Web Marketing Therapy

Building and Branding Your Facebook Identity (Part One)

November 18th, 2009
by Amy Dunn

As I was preparing for my big appearance on Ask The Marketing Therapist (the Blog Talk Radio program hosted by Lorrie); I was able to organize my thoughts well enough to write a post that will hopefully offer readers some practical advice on how to manage your business presence on Facebook:

First of all- when presenting your plan to “the powers that be” in your organization here are some handy stats to throw at them if they give you some resistance:

Facebook Currently Has 300 million ACTIVE users – that means people log into their accounts and use them on a daily basis- check their messages, upload and view photos, read what their friends are doing and their recommendations.

According to the stats published on Inside Facebook as of October 1-
The fastest growing demographic are those 35 years old and older (it now makes up 38% of the users)…ages 26-34 make up 23% and the 18-25 demographic- remains strong, but just 29% of the users.

So what does that mean? That means that people using Facebook are not just kids (a common myth). If you dig deeper into the demographic stats- you will also see that women over the age of 55 is one of the fastest growing groups (interesting- yes?).

So once you have convinced your organization to create an online presence on Facebook- here are some guidelines to consider.

Make Sure You Understand the Difference Between a Profile, a Page and a Group. People ask me all the time- “I’m on Facebook and I don’t know what to do now”. First- define HOW you are on Facebook. Do you have a personal profile? A Business Page? What does that mean?

There are Different Ways to Interact on Facebook

1. Facebook Profile- Your profile represents you- it is your photo, your information (or whatever you choose to share). It is where you share your photos, connect w/ friends and family. It is also where you connect with your professional contacts.

It is where you update what you are doing, share links to articles or videos that you enjoy. You can organize your contacts into groups and arrange to share only certain amounts of info with a particular group.

There is much debate on WHO you should connect with on Facebook- does a teacher “friend” her students? Does a business owner “friend” their customers they barely know (good way to get to know them!). My stance on this could be a little controversial- but I feel that it is beneficial to have ONE Facebook Profile that is used for professional and personal uses. This is the age of social media where a certain level of transparancey is expected- and there are ways to protect your personal updates, photos and identity from people you are not comfortable sharing that info with (this will have to be a future blog post)…..

2. Facebook Business Page (AKA Fan Page): Think of this as a profile for your page. I have noticed that some businesses create personal profiles for their page- which is a practice that is usually frowned upon. Profiles are for People….Business Pages are for Businesses. The good news is the Business Page functions like a profile- and has numerous features that can be utilized to build your brand. Some examples-

A Facebook Page
•    Functions like a personal Facebook profile- it has a wall to post on, photo albums, video, notes and is set up with tabs so it is easy to navigate
•    You can post updates on the wall (which should be fed into fan’s newsfeed)
•    Fans have the ability to also post on the wall and post photos (if the settings allow) comment on the status
•    Admins can and should send frequent updates to Fans (that are fed into the “Updates” section of their Facebook Profile) to keep them coming back to the page
•    You can feed your blog into the notes of your Facebook page.
•    You can promote the page and reach a targeted audience for a very reasonable price
•    Admins can Create and publicize events from their Facebook page too!

3. Facebook Groups- Groups are intended to be more interactive among group members and a good place to post discussion topics.
•    Intended to be an online community
•    Admins can send messages directly to group member’s inbox (REALLY valuable feature)
•    People can post and contribute to ongoing discussions, links, etc.
•    Also create and manage event pages

To demonstrate this more clearly, lets look at the Facebook Campaign for Web Marketing Therapy.

Personal Profiles: Each of us have our own personal Facebook profile. Lorrie Thomas uses her Facebook profile to interact with old friends, colleages, people from college, her students, family, and everyone else. She has over 500 Facebook friends (which is probably more than average). The advantage to having this large network is Lorrie can spread the word pretty efficiently when she is speaking, teaching a workshop or giving a special Webinar. She can also let people know if an article was written about her, etc.

I have a Facebook profile that I also use for personal and professional. I have organized my contacts and I have limited the access that my professional contacts have to my information (I am not sure if I am comfortable sharing vacation photos with a client, etc). However, I like having the ability to communicate with my clients via Facebook and invite them to events, seminars, etc.

Bottom Line: Get a profile on Facebook. If you are worried about people finding you- then carefully set your privacy settings.

Web Marketing Facebook Page: This page represents our brand and allow direct interactation with our audience….and we target business marketers, entreprenuers, social media people, bloggers, etc. All of our updates are fed into their home pages- and often our audience will comment and share their valuable feedback.

Our goal is to make our Facebook page an educational resource for our target audience- so we only post information on our wall we think would be helpful to them..such as links to articles that offer tips on using Facebook, Twitter, Linked In-etc.

In addition, we are able to feed our blog into the page- so everytime there is a new post it is automatically updated to our status page- alerting our fans. We have discovered that Facebook has become a great source of traffic to our blog because of this feature.

We choose to utilize some of the other features of a business page as well by posting photos & video (You Tube Box). We also utlize the Events application to create events pages for Web Marketing Therapy Workshops, Speaking engagements, etc. By having nearly 400 fans on our page and 500 friends on Lorrie’s profile- we are able to promote these events to a larger audience. We also find that many of the fans will share the event invitations with their friends- which makes our community grow even larger.

Bottom line: Building a Facebook Business Page is a slow, organic process. It does not happen by itself and it does not happen overnight.

Our Facebook Group: Web Marketing Group Therapy Our “Group Therapy” Facebook group was set up to encourage a more “discussion based” environment. We love the page- but that is more for feeding bits of info to our audience- whereas the group sets out to find solutions to our member’s biggest challenges. Have a question about Twitter or how to use Forums as a way of reaching a new audience? Join our Group- and post your question on the Discussion Page.

Again- we work as a team to manage this group- and someone from our organization checks it daily. We have the ability to share photos, video, and manage events from the Group (just like the page)- but we primarly like to treat this as an inbound marketing tool- whereas the Page is our outbound marketing tool….

Bottom Line: Treat your Group as an open discussion forum- do not use it to sell things or to send messages to your member’s inbox that is an advertisement. They will leave your group so fast you won’t even know you missed that opportunity.

Part Two of Building and Branding Your Facebook Identity (Tips on Growing and Promoting Your Online Identity in Facebook) coming soon!