I thought it would be sensible to grab a Facebook page for the island itself back in 2010. Since even the organisations which seek to represent the Island have their own brand names, (e.g. “Isle of Wight Tourism“), there was going to be a gap in the market for someone to just represent the Island.

This has given me an interesting perspective on the various organisations on and around the Island that seek to gain an audience on Facebook, and this made me think, who gets Facebook on the Island? Well, without further ado, let’s find out!

General Tourism

First lets look at the pages which intend to represent the Isle of Wight. This includes my page (The Isle of Wight), but also some others including Isle of Wight Tourism and Red Funnel’s ‘myisleofwight‘…

This shows that the brand of the island on its own easily attracts ‘likes’ from Facebook users, people will much more readily click ‘like’ for a generic Isle of Wight page than they would for one that says ‘Isle of Wight Tourism’ for instance. This doesn’t particularly take into account the effort put into the pages, and the full time & content rich nature of pages with big money behind them, which will no doubt grow over time.

I launched ‘The Isle of Wight’ page back in 2010, and its growth has been pretty much entirely viral since then, I am still working out what to do with it, but I do try and keep its content up to date, and use the page to promote my own photography, for instance.

Travel Operators

I happen to find this category quite interesting, the massive disparity between the market leading ferry operator Wightlink and Red Funnel is in my belief, down to the promotional efforts that Red Funnel has put into building their fan base. Whenever I have gone on a Red Jet to or from Southampton, there is quite often something promoting a competition to win Festival tickets or iPods or something or rather if you like the Red Funnel page. Maybe this is what Wightlink has been missing out on?

It’s certainly hard to believe that Red Funnel is 400% more popular than Wightlink as this chart suggests, but anything’s possible, right?  Alternatively it could be the SEO value achieved by Red Funnel, who’s page is named ‘Red Funnel Isle of Wight Ferries’; is there something missing from ‘Wightlink Ferries’ name?

It is interesting to see other smaller operators getting Facebook pages, like some taxi firms; however some haven’t posted regularly or at all, so is there even a point in them having such a page?

Tourist Attractions

Now I’m not really an expert on Isle of Wight tourist attractions, so I may have missed one or two here, but here’s the chart…

It is clear here that the Dabells (Robin Hill & Blackgang Chine) are well out in front, however Robin Hill have achieved this through the use of a personal account rather than an official company page. The Robin Hill personal page has over 3000 friends, but this could mean Robin Hill did the friend requesting.

Regardless of who did what, and whether having a personal account for a business is really sustainable, the fact is that Robin Hill is able to advertise to just under 4000 people, and Blackgang just under 2000 people through Facebook, which is impressive to say the least. Their efforts put others such as The Needles pleasure park (who pay so much for advertising on the back of buses) to shame…

Media & Government

This graph is particularly interesting, since media organisations such as the BBC and The Guardian have been able to exploit social media so well on a national scale, how local media on the island performs on these kinds of platforms may well determine who stays and who goes in terms of media firms. So let’s see the graph…

I was immediately struck by how far down the chart the Island’s number 1 media provider is, The Isle of Wight County Press has invested an awful lot into its website, but their presence on Facebook is pretty much a robot app called ‘RSS Graffiti’, getting one or two likes and comments on an odd article, and the page is closed to wall posts. The newspaper could earn a lot more followers by opening up, asking more questions, and finding a better way to present its stories to Facebook users.

Which brings me to VentnorBlog and Isle of Wight Radio. Both have embraced interactivity, and post directly to Facebook, rather than relying on robots (most of the time), and it shows. VentnorBlog, who many people had not heard of a few years ago has over 3x as many ‘likes’ as the Island’s best known newspaper.

It’s also notable and possibly worrying that the Council’s update page, which was created to inform people of cold weather, and now serves to post press releases and travel updates, has more followers than the Isle of Wight’s local newspaper. Local government interacting more with social media than local media? Now that’s crazy.

Last but not least, it’s….

Major Events & Festivals

Now I haven’t found any major flaws in what these guys are doing with their Facebook pages, but I thought you might find it interesting to see the popularity of these differing events on Facebook. Again, different factors involved, so you can’t say definitively that one is more popular than the other, but it’s a good indication!

Yes, Bestival has 43,800+ fans, over 13,000 more than the Isle of Wight festival. I was going to include some other smaller music festivals in this chart, but it’s just so unfair to compare them! Cowes Week is an interesting comparison, as a far more niche event with a completely different audience, is that about the number of fans that Cowes Week is able to get, so should they be satisfied? or could they push social media more during the event?

So there you go, a little look into the weird and wonderful world of Island-related businesses and Facebook.

Do any of them really get it? Now that’s a question.

Information gathered on 3 and 4 February 2012, this is not definitive or expertly researched, just my own personal perspective, which might be wrong.

Updated 4/2/2012 to add ‘friends’ of VentnorBlog and show clearly the difference between ‘friends’ and ‘likes’ on graphs.