The Facebook Dilemma: Too Many Company Spaces

In the few years that Facebook has been used as a real marketing tool for businesses, it has seen many changes. Many of these changes were beneficial and gave small businesses a really great marketing tool, but it's also causing some problems -- namely, how do you manage everything?

Consider this: If you started using Facebook for brands some time ago, you likely have (1) an old company profile (something that was necessary to create a page at the time), (2) an old fan page, (3) a group, (4) a new community page for people who "like" you, (5) a "Places" page, and (6) any unofficial pages that might have sprung up. That's six different avenues to keep up (at least) on one social media media site alone. 


Facebook has said that brands will at some point be able to merge these places together, but in the meantime at S2EO we're having difficulty even claiming the automatic pages that have been created, like the Places page. In addition, when Community pages first began, they had an option similar to "claiming" a business in which a company could potentially influence the content. However, it seems that businesses will now have no control over Community pages.

This poses a lot of problems for brands and their customers. If you search for a brand on Facebook and find five different, official-looking pages (not to mention a plethora of unofficial pages), how do you know what to choose? How can businesses mitigate this confusion for their customers? They can shut down old pages, but where will you lead them? And how will you bring all of your followers/friends/fans from one area to another?

This could be a big problem for small businesses -- and potentially Facebook -- if customers can't find what they want.

How have you been managing Facebook? Does your business have a solution? Share your thoughts in the comments below.