Facebook Page Badges and Top Fans

It’s been a long time since I’ve been excited about Facebook. A really long time. But times, they are a changing. I’m happy to say that I’m a big fan of Facebook’s fan badges for Pages.

One of #CSUSocial’s core principles is to build community. Super fans are a key part of building community and I love that Facebook is recognizing these individuals. Further, our team’s purpose is to give fans a sense of belonging to fuel their fandom and inform them about Colorado State. What better way to fuel fandom than by better knowing our audience and identifying individuals who regularly interact with us? Thanks, Facebook. Seriously. Thank you.

Facebook Badges for Pages

Badges signify a fan’s relationship with a Page based on their engagement level. Badges can also serve as a who’s who in comment threads. I have seen four types of badges on Colorado State University’s Facebook page: Top Fan, Anniversary Follower, Follower, Milestone Follower.

Graphic of icons depicting badge types

The Top Fan badge is the most consistent one I’ve seen as the other three only occasionally show up, and in fact, I think have disappeared from a few of our threads. I suspect Facebook is still tinkering with the functionality of these badges.

What is a Top Fan?

Facebook identifies a Top Fan as someone who has interacted with your Page’s content in the past week. On a weekly basis, Facebook updates the Top Fans standings. You can see your list of Top Fans in the ‘Community’ tab on your Page. Facebook recently enabled Pages to publish posts targeted only to Top Fans. This new functionality enables brands to deliver content to their most loyal fans to a next level.

Screenshot showing Facebook menu to publish content to Top Fans

One thing to note, badges are only available to Pages with more than 10K followers. More info from Facebook on that here. For eligible Pages, you need to turn on the Top Fans badge by going to Page Settings and select the ‘Facebook Badges’ section.

Screenshot showing badge settings in Facebook

Content for Top Fans

We experimented with publishing posts for Top Fans in August around move-in and the first week of school which also happened to be the same week of our rivalry football game. This time of year, we typically have higher engagement with our content. With the rollout of badges meant that this year we had hundreds of Top Fans during a critical two-week period. This was clearly a prime opportunity to continue to build and foster brand affinity with an activated fan base. Rooted in a foundational understanding of what our core audience engages with on social media, we decided to give our Top Fans what they want… An exclusive photo of our mascot, CAM the Ram.

Screenshot of CAM the Ram Facebook post

Our second experiment with Top Fan content featured a short video from our university president on the first day of classes. This post to Top Fans preceded a fun video #CSUSocial produced featuring President Joyce McConnell handing out coffee on the first day of classes.

Screenshot of top fans post on Facebook

Finally, we capped off our Top Fans posts by sharing a short “behind the scenes” video from the field at our rivalry football game.

Screenshot of Facebook post from football field

Based on the comments, our Top Fans appreciate feeling the love and getting a little extra Ram Pride and attention from CSU. And we’re all about that Ram Pride. I’m excited to see how we can continue to strategically fuel fandom by interacting with our advocates and facilitating more community engagement.