Facebook Profile vs. Fan Page
I’ve have recently seen a trend on Facebook that has me concerned and, quite frankly, frustrated. I have been getting an influx of friend requests from companies and organizations. What this tells me is that people are setting up profiles for their companies or organizations rather than Fan Pages. At first I just found this as odd behavior and sort of annoying, to me. Then I decided to dig around in Facebook’s terms of service and help files and found this:
Here’s another explanation of the difference:
While Facebook obviously is not enforcing this rule right now, they will get around to it. When they do, they will shut down those profiles and all the time and energy spent creating that community will be lost overnight. These companies may as well take the time to get it right now before their community disappears.
Being “friended” by a company or organization is not the norm and you are less likely to pick up followers with this approach. People are use to Fan pages and interacting with organizations through their. Trust levels go down when a profile is presented to them in friend requests. Also when people search for Fan Pages they are likely to overlook a profile that the organization has forced its name into first and last name boxes.
There are also privacy concerns for your community. People set their privacy settings differently for their friends than Fan Pages. They are more open to sharing videos, pictures and information with Friends and “Friends of Friends” as Facebook calls it, since there is a level of trust. The connections with an organization using a profile to promote itself connects people that may not want to share information.
If you know someone doing this, please do them a favor and direct them to set up a Fan Page. I don’t want to signal out the guilty again, I just want them to be aware of the mistake and correct it before it is too late. Communities take time to build and they are nurtured on trust, getting Facebook set up correctly goes a long way to building and nurturing your community. Once they get their Fan Page set up, invite those connected to the profile to get involved on the Fan Page.
Any other Facebook issues you see that should be addressed?
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Comments
Kyle,
I see your point, but mine is that companies and organizations have made the mistake of setting up profiles and not Fan Pages. My suggestion for them is to fix the mistake before they lose their community. These sites don’t always make it easy to get set up, I agree. There are a lot of mistakes to be made in social media (I make them all the time), but I’m just trying to help someone else avoid this mistake.
To address whether a company would miss the TOS, I present the following: When you sign up for Facebook, it asks for a first name, last name, gender and birthday and directly below the sign-up button is a line of text that says “Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business.” Not to be difficult, but it seems pretty forced to get your Company information to fit a form that asks for name, gender and birthday. Facebook also gives you a link right below that form for setting up a page.
Thanks for stopping by and your comments.
b
I think the greater issue is a simple lack of understanding when it comes to how and why to use social media tools for corporate marketing. The fact is that too few organizations even HAVE a social media strategy (they may not have a fully articulated marketing strategy, even), so they don’t consider the appropriate tools to use. And if the person charged with handling their social media isn’t savvy about options, it can easily lead to errors in how/where/why information is presented.
Strategy first, then selection of tools can save a lot of time and effort.
Facebook needs to improve support for Fan pages. Ever try to upload a Picassa or Lightroom album to a Fan page and preserve the photo order and caption? You might just give up and create a profile for your organization instead!
If you had to “dig around” through Facebook’s TOS and help pages to find this, is it really the company’s fault? It seems to me that Facebook ought to build this into the registration process to help their users get this right from the start.