Two winter blockbusters were big gainers this week, with the 2012 and Twilight: New Moon Facebook Pages seeing strong growth. Building on last week’s numbers, Outback Steakhouse continued to bring in new fans with its Bloomin’ Onion promotion (which stops at the 500,000th fan, so only 13,000 or so onions left), whereas both Türk Bayrağı (the Turkish Flag Page) and Disney, while continuing to attract new fans, showed about flat growth week-on-week.

Name Fans Gain Gain, % 1. Texas Hold’em Poker 4,497,527 +305,964 +7.30 2. Outback Steakhouse 486,491 +203,561 +71.95 3. Mafia Wars 5,814,092 +197,991 +3.53 4. Türk Bayrağı 1,883,007 +166,740 +9.72 5. Best Buy 1,006,338 +161,411 +19.10 6. Disney 2,271,860 +152,087 +7.17 7. 2012 548,339 +143,120 +35.32 8. Inglourious Basterds 297,370 +136,930 +85.35 9. Twilight 4,253,133 +133,612 +3.24 10. Modern Warfare 2 348,932 +125,507 +56.17 11. Big Prize Giveaways 2,005,789 +124,201 +6.60 12. New Moon: The Movie 860,713 +107,070 +14.21 13. The Sims 3 681,547 +103,198 +17.84 14. Verizon 386,884 +98,442 +34.13 15. South Park 3,070,497 +92,464 +3.10 16. Minnesota Vikings 275,662 +75,619 +37.80 17. George Lopez 898,236 +70,870 +8.57 18. Starbucks 5,099,602 +65,024 +1.29 19. Sarah Palin 1,051,276 +64,881 +6.58 20. ABC Family 25 Days of Christmas 102,932 +57,370 +125.92

Other notables include the games Modern Warfare 2 and The Sims 3, both of which had game launches this past week, and Best Buy and Sarah Palin’s official page, each of which passed the one million fans mark (Palin is touring to promote her new book and is also on the cover of Newsweek). Verizon’s page also saw a large boost in the last week  which isn’t too surprising considering that they are running some pretty popular TV ads right now around the Droid and the 3G coverage map (two spikes in new fans, however, might be from Facebook adding in unofficial pages).

Finally, at number 20 this week is ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas page, which apparently was launched on November 10, and has steadily grown to over 100,000 fans in just 12 days. This is a great example of a media company using a Page for a specific program (ABC is owned by Disney, and the Disney page is another star). From the page’s Wall, it seems as though most people are becoming Fans of the page because they are looking forward to the programming on ABC Family in December, but nonetheless, the page is well thought out, especially the Boxes section (which many Page owners don’t use very effectively). The Boxes tab contains some useful content including a link to buy the audio CD of all the holiday songs featured during the month, a link to the website, and an especially useful and nice touch is the full December program schedule, so Fans don’t miss one magical moment.

With Thanksgiving less than a week away – and one week until Black Friday – brands, local businesses and non-profits can use their Facebook pages to get shoppers ready for the holiday season, promote Thanksgiving dinners, recipes and ideas, and even help feed their communities.

Brands

With the economy still struggling, many national brands, retailers and online sellers have decided to start their holiday pushes this year even before Black Friday. A few pages have launched promotions already, but they are tied more tied into the holidays and not specifically Thanksgiving.

Sears ran a promotion on their page until yesterday for Fans to be eligible to receive “VIP” notifications and offers via SMS for Black Friday, and Best Buy (which with over 150,000 new fans in the last week is only about 1,200 fans from a million) has two tabs devoted to holiday shopping already, but nothing that seems specifically about Thanksgiving.

Wal-mart also has two tabs for the holidays, one called “Holiday” for social shopping, and one labeled “Giving” that is aimed at supporting US troops and highlighting how Wal-mart gives back to the community, including feeding the hungry. The Food Network’s Page has a really nice tab dedicated to Thanksgiving that breaks down the parts of the feast and then links you off to The Food Network’s website for recipes.

Local Businesses and Non-Profits

Unlike many of the large brands, local businesses and non-profits are generally not lumping Thanksgiving into “the holidays” and are actually focusing on it as its own event. It’s no surprise that restaurants are especially keen on promoting their Thanksgiving dinners, as the Baker’s Drive-Thru in Southern California is doing with a sweepstakes to win one of 72 dinners, the Four Points Sheraton Ann Arbor has a dedicated Thanksgiving tab for their dinner, and the Big Fish Grill in Delaware and Moody’s Diner in Maine being other good examples of using Pages to rally local fans to dinner (if you’re near Waldoboro, Maine, Moody’s dinner is only $14.95 – take that, economy!).

Other interesting promotions that we found included a bank in Kentucky giving away a FlipCam, the band Underoath (which has 115,547 fans) giving away a $5 coupon off their t-shirts — this has generated 176 Likes and 40 comments, and a ski resort giving away passes to its opening weekend (the weekend after Thanksgiving) to new Fans.

Finally, a number of local non-profits and individuals are using Pages to help feed the hungry this Thanksgiving.

The Salvation Army San Diego will serve 2,000 Thanksgiving dinners, an individual is trying to feed 500 families, and a surfing shop is trying to gain support to feed kids.

Thanksgiving Page Trimmings

As we’ve seen, local seems to win out when it comes to Thanksgiving. Perhaps larger brands don’t see the value in separating Thanksgiving out of the rest of the holidays, and there is probably some wisdom in that. For local restaurants especially, if you are planning on serving dinner next Thursday, we highly suggest at the very least to do a Wall post about what you’re doing, and if you have a little more time, put up a dedicated Thanksgiving tab – even if you just list the event and menu, it may just be enough to entice people out of their living room for the afternoon.

Finally, if you just want to become a fan of Thanksgiving, here’s the unofficial Page.

The Clorox Clean-Up Fan Page (not the main Clorox Fan Page), is running a contest for fans to nominate a local non-profit kids’ programs for one of five $10,000 grants. Through an app inside the page called Bright Future, fans can nominate their favorite local 501(c)(3) non-profit up until November 29th. A panel of judges will then narrow down the nominations to 50 finalists and then from December 7 until January 17, 2010 users of the app will be able to vote, with the top five vote getters each receiving $10,000 grants as well as being featured in a People Magazine ad.

We received some stats from the StepChange Group, a company that’s helping Clorox with the campaign. In the first four days, over 2,000 non-profits were nominated, the app had 1,000 active users, and it helped to generate close to 20,000 new fans for Clorox Clean-Up. Since then, however, growth has apparently slowed a bit, as the page five days later has 23,017 fans and 2,200 non-profits nominated (but 44,081 active users for the app, so perhaps growth is trending that way).

As we mentioned last Friday, Facebook has tightened their rules for promotions, so whereas perhaps in the past a Clorox Clean-Up could have required people to become a Fan before nominating a non-profit, that is no longer allowed.

$50,000 in grants is no small number, and we applaud this kind of cause marketing on Facebook, especially in these tough economic times.

You may not have a sweet tooth after Halloween last weekend, but lots of people still do for candy-makers on Facebook. In terms of Facebook pages, most of the big candy brands have vanity URLs and well over 100,000 fans. Of course, three companies make up most of the candy market: Mars, Nestle and Hershey’s. We’ll break them down that way in our coverage.

Fan Pages of Mars Brands

Overall, Mars brands have the largest candy presence on Facebook, including the single largest fan page, Skittles. Other significant pages include M&M’s, Snickers and Twix.

With 3.52 million fans, Skittles currently has the 16th largest following on Facebook overall, according to PageData, more than its closest competitor, Reese’s, which has 1.43 million fans. Skittles has a pretty comprehensive page that includes their “Holla” and “Mix the Rainbow” games. Like a majority of the brands covered here, Skittles leaves their Wall wide open for fans to post. Although this leaves their messaging a bit unfocused, it’s hard to argue with the results they’ve achieved so far.

M&M’s has three official pages. The largest, M&M Fans, has 789,000 fans, and features a wide variety of videos and other promotions from the company. The dryly-named M&M’S Brand Chocolate Candies has 296,000 fans. There’s also a much more interesting one, called M&M’S Racing with Kyle Busch, which has only 5,000 fans.

It’s not clear why M&M is splitting pages into one for “fans” and one for the “brand” instead of having a single page. Maybe they’re approaching one Page like a group? That’s a tactic we don’t recommend. Even so, both are getting good traction, with a number of recent posts on each receiving with more than 200 likes and more than 50 comments. On the “brand” page, one photo album in July about an M&M themed Six Flags has received a strong response with 971 Likes to date. We were a little surprised at the scarcity of videos on the “brand” page, though, as M&M commercials are so famous and well liked. It appears M&M Fans is instead running the majority of those.

M&M’s other page — at least that we’ve been able to find — is M&M’S Racing with Kyle Busch. Although small, it’s a good example of how brands can target Pages at specific niches within their fan base. In this case, it reaches across the aisle to another fan-base, in this case, NASCAR. This Page doesn’t reach too high or too broadly, and the interaction with the dual fan-bases is strong.

Also, the Snickers page, with 266,000 fans has a couple of notable tabs – “Translator” and “Causes”. Translator is a game that lets you translate English into “Snanklish” – we put in ‘Facebook’ and it churned out ‘Social Nutwork’. The Causes tab, for the “Feeding America” anti-hunger campaign, is also a nice touch and one that we did not see on any other candy brand’s page.

Fan Pages of Hershey’s Brands

The Hershey’s main Fan page and the Reese’s Fan page are both similarly structured (perhaps the same person runs both pages?) with Hershey’s currently at 752,000 fans and Reese’s at 1.43 million. Engagement is a bit on the low side on the Hershey’s page, and a little more lively on the Reese’s page. Recent wall posts on both have been alternating between Halloween and college football to promote its “I’m A Big Fan” video contest.

Surprisingly, Hershey’s and Reese’s are the only brands that seemed to be really engaging fans on Halloween – we had expected every brand covered here to be plastering their pages with pumpkins and ghosts, but that just wasn’t the case. The Hershey’s page also does a good job of listing their Events and has half a dozen videos (again, commercials). One nice touch on the Reese’s page is that they’ve set up a landing page in a tab called “Reese’s Home” for new users or web searchers to land on, a strategy that is underused by most Page creators. Other brands in the Hershey’s group that have notable Facebook pages include Hershey’s Kisses and the Cadbury brand — although it’s not clear which pages are for the UK company or the brand that Hershey’s operates in the US.

Fan Pages of Nestle Brands

Nestle seems to be big on promotions, contests and apps on their pages for Butterfingers, Nestle Crunch and Kit Kat. The Butterfingers page, with 387,000 fans, has a video contest and a number of promotions. Nestle Crunch, with 111,000 fans has its “Yearbook” app that let’s you build a yearbook from your grade school days, replete with era clothing.

Managing Facebook pages should be a top priority for any marketer or business owner, and here’s a closer look at ways to do it using desktop, web or mobile apps.

Before we get started, note that you can of course just use Facebook itself to update pages. Many of these apps offer additional features, like the ability to post to Twitter and other services. Mobile apps are especially key for anyone trying to manage a page while on the go.

Also, note that the option of updating pages directly from a third-party service only became available when Facebook introduced the OpenStream API in early August. Third-party services for using pages are still new and evolving.

Desktop Clients

Both Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop have built-in functionality to update your status on your Facebook page or pages. You can either duplicate your tweets or personal Facebook updates (although only if your tweets and updates are business-focused and use the voice you want for your brand) through a few simple settings.

In Tweetdeck, all you need to do is to go to Settings (i.e. the wrench) > Accounts > Add New Accounts > Add Facebook Account. When you add a Facebook account, you will see a button below called “Add Pages”. Click this, sign in with Facebook Connect and Tweetdeck will create a button in your main dashboard to update the Pages you administer. One thing that is important to note is that only the 0.30 version of Tweetdeck or newer has this functionality. On Seesmic Desktop, the procedure is Control Panel > Accounts > Click the + button > Add you Facebook account > Administered Pages.

The other desktop clients that we investigated were Yoono Desktop and PeopleBrowsr. Yoono’s customer service rep said that it is a highly requested feature, and they are working with Facebook on permission issues, and we review PeopleBrowsr’s client below, as it is basically identical to its web version.

Web Clients

We found three clients (well, two and a half as you’ll see) that support Page updates: Ping.fm, PeopleBrowsr and HootSuite. We also checked Seesmic’s web app and Brizzly, both of which do not support Page updates, as well as HelloTXT, which does, but requires you to install a Facebook App. Although these clients have varying purposes – PeopleBrowsr focuses on brand management, HootSuite is mainly a Twitter client, and Ping.fm provides a simpler interface but with the ability to update just about any social network – the core function of each is status updates, including to Facebook Pages.

Using Ping.fm, you can update Facebook Pages either through Ping.fm itself or within HootSuite, making HootSuite the “half” a client here. Setting up Ping.fm to update your Facebook Pages is very straightforward. The first screen you see when you sign up for the service is a list all of the social networks you can update from Ping.fm. Facebook Pages are listed third as if it was its own social network, right behind Twitter and Facebook itself (and before MySpace, which is a saying something on the importance of Facebook Pages). From there, you’ll just need to go through the Facebook Connect sign-in procedures and then you’ll be able to update your pages using Ping.fm.

One of the nice things about Ping.fm as well, is that they have multiple integrations with other services, as well as mobile applications that make it a good choice if you need to access your account from multiple devices. For example, as mentioned, if you are a HootSuite user, you can sign up for Ping.fm, add Facebook Pages as one of your social networks to update, and then update from HootSuite, through Ping.fm to your Page. So if you like the versatility of Ping.fm but prefer the slickness and Twitter feature set of Hootsuite 2.0, this is a good combo.

PeopleBrowsr is an interesting alternative, as their web app and desktop app are basically the same – however, to our knowledge, more people use it as a web app, so we’ll discuss it here. You simply sign in to my.peoplebrowsr.com using Facebook Connect, type in your status, click the “To” button, click the “More” link, and then just check off which page you wish to post to. What is interesting is that PeopleBrowsr allows you to post to any Page that you subscribe to as well as to those you administer.

Updating Facebook Pages by Mobile

Far and away, the best way to update your Pages using a mobile phone is to use Facebook’s iPhone 3.0 app. The app has integrated Page management functionality – something that even m.facebook.com (Facebook’s mobile web service) doesn’t have. Of all of the other apps we’ve discussed here, probably the one with the greatest crossover in terms of usage to mobile is Tweetdeck. But as of right now, Tweetdeck’s iPhone app does not support updating pages. As we mentioned above, Ping.fm offers a number of ways to update their service through a variety of mobile devices/brands, and is a good bet if you are not using an iPhone.

Unfortunately, there are no Facebook apps for Blackberry that support updating Pages. So Blackberry users will need to do what the majority of mobile phone users will need to do if they want to update their Pages on the go, which is to go to the full Facebook.com from their phone and navigate to the Page admin. Or just use Ping.fm.

Of all of the services reviewed here, Tweetdeck, Ping.fm, PeopleBrowsr, and of course Facebook itself, seem the most serious about Facebook Pages. These services not only make it really easy to update your Page, but Pages are also a prominent part of their services.