Facebook rolled out a new feature last week: the ability for users to tag a Fan Page in their photos. So just like you already tag your friends in a photo, you can now also tag the designer of your friend’s shirt. Or the store where it came from. Or the type of liquor in the drinks everyone’s holding. Or the band whose show you were all at. …You get the picture. (Ha, the picture… see what I did there?)
This opens up an opportunity for brands to connect with their customers in new ways. While likes of a Fan Page are highly valued, marketers share a universal challenge of knowing how to gauge each like’s true value. But Fan Page photo tags take things a step further since they empower fans to show themselves actually interacting with a given brand. And a link to a brand page that appears underneath an image of a group of happy friends is going to be more compelling than a link preceded by plain text that just says “Billy likes…”
Before you start immediately inviting photo tags on your Fan Page, there are a few key things to note—good and bad—about the new feature:
- Anyone can tag a Fan Page; users are not currently limited to only the Pages they already “like”
- The tagged photo appears in the Page’s “photos” tab, not on the Page’s wall
- But, because of individual privacy settings, most users’ photos probably won’t even get that far. They’ll only be visible to their own friends (unless they have photos set to be visible to “everyone”)
- Admins of Fan Pages can indeed “untag” the photo. So if someone tags your brand in an offensive photo (which I’m guessing will happen) you can reverse their action. If you’d rather prevent that risk altogether, you can adjust your Fan Page’s settings to not allow any users to tag your Page in photos
Facebook users are probably not entirely aware of this new feature just yet, so take advantage of that early on. Educate them on the process and maybe guide them a bit toward the kind of content you’d like to see added to your page. Then watch it take its course…
Meanwhile, here’s an idea: post a photo of your recreation of the envisionit media “EM” logo—perhaps with your hands, with crayons, with Popsicle sticks, whatevs—and tag envisionit media in it. Have fun!
