Do Virtual Worlds need Facebook??

While working for my Internet Marketing project in the final leg of my MBA (gosh! Just 2 weeks to go!), I was searching for companies with great Facebook campaigns. I was surprisingly disappointed with what I found. Of course there are companies such as Starbucks and Victoria’s secret but considering Facebook introduced its Pages feature in fall of 2007, I was expecting more marketers to have perfected their Facebook campaigns by now.

I was especially appalled by the Facebook pages for virtual worlds such as ClubPenguin, Poptropica and the likes. What struck me was not the lack of activity or “Fans” on the Facebook page but the mere presence of these pages. Virtual world websites are themselves niche social networks and provide interactive community features to engage their audiences. Then why did they have to be on Facebook? There are only two plausible reasons I can think of:

1) Peer pressure – I need to be there because all my competitors are there

2) My target audience is on Facebook and hence I need to be there.

If you are the first category marketer, I would not bother telling you what to do. For the second category of marketers, there are just two easy steps to ensure a successful campaign: Establish a goal for the campaign – What is that one important thing that you aim to achieve using Facebook? Is it CRM, building awareness, launching a brand or getting consumer insights? Once you have a goal, an essential element that needs to be in place is – relevance. Make the content relevant to your goal and make sure it is interactive and engaging enough – there has to be a reason for people to participate.

As an example, multichannel retailer JCPenney's Facebook page functions as both an independent forum as well as a means of driving users to its site. Unlike other companies, though, JCPenney does not have a page dedicated to the entire company, but rather a page dedicated to its back-to-school campaign, Dorm Life. The goal of the campaign is to reach college-age users, so the Facebook demographic is a niche audience within the general JCPenney demographic. The Facebook page has a personality of its own and from an interactive user application that allows you to fool around with a picture if your friend to downloadable wallpapers and plaid and graphic theme icons (It’s theme for teenage clothing this season – SMART!) to updates on the latest teenage styles, the page speaks of all things teen!

Back to designing my own Facebook campaign for a cool new virtual world! Hope the team loves it! Wish me luck!