Today the Pew Internet and American Life Project released their latest study on Facebook user habits. The study, “Why most Facebook users get more than they give,” identified a segment of users referred to as “power users.” Power users constitute about 20%-30% of total Facebook users and engage in a disproportionately greater amount of activity on this social network. Activity is defined as creating, liking, and/or tagging content and making friend requests. Interestingly, power users tend to specialize in one activity over others.
What does this mean for you? Simply put – give your power users what they want:
- Post regular status updates: Give your super users something to like. The likes will boost an item’s EdgeRank making it more prominent in newsfeeds, where most interaction with fan pages occur.
- Post photos: Let your power users do the work for you by asking them to tag themselves and those they know. This also presents another chance to garner “likes” and getter better newsfeed billing.
- Let your super users post content: Open your page’s wall and invite your fans to share content. The content posted by your super users will appear in their friends’ newsfeeds. Lest you think, a super user is more likely to have their content hidden on their friends’ newsfeeds, the Pew study found that less than 5% of users hid another user’s content from their feed.
It seems simple enough but it matters because according to the Pew study the average user can reach an average of 150,000 other users through their friend network. With a ripple effect that wide it pays to engage your power users.