engagement

The two most common pieces of advice you’ll hear about developing a Facebook app are probably:

1. Viral ideas are like half-cooked spaghetti; some of the stick to the wall, but you have to throw a bunch of noodles to find out which
2. Launch you app before it’s “finished,” and develop it over time as new features occur to you

I call this strategy of developing apps over time “baby step development,” because it relies significantly on incrementalism, or taking baby steps with your product.

Why is this important in social media?

Because what you’re looking for is engagement. Facebook highlighted this when they introduced the idea of “daily active users” for an app, instead of just counting the number of people who have installed an app.

And what better way to keep people coming back to your app than to keep adding new features and responding to user requests?

From that standpoint, it’s important that you look at any Facebook or OpenSocial app spec as something to provide a trajectory, not just a product.

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There’s no better way to learn new stuff than by getting your hands dirty. I know I’m not the only one playing with a business page in Facebook, and judging from the results I’m seeing, there’s not a lot of enthusiasm for pages.

This makes sense to me, because pages aren’t really in the mindset of Facebook users. Up until now, you were either a person or you didn’t really have an entity on Facebook. From the perspective of a user - why should you become a “fan” of a business?

I think pages are aimed much more at larger businesses that might actually have a “fan base.” Apple springs to mind as having the most obvious (and possibly rabid) fan group. The Apple page (which is probably not official, judging by the lack of anything on the page) has 146 fans anyway. It’s just a logo so far.

If you’re a business looking to get into Facebook, and you want to decide whether you should be setting up a page or a group, here are a few questions you might ask yourself before you start:

• How much time do you want to spend engaging in Facebook? - Obviously, no matter what you choose to do, spending more time on it will probably yield better results. At this point, however, it looks like properly maintaining a page will be a lot less time consuming than properly moderating a group. A page is, to a large extent, automated in what it does
• Do you sell a product or a service - If you sell a product, pages are better equipped to promote your business. When fans buy something from you, it can be set to propagate in their newsfeed automatically. It’s easy for people to review a product, or a company strongly tied to a product. If you’re selling a service, you’re marketing efforts are probably (or at least in Facebook should be) a bit more oblique. There’s very little room for impulse purchases. You’d do better to impress people with your knowledge and expertise by managing a good group with intelligent discussions.
• Is your business location important? - it may be a silly question, but the point is that pages are more like a business directory listing and less like a hang-out spot. If your business relies more on making personal connections and being seen as an expert, then go with a group. If your business has a storefront or a product that people need to be able to physically find, you might be better off with a page.