When developing an overall web strategy, and in particular a social media strategy, a common question is whether to launch new initiatives as part of the existing corporate fan page, or create a new campaign-specific page for that initiative. This can apply to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, or any number of other social media platforms.
This is essentially a social media strategy problem, with parallels in the question of extension brands versus sub-brands. Here are some questions that are helpful to ask while developing your web strategy and your social media strategy in order to help determine the best web strategy:
- Who uses the main corporate page? Customers? Employees? Investors? All of the above? Is your new social media initiative appropriate to that audience (or to those audiences)?
- Who is the target market for the new product or promotion? If it’s the same as your overall brand target market, consider extending the main page. If your new web strategy targets a different market or a subset of your overall market (e.g. only the younger demographic), you may want to create new social media pages.
- How does the tone of the new initiative compare to your primary brand voice? If you’re going for something edgier that could potentially alienate fans of the main page, you might want to create social media new pages for the new initiative.
- Does the new initiative have geographic limitations? If you’re doing a limited product test launch or an online promotion that won’t be available to all of your customers, consider separate social media pages in this case.
When creating new social media pages, it’s often a good idea to link to the new pages from your main corporate pages, and vice versa, unless there’s a need to maintain a more strict separation in terms of your overall web strategy.
AlterSeekers is a brand promotions agency in New York focusing on promotions consulting and planning, web strategy, social media and social media marketing (including Twitter consulting), go to market strategy, and overall strategic planning. For more information see www.alterseekers.com
