Getting Friendly with Your Fans:
Your Organization's Presence on Facebook (Part 2)

March 2009
Michelle Paul, Business Development Manager, Patron Technology

Welcome to part two of our social media series. Last month, I wrote about the structure and history of Facebook, and gave a broad overview of the options for arts organizations. If you didn't catch last month's article, click here, as it will help you get the most out of this one. In this month's article, I was going to explain in greater detail how to set up your Facebook Page, how to deal with privacy settings, and how to send out Updates to your fans....

However, the article you are about to read is not the one I planned to write!

If you've logged in to Facebook recently, you probably saw this at the top of the screen:

Last week, Facebook announced some huge changes to the way the site works. Some of them, you may have noticed, have been implemented already; others are going live tomorrow (March 11). The changes will affect the way your organization uses Facebook — there are a lot of great new features, but also a lot of ways to make mistakes.

So I've put that planned article on hold, and instead I will shed some light on these latest changes and what they might mean for arts organizations building a presence on Facebook.

(If you're interested in keeping up with this stuff, starting today, I'll be blogging at least weekly about Facebook and the arts, giving you more in-depth information and instructions about how best to use Facebook for your organization. If you asked a question after last month's article, I promise not to leave you hanging! You can subscribe to blog updates in a few different ways — click here to find out how.)

**One important note: For the rest of this article, I'm going to use a lot of Facebook-specific terminology. If I lose you, click here for a basic glossary of terms.**

What's New

Let's get down to it: What's going on with Facebook? The two big changes are:

• "Facebook Pages" are now going to be more like Profiles: They're far more integrated with the rest of the site than they were before, and they will have more functionality then before.
• The Facebook home page is being radically redesigned to embrace the increasingly "real-time" nature of the Web.

You can check out the blog for a more detailed explanation of these changes. In this article, I'm focusing more on the effects I believe the changes are going to have.

Pages

Here's what Facebook says about the Pages redesign:

We changed Pages so that organizations can now also take advantage of powerful communication tools like status messages, the Publisher interface, and News Feed stories, increasing their ability to actively communicate with existing fans and attract new ones. [emphasis mine]

The layout of Pages has changed to match the layout of personal Profiles, but the functionality changes are much more important than the aesthetic one: Specifically, Facebook Pages can now post status messages.

Status messages are the immediate, personal, "of-the-moment" updates that users share with their Facebook friends.

Some current examples from my own news feed:

"Seymour wishes it weren't going to get cold again."

"Susie mopped her kitchen floor and was flabbergasted to discover its real color."

"Sally loves doing her taxes, but hates daylight savings time!"

"Sam is following up the farmers market and neighborhood shopping with cooking shows and menu planning."

By opening up this functionality to Pages, Facebook is giving organizations the chance to develop a personality for their Pages, and to share content with users in a much more direct way.

(Right now even as I write this, my news feed tells me that "Barack Obama is speaking at the White House forum on Health Reform." That kind of update from the Obama Facebook Page couldn't have existed until now.)

Relatedly, there's also a new profile tab that's unique to Pages: the Stream. If you're familiar with the old version of Facebook Pages, the Stream is similar to the "mini-feed" from those Pages, in that it aggregates all the actions your Page has taken: posting links, adding events, etc. But unlike the mini-feed, the Stream encourages interaction. Users can comment on, and/or indicate they "Like," each story that appears in the Stream.

Home Page

Here's what Facebook says about the home page redesign:

We've updated our home page to make it easier to understand what's going on with the people you care about. Now your friends' posts are streamed in real-time and you have more control over what you see.

When you log in to Facebook, you'll still see the newsfeed as before, but now they're calling it the "Stream," and it will be updated automatically, in real time. It will show everything that your friends are doing AND ALSO everything that your Pages are doing. Users will be able to define different groups of stories they want to see in their stream at any given time. This means that Pages are now fully integrated into the Facebook experience. Whereas before, users would need to go out of their way to see their Fan Pages, now those Pages will be right up front and center. (Users will also have the option to filter the home page Stream in a number of different ways, by selecting different groups of Friends or Pages to appear there by default.)

the mock-up of the new home page that Facebook released last week:

What does this mean for your organization on Facebook?

It's time to change the way you think about your Facebook Page.

Here's something that was true when I wrote it here last month:

Facebook Pages don't at all take advantage of the news feed.

With these latest developments, obviously that's not true anymore, so I'll revise my statement:

Your Facebook Page can make status updates and create other content that gets published in the "Stream" — so make sure you're saying something worthwhile!

Now that your Page's actions are being automatically broadcast to your fans, you need to think differently about what you're doing on Facebook. In the old model, you would add a bunch of content and then have to send out an Update to let your fans know about it; now everything you do will be "in their faces" without your taking any extra action.

This is a turning point for organizations on Facebook. There's a huge potential for Facebook Pages to become a lot more integrated, relevant, and important to people; there's also a huge potential for Facebook Pages to become irrelevant, inescapable, and annoying. That will largely depend on how you as Facebook Page administrators model your behavior after the change. There's a big responsibility here to do this right; otherwise, you risk alienating very people you want engage with.

That said, as long as you're being smart about what you're sharing, you're not going to drive people away. Here’s the thing to keep in mind: Facebook Pages are an opt-in feature. There are a lot of Facebook users who aren’t Fans of any pages at all; the ones who are your Fans have actively decided that they want to have a relationship of some kind with you. Now you need to define that relationship.

Social media isn't meant for marketing. I've been saying this for months, and I think the recent changes are going to make that even more clear as all types of Facebook profiles get integrated into one stream. People don't want marketing messages in their Facebook news feed, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't want any messages from brands, companies, and organizations at all — it just means that you, as the organization, need to make sure you're getting the message right.

If you only use your status to announce new events, it'll get old really fast. If you only use your status to "announce" ANYTHING, it'll get old. People are used to their newsfeed telling them what their friends are doing and saying, not bombarding them with ads. The better you can blend in with other Facebook users, the better off you’ll be, so don't think like an advertiser when you're updating your Page's status!

Instead, take advantage of the "social" part of the social network: Start a conversation! Here's a great example already, from the Discovery Channel Page:

This concept can be applied to any content you post on Facebook from now on. Every photo, video, or event you add to your page is a new opportunity to interact with your Fans.

Of course, the jury is still out on how users will react and adapt to these changes. It will be interesting to see what happens next — will people take advantage of the customized Stream filters, or will they just be more choosy about their Friends and Fan Pages? I'll be following up on this question and many, many other others on the blog from now on, so make sure you subscribe if you want to keep up. Next month, E-marketing E-ssentials is moving on to another hot topic, but I hope you'll stick with me for further discussion about best practices for arts organizations on Facebook.