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)
I “like” your take on this. 😉 I was initially unsure about the change myself, but my numbers actually almost doubled last week (maybe partially related to that change), and then I noticed your #2 point above which is way cool so I'm not complaining.
The move definitely is beneficial for a brand or artist's reach, because the “Like” button is all over the Internet in other locations. Melding the Like button on Fan pages along with the ever-increasing presence of the Like button elsewhere on the Internet probably will make it easier for users to frequently Like something–something they wouldn't do if Become a Fan was pasted all over various web pages.
Thanks Ariel! I had noticed some drop-offs lately, and I also didn't know about the change in where the band page showed up on a fan's (ok what do we call them now?:)) personal page. Thanks for the better take on this.
Ken
Ariel, I'm so glad I can rely on you and your team to sort out these techie nightmares for us and give us the breakdown in a manner we can make sense of. Thank you for all that you do!
Ariel, you may be missing another issue. There is significant concern among facebook users that they have been deceived by the “opt in” of their information to third parties. Many people decided to just clear out their personal profile information to deny facebook the pimpery of their information. To write these people off as “not really your fans anyway” is not correct. They may just not be fans of having their every like shared with big brother and his corporate cousins. You may see some “fans” return via the “like” button if they regain confidence in facebook, but some are gone for good.
This was a very helpful clarification for me. Thanks!
Hey Christopher, you can still send an “Update to Fans”. FB actually moved this quite some time ago. Go to your fan page and click on “edit page”. On the right side you'll see it under “Promote your page”.
Terrific point. I knowingly sidestepped this issue because the ramifications of the recent Facebook changes are not crystal clear as of yet. I will definitely blog about your exact issue when we all have a better grasp of the privacy changes over time, and exactly what they mean for users moving forward.
In my estimation, however, people are more concerned with the visibility of their “music interests,” as opposed to the privacy concerns (at least from the qualitative date I've acquired). There is an underlying privacy risk that every Facebook user should already perceive.
Appreciate the clarification. I pulled this information from the post. My feelings regarding FB updates, however, still apply…
Great clarification on this, Chris!
Cool so liking is the great equalizer on Facebook. I get it. So if I'm following Ariel's model, should I be using my facebook “like Page” like an extended email list. Or should I still try and convert the likes into email address?