Facebook

Many thanks to Deirdre Reid for noting in the comments to Want to transfer ownership of your Facebook page? Good luck! that Facebook has finally made it possible for an administrator to delete the original owner of a Page. (This news via All Facebook.) It seems like a small thing, but people leave organizations all the time, and if you happened to have an ex-employee or intern set up your Facebook page, chances are good that they “own” it.

Up until now, there has been no way to get the ownership back from them. People have been railing about this for more than a year, so it’s nice to see Facebook finally wake up and do something. To delete an admin, just go to “Edit Page” on the left side of the page and then scroll down to the “Admins” area on the right.

Of course, Facebook seems to have evolved to a point where it can’t seem to do anything quite right. As a number of people point out on the All Facebook post, the way Facebook has implemented the solution makes it possible for any administrator to delete the owner and take over ownership. Also not an ideal situation. So many other applications have the concept of a “super” administrator that helps to address just this sort of issue. Apparently Facebook has not tuned in to this idea.

Well, two steps forward, one step back.

Jeff

Facebook continues to offer significant opportunity along with significant frustration for businesses. Here are a couple of recent posts that illustrate the point.

The View from 20,000 Fans (I Refuse to Say Likers)

Maggie McGary over on Mizz Information offers some details on the experience of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) with its Facebook page. The ASHA Facebook page has organically (i.e., with no significant promotion) attracted more than 20,000 fans and the big ROI is that Facebook has become a “HUGE source of traffic” to the organization’s Web site.

Maggie doesn’t really dig into the reasons for Facebook being a great traffic source, but given that (a) ASHA focuses on issues that impact a large number of people, (b) that the issues are of the sort that attract people seeking information as well as others with similar issues, and (c) that ASHA itself may not yet be well known as a resource to a significant portion of those people it makes sense that presence in a broad social network could attract new eyes back to the organization. The fact that human interest stories and content relevant to students has tended to attract the most attention on the page would seem to support this view.

Before moving on to the next post, it is worth emphasizing Maggie’s final bullet about the success of the page:

The success of the page is totally dependent on daily tending. During the month-long period when I left to take another job and the page was pretty dormant, traffic to the page and to ASHA website from the page plummeted. Especially if your’e not relying on Facebook ads to direct people to your page, the only way people are going to be aware of it is if they see updates from your company in their News Feed. The only way to make that happen is frequent posts to the page.

The lesson I take away from her post is that Facebook may be a great traffic driver for your Web site if, like ASHA, you serve a broad audience of information seekers and you can leverage the network to create awareness, but like everything else in life and business, you don’t get something for nothing – you have to keep the content flowing. (See also my earlier thoughts on Facebook fan page success.)

Read Maggie’s Post: The View from 20,000 Fans (I Refuse to Say Likers)

An Open Letter to Facebook

Now for the darker side.  I posted a while back on the issue of not being able to transfer ownership of a Facebook page. Apparently I hit a nerve, as that post has attracted a lot of comments. Today, via @ConversationAge, I noticed that Tamar Weinberg has taken Facebook to task not just for this issue but for a whole range of other offenses that make the platform frustrating for business use. I won’t try to summarize here – just go and read Tamar’s full post if you are using or plan to use Facebook for your business. You need to know about these issues.

I’d like to say the lesson here is that there is an opportunity for someone or some company to knock Facebook off it’s throne when it comes to social networking for businesses, but Facebook has so much momentum now, it’s hard to imagine that happening. Still, no one thought that MySpace would fall so fast either. If Facebook doesn’t start addressing these issues soon, it would be surprising if Google – just to pick the most obvious choice – didn’t make some sort of play.

Read Tamar’s Post: An Open Letter to Facebook

Jeff

P.S. – It was great to see Maggie’s post about an association. I am still looking for case studies involving small business Facebook success, though. Please share ’em if you’ve got ’em!

So, let’s assume you can live with the fact that Facebook does not currently enable you to transfer ownership of your Facebook fan page once you set it up. (A seemingly trivial issue that can have significant consequences.) What does it take to get actual business results out of setting up a fan page? You know, things like converting visitors into new customers, engaging and retaining current customers, and increasing net revenue.

I half-heartedly set up a Facebook page for my Mission to Learn blog a while back just to go ahead and stake my claim, but I haven’t really done anything to promote it or try to get value out of it. I’d like to change that over the coming months, but so far I am finding relatively few examples of success stories that amount to anything more than a lot of fans with little if any real business impact.

So, without a lot of great specific examples to reference, here are my thoughts on the general ways in which a small business or organization might get a return off of Facebook: [Read more…] about What are the Keys to Facebook Fan Page Success?

Like many people (based on quite a bit of searching), I am becoming increasingly frustrated with Facebook. For the past few days, what has really gotten to me is the way that Facebook pages work.

Here’s the rundown:

It is possible to create a “fan” page in Facebook that enables you to promote an individual or organizational brand – kind of like a Web site for a specific purpose within Facebook. To do this you either:

• Add a page onto your individual account
• Create a business account specifically for the purpose of managing pages and advertising

Sounds simple enough, but as many of us are finding out, nothing is really ever simple in Facebook if you scratch below the surface. A couple of the major issues – and these are just the major ones – that arise as you start to dive into pages are:

• There is no way right now to transfer ownership of a page from one individual to another. So if Bob in marketing has set up the fan page for your organization, guess what? Bob continues to “own” that page even after he leaves your organization. Or if you want to sell your small company and transfer the fan page to a new owner…good luck!
• Well, but of course the simple solution would be just to set up a business account instead of an individual account (it’s an option in the page set-up process). Not so fast, though. If you already have an indvidual account, Facebook’s policy is that you are not allowed to set up a business account. So, you have to find the one person in your organization who is not yet on Facebook and does not ever want to have an individual account to set up your business account. Then you have to deal with all the headaches of your business account stepchild not really working as well as the better-loved individual account in Facebook.

You have to wonder why more people aren’t screaming about this one. My theory is that they will be soon – Facebook for business is still a new enough concept that relatively few people have run into the need to transfer ownership of a page. And many people still aren’t even aware that the business account option even exists.

The natives are getting restless, though. In the Facebook Help discussion forums, there is a thread titled “Transferring a page to new ownership?” that was posted at the beginning of April. Since then, a total of 146 people have chimed in. As far as I can tell, all of them are looking for an answer and nobody has one.

Where are you Facebook staff?! (Is there a Facebook staff?)

I’m sure the issue will be addressed eventually. Maybe it has been already and some kind reader will chime in to tell me where the secret answer is hidden. (Please!) In the meantime, though, this seems to be yet another instance of Facebook simply not being in tune with the needs of users – and apparently not caring.

All in all, I agree with Douglas Karr’s view that Facebook is a lot like AOL 10.0 and that it will ultimately “fail unless it can correct one universal weakness.” Namely, the majority of time spent in Facebook – at least for business users – is “spent managing Facebook… not using it.”

One final note: If you have set up your business as an individual account, woe be unto you – Facebook could choose to shut you down at any moment given that this approach is a clear violation of their current policies.

Here’s hoping that Facebook sorts through these issues soon.

Jeff

P.S. – If you found this posting of interest, you will also want to visit the more recent postings by Tamar Weinberg (on Facebook) and Valeria Maltoni (covering LinkedIn and Twitter as well as Facebook):

• An Open Letter to Facebook

• Do Social Networks See Organizations as Customers?

P.S.S. – I am looking for examples of small business success stories on Facebook (particularly given the issue above!) If you have one or know of one, please visit the Facebook success stories post and comment.

And yet another P.S. – For anyone debating Facebook vs. LinkedIn, note that there is a clear process for transferring group ownership on LinkedIn.

Facebook can also be a great tool in a Learning 2.0 – social learning strategy.