When you think about marketing on Facebook or business on Facebook, the “page” is what seems to come to mind most quickly. The page sort of epitomizes everything social media was supposed to do for companies. You can see your customers (and prospects), which enables you to put a face to a name and get to know them. The page allows you to integrate images and videos, which are great ways of keeping people interested, if not entranced. You can give news directly to the people connected to your page, and you can use the internal Facebook ads system to drive your target audience to your page. You can even see insights that will tell you how people are using your page and when they’re using your page.
What could go wrong?
Well, as it turns out, creating an interesting and worthwhile Facebook page is more art than science, just like most other things in the online world. I saw a page once where the administrator of the page kept posting product photos and then “liking” the photos. Yikes. That’s a party I don’t want to be invited to.
During my torrid love/hate, hot/cold relationship with Facebook, I’ve come to a few conclusions about pages for companies or brands. Here are some of my thoughts.
If people don’t know you, they won’t like your page or won’t stick around long
One common mistake I see in the business world is that companies think that they can create a fan page and all of a sudden people will start flocking in. If you’re Coke, that could be entirely true. If your Batty Sheen Car Fluid, maybe not so much. People are already battling a lot of noise on Facebook, and that’s just from people they call friends or family. To “like” your page means there has to be some interest for them. Starting a page and praying to the Zucky gods will not help you. Nor will inviting your mom, your 17 cousins, and your 20 friends from high school. They want to support you, but they’re probably not your target customers. What you need to do is either create a cause related to your product that people can get behind or work on transporting your existing “fans” from other places over to your page. There are lots of great ways to do this, and there are lots of black hat ways to do this. One interesting tactic I’ve seen is a print ad campaign that actually drove traffic to a Facebook page rather than a website. Pretty snazzy, huh?
“Like” is not synonymous with “I wish to buy from you now.”
It’s easy to convince yourself that a person who clicks “like” on your page will also spend money with you. However, just like “like” does not mean “I want to marry you,” “like” in Facebook world doesn’t mean, “I wish to buy your full line of products.” For more on this factor, visit Jay Baer’s post that shows that most people who like a page do not expect to be bombarded with marketing messages.
There is no one rule that will work for everyone
Finally, I’ve learned that you need to figure out what the fans of your page actually want from you. Some fan bases want you to be really personable and happy. Other people just want the information that they expect you to provide, and if you have a smiley face there more power to you. On our 12most.com Facebook page, most of our content is represented by a feed of our posts. It seems that people are just fine with that. But if you try to shove a lot of content into a different kind of page, you’d probably get a lot of blow-back, right? So you need to experiment, listen for feedback, and adjust your strategy as you go.
This is all very big picture, fluffy, maybe not entirely helpful stuff. I know. I kinda figured you’d say, “Great, now we know what Margie thinks. And that helps us how?” So, I also want to link you to this post by my friend Tommy Walker, which pretty much explains everything you could want to know about how to start a Facebook page and make it work. You can watch the video or read the transcripts.
What are your thoughts about Facebook fan pages? What have your experiences been? Let’s talk about it!
Image by Asif Akbar. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/asifthebes
I agree Margie, I have almost completely stopped using facebook. I find it an utter nuisance! I understand the idea and perception of having a lot of likes, but to like it “just because” is a waste of my time and their efforts. It’ gives a false sense of support and success. One of my students sold me a social media package, and at first, I was excited by the thought of it all. As time passed, and the more annoyed I became at being incessantly bombarded, the more I realised that I do not want to be one of those people! Maybe I’m missing out on an opportunity… but for now, that’s all good with me!
@letmemoveyou That’s an interesting point – a false sense of support and success. I think you’re right about that and I think that problem plagues companies on any social media platform and on blogs, too. If you’re getting comments and RTs it can be easy to think that you’re doing great, but are you really building your company’s brand? Hard to say, huh?
My thoughts are exactly “there is no one rule that will work for everyone”. Cultures, target audience, objectives and etc all contribute to the degree of success or failure of a Facebook page. I agree that ‘likes’ have been diluted greatly over the years and it should definitely not be attributed to success. However I still believe that it still is a measure of reach such as seen on Twitter.
@janwong Great answer. That’ s the thing about talking about social media in any way, right? What works for me may not work for you. What works for my company may not work for yours. We can talk about best practices and stuff like that, but in the end it has to be planned and executed based on your own best interests 🙂