Facebook Fan Pages Drive Profit, Twitter Follows Suit

The details are nebulous and official word has yet to emerged, but all indications are that Twitter is preparing to launch Facebook-style "Brand Pages" for companies. The concept is backed by "strong interest" from brands, according to a spokesman for Twitter, and the support of Twitter’s top execs.

The pages, which would allow companies their own space to disseminate unique content beyond 140-character blurbs, would open up yet another channel for customer and companies to interact.

"There’s definitely potential there," said David Hartstein, a partner at JG Visual, a company working with organizations to establish their online presence. "The more completely you can represent your company on any site is beneficial. Even now, many companies are branding their pages with custom designs."

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The decision comes on the heels of studies showing Facebook to be a more effective and profitable means of engaging a consumer base. EventBrite, an online ticketing service, calculated the value of having users "share" a ticketed event on different social media platforms. Facebook generated $2.52 in ticket sales per share, while Twitter checked in at $0.34.

More recently, Chompon – a site allowing users to share deals they find on their social networks – released their gross revenue generated for each share and Tweet made for deals. Facebook outpaced Twitter, generating $14 per "share" compared to $5 per Tweet.

The attempt to quantify the unquantifiable has generated discussion in the social media community. Rob Booth, head of internet media planning at Bos Advertising and a contributor to Social Media Today, praised the studies’ interesting take on the issue, while recognizing the long-term strength of social media outlets is "developing credibility via a long-term brand relationship," he wrote. Hartstein agreed, calling the results an "oversimplification" of how social media is used.

"It gets to the point about how difficult it is to record ROI [Return on Investment] when using social media," he said. "Traditionally many have used dollars, but for some that’s a misguided approach. It’s worth figuring out how you want to use social media before determining how you are going to measure your ROI."

Still, Facebook holds many inherent advantages over its Twitter peers. The site was first to the party, directing the expansion of social medial, and has amassed over 500 million users – a nearly incomparable number for other social media platforms. Unlike Twitter, which users often access via third-party applications like TweetDeck or Hootsuite, most Facebook users interact directly on the site itself. Hartstein thinks Twitter will have to provide incentives for users to browse over to Twitter itself for branded pages to have maximum success.

"It will be interesting to see how Twitter balances [having user engage via third-party applications] and what reasons they’ll give people to come to Twitter," he said.

But the big difference between the two is Facebook’s summer 2010 release of Facebook Insights, an analytics tool for companies to track traffic to their site. This feature allows companies to track what posts are receiving traffic, where that traffic originates, the demographics of that traffic and more – all invaluable data for crafting an effective Facebook page. Twitter has not hinted at an analytics tool to this point.

Facebook Insights has opened the door for data collection and the development of best practices guidelines – a feature constantly lacking in the social media world. Buddy Media, a leading social media marketing company working with 600 of America’s most prominent companies, culled Facebook data from 200 of its clients during a 14-day span. Among other things, the study emphasized timing.

"While marketers may work Monday through Friday, Facebook is humming with activity 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow told Mashable, a social and digital media news site.

To be successful, the study posited, companies must align their posting habits with that of their consumers. Hartstein expressed some reservations at the results, though, stressing consistency and managing expectations.

"If you’re going to consistently publish on Monday and your followers expect that, that’s when they are most likely to engage," he said, emphasizing the necessity of ongoing monitoring to look for deviations from normal activity on posts.

Meanwhile, organizations will simply have to wait and see how Twitter’s attempt to "offer more robust solutions" for companies, as Hartstein put it.

"I don’t know that they need [branded pages] to stay relevant, but it will help them grow into the future as companies continue to use social media," he said.