Social Mediarology

Within Indiana’s Tourism Industry, I’ve noticed that most organizations have created Fan Pages, while a handful have decided to instead create Groups or even a Personal Profile for their organization. Hopefully this post will clear the air about the differences between the ways you can reach out to potential and current customers on Facebook.

Whether you decide to use a Fan Page or a Group for your organization depends on your goals for Facebook. One thing you should not do, however, is create a personal profile for your organization. Beyond being against Facebook’s Terms of Service, your organizational goals will be much better met by setting up a Group or a Fan Page.

Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups started out as the only way to interact with organizations and other groups of people. My college class has a Facebook group that is used to update members when reunions are happening or when something big is happening at my Alma Mater. A Facebook Group is a great way to keep a small group of people updated on what’s going on with your organization.

A great example of an effective group in the tourism industry is Travel Michigan’s. They recently shifted their industry communications from the standard email newsletter to a Facebook Group – Travel Michigan Industry News. This has the potential to be a great change for Travel Michigan, as they now can reach industry members in a medium they prefer. Also, by creating a group for the dissemination of Michigan tourism industry news, they’re also providing a place for industry members to have conversations and participate. A standard email newsletter doesn’t allow for this level of interaction.

That being said, the Facebook Group works great for groups like a college alumni class or an industry group, but it might not be the best fit for a true business to consumer (B2C) communication.

Facebook Fan Pages (AKA Public Profiles)

Facebook Pages were created as a way for companies, organizations, politicians, celebrities, non-profits  and others (basically, anything that isn’t an individual person) to have a profile on Facebook. Several years ago, before the advent of the Fan Page, the only way for organizations to interact with their customers on Facebook was through a group. Luckily, Facebook realized they needed to give organizations, celebrities, etc, a more robust and customizable way to interact with their fans. Thus was born the Facebook Fan Page.

At Visit Indiana, we use a Facebook Fan Page (also known as a Public Profile) to connect with our fans. Pages give you all the flexibility of a personal profile and (most importantly) provide you with in-depth statistics on your page and demographic information about your fans.

Pages also allow you to install different applications, like the FBML application I talked about in my last post, Flickr applications and many more.

One more great thing about a Fan Page. Once you have more than 25 fans, point your browser to http://www.facebook.com/usernames and you can create a vanity URL for your Fan Page. The Visit Indiana Fan Page URL used to be: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Visit-Indiana-Indiana-State-Tourism/42785429080; quite the headache to remember. Now that we’ve created a vanity URL for the page, you can find it at http://www.facebook.com/VisitIndiana.

All in all, there is a lot more flexibility available through a Facebook Fan Page than through a Group. In the end, you can decide what’s best for your organization, but here’s a quick comparison chart so you can see, at a glance, the differences between Facebook’s Fan Pages and Groups.

Facebook Groups Vs. Fan Pages

Now that you’ve seen the differences between Facebook’s Groups and Fan Pages, you can make an informed decision about which will best serve the needs of your organization. Let me know which one you’re using and how you came to that decision.

Click here to get started with your organization’s Facebook Fan Page.

Or click here to get started creating a Facebook Group for your organization.

One of the best ways to engage your Facebook Fans is to provide some “Fans Only” deals or content. Einstein Bros. Bagels gave away a free bagel coupon to all of their fans and they offer members-only discounts on a regular basis. This certainly creates good will with your fans and gives them the feeling that they are appreciated.

With a little bit of HTML knowledge, you can easily create “Fans Only” content and deals on your Facebook page. Your first step is to install the Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language) application on your Fan Page (see image below). This will allow you to create a new tab or box where you can display your Fans Only content.

Search for "Static FBML" and add this app to your page.

Once you’ve added this application, you can modify the name of the tab/box and customize it with your content. I’ve included a short example below to show you how to get started. You can put links, images, printable coupons or any number of things in the FBML box using standard HTML. In fact, many of the big name Facebook pages, like Honda and Einstein Bros. Bagels use HTML and FBML to spice up their pages.

Fans Only Coding on Facebook

Everything between the two highlighted bits of code is only viewable by your page’s Fans. Now you can really thank your fans and give them special content or deals. You can place images in the Fans Only portion in addition to standard text and links so you can truly customize your page for fans.

The image above shows what your fans will see when they view your page. If someone who isn’t yet a fan, they won’t see the “$119 – Sundaes & Smiles Hotel Indigo – Columbus, IN” link.

Special thanks to John Haydon’s How To Create an Incentive for Visitors to Fan your Facebook Page post for the inspiration to write this one.

On February 9, Google released Buzz to the masses. If you have a Gmail account, you’ve probably seen a splash page about Buzz in the past couple of days. I turned on Buzz for my account a few days ago and here’s a rundown of what Buzz can do for you.

• Buzz can be used as an aggregator for your Google-owned social media accounts (Google Reader — check out this post and this one for more on RSS and Google Reader –, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa) as well as a few others (Twitter, Flickr & FriendFeed).
• Buzz automatically suggests people you should follow. This list is culled from the people you email most often.
• Underneath your Inbox button in Gmail, a Buzz button appears. This allows you to view all recently Buzzed items.
• Buzz intelligently selects the most interesting buzzes for you to view. You can always click on the Buzz button to see all recent buzzes, but you’ll be notified when an interesting piece appears.

There are a few things that Google needs to do to improve Buzz, but since it just launched last week, Google is bound to do what they need to do to make Buzz more usable. Here are a few things Buzz is missing.

• Integration with Facebook – As the most popular social networking site in the world, Google really needs to add Facebook soon. Ironically enough, Facebook owns Friendfeed, which is currently supported by Google Buzz.
• Buzz posts should also feed out to accounts that are hooked up to it (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, etc) rather than just pulling the posts into Buzz.
  • A great example of this would be for Buzz to function more like Hootsuite (discussed in my last post), but still live within Gmail.
• Allow users to filter and view only the Buzzes they want to see.
  • Just like Facebook allows you to view updates in specific groups, Buzz should allow this. There are sometimes you just don’t want to see every one of someone’s Foursquare updates.

In short, with some work and slight tweaks, Google Buzz has the potential to radically change the way social media is consumed. By building Buzz right into Gmail, Google was able to ensure its immediate adoption by millions of people, unlike Google’s much hyped but less loved Wave, which launched in the Fall of  ’09. Wave turned out to be much more complicated and much less thought-out than Buzz seems to be, on top of the fact that you needed a separate login to Google Wave, which reduces the number of users drastically.

Here’s a quick video from Google all about Buzz.

Have you used Buzz yet? Check me out on buzz: Jeremy A Williams