Earlier this week Facebook released a newly designed Page format (their profile platform for businesses, organizations and public personalities) intended to model the format of their personal profiles. Having just launched Inner Architect’s Facebook Page two weeks prior, the added learning curve has made me a wee bit grumpy this week. Catching up on my reading this morning, I now understand the power in these new Pages, soon to be referred to as “Public Profiles”: It’s in the News Feed. For the new Page format, this comes in the form of a status update box, aka “What are you doing right now?”
Some say this move is to compete more directly with Twitter, whose 140 character micro-blogging box enables your messages instantaneous broadcast to thousands of followers. Businesses now have similar capabilities with Facebook. Build a compelling Page and a following of fans, and your status updates will show up on their home page news feeds blended with the updates of their friends.
The opportunity for businesses on Facebook is very exciting as the viral power can be amazing. The challenge, of course, is to develop a message strategy that is in alignment with the tone of social media. More on that later.
