Facebook is a huge success, we all know that. But are major brands being blinded by the sheer volume of people using the channel?

First it was Levis who started using Facebook’s latest “like” functionality to allow people to share the type of jeans they are buying, or wearing. The style of jean would be sent out to all that person’s friends letting them know what jeans that person is likely to be wearing out down the youth club (do these still exist for the Facebook generation?) that evening.

Now, maybe it is just me, but I would take this as a “don’t buy these jeans” alert. The last thing I want to do, and sharing my metrosexual side here, is turn up on a night out with my friends where we are all wearing the same clothes. Maybe it is just a British thing?

The latest of the major global brands to look to Facebook to steal a march on the competition is McDonalds. The social media giant’s highly anticipated location updates, which are just round the corner, look likely to be the cornerstone of a new way for people to interact with the burger giant.

Sorry, but again maybe it is a cultural thing, but to go around sharing with your friends and family that you are in McDonalds again would fill me with dread. It is one location that, no matter how strong a guilty pleasure a quarter pounder with cheese is, I would not want to share across Facebook, not even for 50p off.

Brands such as the two I have singled out above need to be sure to think carefully about how they roll out campaigns internationally. There will always be cultural stereotypes and idiosyncrasies that will make it difficult to ensure a global social media campaign is successful in all countries. Local teams with local knowledge are important in avoiding the brand becoming a local laughing stock. One answer is to create country specific Facebook pages that will enable these individualities to be a positive and not an opportunity to poke fun.

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You may have read that Facebook recently added a new feature which allows you to ‘tag’ other users in updates, which works in the same way as Twitter’s @ reply feature. We think this will have a significant impact on brands which are active on Facebook.

How does the new feature work?

When writing a wall post, users can now easily link directly to the profile of other another Facebook user, fanpage, or group. This can (and will) be used by consumers to specifically direct comments at brands on Facebook.

What does this mean for PR?

If you have a fanpage or group on Facebook, users can now address comments directly to you from their wall. The comments they address at you will be displayed on your wall as well as their own.

This means that Facebook now allows users to engage in public and highly visible conversations with brands, in exactly the same way as Twitter. As with all conversations that take place in a public arena, there are opportunities and risks: negative comments will be seen by large numbers of people, and brands which either fail to respond, or provide an inadequate response, are likely to suffer.

Conversely, actively engaging with consumers who direct comments at your brand can have real benefits. A recent survey by Trendstream found that 30% of people say their opinion of a brand improves as a result of it listening to people’s comments on social networks.

What action should be taken?

Assuming you are already regularly checking your Facebook page, you probably don’t need to carry out any additional monitoring and we expect that in the short term most brands won’t notice much difference.

However, as Facebook users become more familiar with this new feature we expect that it will be used in a similar fashion to the equivalent Twitter feature, and brands will begin to notice an increasing volume of comments directed at them. As this becomes the case, you may need to allocate resources to responding to these comments – ignoring them is not an option!

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