Now that the personal page etiquette is out of the way, we can now look into Company or Brand Fan Page etiquette. Since I used the analogy of establishing Facebook friends is like meeting them at an event, your Company Fan Page is like a corporate outing where you invited all your clients and business associates to the gathering and your fans should be treated the same as you would in person at this gathering. A Company Fan Page is the opportunity for you clients and fan base to better get to know your company, see behind the scenes, and should be a much more informal experience for them than you own hosting site offers.

I know what you are thinking at this point, you are concerned about the competition peeking in aren’t you. Well they are and regardless of what you put up on Facebook most of what they need to know about you, they already have it. Of course you wouldn’t share any proprietary information, costing, trade secrets and such, so again discretion here is the key. With that said it remains to be said that the person providing the content for your Facebook Company Fan Page, or Twitter for that matter, must be competent and accountable for what they produce. As a rule of thumb someone with authority should be monitoring all the activities and content posted on the page.

The first golden rule of Facebook for companies is don’t use it to constantly blurt out ads, specials, and annoying advertising. Nobody wants to subscribe to a stream of advertising and if they are your fan when they get ready to buy, they will find you. Instead offer them something of value, a tip or something useful they can use that is associated with your company

Don’t bash the competition period. Just leave them alone as far as comments go, take the high road and all the while still keep your eye on them. Don’t copy them either and be creative in your efforts, use their ideas and make enough changes to show your not just following their actions.

Watch out for who has access to publicizing information about your company, i.e. disgruntle employees, ex’s etc. This is where the benefit of attaching your company page to your personal page in that you can assign and remove administrators, oh yeah, don’t give out your personal password and use the administrator tool.  

Don’t whine and complain about the economy or bad times enough of that can be found in the news.

Don’t quote company policy or pass the buck off to customer service when someone complains about your company. Use this opportunity to get personally involved and to make things right. Also keep in the back of your mind at all times that this is public information and one should consider the legal ramifications of your discussion. This is not to say that you have to sound and act like an attorney, but just remember that all that information is available for all to see.

Actually, use Facebook to be proactive when a problem occurs and get the word out to your fan base that you are taking action and for them to stay in touch with you as you work through the problem. For example Toyota in this screenshot chose to pass their fans off to the recall site. If it were me I would have set up a mechanism for dealing with the entire fan base right hear instead of asking to go off to another site. There page was buzzing with folks that are upset and I didn’t see anyone from the company responding. To me this is an opportunity for them to retain their customers that may now jump ship since no one is communication with them and addressing their concerns directly.  This page has 75, 378 fans.

Lastly, is do not create a page and then abandon it, his will get you de-fanned in a heartbeat. The level of participation on Facebook will return the level of success you have with the page. Post photo’s frequently and the Holy Grail of course is video. A double whammy in this regard would to be to use Flickr for images and YouTube for video embedded in your Facebook Fan Page which will be the next topic for discussion tomorrow.