Comments on: A little Facebook fan etiquette please?

By: Rick Whittington

Rick Whittington — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:48:26 +0000

@Jeff: Well-said. I, too, have a Facebook Fan Page for my business but don’t promote it for various reasons. I think organic growth of a Fan page is always best.

@Ileane: Without knowing more about your company, I would think Twitter would be an excellent outlet for technical publishing. It’s ok for companies to decide that social media is not a good fit, but they a) need to go through an evaluation process before coming to that conclusion and b) need to re-evaluate periodically.

@element321 Right now, I think you have to have a personal Facebook account tied to a Fan page so there’s an “administrator.” You can, however, configure privacy settings on your personal account so you can maintain privacy.

By: RalphJP

RalphJP — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:31:54 +0000

Great tips! It may sound strange, but none of my offline friends are fans of my blog on Facebook because they don’t know about it. I have a personal Facebook and a fan page for my blog. I did this just to see how many of my readers would join. Now that I am gaining more fans, I think I will invite some of my offline friends and contacts to join-without being pushy of course

By: element321

element321 — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:14:32 +0000

I do no advertise my blog on facebook. I keep facebook seperate from my blog. In fact only a few people know about might site.

I have been trying to figure out a way to have facebook fan page without using my personal facebook account. Do you know if there is a way to do this? Any advice would be grateful.

By: Ileane

Ileane — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:13:45 +0000

Hi Rick,

I work for a technical publisher who has not found their “place” in the world of social media. Let’s face it social media isn’t for everyone. We have areas on our website that are dedicated collaboration areas for our members and the more I think about it the social web just doesn’t work for us.

In terms of my personal blog, I do most of my networking on Twitter and just like you, some of that seems to be migrating over into Facebook, which I tried desperately to keep separate. In fact I set up a fan page for my blog and it just sits there (I haven’t made it public yet) while I continue to debate with myself about launching it.

There is such a fine line and I don’t see myself crossing it. Thanks for your insights.
@Ileane

By: Jeff Kelley

Jeff Kelley — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:34:11 +0000

Facebook fan requests and groups suggestions are the new spam. If the world were not so ingrained in Facebook, I’d scrap my account. I like aspects of Facebook – checking in to see what friends are doing, events (bigtime thumbs up), photos, and following my favorite brands. The spamming aspect has gotten out of hand and it gives people a negative image who do it constantly.

I like having a fan page for my Web site, but I never, ever promote it. If people want to join up and get updates, well that’s awesome and I’m honored they became a fan. It also gives me an accurate number of people who are actually fans, versus people who were just spammed to pad numbers.

By: Sharif

Sharif — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:02:02 +0000

Well said, Rick.

And another tip… if you do ask, ask ONCE. If someone has already declined the request, asking again every few days isn’t going to change any minds.