The best company page on Facebook

By far, the best company page on Facebook is the Condescending Corporate Brand Page.

Yes, it is what it sounds like. Their About page says: We’re a big corporate brand using Facebook. So look out for us asking you to like and share our stuff in a faintly embarrassing and awkward way.

As a social media marketing professional, it causes me to a) grimace, b) shake my head and c) throw my hands up in the air in frustration.

It also makes me laugh.

The popularity of this page (25,339 fans and counting) is astounding, but not entirely surprising.

Give the increasing popularity of Facebook as a way to reach customers and the poor way that many company pages are managed, it’s no wonder that consumers are fighting back.

The fan interaction with the page is astounding. Thousands of fans post their favorite condescending Facebook posts they have seen created by brands, and each post gets dozens of comments, shares and likes!

There are important lessons to be learned by these posts, the most important one being:

Don’t be fake and don’t be, well, condescending. People can smell it a mile away.

My favorite posts on the page:

• “We really care about your opinion, and in no way would dream of asking you dumb questions in which the answer will be completely irrelevant to us!”
• “Condescending Multiple-Choice Situation – Engage with our brand by typing in a number!”
• “Happy World MadeUpFakeCelebrationThatsGettingF*&%ingAnnoying Day everyone!”
• “Yay, woo, party poppers and stuff…we’ve have 25,000 ‘Likes’ to brag about to our main rivals despite treating you all with utter contempt as promised. Now let’s get 50,000 or we may get violent!”
• “Like this post if you have a birthday this year. Comment if you have a birthday next year. Share if you had a birthday last year.”
• “*LIKE* and *SHARE* this if you find tired photo shopped animal images as hilarious as we do!”
• “Here’s another one to add to your extensive Dog/Hat/Cake photo collection!”
• “Tell us what are you bringing for lunch today as it’s really important for our reporting metrics. Click LIKE and SHARE if you eat to stay alive too!”

Being genuine and authentic on Facebook while still encouraging engagement and interaction is very difficult – there is no doubt about that.

And getting likes, comments and shares is important to EdgeRank, thus ensuring that more fans see your content.

However, treating your fans like automatons, like children or like morons won’t work – and you may even be featured on the Condescending Corporate Brand Page for your efforts!

What is the most condescending thing that brand pages do on Facebook? Please share your thoughts in the Comments section or on my Facebook wall. Thanks for reading!