The Fate of Fans: Starting a Community on Facebook

When many people hear Facebook, they immediately think social networking and maybe youth-oriented technology. However, Facebook can be one of the best, cheapest, and easiest ways a business or organization can start and manage a community of interested fans. Rather than get into the mechanics of how to use a Facebook fan page, it’s important to consider the benefits of having a community for your brand. To help make it easy for you, we’ve developed a short list of reasons of how a Facebook community benefits a business:

1. Evangelism
By having a group, regardless of its size, of dedicated and captivated fans, a business has contact with additional mouthpieces who can help spread and echo major company news and announcements, as well as evangelize the service and skills the business excels in. You can’t buy this or expect to generate this enormous gift through tv and radio spots or print.

2. Whuffie
Tara Hunt applied the SciFi term “Whuffie” to the idea of social capital, the ability to influence and persuade people who trust you through relationships on- and off-line. By building a group of fans, your business can garner some Whuffie that will leave you as a trustworthy source of information with whom your brand has built a connection. Whether it be influencing them to buy your product or merely suggesting where they can get a good bite to eat, your company can influence those who trust you.

3. Feedback
We all like to think we know what we’re doing all the time. However, there are times when some feedback is necessary, whether it’s solicited or not. Your Facebook community can be a great source of life-saving ideas for your business, or just good critiques on areas of improvement for a product or service you offer. With a community, communication is a two-way flow, so don’t be afraid to listen to what your fans are telling you. It might save your business…or lead you to the next pot of gold.

4. Defense
Now, we say this not to be construed as a directive for you to be defensive. You will see that by starting a community while times are good, you have a sounding board and go-to group of advocates that you can set the story straight with in times of trouble (not that we wish times of trouble on you). You will see that by having a relationship with your fans and the people within your community, they will come to your defense when others try and bash and malign the company unjustly.