Fans, Facebook, and You.

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Once upon a time, a fan was simply a way to catch a cool breeze. You held it in one hand and fluttered it up and down by your face. Paper, bamboo, plastic, a fashion accessory. 


Spectator sports brought about a whole different kind of fan; loud at times, loyal, swelling with pride and perhaps swigging a brew.


And then there are those “fans” in Social Media, namely Facebook. Remember “fanning” a page? Despite the changeover of terminology, we’re stilling referring to them as our fans (at least I am). “Likers” just sounds too awkward.


Who ARE these people who have indeed “fanned”, oops, “liked” your page? They include: 
Your friends (admit it; you may have strong armed a few however they generally have an interest for your page else they wouldn’t be there in the first place)

• Your friend’s friends (since they may see activity for your page)
• People who searched on Facebook and happened to find you 
• Tweeps or users of other social networks (if you are promoting your page on Twitter or elsewhere)
• Enthusiasts (who will share and promote you if they really dig you.)
• Friends of enthusiasts who are enthusiasts (who found your page via their friends)
• Spammers (they’ll post spam soon after liking your page so they’re not there for long unless you've been ignoring the upkeep of your page)
• Fans who are “Talking About This”: They consist of new fans “liking” the page, clicking like on a post, commenting on, tagging, mentioning or sharing a page, checking in (if you have a location) and those who are coming to an event (if your page offers events). These are important fans!

Note that a fan can fall into more than one of these categories.


Where do YOUR new fans come from? Are they mostly your friends? If so, concentrate on growing that fan base since your friends may not be typical enthusiasts of your product or service, thus skewing the demographic information that Facebook provides. Not a breeze to do but they may catch wind of you via a Facebook ad or via your blog if you have one.


And why did Facebook make the change in the first place? They state: To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we've changed the language for Pages from "Fan" to "Like." We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.


Hello Facebook, this rationale is rather broad in scope. Would have been nice to have asked US first. Or are you planning to use a 1 to 10 scale at some point (see my thoughts on that issue here). 


It’s been over a year and half since the change, Are you stilling calling them “fans”?
Donovan “caught the wind” early on his career. Click here to enjoy his folky sounds.


This blog is part of the Blogging A to Z Challenge. Here's E, D and C.

Two Nifty Little Tricks, Facebook, and You.

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Some things are so easy, provided we know about them. We all want to “clean up” our busy social lives on Facebook sometimes, right? Here are two ways to accomplish just that; both are optional of course.

Too many pages? There, there now, we all get carried away sometimes. Sure, you can like both Aerosmith and Robotic Dancer’s Monthly, but oh, “Things My Awfully Cute Terrier Says” has got to go and most of those other pages too. But what if you wanted to get rid of ALL of them with little more than a wave of your magic wand?

In Timeline, start off on your wall (click on your name on the top to get there).
Just under your cover picture, click on the box where it says Likes. Once you’re on the page where your likes are, click on edit in the top right. You’ll see the names of ALL your likes by category. The first thing I see is “Music”; you probably see that too.

For each category, simply click on the first page where you’d like to start deleting and hold down the Delete Key and the pages will delete one by one. You can stop at any time and start the process over elsewhere in the category; maybe there’s a few you’d like to keep after all? When done, click on the big blue button that says Save Changes just below that section. You DO have to do this for each category.

We've certainly cleaned up our stream now, haven’t we? Ready to clean it up a little more? Are there people that annoy you to tears to the point where you’d like to cast a spell on them or people you really, really, really want to hear from more often? You can easily make modifications in regards to both of these situations and customize your stream a bit more to your liking.

Too many posts from Ned Painintherear? If you’re using Timeline, go to his wall and click on Subscribe, just under their cover photo, and directly to the right of Friends. A pull down gives you lots of options. The default is “Most Updates”, with the other choices being “All Updates” and the one you’d likely choose for Ned, “Only Important”.  There’s also a list of the types of posts as well. Here’s where you can shut off your friend’s Farmville posts or those friends that post music videos non-stop. Plenty of options for customizing what you see!

You DO have to go to each of your friend’s walls and make the changes for each individual friend. Unfortunately, there’s no time saving tactics here.
Ah, but the results! See what YOU want to see instead of having Facebook pick those posts that THEY feel are important enough to be “most updates”.

Prest-o change-o! Did that make your day just a little bit better?

Do you have to “like” a Facebook Page about Ninja Turtles?

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Do you get suggestions to join pages all the time? I sure do. From my friends of course. And I’ll be honest, some of those pages hold little interest for me. But, what the heck, I join most of them anyway. Why? Well, at best, even if I’m not an active participant, at least I’m helping a legit business grow their fan base. And it’s endorsed by a friend.

So what do you do when you get a suggestion to “like” a page? Number one, simply go ahead and like it. Two, ignore the suggestion. Forever. Perhaps the friend won’t notice. However, the friend WILL notice if you do join, plus you’ll make them feel good.

But what happens when you join something you don’t actually like. Ninja Turtles? Are you kidding me? Ok, perhaps my friend is a few years younger than me, grew up with Ninja Turtles and I want to humor her. The good news is you don’t have to look at the posts. Just hide them. Simple.

Then there’s the "sneaky" way out. This is a soft approach for all of you out there that don’t want Ninja Turtles listed in your profile as a page you’ve joined. Let’s say the Ninja Turtles page has over 6,000 “likers”. Go ahead and “like”. Wait a couple of weeks and "unlike". Go ahead, you can do it. What’s the likelihood they’ll notice that you’re one of 6,000+ that is no longer there. Pretty minimal. Don’t even think about trying this with a page with a small number of likers. You’ll probably get caught by your friend, and suffer the consequences. Boo hoo.

Before you say no, DO give the page a chance. At least take a look at what it’s about, the quality of the posts, and whether it’s truly engaging. You may discover something new. And realize that your Facebook friend has interests you never knew about. How cool is that?

And remember, suggesting to a friend to like a Facebook page is a two-way street. Think about who you are sending the suggestion to before you send. Is it something they might be interested in, or perhaps already have an interest in? Recently, I was invited to like a page about a movie with breast cancer as the theme. Indeed, I liked. In turn, I sent suggestions to a few female friends, some of whom are survivors. The response was overwhelming because I carefully picked friends who would be more likely to see this movie when it’s released. Makes sense, no?