Whilst managing one of our Facebook pages, it’s been revealed to me how important it is to constantly update the content on a page in order to keep people interested.  This is standard practice on the web, if you regularly update your content you will see users returning regularly to check out what’s new.  This is especially important on something like Facebook where users have no genuine reason to visit your page other than out of curiosity.

I can see a lot of brands treating Facebook as a sort of gallery, great to put in a snapshot of their company in the hope that people will see they’re in touch with their audience.

‘People use Facebook? Quick, get on Facebook!  Yeah, that’s right we’re on Facebook.  What do we do on Facebook? Erm,  we have to do stuff?’

In my opinion, the more successful brands on Facebook treat it more as a window into their company.  Their company is constantly working, changing, doing things, their Facebook page reflects that.  Each month they have new content for their page, details of current promotions, events they’re attending, campaigns they support, competitions they’ve won.  This constantly updating content gives users a reason to keep visiting their page, and a reason to become a fan, ensuring that these changes appear in their news feed.

Facebook gives pages the option to add content through ‘Static FBML’ apps, allowing admins of the page to put any HTML or FBML (Facebook’s HTML subset) on a page.  This gives a far greater level of customisation on pages, and has allowed us to implement everything from high score tables for certain applications to mini stores on e-commerce brand pages.  By constantly rotating a selection of best selling products, users are presented with a purchasing opportunity before they even leave the comfort of their procrastination station.

Facebook being used by a business should be the same as Facebook being used by an individual.  The average user doesn’t set up a profile then abandon it, they interact with it, update it and use all it’s features.  Facebook could be a fantastic platform for businesses to interact with consumers on a two way basis, but users will be reluctant to open themselves up to interaction if they don’t expect a response, and will come away with a negative attitude if they ask questions and don’t receive a response.

I think in the future we could easily see brands using web services to relate further to their target demographic.  Starting from Facebook but moving towards services like Twitter, which is fantastic for sending out promotion information, regular blogging, flickr for photo content, the list of services is almost endless, and with aggregation services like Friend Feed pulling all of this content into one place, web marketing could start moving towards an area far more specific and interesting than the standard banner adverts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the Comments RSS Feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.