November 24th, 2009
Facebook, Simplified
Every day — sometimes more than once — I am asked the difference between a profile page on Facebook and a fan page. Or, more accurately, people say how the $#@%^$#! do I put up a business page on Facebook?
The answer is really quite simple, but no thanks to the wonks at Facebook. In his blog post on Hubspot, author Dan Zarella says:
People have profiles. Brands have pages.
Social networking profiles represent people. From your Facebook profile, you declare personal relationships, grow your network by manually accepting friend requests, and discover other people in your network to add as friends. Your Facebook profile includes facts about you including your favorite movies, what schools you went to, and your favorite quotes.
Your brand isn’t a person. It doesn’t have a favorite quote or book. You can’t friend a brand, and it certainly can’t friend you back. Brands don’t have friends. Brands have fans. Fans have discussions about your brands, share news about them, and share information about your brands with others.
Now, if only building the Fan Page were that simple. Why does everything worth doing in the realm of social media require an entire IT department?
Admittedly, it’s hard to find the link to create a page, it’s an icon at the bottom of the page that looks like a callout button with an “f” in it, or you can go to: http://www.facebook.com/pages/. Then it’s actually very easy to create one. They have basic templates for different kind of businesses. The big questions are:
1. Do you have fans?
2. Can you/your fans provide fresh content?
3. Do you have a strategy for your Facebook page as well as your other social media efforts?
Hope that helps.
Diane
Thanks, Diane–Yes, of course you’re right and it is getting much more user-friendly. But for the majority of my clients it is not intuitive. There are some really smart people out there who are flummoxed by the whole profile/fan distinction. I hear it in almost every conversation I have.