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.

Twitter and Facebook are compared all the time; yet essentially they are two very different beasts. Twitter is a microblogging site where posts are 140 characters long; whereas Facebook is a multifaceted social network which allows status updates, photo upload, event posting and much more.

The main comparison between them as far as I can see is that they are probably the two most popular social media sites. But how do they compare in terms of using them for buzz monitoring?
Because of Facebook's privacy settings, it isn't possible to search for mentions of your business and see all the users that have mentioned you recently; you will only see the ones that have their settings as such that anyone can see their wall postings and updates. However most fan pages will not be set to private so you will be able to see any updates from these.

On Twitter you can see everyone's updates so in this sense it is better for searching for mentions of your brand. However, it isn't as popular or widely used as Facebook, so despite the Twitter results yielding more mentions in the same time frame, this alone won't give you a very accurate representation of the type of people talking about your brand.

You will most likely have heard, Facebook has launched vanity URLs ( for example, facebook.com/yourcompanyname) for individuals and companies. This is an opportunity to increase your coverage online, but you must be quick or else someone will beat you to it. Even if at this moment in time you are not thinking about creating a Facebook group my advice would be to go ahead and register your vanity URL anyway. Most well known brands have made their move already, so don't delay.

What does this mean for the B2B sector? Well, although Facebook is thought of very much as a B2C social media tool, we would recommend registering your brand name anyway. Facebook is one of the most popular social media tools out there and this is something you cannot ignore. There is a lot of nice functionality in Facebook that could be utilised by a B2B company: letting people know about events, uploading video and pictures, engaging in debate etc. Don't rule it out just because it is used mainly as a social facilitator.

Update: It has since become apparent that Facebook set some prerequisites to the vanity URL for companies. Firstly they have decided you need 1000 fans or more to have a vanity URL on your fan page. Secondly, you must have had a page since 31 May 2009.

Another update: Good news for smaller companies: Facebook will lift the ban on 1000 minimum fans on June 28th.

Social media has become part of many people's everyday lives: Facebook-ing friends when we’re supposed to be working; watching YouTube instead of Coronation Street; and Twitter-ing - if you’re not now, you soon will be - with people we’ve never even met. But what about social media as part of a corporate marketing strategy? Can companies be social in this sense?

The answer is yes, most definitely! Here are a few things to consider as you embark on your campaign...

Marketing managers need consider what they want to achieve with a social media strategy. If clear objectives aren't set the campaign will easily lose focus (like any good marketing campaign you will need to set out metrics to measure your success).

Next, think about your audience. Are they active in social media, even Internet literate? If not this doesn’t necessarily mean they never will be, but keep in mind the channels within social media that will be most appropriate. You should not rule any demographic out. If you are certain that your end customers aren’t active within social media now and never will be, consider communicating with their key influencers: children, friends, and colleagues.

Now consider that well-known brands are often perceived as monolithic, impenetrable presences: a ‘thing’ rather than a ‘them’. With social media comes an opportunity for brands to communicate with customers on a more personal level, literally human to human. The human face of a brand is its employees, and it is important that brands empower (and trust) their employees to represent them online. Forrester Analyst Josh Bernhoff asserts that brands are wasting their time if they are not prepared to let their employees, rather than the brand, do the talking:

“Your customers and your prospects are connecting and talking about your products and your company right now... You need to be part of this conversation... You might start a blog... a Facebook group... But until you start connecting as a corporate employee, you won’t understand what is going on out there.”

Another way of putting it is: companies don’t blog, people do. It is difficult for brands to move away from wanting to control all corporate communication with the utmost diligence. But social media is about the moment; brevity is its defining feature. Status updates are changed hourly, blogs are hurriedly published with typos, comments left breathlessly without hesitation - the next day yesterday’s activity is on page 7, no longer important. In short, there simply isn't time for all comms to go through the usual sign off channels - so try and loosen the reins a little.

Authenticity is a key concept to be mindful of when it comes to brand engagement with your customers within the social media environment. People don’t want to hear ‘risk-avoidant lingoism’ (as one commenter recently put it), but instead real opinions and helpful advice from the experts, the employees! Be careful to keep alive the inherent spirit of authenticity and informality, or else your efforts will be less successful.

Lastly, remember that participation isn’t limited to ‘speaking’. Josh Bernhoff cites four other ways for companies to get involved with the conversations happening in social media: listening (finding out what your customers are really saying); energising (getting your best customers to evangelise your products); supporting (helping customers solve their own and each other's problems); and finally, embracing (working with your customers to make products better).