Facebook has changed radically over the last 18 months. A minor tweak here, a minor tweak there and before long you have a platform that, though it looks much the same to the user, operates in a vastly different manner. What has changed most about Facebook is the psychology of using the site; how we interact with updates and our motivations in doing so. And page administrators must invest time and energy into getting to grips with these pivotal changes in order for their fan pages to be successful.
Among the many modifications that Facebook has made in the last year or so, there are two that have specific relevance and importance. The first is the ubiquitous Like button. At the time this was introduced, it seemed like tinkering for the sake of tinkering. But changing 'Become a Fan' to 'Like' was one of the cleverest changes that Facebook has ever made, superb in its subtlety. Overnight, users felt less committed to a page when they clicked the button and it opened up a new world of fans for Facebook pages (even if to this day we still don't know what to call them!). Along with the ability to embed the Like button into external websites, Facebook further cemented itself as the social web's focal point.
The second tweak that has massive implications for page administrators goes back further to when Facebook introduced newsfeeds and integrated all content together, merging friends' and pages' status updates. In combination with the Like button, this has changed how people use Facebook and understanding how and why is hugely important. Research from BrandGlue estimates that 99.5% of Facebook interactions are generated via the user's own wall or newsfeed. Which means that virtually no-one revisits your fan page once they've 'Liked' it. And that, if you stop and think about it, is scary. It's hardly a hidden secret that getting people to click the 'Like' button is important, but this shifts your entire approach to getting that visit/Like conversation rate as high as you can, right?
Well, yes and no. Because more research from BrandGlue (and this one's really going to screw with you!) estimates that as few as 1% of fan page status updates are read by fans due to the Facebook algorithm that displays 'popular' news first in your newsfeed, unless you change the view from 'Top news' to 'Most recent'. And it's estimated that less than 5% of users do. So where does that leave us? Hardly anyone's going to come back to our page once they've liked it, and hardly anyone's going to read what we post in their newsfeed unless they start interacting with us. Suddenly Facebook marketing's not looking so great, is it?!
So, over to you. What do you think is most important in the psychology of Facebook marketing strategy and how you structure your page? Is it getting someone to like the page in the first place - giving them a good reason to do so with, for example, a competition or a custom landing page or unique content? Or is it ensuring that they Like or comment on your updates in their newsfeed as much as possible as early as possible so that Facebook marks your page as relevant to them? Chicken meet egg, egg meet chicken. All thoughts, ideas and opinions very, very welcome...
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