As I discussed in my last post, I’m intrigued about the idea of exploring how customers engage with brands on Facebook. I’ve started compiling some data with the hope of coming up with some interesting metrics. While there are still a lot of details to iron out, I thought I’d toss up a few ideas that I’ve had so far in order to see if the wikinomics community might be able to help. The four I’ve looked at so far are: An engagement index comparing fan to group activity, a Facebook group love/hate index, relative fan activity, and relative group activity. The first is kind of confusing, but the other three are pretty straight forward.

1. An engagement index comparing fan to group activity. The idea here is that becoming a fan of a particular brand is fundamentally different than becoming part of a group that associates with it. What’s particularly interesting here is that while groups are generally created by customers (i.e. totally outside of the company control), fan pages are increasingly “facilitated” by the company itself. While this isn’t always the case, and I still have to sort out exactly which ones are, I decided to explore how the fans and groups associated with particular brands might behave differently.

The figure above is a 2 x 2 I developed based on two metrics. The horizontal axis is the ratio of fans to members of the most popular group. In 25 of the 27 cases, the number of fans exceeds the number of people in the most popular group. The contrast in ratios is startling though – Wal-Mart is the lowest at 0.1, and Levi’s is the highest at 127. The vertical axis is what I call an average activity index – the ratio of wall posts per fan to wall posts per group member. In every single case, the per-person activity in the most popular group exceeds the activity on the fan page. The range is again quite high though – from 0.3% (the NBA) to 67.4% (Victoria’s Secret).

Now a lot more analysis needs to go into this to figure out what it all means – it’s not easy to say exactly what is “good” and what is “bad”, for example, and I’ve had to make a few judgment calls that will need to be handled a little more rigorously for the final analysis. But I think there’s some promise here – even just starting from the relative positions of Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and Levi’s, for example.

2. A Facebook Love / Hate Index. Here things are a little easier to understand. I’ve started going through the groups that have been created around various brands, and putting them in one of four buckets – love, hate, neutral, and employee (noting that the love/hate balance within the employee focused ones appears interesting to explore). Looking at it from a brand perspective, the love/ hate ratio seemed like it could be interesting. I’ve looked at a handful of brands so far, and the current ratios range from about 1.1 : 1 (Wal-Mart) to a startling 67.3: 1 (Disney). McDonald’s is down near Wal-Mart territory (1.5 : 1), and Starbucks is up in the 18.4: 1 range. Looks like it could be a simple, powerful metric to track.

3. Relative Fan Activity. Another easy one to understand: Wall posts per fan as an indicator of engagement levels. From the sample of brands i’ve looked at so far, the range is from 0.0013 (MTV) to 0.0526 (Avon Products). Others near the top are NASCAR, Molson, Bath & Body Works, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, and the NHL. Others near the bottom are The Gap, Levi’s, Nike, Sephora, and Abercrombie & Fitch.

4. Relative Group Activity. Very similar to #3 – wall posts per group member (in the most popular group associated with the brand) as an indicator of engagment levels. As noted earlier, the relative activity in the groups is greater than on the fan pages. The range from the sample I’ve looked at so far is from 0.0144 (Nike) to 3.67 (NBA). Others near the top are NASCAR, NHL, Crate & Barrel, and Avon Products. Others near the bottom are Victoria’s Secret, Somersby, Levi’s, and Abercrombie & Fitch.

Just from the process of writing this, I see another 2 x 2 in my future – relative group activity versus relative fan activity. But before I go there, I’m interested in hearing what people think. What looks promising? What might I be missing? Is there another lens that I could be taking? Any thoughts on #1 would be particularly appreciated…