- Chapter 3: Establishing a Corporate Presence
- Developing a Corporate Facebook Presence
- Facebook Pages
- Apps for Pages
- What’s Next
- Promoting Your Facebook Page
- Facebook Groups
- Page or Group: Which One?
Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
Developing a Corporate Facebook Presence
The individual choice of whether to join Facebook and blend your personal and professional lives aside, as a brand, consider establishing a presence on Facebook because it helps to humanize your brand. Facebook is a very personal social network. People like people and people and in a social context, people like brands that are personal. Through the types of content that you can choose to share on a Facebook Page or Group, you can show that your company is a lot more than just a logo. You can peel back that logo to expose all the great personalities that make up your company.
Facebook is a thriving community sure to contain fans of your company, executives, product, or service. If you’re shaking your head left and right yelling loudly that you don’t have any fans, realize that your prospects, customers, and future fans are hanging out on Facebook. Developing a presence on Facebook provides you the opportunity to bubble up these fans and activate them by providing them with a community in which they can interact with one another and with your company. You need to realize that the days of forcing your prospects, customers, and fans of your brand to go to a website of your choosing is gone. Sure, you can still drive traffic to your website and convert people through a contact or informational form. There is still a lot of value in corporate websites. But, nowadays, you have to go where your prospects, customers, and fans hang out and build communities with them there. This, in turn, can turn toward visiting your corporate website and engaging with you on your turf. If you ignore that, you are missing valuable opportunities to develop a stronger community. For instance, if I only hang out on Facebook and you only hang out on Twitter, you’re missing an opportunity to engage with me, even though I could be speaking your praises or running your name through the mud on Facebook.
With Facebook continuing to grow more and more in popularity, it makes sense to develop a corporate presence. At the very least, establishing even a basic presence on Facebook can make it more difficult for others to claim your brand on Facebook. If you need even more convincing, realize that Facebook is now the top driver of traffic, over Google, to large sites.
Getting Started
So now that we’ve convinced you to establish a corporate presence, how do you get started? What do you need to know? What about someone stealing your brand’s name? Is that possible? What if someone says something bad about you on Facebook? Will that show up? What are fans? What’s the ROI of our efforts? How much time do we need to spend to make it useful?
All these are questions that come up when corporations consider venturing onto Facebook. If any of those questions ran through your head, trust me, you’re not alone. In fact, we bet that those questions are then followed by: “I don’t want my employees on Facebook all day.” “If they’re on Facebook, how will I control them from going on their personal pages, chatting with their friends, or checking out pictures from their friends’ party last weekend.” “I can’t afford to give my employees time to “hang out” on Facebook.” “I need them working on their projects.”
This tip is helpful to find other employees, especially if you have a large organization or one that might be decentralized with employees working from all over the world. This does not allow your employees to connect in a centralized area. Furthermore, it doesn’t do anything to help your prospects and customers. To assist with this, Facebook has created two different areas: Pages and Groups.