Page

You’ve probably noticed that Facebook’s been making some changes to their Pages of late. Now, instead of becoming a “Fan” of something, we can “Like” it. According to Facebook, this change “offers [users] a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which [they] are interested.” In other words, it’s all about semantics rather than functionality. Personally I’m not a fan (har har!) of the new name because I think it can be easily confused with Facebook’s other “Like” feature that corresponds to videos, status updates, pictures, etc. (“Liking” the Cheetos Page is not the same as “Liking” a picture of your friend’s new baby. “Liking” a Page is the equivalent of subscribing to it forever [or at least until you decide to opt out]; “Liking” friends’ activities is more spontaneous –it’s commentary that’s there today and gone tomorrow.)    

Most of that’s neither here nor there, of course, since it won’t really affect how you go about your Facebook business. What’s really important is the change that Facebook is still rolling out: the Community Page.  

The Facebook Pages that we know and love (Facebook calls these “Official Pages”) are intended to help us connect to the artists, performers, organizations, and products that we like and are created and maintained by third-parties (PR people, business owners, and marketers) in the interest of promotion. The Community Pages that are in the works are different: they are meant for causes and issues rather than brands. Anyone can create a Community Page, but Facebook has already made 6 million Community Pages for a variety of activities, interests, places, etc. While they’re still intended to be places for like-minded people to gather and talk about a shared interested, Community Pages also supposed to be collections of information on whatever topic they’ve been created for. (Each Community Page will feature its related Wikipedia article.)

 If it hasn’t done so already, Facebook will soon suggest both Official and Community Pages to you based on the location, school, activities, interests, movies, music, and television shows you’ve listed on your profile (for instance, if you’ve listed your hometown as Dallas, Texas, Facebook may suggest that you connect to the Dallas, Texas Community Page). If you choose to connect to these Community Pages, Facebook will replace the text on your profile with links to the Pages. The idea is that eventually, most of the information on your profile will be visual and connected to other pages within the site. In other words, Facebook doesn’t want your profile to be an island anymore—if your profile says you're from Dallas, Facebook wants to connect you with others from Dallas.

You can select as few or as many Community Pages as you’d like to display in your profile, and you can always delete or add Community Pages as your interests and favorites change. Once you make a connection to a Community Page, it will have access to anything you post about it, so if you label a video as “My brother driving a Ferrari thru Dallas, Texas!” that video will show up in the “Related Posts” section of the Dallas, Texas Page that you’re connected to (for you Twitter users, think of it as Facebook's version of "Real-Time Search Results"). Also, unlike Official Pages whose administrators send out messages to their Fans’ (oops, “connections’”) News Feeds, Community Page updates will not show up in the News Feed—you will actually have to visit the Page to get information. 

As I mentioned before, Facebook is still in the process of making the switch to Community Pages and connected profiles, so their impact, true functionality, and the public’s reception really remain to be seen. 

“What’s the difference between a Facebook Group and a Facebook Page?” When we’re talking social media marketing, this question is practically inevitable, and it’s almost always followed by “Why would I choose one over the other?” and/or “Do I need both?” These are all perfectly sensible inquiries, as anyone who’s seen examples of both knows that they’re almost identical:

(Click to enlarge.)

So, “What’s the difference?”
The Tabs: By default, Groups and Pages have the exact same tabs: Wall, Info, Photos, Videos, Events, and Discussion. Page owners, however, can take it a step farther by adding Notes, third-party, and custom tabs (as Diet Coke has done in our example) if they want to communicate with fans in a different way.

The Administrator: Both Groups and Pages have admins who update the tabs and monitor the activity of members and fans. When a Group administrator posts something to the Group’s wall, the post is labeled with the administrator’s name (EX: Sarah Norman I love Diet Coke!). When a Page administrator posts something to the Page’s wall, on the other hand, the post is labeled with the Page’s name (EX: Diet Coke Beware of Mentos!).

The Control: When you create a Group, you have the power to customize how members can interact within it. If you don’t want Group members to post pictures, videos, or comments on the wall, you can check the Admin Only boxes. Pages don’t give you the power to limit interaction, which means once someone’s a fan of the Page, they can pretty much do whatever they want.

The Updates: When an administrator posts something new within a Group, the only people who see it are the people who visit the Group. Some perspective: I’ve been a member of the same 16 Groups for about four years. I haven’t checked a single one of them in about three and a half. When administrators post something to a Page, every single fan sees it on his or her news feed (home page) almost immediately. More perspective: When I logged into Facebook this morning, the first thing I saw on my news feed was an April Fool’s Day prank from RecipeZaar.

The Point: Groups are to Pages as NESs are to Wiis—great in their time, but more or less obsolete now that the other, more functional model is available. When Facebook began, Groups were places people could go to discuss their interests with like-minded Facebook users. Then and now, people started Groups, other people joined, discussed the Group topic for a few days, and then more or less forgot about it. Pages are essentially Groups 2.0—not only can like-minded fans discuss the Page topic with each other, they can also receive updates about it from the Page administrator.
 
“Why would I choose one over the other?”
Social media marketing is all about maintaining open communication between a brand and its customers. The best way to facilitate that communication is by letting your customers know you want to talk to them, which means putting your name on a message and getting it in front of their faces. The second best way to facilitate communication is by making all sorts of communication channels available to your customers, which means adding appropriate new tabs and encouraging customers to interact with the brand. With this in mind, the question really becomes “why in the world would anyone choose a Group over a Page?”

“Do I need both?”
While it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have both, it really wouldn’t help much either: everything Groups can do, Pages can do better. You should hang on to a Group if you already have one, but save the updates for you Page so more people will see them.

On June 13, 2009, Facebook began allowing its users to claim usernames (also known as “vanity URLs”) so that they could direct friends to their profiles more easily (instead of www.facebook.com/people/Joe-Blow/4815162342, profile URLs could now be www.facebook.com/joeblow). On most other social networking sites, vanity URLs are the default (Twitter users, for example, would be aghast if they suddenly had to tell people to follow them @/people/Joe-Blow/4815162342) but before June 13, Facebook users could only direct friends to find them by looking them up.

These usernames were made available for Pages too, but there was a catch: Only the Pages that could boast 1,000+ fans were eligible. That number eventually jumped down to 100, and now Facebook says all Pages with at least 25 fans are eligible. Once you’ve reached that magic number, all you have to do to claim your username is:

• Visit http://www.facebook.com/username/.
  *You may be prompted to enter a cell phone number so Facebook can verify your account via text message.
• Click on “Set a Username for your Pages.”
  
• Select your Page from the dropdown and name away.
  *Usernames must be at least 5 characters long and can only be changed one time after they are set, so choose wisely!

So what’s the big fuss over usernames? Aren’t Pages assigned the same long URLs as profiles? Couldn’t you just use that to tell people about your Page? Well, yes and sort of. If you want to use the long URL to create text and  links, no one will know the difference. But what if you want to put your Facebook address on your business card (and you should want to)? The cumbersome /pages/My-Biz/001100101 is certainly less user-friendly than /MyBiz. What if you are talking to a friend about your business and you want to inform him about your Facebook Page? Would you rather try to remember to email him the URL the next time you are at your computer, or just say, “You should check out our Facebook Page at facebook.com/MyBiz!”? What if you're sponsoring a bake sale or a half-marathon team? Rather than packaging your cakes and your runners in boxes and t-shirts marked with your name and an easy-to-miss Facebook logo, you can instead send them out sporting the easy-to-remember Facebook.com/MyBiz URL. Simply put, a Facebook Page with a vanity URL is easier to advertise than a Facebook Page without.

If you’ve reached the magic fan number, take a few seconds today to claim your username before someone else takes the one you want. It might not be the secret to instant Facebook superstardom, but it’ll definitely make it easier for you to promote, promote, promote.