The mystery behind the Nissan Oman Facebook page

The other day during a meeting I was asked how it is possible that the Nissan Oman Facebook page has nearly 6 million fans when in Oman we have a population of about 3 million people. That conversation inspired me to write this post about 'global pages'. 

The Nissan Oman page actually has about 18k fans but what you see when landing on the page is a much bigger number. You can see the following screenshot, it clearly shows 5.7 million fans.

How’s that possible? A trick? No, very simple.

At the end of last year Facebook rolled out FacebookPages for global brands which allow international brands to maintain a single fan page with additional localized sub pages for users in different countries.

All multiple pages, from the same brand, are able to merge into the one URL www.facebook.com/brandXYZ, and still keep their content.

This is great from a branding point of view, as users from all countries will see the same page name (translated into their local language), and also to keep communication more consistent. The ‘number of fans’ and ‘People Talking About This’ will show the combined total number for all countries...a bit of showing off is always good!

What sub pages admins can change is the profile photo, cover photo, about section, photos and the various tabs/apps.

Users who visit a global page are automatically directed to the version specific to their region or country, so if I’m in Oman I’ll see the Oman sub page. If I’m in the UK I see the UK sub page. This allows the social media teams in each country to post specific photos and comments which can engage only their local audiences.

So if we look at Nissan again; this is a screenshot from the Nissan Global page (which has 77 sub pages) at it has exactly the same number of fans and 'Talking about this' but status updates, as well as profile pic, cover image, about section, photos and tabs, differ from Nissan Oman and all other countries:

Mystery solved!