Brands that conduct Facebook marketing can gain huge benefits by targeting the friends of their Facebook fans, according to a new report by comScore and Facebook, which also found that Facebook users spend 27% of their time browsing homepage newsfeeds.

Below, additional findings from the report, titled "The Power of Like: How Brands Reach and Influence Fans Through Social Media Marketing," by comScore Social Essentials and Facebook.

A Company of Friends

Friends of fans* constitute a large percentage of Facebook's universe. For example, Microsoft Bing's fan base is approximately 1.7 million, but that number pales in comparison with the number of friends of fans in the network: 232 million—more than 130 times the size of its fan base:

 

Friends of fans typically comprise a bigger segment of consumers—34 times larger, on average, for the top 100 brand pages—and can receive social media brand impressions via their friends (i.e., for every fan of a top 100 brand, an additional 34 friends of fans can be reached via an exposure to the fan).

Extending Brand Reach via Friends of Fans

Looking specifically at Starbucks, Southwest, and Bing, the number of friends of fans reached by those brand impressions exceeds the reach of fans alone—by nearly double for Starbucks and Bing, and roughly 25% in the case of Southwest.

Importance of Newsfeed

Facebook users spent more than one-quarter of their time on the site consuming and interacting with the Facebook newsfeed (appearing on users' homepages) in May 2011. That activity accounted for 4% of all time spent online in the US during the period.

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Facebook: Brands Should Target Friends of Fans

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