Big shout out to C.C. Chapman and The Advance Guard for publishing this great new white paper on the new Facebook Pages and their capabilities. It's quite timely, as I've recently been exploring the intricacies of using Facebook more for cross-marketing, promotion and social networking on behalf of clients. In fact, most of the research showed that there wasn't a big difference between Pages and Groups, which was my burning question.
At that time (way back last week), updates to Facebook Pages stayed on the Page--they didn't go directly to Fans' inboxes or appear on their Walls. Fortunately, Facebook just changed all of that (a few days after all my research--go figure!), making Pages a lot more social and a lot more conversational.
So I dug into the white paper gleefully, devouring it and making notes on my flight to meet with a client in Seattle. My summary:
- The biggest benefit: now your actions (updates, photo & video posts, etc. ) appear in your Fans' feeds as if you were a Friend
- Best quote: "Brands MUST be social--creating content, sharing status updates, posting photos, hosting events and making regular contributions to the Community"
- Best new feature: tabs
- Wall (first tab): now the landing page and most valuable real estate
- Info (2nd tab) : second most valuable
- Boxes: now act as a kind of sidebar, like in a blog
- Each tab has its own URL, so great for promotion
- Content from all tabs now visible to non-FaceBook users
There is also a wealth of information on how to perceive the Wall, the Info tab and how to best take advantage of Photos and Videos. In short, Pages now function a lot more like Groups and enable a lot more highly visible conversation with your Fans. I'm not sure if there is any truth to the rumor that Facebook is phasing out Groups; seems like it would be a shame if they did. I mean, Pages are fantastic for businesses, not for profits and brands, but we don't really want to lose I Love Thin Mints or Thank You Joss Whedon, do we?
