A new platform in Facebook: Community Pages
by Mike Saunders on 06/04/10 at 5:00 am
1 comment
Facebook have released a new platform call community pages. I have expanded of what community pages are on my blog if you need to catch up a little.
This article however looks at something important to consider now that Facebook has created and unofficial basis for discussing brands online.
You see big brands have started to take over Fan Pages from fans in order to better control their Facebook environment. The truth is that it scares the pants off marketers knowing that we can’t control the message our customers get about our brand.
So now Community Pages have been launched to ‘allow’ two things to take place:
- Fan Pages can become a more official presence for business organisations
- Community Pages allow for the public to create online communities about your brand without fear of the brand squashing it.
Popular community pages eventually get handed over to the public to manage in a wiki style. Scary stuff if you are still marking with an old marketing mindset. Especially considering that we cannot ignore what happens on Facebook anymore.
What about naming rights?
These community pages are meant to be free from naming rights. This means that anyone could create a page about an official organisation without fear of being challenged regarding the naming rights of the page. In fact if the page gets popular then the page gets handed over to the Feacebok community instead of to the brand or organisation.
Right now I can hear the chorus of every Marketing Manager in South Africa singing “how on earth can we control our company image.” Well, you can’t – not completely at least but then welcome to the world of Social Media. This might be Facebook’s answer to the problem currently being experienced by Julius Malema.
I would love to hear some thoughts from you. How do you think this will impact brand marketing into Facebook?
Mike is the CEO of DigitLab, a digital marketing and social media agency, as well as Keynote Speaker and Social Media Coach at TomorrowToday. Google+ View more articles by Mike Saunders.
Tags: facebook, facebook marketing, Google, Mike, mike saunders, new media, online, online advertising, Online social networking, social media environment
What on earth is a Facebook Community page? | Mike Saunders
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