Facebook is the new hot ticket in marketing. Previously, I rattled on about advertising on FB, but now let's talk about Facebook Business pages.
Facebook lets you create pages to promote your business. But the functionality is still pretty limited. Here's a synopsis of our experience with FB Business Pages.
PAGE OWNERSHIP - A DIFFERENT MODEL
Facebook specifically advises that business pages are to be a subset of profiles. That is, they frown upon creating two (or more) profiles (one for a biz and one for an individual). This runs against the model of other social networks including MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.
But FB has a pretty good reason for their approach: the Facebook franchise is based on real people with real email addresses (unlike MySpace where everyone has a slew of profiles).
PAGE DESIGN - WEAK
The options for page design are pretty limited. Most of the Apps you can add to a profile cannot be added to a Business page. FB only offers one generic choice for color and style (white page, black type, blue accents).
FUNCTIONALITY - LIMITED
Pages don't offer much opportunity to push content out to an audience. I'm a fan of a dozen pages, but never get an update. So, in effect, I forget about a page after the initial contact.
The New York Times has created an App which streams the most-emailed stories to your profile. But creating a custom FB application is totally beyond the means of small advertisers.
FB PAGES - ANALYSIS
Facebook pages have a long way to go before they provide any meaningful value for business. Better to run an ad on FB and direct the traffic to your website or a landing page.
FB is the hot ticket today, but they'd better improve the show before the next circus rolls into town.
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