Brenda Burch Dumont's Blog

Having a Fan Page (I just CANNOT get used to calling it a ‘Like’ page – no one can) on Facebook is………well………..essential for any retailer.  The page should be used to engage with customers, prospects, vendors, anyone!  It serves as a quick and efficient way way to publicize events, promote loyalty amongst existing customers, develop new customers, deal with customer service issues, drive traffic in significant areas to your website where appropriate and certainly, YES! SELL MERCHANDISE.  These are all worthy reasons why you should hire someone to create, enhance, and launch your Facebook Fan Page to best take advantage of the excellent search engine optimization inherent in Facebook while providing visitors with the ability to interact with your company in a social and meaningful way.

Many, many retailers have Facebook Fan pages.  Retail is a natural fit for a platform like a Facebook Fan Page.  It serves as an opportunity to introduce, entice, and reinforce product offerings and its an absolute essential and natural customer service tool.  It may seem strange to some companies to have to promptly respond online to customer service issues, but believe me, all the reading and learning I’ve done tells me the consequences can be dire if you don’t respond quickly, or have the ability to do so.  The Top 10 Brands on Facebook are:

What are the two things that most retailers and many of these ‘top’ brands aren’t doing?

In all these pages not one has a Jobs tab.  You know, a tab that when you click it an explanation of how to apply for jobs and a selection of the jobs available is presented.  Arguably, if you are Coca-Cola (try visiting the Coca-Cola site and see what comes up?  Obviously millions of people click through and ‘allow’ their customized app – would you?), or Red Bull, or certainly Windows Live Messenger, this isn’t the place to be providing meaningful employment branding or posting materials.

And the Skittles page isn’t about Skittles the candy at all.  The Skittles people, like the Oreo people, have set those sites up as general exchange pages while getting in a little tiny plug from time to time about their product.

But, the mighty Zara or two divisions of Victoria’s Secret must have constant challenges – like all retailers – to have the very best retail employees in all of their retail operations, their corporate offices, their distribution centres, etc.  With millions AND MILLIONS of ‘fans’ and many, many more visiting every day converting to fans, wouldn’t a little, basic, uncomplicated RSS feed under a Job tab make sense?  Aren’t some of the very best employees originally customers?  If you are coming to any Facebook fan page to check out the latest, ask a question, whatever, wouldn’t it make sense to see which jobs are available at the company that you have chosen to ‘like’?  Wouldn’t a link to some complete information on your website on the benefits of considering employment at your company?  To get tricky, even an Employment Tab that maybe had chatroom capabilites as well.  For those of you who have the capabilities of online applications – a link to that application?   All of the Facebook Fan Page creations I am working on currently have Job tabs.  (You can call them Jobs Tab, Employment Tab, Career Tab, whatever)

What is the second thing that retailers with Facebook Fan Pages aren’t doing.  I’ll publish that in my blog on Wednesday.

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Retail, Uncategorized, recruitment, social media, social media recruiting by Brenda