Facebook Success Story: The Pickle

Susan Boyle. Farmville. Subservient Chicken. Pickle.

That’s right, you can add a pickle to the list of social media-made celebrities.

It didn’t dance, sing, or bite someone’s finger. All the pickle did was get more fans than the band Nickelback on Facebook.

The page ‘Can this pickle get more fans than Nickleback?’ launched on February 3, 2010, and in just sixteen days, it met its goal, surpassing Nickelback’s fan page. Right now, the page has more than 1.5 million fans.

I bet you’re thinking, ‘Who cares? It’s a pickle.’

Let me repeat myself. Right now, the page has more than 1.5 million fans.

When it comes to social media marketing, one of the more popular goals you’ll hear is to increase brand awareness. Like James pointed out in The Value of Position, it’s a noisy world out there. And social media is no exception.

“Social media marketing is an intense battle for attention,” writes Scott Bishop of Real Time Marketer. “You’re not just in a fight with other industry competitors…you’re battling everyone and everything.”

I’d say the pickle won this battle.

Companies are begging for this kind of exposure. They turn to the brightest, most innovative minds in the industry. They spend millions of dollars. And still, their campaigns are beat by a pickle.

Now, I know this pickle isn’t exactly a brand, but there is a valuable marketing lesson here.

Don’t disvalue the immense power of the Facebook mob.

Many brands already know this. In fact, Facebook reports that more than 1.5 million local businesses have active pages on the site. Can every Facebook fan page be like the pickle and reach over a million followers in just a couple weeks? To be honest, probably not. According to Tech Crunch, 77% of fan pages have less than 1,000 followers.

That doesn’t mean Facebook shouldn’t be a part of your social media marketing campaign. We told you that Twitter is now boasting more than 75 million accounts. Well, that’s nothing compared to Facebook’s 400 million active users.

And we mean active. Check out these user statistics from Facebook:

• More than 60 million status updates posted each day
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.)shared each week
• More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
• The average user becomes a fan of 4 pages each month
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

Even if your page doesn’t get you millions of fans, you can’t deny Facebook as a powerful marketing tool. It gives you a chance to reach out to your customers, to engage and interact with them. Plus, it doesn’t cost you anything (bonus!).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go become a fan of ‘Can this pickle get more fans than Twilight?’

Danielle Hohmeier writes about marketing and design in the digital world for Atomicdust, with a focus on marketing convergence and social media.