Tag Archives: IFA

It has been almost a year since Facebook announced support for “Parent/Child” businesses. The businesses this functionality targets, which include franchise companies, multi-store retailers, dealerships and the like, are typically nationally branded companies that distribute through local outlets. In other words, the very same companies that are just like many of our clients here at Engage121.

While Facebook widely publicized its support of Parent/Child pages at the recent International Franchise Association conference in Orlando, this functionality is not yet well understood. So, let’s clarify what Parent/Child can do:

• Perhaps most importantly, the administrator of a corporate (“Parent”) page can efficiently upload multiple local outlets to Facebook, automatically creating local (“Child”) pages for each of their outlets. In the past, we have had to manually create local pages. And, that was time consuming and expensive. Facebook has now made this as easy as completing a spreadsheet and hitting a button.

• The Parent page is automatically linked to all Child pages. This enables some useful functionality, especially on the Parent page. For example, check-ins from all Child pages are aggregated, users can search for the location of the closest physical outlet and a tab is created detailing all outlet locations. Also, each Child page links back to the Parent, and consistency of branding is enabled among all the pages by sharing images.

Facebook provides a great start. And there is a lot we can do to help.

Let’s start with the content creation process. It is well known that social media content gets stale, fast. And, as previously noted, EdgeRank conspires against dated content by increasingly limiting the distribution of content as it ages. To complicate matters, operators of local business come to work every morning ready to sell shoes, make pizza or fix cars. They don’t come to work thinking about social media, or any other kind of media for that fact. Engage121 allows corporate teams to create content that can be localized to each local store or office, providing a continual flow of new, fresh and relevant content.

What about Facebook apps? How many local stores care to manage the development of Facebook apps? Engage121 enables a corporate team to create contests, coupons and more that each local store can customize, if desired, or post to their fan page as is – engaging their local fans with technology and sophistication equal to any of the big national brands.

And, Facebook ads are lost on most of the local stores we know. They are turned off by Facebook’s complicated interface and intimidating process. Inside Engage121, however, local stores follow a simple wizard that produces a variety of paid promotions that play an increasingly important role in today’s social media world.

My bottom line – Facebook’s Parent/Child provides targeted companies a great start. And, we can help make Parent/Child even more usable for nationally-branded companies that maintain local stores or outlets.