Business Advice

Fan Pages. Don’t treat them like they’re free.

July 3rd, 2009

Written by: Adam Pierno

We all know by now social media blah blah blah. It’s a powerful yadda yadda. Harness the social graph and so on. Et cetera.

So you want to get started building out your social media presence and participate in the great conversation. This is smart. Where do you start? Probably a fan page on Facebook, since it’s one of the most celebrated channels for social media, particularly where marketing is concerned.

Also, they’re relatively easy to set up, not too stressful to manage (usually). Best of all. It’s free. Or is it?

Here’s something I’ve noticed about Fan Pages on Facebook. There’s an awful lot of them.,and they’re not all real serious. This morning I saw the following parade of Fan Pages in my Suggested Friends feed on the site (this is true) Sleep, Sarcasm, Baskin-Robbins, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Dog the Bounty Hunter and about 20 ad agencies. 

If you set up shop here, expect to be piled in the neighborhood of ironic fan pages clicked once and never visited again. By association, your page is sure to be treated with similar regard as Sarcasm or retired pro-wrestlers (who wear kilts).

Of course, this can be addressed by being smart about your page. Actually tending to it, interacting with your fans, and (gasp!) adding content regularly. Heard this before? Probably. It’s basically a common sense starting point for managing your page. But once a page is set up, many are overwhelmed by the actual investment of time and resources it takes to keep these “free” tools working for them.

The goal of any initiative I work on with clients is to make sure we’re doing something that will please their customers and make their competitors jealous. I’ve never had a client ask “Hey – do you think we could create something that would really disappoint my customers? I’m sick of their money.” Er, not yet anyway.

Think about it this way – once you buy your domain name and set up web hosting, it’s pretty much free to host your brand website, your microsite, your special offers page. But you’d be horrified to go to a brand website that was a blank page with a logo on top and a link to some other folks who have visited. As brand marketers, consumers and information gatherer’s we’ve come to understand the value of content, and the increased value of new content. It’s why people come back to your site.

It’s why you’re reading this. New. Content. (And free!)

Why then, would you set up any presence with your brand that you didn’t have a plan to make successful? The answer is: you wouldn’t. So don’t. Before you jump in, make plans for content, monitoring and interaction and assign people clear tasks and deadlines. Then follow up to make sure your business is well represented.

This will keep you out of the category of joke pages for sure. Unless that’s your business.