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The topic of Facebook Fan Pages is coming up more and more regularly as people and brands try to decide whether they should spend a lot of time and money to have an amazing fan page and how they are going to get it above 6 fans that aren’t married to or otherwise related to them.
Now there’s research out there that suggests that people that fan your brand are also much more likely to recommend or buy from you. Then there’s research that tries to figure out a dollar amount on the “how much is a Facebook Fan worth in dollars in cents?” issue. All of this studying of Facebook Fans has whipped marketers and brands into kind of a Facebook Fan Page frenzy.
Before you run out and start a fan page or yell at the marketing team for having a crummy fan page you should also read this article about “slacktivism” and Facebook. You know, how people hit the “like” button on everything because it’s a totally non committal thing to do?
Ok so here’s the skinny on the Facebook Fan Page:
If You’re a Brand -It’s altogether possible that you should have a fan page especially if your audience is a heavy Facebook using audience. (provided you have the time resources to do it ) However, you should NOT treat your Facebook fan page like a mini website or an extension of your website. What you should do is come up with a specific goal for that page. Check out Red Bull’s Fan Page for example. Their goal is to put up info, news, and video about extreme sports 95% of the time and 5% product or brand info. They don’t devote the page to Red Bull photos or reposting everything they have on their site, or everything from their blog. It’s a cool little spot to get info on extreme sports that you won’t find anywhere else on the Red Bull Channel. Also, people know what they are going to get when they reach their Facebook Fan Page. Are they missing some of their fans that aren’t into extreme sports? Yes, but if they try to reach everyone their page is going to be all over the place and no one will be happy they came there. You’ll see that Victoria’s Secret does the same thing with their page – they highlight models and bombshells 60% of the time.
If You’re A Personal Brand - Ex. Realtor, Author, etc. I think it’s more than acceptable to not have a Facebook Fan page if you are allowing some crossover between your clients and your friends already. You will need to surrender the idea that you will be able to put intensely personal items on your Facebook Page but if you are a brand that’s trying to create business online you are at some point going to have to find out where your line is with personal information online. Gen Y is already really good at this, there’s no real sense of “here is my personal persona” and “here is my professional persona” and there’s no crossover between the two, it’s already seamless for them to have clients know that they *gasp* go out to dinner. Other generations may struggle with it a little more but when it comes to Facebook, it’s a personal space so having to update 2 pages with “professional me” vs. “Personal me” can feel a bit split personality-ish.
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Comments
07.23.10
Caitlin , I have a question. Should a B2B entity have a facebook page? My problem is that the customers or the key business influencers (who the business is targeting) are:
a)35+ yrs old b)are active on facebook but all of them have linkedin accounts c)none of them are on twitter.
So i know that they are on facebook and linkedin , but they are more active on FB than on linkedin which they are simply using to accept invitations & are not participating in discussions. My guess is that the discussions that I keep trying to generate on linkedin would actually do better on the FB page.
What do you think?
07.23.10
Thanks for sharing this Caitlin, although I'm not personally interested in following most brands on Facebook, often I will just to see how they engage and how well their community does (or doesn't) respond.
You bring up some great points here, unfortunately most "traditional marketing folks" (the ones with decision making authority and $) have a tough time understanding the 95% content 5% traditional promotion strategy. More often then not it is flipped the other way around.
I wanted to weigh on on Sadya's question. I wouldn't recommend ALL B2B entities have a Facebook page, but it does make sense for some businesses. In the end I think individuals benefit more from the social revolution than entities as a whole.
07.23.10
Sadya - Without knowing what the business is, it’s a little hard to say. In these cases it’s sometimes easier to see what the company itself is really good at. If they have a ton of accounting information and are targeting new business owners than they could do something with a really cool blog or video series and use Facebook to highlight it instead of making Facebook the focal point of the marketing plan. B2B's (in my humble opinion) should decide what type of resourceful information they have to impart and let the content they know best drive where they put it.
Brandon - me too! I like to dig around and see who's doing it well and who's not :)
07.23.10
caitlin or brandon..what are your thoughts on visual artists having a fan page?
07.23.10
Candace - I think visual artists should absolutely have a fan page. Again, depending on how much time you have to devote to Facebooking, perhaps the fan page could be your only page. I actually think visual artists could really benefit from a page that talks about progress on certain work, videos of your techniques or behind-the-scenes type stuff.
Converse shoes sponsored a tattoo artist (which was awesome) because he had lots of content out there. It's a great way to get noticed!
07.24.10
Cailtin & Brandon: you're right not every B2B should have a FB page. but a B2B that sells an accounting software , and knows that its likely influencers/purchasers are heavy facebook users...should probably try out an FB page. but yeah the content genration for that page will be a challenge
07.25.10
caitlin..thanks so much for your feedback!
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