What Facebook Fan Pages Taught Me About Relationships

Hi Chris, I don’t know you, you don’t know me (at least I think I can safely assume that!, but I like the article and you seem to have both fans and friends in abundance. Add another one here!

I had been thinking of the fan thing on FB, but more and more I am feeling that FB is a little restrictive and the ‘friends’ are generally random and meaningless. So, unless I have some commercial agenda that I will one day zap them with, it’s a bit of a dead end.

I opted for the ning route (along with my wife, Olga Sheean) to see if we can create a community based around a focus, which people can then network out from. My theory was to present the needle, and then people can explore the haystack if they want to.

What do you think?

Chris,
I think the problem is that you have essentially become a brand that everyone wants to know. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen you pop up in the “people you may know” box on Facebook. While I feel I know about you from reading your blog, following you on Twitter, and going to the New Marketing Summit, I don’t really know you. But, I would be happy to be your fan and have you community with me and share information via a fan page. Personally, I use Facebook for my personal connections. People that I don’t mind seeing pictures of my family or that I don’t feel like working today. I was taken aback when I got a friend request today from “Middle Ear Thermomater”. Not only is it against FB policy to represent a commercial entity as a “friend” I found it annoying and offensive. If I like you, I’ll be your fan. But unless we’ve had a conversation or two, don’t call me your friend. You’ve probably had conversations with many thousands of people but still — who are your friends? I say, set up a friend page and save the rest of the conversation with us followers on Twitter.

I agree with Tamara Gruber… to me, Facebook is for the most part my private life, and I use it to connect with people from my private life. And the reason to have Facebook at all is to share pictures, notes, random musings, and sometimes play games to pass time. I’m almost always unsearchable on Facebook to avoid people from high school or whatever who I never talked to.

To me, Facebook is a good tool to keep in touch with friends who don’t live nearby anymore, or who I want to share my life with but not necessarily want to call up on the phone and talk to them for two hours. If they’re interested, they read my note or view my pictures at their leisure. It’s also good to coordinate events – to invite friends to a house party, or plan a pick-up soccer game, where friends can invite their friends, but I don’t necessarily want to have to become “friends” with their friends.

I have 50 friends on my Facebook, and follow 50 people on Twitter… only two people overlap between the two services. Twitter is a better medium for information sharing or outpost for content. The fan page on Facebook solves your – and other’s – problem with exceeding the limit of friends, and seems like a reasonable solution to me.

If you’re using Facebook in the same way you’re using Twitter, then you should rethink how you use Facebook, maybe… JMHO.

BTW, I subscribe to your blog’s RSS, and neither follow you on Twitter nor am a friend to you on Facebook. I find Twitter and blogs more easily coalesce, though, ‘cos often the one-liners lead to longer discussions which lead to blog posts… so I’ll probably follow you on Twitter eventually. :p

@franswaa Great point – thanks for the ping.

How members choose to utilize Facebook is really a personal decision.

Many highly successful and visible business people prefer to keep their Facebook account for just close friends and family, while driving the “masses” to their Fan Pages. However, my opinion is that you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to position yourself and your business by not building out your network of friends strategically up to the 5,000 mark.

The primary reasons to utilize your Profile for business are: (a) the News Feed feature – you can create consistent strategic visibility among hand-picked key contacts, and (b) more people than ever are using Facebook as a connection medium and actually check their profile and email – thus you can reach highly influential people you may never have been able to reach before.

SO – what to do about the real life close friends and family members? Here’s my suggestion – set up a Secret Facebook Group and share photos, videos, content that you want to keep private. OR, tweak your privacy settings for certain photos/videos. OR, use another medium like an invite-only Ning group or Yahoo group for friends and family. Facebook Profiles are all-too-powerful to not use them for business purposes.

Hope this helps!

@marismith

Thank you for the links provided at the end of your post – very helpful!

I enjoyed using Facebook up until they changed their format. Originally I used my profile as an online business card.

One of the most powerful Facebook page tools is the Updates – where you can send messages/news to all your fans and even target specific fans if need be.

Late to the conversation, but better late than never, right? :)

It’s interesting how Y-gen utilizes Facebook differently. Our networks are already built-in by the time we graduate! Rather than adding new professional people we meet at conferences, for example, we’re adding people we meet at frat parties. It’s a totally different ballgame, and the relationships that we have with our Facebook friends are therefore very different from the relationships that people who are well into their careers have with their Facebook friends.

At the age of 20 very few of us are thinking about how Facebook affects our professional visibility or personal brand. Maybe we should be, but the fact remains that most aren’t. Moreover, many young people would never consider adding people they haven’t met in real life on Facebook, whereas I see older people doing so right and left. For us, it’s less of a place to meet new friends as it is to maintain the friendships we already have.

Some commenters above (and someone @replied a Tweet to me today) suggested that Facebook isn’t valuable. Perhaps not in a strictly marketing sense, it’s not, but we have to consider the original purpose for which it was created — simply for college students to keep in touch with one another. I don’t think your average college student would deny that excels superbly at that.

Great points, @Teresa Wu. I’m several decades past my 20′s, but see how FB excels at maintaining existing friendships. I wanted to stay in touch with someone at almost every place I worked, whether employee or contractor. Email really hasn’t worked beyond the first 3 or 4 months after leaving.

I’m beginning to see my social network as 3 concentric circles. The inner circle is family and friends I stay in touch with often. They want to see my latest photos; I want to see theirs. I have met them, though it may have been virtually while working on projects for extended periods of time.

Circle 2 is people that I want to engage in 2-way conversations, but less frequently. They could be professional colleagues, high school or college classmates, or former neighbors. (A generation back, these were the people on Christmas card lists that ran in the hundreds – before postage costs and two career households began driving that trend down.)

Circle 3 is people like Chris, Guy Kawasaki, Darren Rowse, etc. who report on trends, but also set them. I am interested in a lot of things they are doing. Their tweets interest me most of the time.

Circle 3 is primarily 1-way, with people I haven’t met, or met only briefly. But it’s not Twitter; I don’t catch all of their tweets. It’s not their blog; I don’t get to read all of their blog posts. What’s missing? Probably some interesting guest posts on others’ sites. Also, videos of speeches at meetings I have no other reason to attend. (Though if I knew they were coming to my area, I might try.) Right now it’s pure chance if I hear of a new speech online, or nearby appearance.

FB’s friends work nicely for circle 1. I think circle 3 might be FB pages like Chris, Darren and Guy have set up – depending on how they use them. Circle 2 is a mishmash of a few FB “friends” who are probably tired as tired of my regular updates as I am of theirs plus some LinkedIn contacts.

Interesting read. most of the above comments are true. unfortunatelly i came to late to the post :-(

@Bonnie Kirk – I really like your three concentric circles idea. I think you hit the nail on the head. The particulars for me may be different, but the concept is spot on.
~jon

I use my blogs in which to write my thoughts and opnions.

I use Twitter and Friendfeed to network.

I use Flickr to upload photos to share with the world.

I use Skype and Gtalk to IM with people.

I’ve been online that long, that for me the first place I go when I want to contact someone is my email – in my case these days – Gmail.

So, where does that leave Facebook? It’s very much a secondary thing for me.

For me, Facebook is about keeping up with friends and acquaintances. This ranges from just knowing folks are moving through life (marriages, births, moves, etc.) (more of the circle 2 concept that Bonnie described – I like the analogy!), to coordinating social events with friends (“haven’t seen you in a while, want to meet up for Mexican?”), to closely tracking and participating in my best friends comings and goings (photo libraries, comments, etc.) (this would be my circle 1). I agree with a prior entry that it is an excellent way for me to keep up with friends and acquaintances I have developed, pretty much all over the world.

I have subscribed to groups (products/services I like, fan stuff, etc.) but, except for one (Reading Don Quijote, an online reading group) I actually never click on anything they send me and have them more to communicate to my friends what kinds of things I like (which I guess can still help those businesses). I am not sure I would pursue something in Facebook for my professional purposes. However, that does not mean I do not think others can get good value. I find Twitter better suited to my particular goals at work and LinkedIn for my professional networking/career “management”.

However, if I were to decide there was another objective I could achieve in Facebook (e.g., business, professional, etc.), I think I would create a new profile altogether as I wouldn’t want that mixed in with my personal.

Raul,

I thought about two Facebook profiles as well. However, the terms of use agreement says: “…you agree not to use the Service or the Site to…register for more than one User account….”

That was how I hoped to manage my first and second circles, especially since Facebook allows my “friends” to link me to photos through tagging. You never know when a friend or relative might decide to play a prank! And there are probably thousands of college grads who do not want their new employers to see the photos from spring break.

Bonnie

I try not to set up more than one profile on any one service in any case. I do have different email addresses for personal and for business use, and I do maintain different web sites/blogs for different purposes, but I’ve seen so many folks get so tied up with multiple accounts, and trying to remember what was set up for what, that it often seems too much like hard work to me, and more importantly, not a very productive use of hard work either!

Interesting post. I find the whole Facebook page thing a bit awkward for musicians too.

I just became your fan #666. ;)

fuck you . . . and you're 500 friends and you're desire to post shit about fitness and non-chrisbrogan and whatever the fuck that is.

fuck you and people like you. . . Go post shit on ” I am full of shit.com ” It would be more appropriate.

Once again a great job….Always very informative and well thought out. Look forward to the next one!Your advice is very useful. Thank you

Friends should be added on your personal page and a separate Facebook fan page should be created for your fans :)