Lollipop Local

There have been a couple of questions in social media groups about how best to use Facebook for what I would term ‘delicate’ or embarrassing products.

That would be products or services that are very useful but which most people would not want to advertise their use of on the world wide web by ‘liking’ their Facebook page. I’m thinking pest control… or divorce therapy or… errr… ‘personal products’ for both men and women.

I wrote some months ago about how Facebook is good for emotional products but even that has a limit.

There are some creams, pills and potions that can have a personal value in terms of performance which cannot be quantified in terms of cold hard cash – but their use tends to be a closely guarded secret that most would not admit to even their closest friends.

And it’s the same with head lice, cockroaches or bedbugs. A lot of people need to know how to eradicate them and are willing to pay what it takes – but they don’t necessarily want to tell everyone in the neighbourhood.

So, how best to promote your product on Facebook? As Mari Smith pointed out, Facebook Pages are entirely public by default. Any interactions with the page, including liking it, are public. There’s no way to prevent the act of liking a page from posting to your wall/friends’ feeds. I thought it might be possible to go into your Activity Log on your profile and remove the story about the like (which removes it from friends’ feeds – after the fact). However, the only option is to actually unlike the page.

Bottom line, there are simply some types of businesses and uses that are not a good fit for a highly engaged Facebook fan page. Could be that you could focus on using the page more as an information center to raise awareness – given anyone can see and interact with the page whether they are a fan or not.

Some commenters suggested that products might be better served with a Facebook Group for discussions and advice. The Facebook Page could drive attention to the Group, which should be Closed.

However, the fact remains that anyone on Facebook can see who is in Closed Groups and can request to join, although they can’t see the actual posts. So it still means that your friends can see you are part of that group. The only alternative is a Secret Group, but you have to be friends first with peeps before adding them, unlike Closed or Open Groups. This kind of defeats the object and produces a chicken and egg situation if you are looking for information or a solution to a particularly embarrassing problem.

Perhaps, as Mari suggested, in some circumstances, it is worth raising awareness of the different facets of a problem. I would recommend that for products which are very popular – even if no one admits to using them – admins should work the page on the basis that people are reading your information – even if they are not actively liking your page.

I remember when I first started learning about affiliate marketing, there was a very successful pest controller whose customer base had increased dramatically when he started using video on his site about the different types of pests. His idea was to make the problem of infestation nothing to be ashamed of, just another fact of life that had to be dealt with… and to provide information and prices about the best way to do it.

I see the Facebook Page as just an extension of this – answering questions and posting videos about such subjects could provide a lot of value to those lurking in search of advice. The fact remains that a lot of people do use Facebook to search for information and just because a page does not seem to have many likers does not mean that it is not providing useful content.

The SEO Value of a Facebook Page for Embarrassing Products

And just because people won’t like a Facebook page does not mean they are not searching for information about that subject on Google. A Facebook page that is properly optimised for search terms with high volume also stands a good chance of appearing on the SERPs for that phrase.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2012 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Facebook, SEO For Business, Social Media and SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.