DavidBlanar.com

I generally enjoy the Church of the Customer blog and I don’t knock Ben McConnell, whose passion is admirable.

But his piece, Facebook fan pages are the future makes a leap which – aside from presenting a world vision of marketing I assiduously wish to avoid – strikes me as having little chance of coming true.

McConnell writes:

“When fans interact with a fan page on Facebook, that interaction is sent through the fan’s news feed, which goes to all their friends, practically daring a chunk of them to see what the page is about.

Compared to Twitter, Facebook fan pages rule. You’re not limited by Twitter’s 140-character posts, plus it’s far easier for fan page members to preview a photo, video or weblink than what Twitter offers.

What more could a brand manager want?”

Plenty. Authenticity; credibility; and even value spring to mind.  I firmly describe these types of promotional pages on social media sites as extensions of corporate blogs, which we all know finish dead last in terms of consumer credibility. Read more…

Having spent the better part 10 years publishing in many digital forms, I continually enjoy watching friends and colleagues discover blogging and, in turn, delight in connecting with others online.  Numerous, ubiquitous social network sites deliver simple publishing tools to whole societies, scaling what was the domain of geeks into a mass-market proposition.

Some reject blogging entirely, which is their right.  But millions have taken virtual pen to paper and, consequently, prompted corporations looking for competitive advantage to investigate how to best employ this activity for profit. Read more…