I don’t have to go over all the reasons why social networks are becoming so important for marketers these days, as I believe most wikinomics readers have seen them before. However, my interest in how companies engage with Facebook in particular was piqued again when I read this eMarketer report about the social networking presence of retailers. Key stats:

• 32% maintain a fan page on Facebook, versus 27% on MySpace.
• In September of 2008 59 of the top-100 online retailers in the U.S. had a fan page, up from 30 in May.

But as I looked through the list of retailers, what I was mostly thinking about is the balance between company  “controlled” fan pages on Facebook versus self-organizing fan groups. For my own interest I started doing some qualitative comparisons between how the retailers present themselves to “customers” on Facebook and how the self-organizing groups present the retailers – and there really is a lot of fascinating contrasts. But I’m a sucker for numbers, so one of the issues I really wanted to explore was the popularity of each approach – basically comparing the number of fans on the “official” fan page to the number of people in the various groups, as well as an indication of the level of engagement. Here’s a sample of a few select retailers and what a first glance at the numbers looks like:

• Abercrombie & Fitch. There appear to be two official fan pages, with 62,410 & 33,772 fans (respectively). On the bigger one, there are 261 wall posts, 80 fan photos, 3 discussion “threads”, and one event. If you search groups, there are over 500 hits. The two most popular ones have 20,253 & 12,451 members each. The most popular one has 972 wall posts, 230 fan photos, and 61 discussion topics – so less people but a lot more action. The next most popular tend to be dedicated to the love of the brand and/or how hot the models are. Then there is a huge long tail of groups focused on things like geography (i.e. in New Brunswick, 1,497 members & UK, 754 members), why the company should be “blown up” (1,305 members), “you know you work at A&F when…” (756 members), etc.
• Costco. Official fan page has 6,747 fans, 6 fan photos, 2 fan videos, 129 wall posts, 6 discussion topics. There are again over 500 groups. The most popular group is I Love Costco, with 1,859 members. 168 wall posts, 9 discussion topics. There is also I go to Costco for the free samples with 1,380 members, various groups trying to bring Costco to certain areas, an employees (Even ex ones) group, etc. Not much activity overall, but again more in the groups than the fan page.
• Nascar. Official fan page has 20,138 fans, 502 fan photos, 9 fan videos, 809 wall posts, and 28 discussion topics. The most popular group is Fans of Nascar with 7,578 members, 3,591 wall posts, 627 discussion topics, 1,233 photos, and 19 videos. Other very active groups include NASCAR FOREVER! with 4,891 members, 3.016 wall posts, and 98 posted items, Dale Earnhardt in NASCAR, chicks who dig Nascar. There are hundreds of others, including requisite protest groups like “NASCAR IS WASTING OUR GAS!
• Nike. Nike Shoes & Nike… Just Do It are the two most popular fan pages (there are many other “niche” ones). The first has 477,416 fans, 1,295 wall posts, 1,227 fan photos, 17 fan videos, and 17 discussion topics. The second has 250,430 fans, 293 wall posts, 205 fan photos, 4 fan videos, and 4 discussion topics. The most popular group is I LOVE NIKE! with 15,074 members, 217 wall posts, 15 discussion topics, 603 photos, and 32 posted items. The next is the Nike Dunk Appreciation Group with 6,679 members, 1,737 wall posts, 150 discussion topics, 1,602 photos. There are many, many other ones.

So even from this random sample of four, I think some interesting trends start to emerge. In each case, the fan pages get more members than the groups. In each case, though to varying degrees, it would appear that the people in the groups are more “engaged” than the people on the fan pages. I sense that if I extended this out into a more complete study, I’d be able to come up with some interesting metrics and benchmarks on how well companies are engaging with their customers directly as one indication of brand strength / loyalty, and how well customers are engaging with each other in relation to the brand as another.

In fact, I think I’ll do just that. It will probably take a fair bit of time, but I’ll report back on a few of the high level findings as they come up.