Why "Pages" might be better than Page Views

I realize that in these discussions about Facebook, both here on the blog and in my webinar last week, I've been spending a lot of time on the "how" without really addressing the "why," so I wanted to take a minute here to back up a bit. It's true that Facebook and social media are the things with all the buzz lately, but looking past that, what are the real reasons a Facebook page can help your organization?

Here's a question that came out of the webinar:

"What is the benefit of linking the facebook page to our company website? Meaning, why should we get more facebook fans if they are already visiting our website?"

My answer has two parts.

1) Here's a graphic you might have seen if you've been to any of Patron Tech's seminars in the past four or five years:


This illustrates the "e-marketing paradigm" of how your Web site and e-mail newsletters should work together.

"If I can get someone to join my e-mail list, I can market to them forever. But if they come and go without leaving a trace, I've missed a huge online marketing opportunity to contact them directly." (Web Sites for Culture, Eugene Carr)

Replace "e-mail list" with "Facebook Fan Page," and the concept stays the same. If a patron is on your site, that's great -- but who are they? What do they want? And how can you contact them again? By getting that visitor to become a Fan, you get to find out who they are, and you can continue to communicate with them in the future, rather than just passively waiting for them to visit your site again.

And my second point:

2) People spend a LOT of time on Facebook. They don't spend a lot of time on your site.

As of January, the average visit length on Facebook was just over 21 minutes (source). We know from our own research at Patron Technology that the average arts Web site visit is around 5 minutes long. Your patrons are already used to spending more time on Facebook than on arts sites. If you post your content on your Facebook Page, that means they won't need to go out of their way to see it.

Ticket purchases or donations are one thing, and you should certainly drive traffic to your Web site for those, but if you have content worth sharing, why do you need to coax people to visit your site at all? An article or photo or video that you post on Facebook is automatically an invitation for comments, for further interaction and engagement, and for people to easily share your content with their friends.

Coming later this week: more specifics about linking to your Fan Page from your site and e-mails.