So, you might have heard about the new Facebook Pages features.

You can read about it straight from them, if you like, but it boils down to this: Pages now have the basic interaction and notification features that used to be only available to individuals.

A few of our clients asked us to outline some best practices for their brand pages, in light of these new opportunities, and we thought that others would find them useful, too.

Opportunity 1: Interact with your target audience on a competing brand’s page. This only sounds like an opportunity for the first 30 seconds after you realize you can do it. After that, you realize you’d be like the guy with a bullhorn walking around one grocery store talking about how much you prefer a different one. Nothing to be gained.

Recommendation: Don’t go there.

Opportunity 2: Interact with your target audience on a contributing brand’s page. Let’s say you’re a movie studio, you’re posting on a theater chain’s wall. There are moments when this makes sense. It makes sense for each of you to become “Featured Likes” on the other’s page. It might make sense to cross-post or comment at times. This has the potential to be symbiotic, if managed well.

Recommendation: Proceed with caution.

Opportunity 3: Interact with your target audience on an unrelated page. You are selling perfume, and you know that individuals likely to buy your products are also likely to be fans of All My Children. The All My Children Facebook page has roughly 10 times your audience. As you come to understand the potential, you are momentarily blinded by visions of early retirement, philanthropy and a PhD in Hawaiian beaches.

While those things sound great, keep in mind that All My Children can shoot you down whenever they like (ha!).  Only with their permission (or serious negligence) will your posts on their wall live to see daylight. And even then, only to the visitors to their wall, since your message won’t go out in their news stream. Would it be super awesome and valuable to be one of their Featured Likes? For sure. How do you get there? Well, there’s the rub.

Recommendation: It’s great work, if you can get it.

The Bottom Line: No matter what, these strategies are (at best) unproven and (at worst) a huge waste of time. You’ve got to understand the best use of your resources and your brand goodwill in the context of Facebook. Weigh these things and make a good decision.