If you follow any decent sized Facebook accounts, you’ll have seen Top Fans in the comments – recognisable by the jewelled icon beside their names.
As Facebook looks to reward engagement and loyalty, the Top Fan badge helps to showcase those who are the most active within that community. Those who frequently watch videos, like posts, and comment are likely to receive a Top Fan badge – if the page is set up for it.
How to set up Top Fan badges
There are a few stipulations for adding Top Fan badges to your page. Unlike on Facebook Groups, where badges are rewarded to groups with over 50 members, the figures for Facebook pages are a little bit higher.
For a Facebook Page, your page needs to have over 10,000 followers and be over 28 days old. To turn on the functionality, head to settings, and click ‘Facebook Badges’, toggling Top Fan to on.
Once on, your Top Fans should receive notifications about their new status.
Having trouble? Check your Page’s template style: you may need to switch to video template (as this badge was mainly designed for video content producers).
How to see your Top Fans
Want to check if you have enough Top Fans before you turn it on?
It’s easy – click on ‘community’ and your Top Fans will appear. The Top Fans badges are updated on a weekly basic and you’ll be able to see who is a Top Fan for the first time, and who has been on the list for several weeks in a row.
Normally, Facebook is fairly good at weeding out trolls from the list. However, if you see someone on the list you feel shouldn’t be there, you can easily click the three dots beside their name, which gives the option to remove their Top Fan badge, or block them altogether. You can also remove their badge in the comments section, if they have posted something offensive and you want to get rid of them immediately.
How to use Top Fans for marketing
The Top Fan badge isn’t (just) for people to brag in the comments. Facebook allows you to target your Top Fans specifically – so you can create posts just for them.
You may decide to reward them with a special discount or provide them with news first.
As they are the most engaged members of your community, you can also curate exciting content for them to enjoy – for example, a competition, or even a free trial of a new product.
This allows you to use the Top Fan badges not just as a gimmick, but a way to utilise and converse with your audience. If users know that that Top Fans get more, they’re more likely to stay engaged.
With Top Fans being a fairly new feature that Facebook has been working on for the past six months, posts targeted at them are likely to get a higher reach and engagement rate – especially because the reasoning is that the user will want to see the post, so it is more likely to appear in their feed. This also allows you to test what performs best and creates a great opportunity to A/B test before you launch something to a wider audience.
However – you can’t focus all your efforts on the Top Fans, or no-one else would get a chance to join them. Make sure to continue to post content to everyone and continue engaging!