If your business uses Facebook to help drive visitors to your website, to increase brand awareness, or for any other business reason, have you thought about whether to enable or disable the wall?
So just what is a Facebook wall?
Your Facebook wall is where your status updates are posted to your personal profile or to your business page. Depending on how you set your privacy settings, people can comment on wall posts or add posts of their own. The wall can be viewed by anybody or select groups, depending on your privacy settings.
When it comes to a business page, some people prefer to disable the wall. Why? They don’t have to check the page as often. Nobody can spam the page. Nobody can post a negative comment. But nor can anyone offer public praise, outside of clicking the ‘like’ button for that page. Disabling the Facebook wall can limit the engagement people have with your page, and thus the amount of time they spend on it.
Many businesses choose to enable the wall. If you enable the wall, you should frequently monitor the activity. People may enjoy bantering over your product or service. They may also use the wall to post questions requiring your response. And should you get a bit of spam, you as administrator can remove spam posts.
But what if you get negative criticism? Will you have the willingness to post a public response, showing that you value transparent feedback? Responding to negative posts can allow you to publicly demonstrate a caring customer service approach.
If I was the administrator of a Facebook business page, I would try it both ways. First, I would let people have access to the wall feature. I would want to see how it was used, how much time I could devote to managing the page, etc. Then, if I wasn’t 100% comfortable with having the wall enabled, I would disable it and see how the interaction changed.
The situation will be different for every business, but it’s worth giving this a try so you can find a strategy that works best for your online marketing goals and resources.
