Facebook Customisation – A Wasted Effort?

After my post last week, a few observations jump out that I feel are worth consideration before investing in Facebook Page development.

• Jay Baer mentioned that after mining their client Facebook API data, Brand Glue have found that 99.5% of all comments (those crucial interactions) on their client"€™s status updates come from within the News Feed, not on the Wall of the pages themselves.
• Facebook expert Mari Smith estimates that fewer than 0.5% of all status updates are shown in members"€™ "Top News feed" (the default Wall setting used by ~95% of all Facebookers). So, if you have 200 Facebook fans, and you publish a status update, on average 1 of those 200 will see it. Ouch. This is down to Facebook's EdgeRank - more on that here.
• Even anecdotally - who returns to the Pages of brands anyway - do you, really? Interactions tend to be from your wall because of content from the brand coming through - you've little reason to go directly back to the page. How many of you friends pages do you re-visit regularly?

It follows then, that making your Facebook Page heavy with functionality, investing in too many apps and porting across functionality from your corporate web site is most likely not a top priority to reach your sales and marketing goals.

So, if Facebook Page functionality is not priority what are the possible take-aways here - can you think of more?

1. We want more "Likes"? So focus on that, set a target (half of your email database size?) - build in the basic functionality necessary such as custom landing tabs to support that first visit and objective of a "Like".
2. Remember the key reasons why people "Like" your brand - primarily for information, offers, exclusives (content as well as product) and because they wanted to show support - so focus on giving them what they want and therefore what will have them clicking, commenting and Liking from their wall. Invest the budget here.
3. If you don't know what your audience would really value, ask them wherever you are interacting (blogs, other networks or portal sites?) - consider setting up a Facebook Group with a select few customers. Is it working? Keep an eye on the conversion rate between visits to your page and "Like" clicks.
4. Share content frequently, I am not sure of what's "optimum" for everyone, though twice daily would seem logical so that you're giving yourself the best chance to be  in "Top News" with some degree of frequency.
5. Measure interactions with your content - comments and feedback - this is activity that correlates directly to your content efforts and should steer refinement and improvement.

Logically, with time and effort your Facebook Page could evolve with functionality to be the hub that you maybe dream off with people returning and referring - but just remember to ask yourself, "Why would they, really". Integrate something amazing, until then - market content well?