Ad Mavericks

So Lessing-Flynn is now on Facebook. And it wasn’t a decision we took lightly. I think the process to determine what to do on Facebook with our own brand was an interesting one, and you might use this to determine what’s best for your brand. Here are some of the questions we asked ourselves.

Do we want a fan page?

I’m a fan of the Dave Mathews Band, Ed Norton’s acting ability and the comedy of Rodney Dangerfield (still gets no respect). All three of those examples are celebrities. Paparrazi type celebrities. I mean, when is the last time you saw a Lessing-Flynn employee at a red carpet event? Right.

I’m “not a fan” of creating Facebook fan pages for all brands. They have their place, but how many people do you know that are huge fans of an ad agency? Sure, people like ad agencies and people enjoy business with some ad agencies. And typically, people like to hear what agencies have to say, especially our competitors who read this blog (Thank you analytics!) But ultimately, agency people are nice to go to dinner with, not the type of folks you make signs saying “GO LESSING-FLYNN!” for at a pep rally. We’d like to think our clients would be fans, but since they get an invoice from us every month, its hard to determine the cost of that fanship.

What brands are you a fan of? Would your customers view your product with a fan’s eyes like the iPhone, or as a necessary evil, like HyVee brand shampoo?

Do we want a group page?

Too limiting. Its good if you have a large company and don’t want to build a socially friendly intranet, other than that, there’s not much value in groups for businesses. Group pages are for people that belong to something, like a school alumni or a play group.

What about a profile page?

For us, this was a slam dunk. We could be “friends” with people. Which, is what we try to do when we are meeting clients, meeting new people and just being ourselves. Sure, I am not going to the movies with my client, but we are “friendly” with each other and this made the most sense. Also, we tend to be a humble group here so having people be friends with us made a lot more sense than a tribute statue to some old dude. And I can still message all of my “friends” on Facebook the same way you message “fans.”

Why should we be on Facebook?

Until we added Facebook and social media bookmarks to our site, Twitter was the only medium we were using to really promote our blog. Facebook, like Twitter is another medium in which we can communicate to people about our blog and the on-goings of Lessing-Flynn. Facebook, like Twitter, has become a great traffic driver for us. Oh yeah, it’s free as well.

Let me be really clear here. Fan pages are great if you are committed to your customers, willing to post often and ready to keep it real. That means being honest, transparent and authentic. If you have a product that people embrace then a fan page is the best way to go. Brand advocates can do great things for your business. For us, we choose the profile page approach since it seemed to fit who we are and the way we go about our own specific business. So strongly consider what is right for your business before you jump in.

If you are interested in what we have to say, and you might be since you are reading this, you should friend Lessing-Flynn on Facebook. If we don’t provide value with every update, you might unfriend us. And that’s a risk we’re willing to take.

Author: Josh Fleming

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