Facebook Pages: Are You a Supporter or a Follower?

I learned a whole bunch of new things about Facebook pages this morning. I found it so interesting that I thought I would share it with you.

Did you know that there are two types of people who "like" Facebook page? Yes, there are the supporters and the followers.

The supporters will click "like" on a page to show their support for a page or the page owner even if they have no interest in the page at all.

Followers, on the other hand, consider the page a vital source of news and actually want to receive updates about the page in their NewsFeed.

I admit that I am a bit of both. Currently I have "liked"  280 pages on Facebook. For many of those pages I wanted to show my support. There are, however, around fifty pages that I actually want to keep up with.

What You Need to Know About Pages

The important thing you need to know about pages is that just because you hit "Like" doesn't mean that you will automatically see updates in your News Feed.  In fact, if you see any it will only amount to about 15% of what is posted. (That's an actual statistic from Facebook. You can read about it in item 3 of this article from Socialmediatoday.com)

So what are you to do if you are a follower and actually want to see the status updates?

I learned about a new feature today that will help with that.

Go to a page that you have liked and want to follow - a page where you want to keep up with their news.

Then hover of the Liked button (presumably you've already liked it).

a "Liked" page (click to enlarge)

Have you ever done this before? Ever notice there is a Get Notifications option?!!

Get Notifications (click to enlarge)

Click on the Get Notifications button and now you will start receiving alerts about new Status Updates. You are now on the road to better controlling what you see.

I can't help but notice that underneath the Get Notifications button is the Show in News Feed option. I think that it's best to have that checked too. The Show in News Feed option will allow you to see those 15% of posts that Facebook will let you see without the page owner having to pay to promote their posts. The Get Notifications button (if the syntax is accurate) will actually give you a notification of a post on the wall.

This is new to me so we will all have to test it out for awhile to see how it really works. The concept however is a good one as it lets us control what we want to see and allows us to continue to be both page supporters and followers.

Happy Facebooking!

Comments

  1. I did the "Get notifications" thing and got notifications of every little thing the Pages did. Made me crazy so I undid everything. It is an unfortunate decision by Facebook as I may move everything to my Google reader for Page content I want to follow. Most of the Pages I follow duplicate blog posts. It was more convenient to do everything via FB, but not anymore.

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    1. I haven't seen any notices yet for the few that I have changed. I guess the lesson is to only Get Notifications from pages that don't update frequently and don't use this option for too many pages.

      Thanks for the heads up! I will have to keep watch to see what happens to my notifications.

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  2. Thanks for the information Marian. I'm going to try a few tests with the 'likes' from my personal FB page before I go begging my Fan Page readers to upgrade my site to Get Notifications.
    FB is trying hard to get even the smallest of businesses to buy advertising. Not in my budget and don't think it would be effective marketing anyway.

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  3. These confusing choices are the reason I'm so happy with my absolutely separate circles on Google+... I can happily post to Genealogy circles without bothering my Science circle or my Geology circle; and I can post to my family & close friends only without any of that info getting to acquaintances in different circles. Etc. I'm now only using Facebook for a couple of reasons, and it takes me moments to go through the posts on my wall and move on.

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  4. Dear Marian

    Thanks for this. Although I think I am a seasoned social media user, I am always surprised by what escapes me. Thanks for helping me become a more proficient user. I have updated several likes to Get Notifications and I'll see how I go. It's all a work in progress really isn't it?

    Alex

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