This, the second of my series on Facebook Fan Page Best Practices, discusses a common issue facing global brands. Should you create a global page or a series of regional ones?
The vibrancy of a Facebook community is connected greatly to the size of the group and to the amount of activity within it. Maintaining one global group over several country-based groups will reduce conversation and population fragmentation.
Consider the strength of your brand from the eyes of the consumer: they’re not into your brand because of the country or continent they’re in, they’re into it because of your product’s quality, message and brand attributions. This should be the primary focus when building an advocacy group for your brand.
I commonly hear the following two arguments to this global position;
- The differences in products from region to region require separate pages
- Promotions and contests are targeted regionally.
Both are valid business concerns, and both should be dealt with on other digital platforms.
Facebook isn’t the place to sell your product it is the place to celebrate it. Don’t build a page that pushes the product to a group that is already buying! Most of the time, the differences in a global brand are subtle region to region. Find the core of the brand and use Facebook to celebrate that. Don’t worry about taglines or product features that are different from market to market. In the vast majority of cases, advocates don’t really care about that anyway.
Unless you are rewarding the advocate, do not push a “conquest” contest or promo on them. This is a recipe for disaster in online communities. These people are not your target audience for a conquest program. They are already your enthusiast.
We know that Influencers, Advocates and Brand Enthusiasts are not as interested in local marketing as they are their enthusiasm for the brand itself. If you must include promos and contests that are regionally based, consider using Facebook house functions like “Events”, “Discussions” or “Posted Items” which can promote any program in the world. Regional audiences will self identify if your copy is on target. Do not sacrifice the vibrancy of your community to push a contest on your advocates.
Facebook also offers the ability to create standalone widgets and applications that further expand the standard features. There are over 24,000 applications currently available and 140 new ones coming online every day.  If the application you require does not exist, it can be created. Developing a widget for localized promotions can be a great way to further engage enthusiasts credibly in this space.
The recommendation for global brands is to remain global. There is no need to build 50 pages because you are in 50 countries. This fragmentation has more to do with how you run your business then it does how consumers buy your products and advocate them.
More Posts from this series on Facebook:
Best Practices for Facebook: User Types
Facebook Population, A Global Breakdown
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3 Responses to “Best Practices for Facebook Fan Pages: Global Brands”
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October 3rd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
[...] posts from this Facebook Series: Best Practices for Facebook: Global vs. Regional Pages Facebook Population, A Global [...]
January 29th, 2009 at 9:34 am
What about language differences? The first thought would be to publish in English, but that seems off-putting. Could a user in France, for example, click to read a US-created Facebook page in their native language?
January 29th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Great question!
The answer is no. In your example, a person using the French interface to Facebook will not see content that is written in English as French. In other words, the language translations are only for Facebook functional and instructional copy only. Not the content itself. There is no automatic process for this.
Apple Students Facebook Fan Page has a built in i-frame that will allow the user to select a specific country. The content of the page refreshes to both the local language, and local content. This was built at additional cost, and not part of the Facebook offering.
Hope that helps.
collin