IN many ways, pages function similarly to profiles. Pages can have friends (or fans), and they have a wall where the person managing the page (and/or their fans) can post comments, links or pictures. Content on fan pages can be organized using any number of tabs, and their page layout is very similar to that of a standard profile.

This is a way of saying that if you’re marketing a brand or company of any kind, then you’re going to want to build a fan page on Facebook. Are there any situations in which you shouldn’t bother? The only one I can think of is if you know in advance that you won’t take the time to maintain it. Having a fan page with outdated information and only two fans will only make your company or brand look worse.

Of course, having a community is only the first step. You need to understand your community and you need to be able to manage it. You need to know who your alpha dogs are, how your community wants to interact with you, and what your community is passionate about, and you need to be able to connect people in your community who have shared ideals and shared questions.

With Facebook specifically, what is so great about fans is that they are connected to you in a platform where they are also connected to all their friends. So even beyond the lifetime value of a Facebook fan, which in itself is tremendous, the share value of a fan is probably even more important.

Facebook fans are for every brand that believes community is a positive tool they can use for brand building, promotion and loyalty, and that understands the power of friend-to-friend word of mouth in terms of driving action.

As a brand, you have access to a fan’s entire network through the fan’s sharing behavior.  I’ve mentioned before how powerful that is in terms of the number of people you get access to. But even more important, we’ve seen again and again the power of word of mouth in terms of driving action.

Now in terms of using fan pages to promote the brand, McCann shares with this columnist this brand-new app that will push Nescafé Philippines Facebook page fans’ engagement to the next level—the Youmeoke (“yoo-mi-oh-ki”).

It is a novel and refreshing spin to photo sharing on Facebook—one that allows users to create a slideshow of their Facebook photos videoke style. Imagine your photos in fluid transitions, animated against a musical track of your choice, with lyrics sprawled on the screen for you to sing along.

Youmeoke is the brand’s way of celebrating simple moments online, by mixing two Pinoy obsessions—videoke and Facebook—into one quirky application. The app’s design mixes two elements together as well—pop art and pop music—in the form of an edgy, neon-lighted, vintage jukebox.

Getting started is really easy, especially with the app’s fun and friendly interface. First, you select an OPM song from three categories, namely OPM Classics, Senti Pinoy Hits and Pinoy Bands. Afterward, you will be prompted to select a maximum of three friends. What the app will do is search your photo bank for pictures where you and your friends are all tagged together, and automatically animate those pictures into a slideshow while playing it against the song of your choice.

The app can be accessed and played within the Nescafé Philippines Fan Page. With over 1,000,000 fans to date, it won’t be long before the page hits another million, especially with Youmeoke, being an irresistible attraction, not to mention all the other exciting attractions found within the fan page. Youmeoke (Nescafé Philippines Fan Page URL https://apps.facebook.com/youmeoke/) makes it possible with its “share” function, which allows you to post the videos on your friends’ walls.

Nescafé offered a pretty cool application that enabled users to combine fun with a strong pass-along component. And the beautiful part is that Nescafé is building a community and creating the base of supporters who will support the app—and by extension the brand—in the long run.

In terms of using fan pages to promote your brand, you don’t really want to draw a firm line between promotion and conversation. Promotion needs to be part of an ongoing conversation that you are having with your community—or in this case, with your fans. Of course, continual conversation requires resources just to build up your fan page. But building up your fan page and then not engaging with your fans just means you’ll have wasted time and resources creating the fan page in the first place.

Keep your engagements simple, direct and compelling. Again, it goes back to being very customer-focused and customer-driven and defining a concept that will add value for consumers and drive their interest and engagement.

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Bubuwit Squeaks

Good campaign

In his years of writing copy, he has produced ads of which he is inordinately proud—or fond. Not necessarily the most successful. He doesn’t think of ads so much as he thinks of campaigns. When a client comes to him in trouble, and he prepares a campaign for the client—not an ad, but a campaign concept—and if over a period of 10 years, everything else being equal, because copy is not the only prime mover in this business, and he sees his client’s business going up and up and up, he considers that a good campaign. “It is worth paying attention to.”