How Disney Put Mouse Ears on Facebook

This post is part of the Killer Facebook Pages Series, which highlights the top brand pages on Facebook and provides tips on how to emulate their successes.

How easily does the Magic Kingdom translate to Facebook? Judging by its millions of followers, Disney’s theme park slogan of “the happiest place on earth” might extend to cyberspace as well.

Disney’s main Facebook page has 35 million followers, making it the fourth most popular brand on the site. When taking into account the company’s other brands, such as movies, TV shows and theme parks, that number skyrockets.

Disney boasts 332 million fans and counting on its social media sites. Needless to say, Disney is a social media giant. It’s a company that all social media marketers should look to when figuring out their brand’s strategy. Let’s see how Disney does it.

Get Fans Talking by Promoting Interaction

Disney’s Facebook pages are highly interactive. Take the Walt Disney World page: It’s a wonderful example of a brand encouraging fans to take part in the discussion. On the landing page, there are options to “share your favorite Disney memory today,” to “create a Disney Memories Photobook to share with family and friends,” and to “create a personalized Disney memories show featuring you!”

By asking fans to produce the content on the Walt Disney World page, the company is giving them the power to control the conversation. When someone uploads their photos from the theme park onto the page, they will most likely share the link with friends and family members. Just like that, Disney has gained more exposure.

Ignite Social Media studied the Disney page in February 2011, when it had 17 million active fans. Using 10 status updates, they found that overall, 12% of those 17 million people posted replies or comments on posts. That was four times the amount of engagement on the fan page of MTV, another social media powerhouse.

Fostering an Emotional Connection

Disney is seen as a happy, positive brand. People generally associate good feelings with their childhood, which is what Disney is all about. The slogan for its theme park is “Where Dreams Come True.” For the company, it’s all about the magical and whimsical side of life.

Disney scores big on updates that include images from its movies with quotes. Nearly everyday, it posts such content. Ignite said this is a huge contribution to the engagement rate.

“Luckily for Disney, a brand with die-hard loyalists and unofficial brand ambassadors, these posts generate high feedback rates, especially with their often nostalgic tone, a trend that the Engagement team has noticed on several fan pages,” author Cassandra Clark writes. “All Disney has to do is post a popular quote from one of its films, tag the appropriate fan page, and include a picture to generate likes in the double-digit thousands.”

For brands to see such a high level of participation, they should also post about their products that bring back good memories to customers. For Coca-Cola, that would be a picture of a vintage poster from the 1950s. For YouTube, it could be the “Charlie Bit Me” video. For Nickelodeon, it might be a cast photo of “Salute Your Shorts” actors with a quote from the show.

The lesson is: Figure out which content or products were well liked in their day and post content about them. Nostalgia and emotional connections are sure-fire ways to endear fans toward your brand and remind them why they liked you in the first place.

The Power of Subpages

People don’t necessarily think of Disney itself when they conjure up images of what they like about the brand. Fans don’t love the corporation—they love the products. “Beauty and the Beast” was perhaps the first love story introduced to you as a child. You relate to Andy in “Toy Story 3” when he leaves behind his childhood to go to college. You think about that first time you visited Disney World or Disneyland and went on rides in the Magic Kingdom.

On the Disney page, the company lists all the other brand’s pages by popularity. Among all of the products, the movies rank the highest, with “Toy Story” boasting 28 million fans and Dory from “Finding Nemo” clocking in at 17 million fans.

By creating a separate space for the different pages within the Disney corporation, the company has made it easier for people to find their favorite aspects of the brand. The more sub-pages the brand has, the more the SEO is likely to increase. By making sub-pages easily viewable within the main landing page, fans will be more inclined to like the brand, thus increasing exposure further.

By producing active, engaging, easy-to-use, and emotionally connected content on its pages, Disney has been able to broaden its brand further and grow its fanbase.

Image courtesy of RichardStep.com/flickr