and Share and

Creating a Profile is not the right way.

1. Relationship: People make friends with people, not with an entity (brand, object, product, institute…)
2. There is the limit in the maximum number of people a profile can make friends with: 5000. If they have hit the limit, they won’t make friend with the profile you create
3. When people have too many connections, it becomes sluggish for them to perform actions that require the friend list to load:
   1. Tag photos
   2. Tag videos
   3. Suggest friends
   4. Search friends

Creating a Group is not the optimal way either.

1. There is the limit in the maximum number of groups a profile can join: 200. If they have hit the limit, they won’t join the group you create
2. Relationship: people form groups to get to know one another who share the same interest

Creating a Fan Page is the right way.

1. Relationship: It clearly defines the relationship between the entity (brand, object, product, institute…) with its fans/supporters
2. There is no limit in the maximum number of pages a profile can become fan for, or at least I haven’t hit that cap

In Sum

1. Create real profiles for real staff
2. People love to interact with real people
3. Separate the people-people and subject-fans relationships
4. Be professional on the subject, be slightly personal on the profiles (of real staff)

Addendum

Tagging people in the marketing pitch is a smart move, but don’t overdo it.

One Response to “Social Media engagement on Facebook: Fan Page is the better channel”

1. Fresco 2.0 | Facebook: how to convert Friends to Fans? says:

   October 18, 2009 at 12:35 pm

   [...] thanks to that, I learnt a couple of things. I believed @taitran wrote this blog post: “Social Media engagement on Facebook: Fan Page is the better channel” partly to remind me that creating a Facebook Profile for the movie was not the right way to [...]