The kilo75 blog

Facebook recently introduced Facebook community pages. You can read Facebook's blog post about them here.

Pages about communities and interests make a lot of sense to me. The example in the blog post illustrates the idea really well, a community page about cooking is a topic that would be unlikely to appear on Facebook but there are plenty of people who would be interested in the 'cooking' community page.

The problem I've started seeing is that Facebook has also created community pages for brands that are mentioned as an 'interest' in people pages. Which means we see duplicate pages in the search results for some brands and there is little differentiation between the pages, one being the 'official' brand page and the second the community page. Will Facebook users be discerning enough to know which is which?

At the moment most community pages I've looked at are Wikipedia entries alongside Facebook status updates however this will change over time as Facebook start to ask people to add their own content. Nothing surprising in that.

It's understandable that brand managers who have been nurturing their company/brand page are concerned about community pages. They are seeing fragmentation of their fans with some people signing up to the community page, they have no way to contribute to the page and the community page is often ranking above their own page in Facebook search.

If you look after a brand page on Facebook and now have a community page too what can you do?

Keep close attention to your Wikipedia page/entry as this is forming the basis of the pages
Reach out to those who have 'liked' your community page and not your page/group. They might have been looking for your page in the first place.
Sign up to your community page so you can see what people are saying
Volunteer to look after your community page. Although no one can edit the pages yet Facebook will be asking people to get involved at some point.

Analysts are starting to turn their attention to community pages so the following articles are worth reading if you want to find out more:

What's your take on Facebook community pages? Leave your comments below.

Monica is taking part in the first ever Leeds Social Media Surgery taking place on Tuesday 10th November between 5.30pm and 7pm at The Round Foundry Media Centre (LS11 5QP).

If you are interested in using Blogs, Social Networking and other free Internet services to help your community/voluntary group, club, society or small arts organisation then this event is for you! Come along to this free advice session to find out how you can use free web sites and services to organise activities, promote events, raise funds, collect feedback from your participants and keep a record of everything you do.

This event is for people of all levels of web and internet skills and you don't even have to be based in Leeds to take part.

Did I mention that it is FREE?

Please visit the Leeds Social Media Surgery website for more details.