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.

If you’ve already created a Twitter account, a Facebook Fan Page and a WordPress blog for your organization, you’re on the right track. Now that you have accounts at a handful of social media sites, how do you manage them all?

There are dozens of social media management platforms out there, including some great ones like TweetDeck and Seesmic. Both are great applications, but they need to be installed on your computer. One of the many great things about Hootsuite is it’s 100% web-based. You simply visit Hootsuite.com, log in and you can manage your social media initiatives from any computer with an internet connection.

Hootsuite Screenshot

Hootsuite originally launched in late 2008 as a dedicated Twitter client. As you can see from this screenshot, it’s evolved into a powerful social media management platform. In addition to Twitter, you can now manage Facebook (including Facebook Fan Pages), LinkedIn, WordPress and the lesser-used Ping.FM.

Do you want to post the same message to your Facebook page and your Twitter account? Do you want to set up your blog to feed through to your Twitter and Facebook accounts? Do you want to set up multiple accounts so different people at your organization can help manage your social media strategy? Hootsuite lets you do all this and more.

Hootsuite Stats Screenshot

Hootsuite also automatically shortens links using their Ow.ly URL shortener and gives you detailed stats about each links posted through Hootsuite. You can look at link stats from the past 24 hours, past week, past month or any other timeframe.

I’ve been using Hootsuite as my primary social media management tool for the past several months and I’ve been extremely impressed. There is a Hootsuite App available for iPhone and I’m waiting for the Blackberry app that will hopefully follow.

Have you used Hootsuite?