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How Do You Treat a Fan Who Owns Your Facebook Page?
March 18th, 2009
| By Justin Smith | 27 Comments » |
According to PageData, the folks at Coca-Cola seem to have accomplished something pretty amazing on Facebook – the Coca-Cola fan page is the 2nd most popular Page on all of Facebook with over 3.3 million fans, second only to Barack Obama.
The only catch? The page wasn’t created by Coke, but by two Coke fans in Los Angeles, Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski. In a recent AdAge story, the two tell of how they were recently contacted by Coca-Cola and asked to partner with Coke to manage the Page in a move that showed a graceful approach to social media by the company.
It’s an increasingly common question for brands interesting in building their Facebook presence: What do I do if someone has already created a Facebook Page for my brand? Or in the case of big brands like Coke – hundreds of Pages?
There are a variety of options at your disposal, and how you choose to proceed is really up to you.
1. Ask Facebook to transfer control of the Page to you. Most brand managers who plan to actively invest in Facebook promotions want to control the destination Page, and Facebook’s policy on Pages is that they may only be controlled by the rightful brand owner. If you’ve found a Page for a brand that you’re the rightful owner of, contact Facebook and they can transfer it to you once they can confirm your identity. However, of course, you’ll need to consider whether and how this should be communicated to the Page’s fan base – especially if there’s already a strong community in place.
2. Ask the Page owners to transfer control to you. For those brands concerned about alienating the fans that have invested their time in creating and building a Page – sometimes over a period of years – talking with the Page owners directly may be a more appropriate approach to try first. Facebook doesn’t make the contact information of Page owners publicly available, so you’ll have to either just post a message on the Page’s wall or ask Facebook for their contact info. From there, you can have a conversation with the Page creator about how to proceed.
3. Ask the Page owner to share control with you. In cases where the fan community has become very large and the brand isn’t incredibly perturbed by the way the Page owner is running things, a more innovative approach to sharing administrative responsibilities can work. In the Coca-Cola case, “Facebook made the decision to either close the page or let Coca-Cola take it over. Coca-Cola instead proposed an alternative: Let the creators keep the page but share it with a few of Coca-Cola’s senior interactive folks… Coke instead flew the guys down to Atlanta for a few days of meetings, a tour of the World of Coke museum and a visit to the company’s legendary archives.”
4. Ask Facebook to shut the Page down. If for some reason you just don’t want this Page to exist any more, brands can ask Facebook to shut it down. Facebook can either simply delete it or roll over the fans of that Page into another Page that you own. However, in this case especially, you should be careful to communicate this in such a way that it does not create a jarring or otherwise poor experience for the Page’s community.
5. Let the Page continue to exist, and start an “official” Page of your own. For those that don’t mind having “unofficial” Pages around, you’re always free to do nothing and let it ride. However, fans searching for your page may find the unofficial ones instead, which could be confusing and/or splinter your community. Facebook itself may notice that there are duplicate Pages and ask you if you’d like to consolidate them at some point.
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March 18th, 2009 at 11:51 am
What did Coke do with the remaining 100s?
March 18th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Their profile picture sure does look good now!
– compliments of @TractionOKC
We’ve had a similar situation with a client. We decided to post our own “official” page and try and befriend the other pages & groups to let them know there’s an official page in existence. They didn’t opt to immediately close their pages, but we can write on their wall anytime and that hits their fans that aren’t yet our fans.
We were able to grow our page to more than 20 times the size of the others in just 3 weeks. Keep in mind, this is for a local Oklahoma City client.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
[...] con ellos y les ha ofrecido colaboración en la gestión conjunta de la página, según cuenta Inside Facebook, que se pregunta sobre las distintas reacciones que una marca puede tener frene a este tipo de [...]
March 18th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
What an interesting article! Quite a dilemma I think and one that would need really careful consideration before acting.
I think it’s really interesting the way Coke handled it, sounds like everyone is happy in that instance.
And Tyler’s group seems to have managed it as well.
Well done.
March 19th, 2009 at 6:10 am
[...] How Do You Treat a Fan Who Owns Your Facebook Page? "It’s an increasingly common question for brands interesting in building their Facebook presence: What do I do if someone has already created a Facebook Page for my brand? Or in the case of big brands like Coke – hundreds of Pages? [...]
March 19th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Any additional tips on tracking down the Page creator?
FB will not provide the contact info and the wall post asking for the owner turned up zero. I am happy to have FB pass along my contact info but that hasn’t gone anywhere either. Ideas?
March 19th, 2009 at 9:40 am
[...] asks "What do I do if someone has already created a Facebook Page for my brand?" He lists (and elaborates upon) the following options a business has in such a scenario: – Ask Facebook to transfer control of the [...]
March 19th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Thanks, just the answer I was looking for.
Cheers,
Stuart
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:15 pm
[...] asks "What do I do if someone has already created a Facebook Page for my brand?" He lists (and elaborates upon) the following options a business has in such a scenario: – Ask Facebook to transfer control of the [...]
March 25th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
[...] inside Facebook social media [...]
April 14th, 2009 at 11:51 am
[...] In passing, he mentions the impressive 3.5 million fans which Coca-Cola has gathered on their Facebook page. In fact, that page was started by two fans, unofficially and independently, before Coca-Cola caught on. [...]
April 20th, 2009 at 7:01 am
[...] companies, or brands they like as a place to earnestly express their passion. Brand owners have to figure out how to respond, but usually, these cases are resolved smoothly and [...]
April 30th, 2009 at 3:22 am
[...] option has its potential pros and cons as Smith explains, but I feel like the last one will be the best option in many cases because it’s the one [...]
April 30th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
[...] How Do You Treat a Fan Who Owns Your Facebook Page? (insidefacebook.com) [...]
May 4th, 2009 at 10:21 am
[...] How Do You Treat a Fan Who Owns Your Facebook Page?, we discussed the five options brands can take in handling unofficial [...]
May 14th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Any idea how to either share control or have the page transferred. Seems difficult since business pages are now linked to an individual’s profile… It would be great to hear if you have any insights on this.
June 11th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
[...] social web is one big stream that requires listening, empathy, and also engagement and response. InsideFacebook recently shared a great story of how brands can cultivate communities on Facebook [...]
July 6th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I’ve been trying to contact FB to get control of my brand’s fan page and have still not heard anything back yet. The page has thousands of fans, so it wouldn’t make sense for me to start another one. Anyone have any tips on getting in touch with someone from FB?
August 11th, 2009 at 7:02 am
[...] ranging from transferring the Page to your control to shutting the Page down altogether (see How Do You Treat a Fan Who Owns Your Facebook Page? for more details and options). Using the “Report Page” link on the bottom left corner [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 2:22 pm
[...] its official Page. Facebook intends for Pages to be owned by companies themselves, so it has been helping various organizations do this [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 2:31 pm
[...] close it’s nonofficial fan pages and fold them into it’s main page. It’s not the first time either. As that post points out their are a number of ways of making sure that you as the owner of the [...]
September 30th, 2009 at 3:48 am
I tried to find the owner of an unauthorized page about our comedy group on Facebook, through a posting on the fan page, but he never answered and seemed to have abandoned Facebook. So I contacted Facebook to transfer control over the page to me. This was their answer:
“For legal reasons, we’re not able to give other users access to unauthorized Facebook Pages or administrator information. Sorry for any inconvenience. However, if you’d like to create a Page [..] and respond with its web address (URL), we can transfer the fans from the unauthorized Page.”
This is what I did and it worked really well.
January 26th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
[...] image that Coca-Cola then reposted using the Share button (a great illustration of how Coca-Cola partnered with their raving fans who created the [...]
January 27th, 2010 at 5:01 am
[...] image that Coca-Cola then reposted using the Share button (a great illustration of how Coca-Cola partnered with their raving fans who created the [...]
January 31st, 2010 at 8:37 pm
[...] you were in the beverage manufacturer’s shoes and saw what they saw, how would you react to an unofficial Facebook page with fan statistics you would want for yourself? What would you do? If you were Arnold or [...]
January 31st, 2010 at 8:46 pm
[...] you were in the beverage manufacturer’s shoes and saw what they saw, how would you react to an unofficial Facebook page with fan statistics you would want for yourself? What would you do? If you were Arnold or [...]
January 31st, 2010 at 8:49 pm
[...] you were in the beverage manufacturer’s shoes and saw what they saw, how would you react to an unofficial Facebook page with fan statistics you would want for yourself? What would you do? If you were Arnold or [...]