Let’s be honest. Trying to drive engagement via a company Facebook page is hard yakka. Done well, it’s most certainly a worthwhile investment. Persistence beats resistance is a good motto, however there’s no denying that content creation, resource management and engaged reach is an uphill battle.
If you have two or more company Facebook pages, which represent different offerings from your business it might be wise to ask yourself a few questions. Are your pages trying to connect to the same audience? Are you pages sharing the same or similar information? Are your pages cannibalising your engagement efforts and scheduling visibility? Are your competing pages diluting your brand power?
In almost all cases, I would try to avoid multiple Facebook pages for the one business. If the end vision is one of the same then why not merge Facebook pages, consolidate your efforts, resources and content and make one company Facebook page bigger, better and more successful. After all the brands within the brand and the projects within the organisation have usually been created to broaden the offering of one the hero business. Wouldn’t it be better to join forces, carefully curate an on-brand mix of content across multiple social platforms, with one Facebook page.
A better approach would be to connect with audience sectors via thoughtful EDMs, Facebook events and Facebook groups.
There are some businesses however (most commonly large retail chains) that find a national Brand Page can’t can address the needs of the local communities and speak to the audience in a way that a store-specific one (driven by different locations) could and, so local pages are born.
Having a single page however allows you to engage with your customers in a streamlined and sustainable way, rather than managing multiple pages, where communication and brand voice get lost. For me, quality over quantify reigns supreme.
A Facebook page representing the same thing, or multiple Facebook pages trying to compete for the same audience can be merged. The good news is that that the people who like your Pages and any reviews can be combined, but all other content such as posts, photos and the username will be permanently deleted from the Page you merge.
Words by Jade Roberts, Founder/Director raraPR
