I was talking with a client recently about setting up her company’s Facebook page. She asked if she didn’t need to create a Community Facebook page, showing me an example of one with the bulbous, blue icon. I had to explain to her the sad facts about Community pages, those being:
- You don’t create those Community pages–Facebook does.
- Facebook may, at any time, create a Community page that competes with your official Facebook business page.
- You can create a similar community page around your topic, but if it becomes popular it will be “adopted” (i.e. taken over) by Facebook and you’ll lose control.
- Community pages don’t allow the admin’s posts to appear in the fans’ feeds.
- Community pages that Facebook owns/creates don’t let you act as an admin–you have no control over their contents at all. All you can do is post on the wall, like anyone else.
Needless to say, this marketer was surprised and appalled that the platform she is using to build a community for her business and promote it may randomly create a competing community, if her own shows any promise!
It looks like Facebook may have taken the hint, though. After a series of blog posts and articles complaining, they seem to be weaning out a lot of the competitor pages. Moreover, the Community Pages are appearing lower in the search rankings within Facebook than they were originally.
Community Pages are a Goldmine for Facebook
Ostensibly, Community Pages are created to cover topics of interest to a large number of members. From the perspective of Facebook as a business, Community pages make a lot of sense. Take the Fine Dining Community Page, currently at 24,926 fans. Every one of those people has clearly indicated their interest in dining out at higher-quality restaurants, providing additional information for ad targeting.
Facebook could do more, though. They could offer space on the Fine Dining page to advertisers, of course. Going beyond ads, though, they can allow advertisers to post on the wall. On behalf of these advertisers, Facebook could send appropriate coupons and notices about deals at local restaurants to Fine Dining fans, leveraging their stated interest in fine dining plus their location information. Community Pages are a potential gold mine, to be sure.
Community Pages Take Work
They also take work. The most successful Facebook pages are successful because they have someone (or more than one person) administering them. Someone comes up with items to post, such as good links and videos. Someone creates polls and questions to ask fans. Someone responds to comments and engages members. There’s an administrator balancing marketing/promotion goals against the needs of the community, so the page doesn’t become simply a place to post advertisements and marketing messages. If it does become that, the page loses fans. It takes attention and effort to manage and grow a community.
Who is going to manage these Community Pages? Is Facebook going to hire staff to police them? To build up the community and create interesting content and posts? If Facebook is relying on marketers to hold back, they have far more faith than they should. For example, take a look at the Fine Dining Community Page and you’ll see it’s full of wall posts that are essentially advertisements from various dining-related businesses. The question is, how long are fans going to frequent pages that are primarily a long list of advertisements?
Pick Any Topic–Someone’s a Fanatic About It
My husband is fond of saying pick any crazy topic and you’re sure to find someone–usually a lot of someone’s–who are fanatical about it. The wonderful thing about Facebook and, potentially, Community Pages is that there is room for all those niche topics. You can envision Community Pages about all sorts of very specific topics, just as there are websites devoted to the craziest interests.
Take me. I started a small Facebook page a while back called Parenting and Social Media. I was interested in the topic of how to help our kids use social networks, cell phones, etc. safely. My quick search didn’t show many sites or any Facebook pages dedicated to the topic, so I took the opportunity to create one. It allowed me to try out “owning” and growing a Facebook page, publicize some posts I wrote about protecting kids on Facebook, and do something useful for the larger community.
I’ve spent some effort on the page and managed to grow it to about 300 fans. It’s a niche topic that I happen to care about, so I’m willing to put some effort into it.
Let Third Parties Manage and Grow Community Pages
Which begs the question: why doesn’t Facebook let third parties manage their Community Pages? It’s not going to be cost-effective for Facebook to manage myriads of Community Pages in the way they must be manged to grow. Yet, if Facebook doesn’t administer them and actively foster these communities, it will result in pages that are a wasteland of advertisements. Eventually, they’ll lose fans and Community Pages will be as dismal a failure as Groups.
Why not, instead, let individuals like me, people who care, manage the Community Pages? Frankly, at this point, I have a disincentive to grow my page. If I’m successful and manage to get a thousand followers, Facebook’s likely to create its own Parenting and Social Media Community Page to compete with mine.
Instead, they could contact me about owning the page, for as long as I’m willing to be active. Better yet, they could offer me financial incentives, perhaps tied to the growth of the page. They might offer a cut of the ad revenue, for example.
Facebook would be far better off leveraging the people who are passionate about each topic and who know it best, and letting them adminster the Community Pages. They’d do best by giving those people some financial stake in the pages, even a small one, to help them justify the time they spend. Taking this approach, Facebook could outsource most of the community management work for all those diverse pages to the most informed and passionate people, while still leveraging their corporate strength by putting their icon/stamp on the pages, publicizing them, and minimally policing them. Facebook could leave it to these community administrators to appropriately limit marketing on the pages, so they don’t turn off fans. At the same time, Facebook gets the opportunity to make money off every one of these pages.
In this model, administrators who grow their pages successfully should earn more money, because they are providing Facebook more advertising and business opportunities. Administrators of the most popular Community Pages might be offerred additional business opportunities, such as access to applications or application developers that they can leverage for their pages.
It seems like a win-win model to me. I think Community Pages stand a much better chance of becoming vibrant, valuable, and profitable if Facebook is willing to share a little of those profits to leverage the enthusisam and expertise of its diverse membership. What do you think?
