Facebook Changes Their Pages – What Does It Mean For Your Marketing Potentials?

Posted by Sara Hansson Apr 22nd, 2010

Now we will “Like” instead of “Become a fan” of Facebook pages, and peoples’ interests will be put more on focus. This post is a sum up of the changes that are being made in relation to Pages and how this can improve marketing your business at our favorite place called Facebook.

“People who like” instead of “Fans”
No longer will your business’ Page have any fans. You will have people who like you; people who connect a part of their interests or personality with you. It’s a small language change but it will have great affect. The most used word on Facebook is “Like” and we’re gladly using it. Becoming a fan, on the other hand, takes more commitment. I can defiantly say that I like the coffee made at the café down the street, but I’m not a dedicated fan of them. This function will make it easier for people to connect with your business’ Page. You will have more people who like you which mean that you have more people to communicate with and build a closer relationship to.

“Official Pages” and “Community Pages”
Do you think it’s confusing with all these pages, groups and profiles? Now you can add some more. When creating a new Page you can choose between “Official Page” and “Community Page”. Official Pages are for your Local Business, Brand, Product or Organization. Artists, Bands and Public Figures are also able to create an Official Page. In other words, you can now get a more trustworthy Page for your business. This page will still function in the same way as it use to: you can communicate with your fans on the wall and send updates to their news feed.

Community Pages can be created for a common interest, a topic or a cause. There are two kinds of Community Pages for the moment: Pages run by Facebook and Pages run by individual. “I need my cup of coffee in the morning before I can function!” is an example of a page run by individuals and one of those we are familiar with. If the Page would become very popular though, and attract a huge amount of fans, it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community. How many fans that will be needed are still unknown. It’s therefore very important that you as a business choose the Official Page.

Community Pages adopted by Facebook don’t include a wall and are not sending updates into people’s feed stream. Instead it functions as a knowledge collection. It includes facts from Wikipedia and show streams of related public content from peoples’ status messages. A Community Page like the one you can see below called “Coffee” imports your public updates if it includes the word coffee. A function very similar to Twitter’s hash tags (#). You don’t have to “Like” the community for your update to be shown in the stream.

Facebook spokesmen say that it’s their goal to make the Community Pages “the best collection of shared knowledge on a topic.” They also says that they start by showing Wikipedia information, but want people who are passionate about any of the topics to sign up and contribute when Facebook are ready to carry it out.

How can this contribute to your marketing? By finding out which interest or topic your business involves, your business are more likely to be find when it’s being mentioned on the Community Page of that interest/topic. By making following update: “I really like café X down the street. Their coffee is the best.” it would not only let my friends see my referral to café X, but also everyone connected to the community page.

Likes and interests
Facebook has put more focus on making peoples profiles represent who they are. At our profile’s account under the tab “Likes and interests” we can now more easily see which Pages our different interest is connected to. This makes it important to communicate your business values much more than before. If people share your believes and your qualities you will be a part of their likes and interest – a part of their personality.

What do you think about the Facebook changes? Are there other positive effects out of a business perspective? Or do you see any difficulties along the way for marketing potentials?