As a business with multiple locations spread across the region, you understand just how much of a logistical nightmare getting your marketing outreach coordinated can be. Not only do you have to make sure all of your sales, offers, and promotions are going out to your stores on time, you also need to make sure that the stores are actually getting them out to the customer on time as well. When it comes to the social side of things, the chaos can be compounded even further by a number of factors outside of your control. In order to help navigate these issues, we’ll be talking about several of these factors when dealing with Facebook specifically.
How can a non-official Facebook page be created? These local pages can occur in a number of ways. Your local branch managers might have created their own local Facebook page in order to promote themselves in the community, Facebook themselves may have created confusing, auto-generated look-alike Community pages, or an unofficial page may have been created and now you have a fake page. All of these rogue elements can create a problem for your brand reputation, client communication, and social representation.
In 2010, Facebook decided that it was going to roll out a new feature called Community Pages. Throughout the launch of this new product, they auto-generated over 6.5 million new community pages based on terms that Facebook users were using. The major problem that users ran into was the fact that a Community Page could be created for their business, but there was no way to actually claim or manage that page. These pages were even using photography and iconography that was associated with real businesses. When searching for a business on Facebook, these Community Pages were being returned right alongside the official company and causing a massive amount of confusion. The worst part of this entire rollout is the fact that businesses can’t claim or control these pages.
These pages could have been created throughout the years by either Facebook themselves due to interest from the community, a fan (or competitor!) who accidently filled out the address incorrectly thus creating a new page, or a variety of other hiccups that can occur and produce an unofficial page. However, unlike Community Pages these unofficial pages can be claimed by the rightful business owner. Facebook has put many verification processes into place in 2016 in an attempt to prevent these from cropping up, but there are still holes in these processes that require vigilance on your part.
Sometimes you’ll have a local owner who wants to promote their business socially. This is fantastic news on the surface! After all, a motivated owner is typically a productive one. However, you can run into quite a few problems with this from a corporate standpoint. Even though the page was set up with good intentions, sometimes it falls to the wayside and no one is paying attention to it. You want to make sure that you’re having positive engagements across the board in a timely manner. You also want to make sure that your message is being relayed in accordance to your requirements.
It’s hard enough to detect these rogue pages and fix them for just a single location, just think of trying to get this done at scale across your entire service area. However, it needs to be done if you want to have full control over your multi-location Facebook presence. And trust us when we say you want to have oversight of your entire multi-location social outreach program. By taking hold of the reins at the corporate level, you’ll be able to:
Control your message, voice, and brand at the local level. You’ll be able to incorporate local dialect, terms, events, and other references in a way that can help build both relevance and engagements.
Customize your imagery to the area you’re talking to. A landscape picture is going to look a lot different when posting to Daytona Beach and Seattle.
Promote local inventory and events. You’ll be able to get in front of a much more relevant audience by posting locally exclusive products, services, sales, and other related items directly to a market versus posting it to a corporate account.
Display your team’s dedication to the community. If your local businesses are taking part in charitable and philanthropic events, you’re going to want to promote this fact to your local communities. This will help build up goodwill and show that you’re more than a faceless organization.
Now that you have an understanding of the primary ways your business can end up with rogue local Facebook Pages, stay tuned as a future post will go into detail on ways to fix these issues. If you’d like to get a jump on claiming and controlling your errant Facebook pages for your multi-location business, or you’d like to know how you can do it easily and efficiently, give us a call today and we’ll be glad to discuss it with you.