It is interesting to see a lot of pages come up on Facebook these days. Essentially meant as a medium for brands to be part of social networking it is slowly turning into avenues that earlier groups used to provide. By definition pages on Facebook were meant to be this: A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.
Avid users of Facebook will agree with me that a lot of pages that they become fans of these days have gone beyond the scope of this definition. So we have pages of attitudes, places, food, etc. in place of brand names that people are becoming fans of. Now this isn’t just some fancy trend created by a few page owners. A lot of these pages have gone on to be amongst the fastest growing pages, and are highly interactive.
The reason behing their growth is the same as why people join communities on networks, or join action groups, or sport their favourite jersey. So what was initially a platform which curtailed free use of Facebook by brands to a certain extent and yet interactive is slowly turning out to become another facet of socializing. The interesting point here is that, while communities or groups were earlier meant as breeding ground to find like minded people, fan pages don’t quite involve this relationship building excercise amongst members. Being a fan is only about choosing your tribe and acknowledging it. However, these days that is all that marketers need.
Just like websites, fan pages will now be the new destination of interaction. Status updates will be akin to banner ads and comments and likes will be feedback. Social Media I have always said brought democracy into media, leveling the playing field. This trend that we see now is bound to take it further building on evangelism and the insinct of the tribe.
What does it mean for brands?
This means that a page with their brand name might not be enough to engage and interact in the future. They will need to identify their target groups social identity, what are the habits they have, what are the movies they like, what is their favourite place on earth and why so? On the other hand decide which of these habits, likes or dislikes are in tune with their brand identity. And with this data create pages on these nuances, and get those who share them together on one place and then pitch the brand. Here pitching would mean nothing but just putting your brand in front of them. Say, a fan page for Coffee, and putting Star Bucks’s expresso snap on the wall. The reactions depending on the size of the page can be instantaneos and emphatic further propelling the brand image.
Basically make it an asset, make it a property that you can use.
Now you might wonder, if this post is just about Facebook fan pages why do I have a generic title. The reason is it can be duplicated elsewhere on similar if not the same lines. Mahalo in fact uses @answers on Twitter to engage its potential users very well. The point therefore comes to obtaining and using these media assets well for your brand’s benefit. This is very similar to the generic domain name business that was in vogue till people ran out of words in the dictionary to book. And boy that yielded some rich dividends to a lot of people.
What do you people think about this thought?
