The ever-elusive Facebook Fan Page.

Regardless of what you think about yours, you can’t deny its power: the ‘Suggest to Friends’ link provides an unbelievable opportunity to spread your brand (especially if you persuade your contacts to do the same), the wall allows for a rich content experience unmatched by the likes of MySpace or Twitter, the lack of “friend cap” (see: Facebook personal profiles), etc.

Recently, as if musicians needed more technological changes to deal with, the marriage between Facebook Brand Pages and Fans has extinguished. Users now only have the opportunity to “Like” a page. Please don’t confuse this with the Facebook’s traditional “like” function for pictures, comments, etc. I would have “liked” to see Facebook think about what they were doing semantically before giving two separate experiences on their website the same name, but nevertheless.

Many people are complaining about the new Facebook Page changes, mainly because they don’t understand them. Musicians, I believe that it is better for people  to “Like” your page rather than “Become a Fan.”

To be a ‘fan’ of something is a big commitment; to just ‘like’ something is much more casual. In the real world, I personally like a multitude of things, but rarely consider myself a fanatic of a particular sports team or band. Over time, people will be much more likely to engage in this “Like” behavior, strictly based on language alone.

Many artists have been complaining recently about the number of contacts on their pages dwindling. I’ve been getting emails from artists asking me, “Is there some type of Facebook virus? All of the fans on my page are disappearing.”

Here is what is going on:

1) It is important to remember that this initial decline in fans/likes will stop (it probably has already).

2) If you go onto one of your fan’s personal profiles, your name now appears under their “Favorite Music” section, as opposed to a “Pages” section that is buried on the bottom of their profile. Your name will now appear alongside the biggest names in your genre (assuming that your fans “Like” their pages as well). Never before has a band’s music page on Facebook had so much visibility and viral potential.

3) The people who “Unliked” your page because of its new found visibility are not your real fans anyway, so good riddance. You now have a better barometer of who your true fans are.

Zuckerburg and his cronies are always trying to improve their service, so whenever they tweak something, it is probably beneficial for you, whether you initially perceive it or not.

Whenever your social networking world is altered, attempt to take a few minutes to figure out why. Then, read my next blog post for clarification.

Christopher Gesualdi is currently the Marketing Director @ Ariel Publicity (http://twitter.com/cyberprmktg)

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