Facebook fan pages are an effective way to build followers and encourage advocacy, monitor the buzz, have conversations, promote products – and generally spread the word about your technology brand. Social media promotion of brands via Facebook is more suitable, generally, for B2C brands than B2B. This is because Facebook is thought of as a social tool in the truest sense; it is where people go to hang out with friends, rather than a place where businesspeople network or look for solutions or advice.

For technology brands who wish to promote their products via Facebook, here are 5 reasons to promote your consumer technology brand using a Facebook fan page:

1. Build followers: your fan page shows up in the News Feed of all your fans' friends, so they get notified whenever their friend has some activity on the page. By nature, friends have similar interests, so this is very tempting for the friends to have a look at what is going on at the page, and even become a fan themselves.

2. Encourage advocacy: when people become fans of your technology brand on Facebook, they immediately become advocates. You are giving them a chance to proclaim to the world that they really dig you! Not only this, but they can talk to other people about how much they like your products, suggest ways to improve, show pictures of themselves with your products, share links to information about your products - and so on... They don’t want o hang out on your website; they want o hang out on Facebook – so give them a space where they can do that and still interact with your brand.

3. Monitor the buzz: the Facebook fan page offers a great snapshot of what people are talking about. Obviously, people on a fan page are more likely to say positive things, so it may be one sided. However it still offers a chance to see what people think about your recent product / activity / campaign and get valuable feedback.

4. Talk to your customers: one of the best things about social media engagement for customers is that it empowers them. They have an opportunity to communicate with brands in a new way, rather than via a call centre. It also provides an opportunity for you to talk to customers in a new way too. To keep momentum up and activity high by seeding discussion, asking questions, inviting comments - have conversations, after all, that is what social media is all about.

5. Promote your products: use video, share links, post slide shows, and promote events - there atre so many ways to promote your new products via your Facebook fan page. Take advantage of the multimedia possibilities. You don't have to stick to the organic growth strategy of the news feed; consider using advertising on Facebook to grow your fan page is you have a product launching to boost activity.

So, should you set up a Facebook fan page or should you wait until one of your customers does? Well, only the page admin (person who has set the page up) has access to the Facebook Insights, the excellent stats area which shows you user exposure, actions, and behaviour relating to your Facebook fan page. It is great to be in control of your fan page however, if a fan has set one up then that is something you should be happy about. We wouldn’t advise waiting for customers to set one up. If one is already set up then maybe you could set up an alternative page with a different angle?

Whatever you do, if you are a consumer technology brand than you should have a Facebook fan page as a channel for marketing your products. Talk to us about engaging your customers using social media today on Twitter or email.

More information on Facebook fan pages visit this page.

We have been helping a large telecoms company manage their online reputation using Twitter and blogging. Even though most of their customers are really happy with their service, there is also a disgruntled lot who are making their opinions known, loud and clear, on Twitter. Sure, some of these customers are only followed by a small group of people. But others are followed by hundreds, even thousands of people, so these people are often highly influential individuals. And in this age of user generated reviews, other people's opinions matter - a lot!
By setting up a new, fresh Twitter account that is dedicated to addressing customers' complaints, comments and questions we are slowly but surely improving the reputation of the company.

It's really quite simple. By searching regularly for brand, product and service names, we can see what people are saying about our client. Then, we can respond accordingly, expressing disappointment if they say they are unhappy - and more importantly, seeing how we can help. If we notice that one topic or theme is occurring, then we respond in more detail on the blog.

We've had an amazing response. People are thrilled that this company, after seemingly ignoring them for quite some time, is now listening intently to what they think about their products and services.

For every customer that we convert back into a happy, smiling one from an aggrieved, angry one, we are not only managing the reputation of the company, but we are also saving them money as some of these customers would undoubtedly have moved elsewhere in the long term, such was their complaint.

Social media engagement with customers can be very impactful and meaningful, and we are confident we have helped this company retain lots of customers through managing their reputation on Twitter.

This week we are at Gitex in Dubai to see our hard work from the last few weeks come to fruition. We have created 54 interactive presentation kiosks for Etisalat, the telecoms giant of the Middle East. We are also twittering and blogging about the event live...

The kiosks combine dynamic 3D animated sequences that highlight the most important messages for each product or service, with animated 2D sequences that present the detail. All the presentations follow through the brand feel of the stand, and present today’s advanced technologies in a consistent and easy to follow manner. The style that matches the quality of the stand created by 2LK and the live interactive tours by Topspin, who we work with frequently.

Dell and Symantec have also pulled out the stops for this important show, with magicians and AR competitions to attract people onto their impressive stands. We also spoke to a robot, maybe if we had a better grasp of Arabic the conversation would have flowed a little better, but it was fun to try and it demonstrated that we are perhaps not that many years away from computers that will look and talk like people.