Not All Buses Are Heading the Right Way
I am typically a supporter of some of the innovative ways that folks want to promote themselves. Social Media is a great platform for innovative ideas and often some of those ideas have passed us by before we realized how successful they really were, but I don’t think this applies to Facebook Fan Pages. I’ve leaving lots of room to be wrong here and I’m willing to hear another side.
I’ve been inundated with “I’m a fan, do you want to be too” invitations from people I’ve never heard of. Typically they are fan of themselves and want you to be as well.
Todd Carpenter wrote about this at realtor.org, and one of the comments actually clarified what I couldn’t put my finger on. I knew that I didn’t like the practice, but didn’t know why until Ginger WIlcox asked this:
“Is it worth it to violate standards of engagement and potentially offend our fan base (or potential fan base) just to get a vanity url? Couldn’t we inform people that we have a page and what we plan to include on that page. See if it sparks an interest?”
I’ll Let This Pass Me By
Look, if I’m really a fan I will seek you out. I don’t think it’s a FanPage, if you’ve created it yourself. Then it’s just a Narcissism Page. I’ve sought out people and companies and become fans of their service, ministry or product; but rarely have those folks asked me to like them. It defeats the intent of purposeful engagement.
If I want to engage you and be engaged than I’ll happily do so on your profile page. I don’t understand the virtue of a Fan Page for an individual practitioner. Sure, it’s a gathering place and yes if you get (I think) 100 fans than you get a unique URL, but can’t you register any old URL for $10 a year on Godaddy and point it to the Facebook fanpage? Is it to see if folks will congregate naturally? I’ve always felt that the organic following that can occur in Social Media is far more powerful than this false sense of creation that a FanPage allows.
Somebody help me out, I’m sure I may be wrong on this. There are some folks who’ve jumped on this bus, that I am truly a huge fan of. But, if I am a fan of everyone, does it really carry a lot of “Wuffie”?
