

Imagine if they had used our Social Offers to run this promotion
Firstly, those hardcore fans would have got a little reward for their participation in the fan community by being the first to get a free sample. Then, as those customers participated they would be sharing the free sample offer with their friends. This would have been a great way for Purex fans to introduce their friends to the brand. Because people generally tend to be friends with those similar to them, it is likely that those friends would be interested in a free sample, and by participating share with their friends. You can see how this could have quickly spread, and spread to those who were interested. Here is what this might have looked like:
Let’s look at some hypothetical numbers
Running this on their Canadian fan page, they have just over 9,000 fans. A regular (i.e. not promoted) status update is seen by approximately 16% of your fan base. So when their Social Offer for a free sample started approximatley 1,440 people would have seen it in their news feed. Their regular post I highlighted above was shared by more than 376 people. Let’s take that as a conservative estimate of the number of fans who might have participated. But wait, this is where things are just getting started. Each of those 376 people have an average of 400 friends each. This means that as they participate their participation is seen by a potential audience of 150,400. Again, let’s assume that only 16% of these people actually see the update (24,064), and a conservative 5% of these people participate (another 1,203 participants). We now have a total of 1,579 participants – 376 first degree (i.e. those who were already fans) and 1,203 second degree (i.e. friends of fans). Let’s look a couple of degrees further removed: Third degree participants = 1,203 (2nd degree participants) x 400 (average friends) x 16% (people who would see the update) x 2% (an even more conservative participation rate) = 2,309 Fourth degree participants = 2,309 x 400 x 16% x 1% = 1,477 As you can see I have reduced the participation rate dramatically as we get further away from the original fans of the page – assuming that these people are less likely to participate. So, we are just at 4 degrees of separation from the fan page, and we have already beaten the target of 5,000 participants, even with my conservative participation estimates. If I was a betting man, I would put my money on it happening within 3 degrees of separation in the real world.