More On Facebook Fan Pages

More on facebook fan pages
Following the previous chart on the most fanned pages on facebook i wanted to quickly share some unstructured thoughts. Jonathan rightly asked “what the VALUE is in being a fan, if any?” The short answer if you cannot be arsed to read the whole post is not much.

I’ve looked around quite a lot of products/brands fan pages and while it is impossible to say what is the percentage of user generated pages vs. official branded pages (far more of the former thats for sure), it is very easy to spot the different once on the page. Branded pages usually have some additional content / module on the page while UG will have a URL, short description and the rest are just the community features (the wall, feed, fan photos etc)

I like to think about fan pages on facebook as a visible cross between newsletter and a mini-microsite (by visible I mean that everyone can see how many people have subscribed to your page - something which no one knows in newsletters or any other email marketing program). To date apart from the O2 unlimited orgy of fun of which phenomenal success took me by surprise, I haven’t seen anything worth mentioning. If there is anything interesting that goes beyond simply extending the reach with what they already have - please do let me know. It’s not wrong, it just feels like an opportunity waiting to be realised.

These pages for the most part are mini-microsites in a sense that they usually tell you what this brand/product is up to these days and contain some content (photos, videos) as well as promotional stuff. The Apple student page is the best example for a full blown promotional microsite on facebook. Check also urban outfitters’. From a media brand POV, The Economist is doing a rather good job of extending it’s website content offering while linking back to The Economist website for further reading. I would like to see a better ( 2 way, that is) integration between FB and the mother website - currently it’s linking one way and I think that creating FB only polls or debates and presenting them back on the main website could be more interesting.

Fan pages are the new newsletters in a sense that by becoming fans people in-effect subscribe to the page’s notifications and updates. So if you have something new on the page, whether it’s a piece of content or promotional stuff you can notify your fans. But bare in mind that just like your newsletter lands on a cluttered inbox, your notifications are mixed with all the rest of the social activities/notifications and updates on people profiles and they can auto-delete / ignore them just as they do with emails.

So is there value for people? Well, not really, or, at least not added value beyond any other channel. Some brand might do facebook-exclusive promotional deals and thats indeed could be considered as value but as I said earlier, I’m waiting to see a more innovative use of the platform.

Is there value for brands? To some extent, yes there is. Consider this hierarchy of participation:

- become a fan/friend
- consume content (video/photos)
- vote in poll
- leave comment on wall
- read more on page/portal
- start a discussion
- actively share with friends
- upload content (video/photos)

So there is quite a lot of potential interaction with the brand here. However, I suspect that the ongoing interaction is far smaller in numbers that the actual fans figure. People on social networks are looking to socialise with their mates and express themselves; they’re not searching for information or products. So for the vast majority of ‘fans’ the ‘engagement’ with the brand starts and ends with becoming a fan - a quick, one-off gesture of showing emotional proximity.

Therefore, the main value is potentially a PR one which lies in the number of fans and the rate of growth of that figure. Consider the notion of visibility again. Unlike traditional newsletter where apart from limited active ‘tell a friend’ functionality, in the case of FB fan pages the social newsfeed means that every time that someone becomes a fan his/her mates read about it in their news-feed. That implicit or auto-WOM can be hugely beneficial for the brand especially in the beginning if the brand in question enjoys the herd effect (when you read 36 times about your friends becoming fans of marmite, unless you hate marmite you are most likely to become a fan yourself). I reckon that a conservative estmate will tell you that over million of people have read that their friends became fans of marmite. That a hell of a lot of free PR.

The visible semantics of becoming a fan is obviously far stronger than if it were ‘Asi subscribed to the Apple page updates”. Becoming a fan is publicly declaring their emotional proximity (brrrr. love, that is. must stop using stupid marketing jargon!) and thats a massive value for brands. To use the marmite example again, I reckon that a conservative calculation will tell you that over million of people have read that their friends became fans of marmire.

So to conclude, in the case of popular pages currently there is far more value to brands than to the people. I don’t think that people accept some reciprocity or thinking in terms of value but it would be nice if brands will adopt the mantra that the love that you take equals to the love that you make.

I’m waiting to read about marmite (for example) sending free special edition sample to all it’s facebook fans or free marmite for life for active fans, or any other nice gesture that people will talk about. They should look at how innocent, the masters of nice gestures handle their fan base

Kategoriler: Facebook Fan Pages,Facebook'un En Popüler Grubu,More on Facebook Fan Pages