14 Jul iTunes – Facebook Fan Page Examples in Detail #8
Next up in the 26 Facebook Fan Page Examples in Detail series is not only a favorite brand of mine, but of music buffs everywhere: iTunes. I was not surprised to find that iTunes has a huge Facebook following with over 15.9 million fans, and quite surprisingly (for Apple) the brand is actually attempting to engage these fans on their branded tabs and wall. Lets take a look at what they are doing.
iTunes Festival Landing Tab
When users come to the fan page for the first time, they are directed to the iTunes Festival tab. This tab promotes the month-long iTunes festival in London featuring 60 artists in a rotating image. Here, fans can view the festival lineup and then click a link to download an app for iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to watch the live performances once they begin in July.
While this is a great experience, this tab is more informational rather than social, telling fans about the festival and directing them to iTunes. If fans could watch and listen to an exclusive clip from their favorite artist performing at the festival, or download a song for free by that artist by being a fan, this would help iTunes create more hype surrounding the concert and provide additional value to convert non fans.
Glee Playlist Tab
One of my favorite tabs on the iTunes fan page is the Glee Playlist tab. With the continuing success of the show Glee and the fact that many of the songs from the show have topped the iTunes store, the Glee Playlist tab is a smart way to engage iTunes fans on the Facebook page. I’m sure all of my fellow “Gleeks” out there will enjoy picking their five favorite songs from this season, sampling 30-45 seconds of each song and then sharing their picks on their Facebook wall. This in my opinion, is a very smart way of raising awareness of iTunes by capturing an already engaged target audience.
Free Music Tab
Another one of my favorite Facebook tabs on the iTunes fan page is their Free Music tab because it gives fans exclusive access to sample songs from specific genres of music for free. There are currently two different kinds of music samplings available, one featuring a 10-song sampler of songs from the Vans Warped Tour 2011 and another featuring a 5-song sampler of Country Songs. Giving free music downloads to fans is a great way to reward users for being fans and to expose them to music they might be interested in trying out but aren’t willing to pay for without listening to first.
It’s smart to offer different kinds of music to appeal to a wider variety of fans, so I’m hoping they continue to refresh this tab on a regular basis with different genres to encourage fans to keep coming back to the tab. The one thing users might find frustrating with this tab is that, like many applications, you have to allow iTunes to access your profile and information before receiving your code to download the free sampler.
Engagement Strategy
Although iTunes has invested resources in creating engaging tabs, less resources appear to be utilized in terms of page management.
iTunes should start closely monitoring their fan page to remove spam and inappropriate content, in order to cultivate on-topic conversations and sharing. For instance, the Discussion tab has current discussion topics that explain how users can rip Blu-rays and DVDs to iTunes without purchasing them through the iTunes store. This discussion thread should be removed, or the entire tab should be reconsidered in the first place.
In terms of wall engagement, iTunes has a surprisingly low engagement rate considering the popularity of the brand and their large number of fans. The brand typically posts two or more times per day, covering a wide variety of topics like new music, movies, podcasts, TV shows and free downloads. However, most posts only average 950 Likes and around 90 comments. For such a large fan base these numbers are very low. In fact, compared to the Victoria’s Secret fan page (with almost 2 million less fans), iTunes has a .04% less engagement rate. From this finding, iTunes should begin to test content types and reduce the frequency slightly to increase this engagement rate.
As you can see, iTunes is one of the few Apple brands trying to engage actively in the social space. How do you think iTunes can improve their engagement strategy on their fan page?
