In April of 2010, we released the 2010 Asia Travel Engagement Report. The 65 page white paper looked at social media adoption rates and patterns in the Asia travel industry. As part of that analysis, we examined the various pitfalls that await brands in social media. The article below is taken from the Report. In this excerpt, we take a look at page jacking and issues related to maintaining control of your Facebook Fan Page.

Page jacking was another major issue we found in our research. Page jacking occurs when third parties employ your Fan Page or profile as a means of promoting their message to your followers. This practice is the social networking equivalent of spam and an unfortunate reality of the virtual landscape. The bright spot here is that this is easy to detect and police against, at least in its most common form, that is, the page spammer.

The example at left shows a page spammer in action. Shamelessly, he repeatedly posts his message and (not one, but two!) email contacts.  To give him his due, what he lacks in creativity he clearly makes up for in persistence, posting again and again his promotional message on this neglected Fan Page. The page administrator here seems oblivious to what’s happening. From the date stamps, you can see that the messages have been on the site for multiple days and at one point the administrator was active on the Page after the first round of messages, but did nothing to remove them.

While the example at left shows page jacking via the Wall of a Facebook Fan Page, there are other ways spammers can use the features of a Facebook Fan Page to spread their message. One of the settings on your Fan Page allows you to enable Fans to upload photos to the Photos tab. Creative page spammers use the Fan Photos feature as a way to upload their messages, as you can see in the example taken from the Malaysia Airlines Facebook Fan Page (below).

In this example, the spammers have used the Fan Photos option to upload a variety of messages. The top row shows a (doubled) snapshot of an article from the Malaysia Airlines in-flight magazine. The poster is complaining that the facts in the article are incorrect and that the airline is culturally insensitive. While the use of the Fan Photos to raise an issue about something published by the airline is not necessarily something you would want to discourage, you probably don’t want to it to be addressed in this manner. Worse yet, the bottom row of photos shows an example of the sort of  things you would definitely want to block — in this case the spammer has uploaded an advertisement for their system for making money online with social media (see, detailed view).

Failing to police your page creates a nuisance for your followers and exposes them to possible abuse by third parties. The administrators of your profiles — particularly your Facebook Fan Pages — need to be wary of this sort of activity and take immediate steps to shut it down by deleting the posts before you lose Fans and your brand suffers.

Page jacking can also take a more aggressive form, providing a forum for people to air grievances against your brand or product and turning your Fan Page into a negative publicity weapon aimed directly at you and your Fans, as we see in the next example.

The screen shot at left shows the Facebook Fan Page of Bali Anantara Uluwatu. The property is currently in development. Its location on the cliffs of Uluwatu has been the subject of some contention by environmentalists and others concerned with development in Bali.

Those who seek to stop the development have turned the Anantara Uluwatu Fan Page into their own resource for rallying support to their cause. If you will note the screenshots, you will see that they have not only posted to the Wall, but they have also uploaded Fan Photos that support their cause and even used the Reviews tab (see, below) to further voice their objections.

Again, the administrator of this page needs to take remedial steps to get things under control and to respond to this. As it stands now, the only voices being heard on this Fan Page are those of the critics.