Top 50 Branded Facebook Fan Pages, March 2012. Nike Sprints, Reese’s Melts (UPDATE)

An overhaul to the process that creates the charts for my monthly “Top 50 Branded Facebook Fan Pages” posts created errors in the March version. We realized this overhaul inadvertently dropped a few pages we’ve been tracking for a long time. We’ve since updated the chart below. My apologies for any inconvenience.

-Jim Tobin


March was a good month for fan growth for fast brands, it seems. When you look at the 5 fastest growing pages among the Top 50 Branded Facebook Fan Pages, three deal with speed, two deal with fashion. More on that in a minute.

We also improved our page sweeping efforts by redoing our analysis, by hand, of more than 1,500 pages and then adding new automation to how we track these charts. As a result, we have an unusually high number of new names on the list this month.


Fastest Growing Branded Facebook Fan Pages

The top 5 fastest growing fan pages among the Top 50 this month are:

  1. Nike, up 16% to #45
  2. Walt Disney World, up 13% to #37
  3. BMW, up 12% to #39
  4. Sprite, up 12% to #49
  5. Nike Football, up 10% to #30

Biggest Losers

With all the new pages we’re tracking now, there was more movement than usual this month. And, as usual, the pages that fell in the rankings continued to grow. They just didn’t grow as fast as some of those previously ranked behind them.

  1. Reese’s, down 3 spots to #42
  2. Starbucks Frappuccino, down 3 spots to #44
  3. Taco Bell, down 2 spots to #47
  4. Dr. Pepper, down 1 spot to #27
  5. Victoria’s Secret Pink, down 1 spot to #28

Others that dropped 1 spot included Levi’s, Disney Pixar, Starburst, National Geographic, DC Shoes and Hollister.


New to the List

With our new system, we’re happy to add 8 new pages to the list, all of which meet our methodology for this ranking. They are:

  1. Dior, debuting at #31;
  2. Hello Kitty, debuting at #32;
  3. ESPN, debuting at #34;
  4. Louis Vuitton, debuting at #35;
  5. Dove, debuting at #39;
  6. Yahoo, debuting at #43;
  7. Nickelodeon, debuting at #47;
  8. Domino’s Pizza, debuting at #49 and
  9. Dolce & Gabbana, debuting at #50.

Top 50 Branded Facebook Fan Pages, March 2012

Current Rank (03/28/2012) Rank by Fan Count (02/29/2012) Change in Rank Fans As of 02/29/2012 Fans As of 03/28/2012 % increase
1 Facebook 1 0 63,020,594 64,544,641 2%
2 YouTube 2 0 54,042,335 55,876,445 3%
3 Disney 4 1 33,459,545 34,793,501 4%
4 MTV 5 1 32,333,102 32,983,202 2%
5 Starbucks 6 1 28,709,726 29,459,579 3%
6 Red Bull 7 1 27,101,861 27,636,517 2%
7 Oreo 8 1 25,153,576 25,590,292 2%
8 Converse 9 1 23,374,534 24,015,249 3%
9 Converse All Stars 10 1 22,888,851 23,361,713 2%
10 Playstation 12 2 20,774,895 22,135,038 7%
11 Skittles 11 0 21,022,956 21,462,083 2%
12 iTunes 13 1 20,302,660 21,220,716 5%
13 Pringles 14 1 18,164,735 18,676,499 3%
14 McDonalds 16 2 16,908,569 18,351,559 9%
15 Victoria’s Secret 15 0 17,759,019 18,150,548 2%
16 Xbox 17 1 15,363,800 16,629,869 8%
17 Live Messenger 18 1 15,261,803 15,407,745 1%
18 Ferrero Rocher 19 1 14,915,318 15,343,376 3%
19 Monster Energy 20 1 14,663,012 15,206,306 4%
20 Nutella 21 1 13,946,669 14,513,757 4%
21 Walmart 23 2 12,916,141 14,006,888 8%
22 adidas Originals 22 0 13,132,339 13,558,429 3%
23 Disneyland 24 1 12,615,830 13,507,206 7%
24 Zara 25 1 12,395,406 13,070,961 5%
Current Rank (03/28/12) Rank by Fan Count (02/29/12) Change in Rank Fans as of 02/29/12 Fans as of 03/28/2012 % increase
25 Subway 28 3 10,972,031 11,944,423 9%
26 Burberry 29 3 10,920,154 11,833,178 8%
27 Dr. Pepper 26 -1 11,478,675 11,701,778 2%
28 Victoria’s Secret Pink 27 -1 11,378,488 11,655,364 2%
29 Google Chrome 32 3 10,760,369 11,597,996 8%
30 Nike Football 35 5 10,193,596 11,226,918 10%
31 Levi’s 30 -1 10,842,974 11,225,775 4%
32 Disney Pixar 31 -1 10,765,182 10,985,578 2%
33 Blackberry 34 1 10,529,591 10,935,000 4%
34 Starburst 33 -1 10,549,924 10,763,462 2%
35 H&M 36 1 10,065,217 10,561,117 5%
36 Target 38 2 9,468,846 10,118,871 7%
37 Walt Disney World 40 3 8,828,450 9,971,838 13%
38 National Geographic 37 -1 9,480,019 9,966,725 5%
39 BMW 43 4 8,457,827 9,502,297 12%
40 Lacoste 42 2 8,548,806 9,259,584 8%
41 Google 44 3 8,397,452 9,140,364 9%
42 Reese’s 39 -3 8,859,925 9,113,831 3%
43 Yahoo new 9,061,218
44 Starbucks Frappuccino 41 -3 8,734,910 9,036,530 3%
45 Nike 52 7 7,376,261 8,587,453 16%
46 Mozilla Firefox 46 0 8,050,170 8,482,129 5%
47 Taco Bell 45 -2 8,273,368 8,479,573 2%
48 DC Shoes 47 -1 7,769,665 8,330,191 7%
49 Sprite 51 2 7,439,705 8,316,882 12%
50 Hollister 49 -1 7,567,062 7,946,692 5%

Methodology

For those of you curious about where your favorite band, movie or TV show is on this list, here’s the full explanation for what we’re tracking.

Since at Ignite Social Media we’re primarily interested in social media marketing by brands like those we represent, I excluded fan pages that weren’t official pages being used to promote a product. Specifically, I left out pages that featured:



Ignite Social Media