Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Friend or Fan! Sorry FB, I'll Take Friend Any Old Time
Today I had lunch with Linda LaRue, star of health/exercercise infomercials. We decided that we don't like the word "fan," even if Facebook does.
Should you have a Fan page?
Before I start, know that once your friends on Facebook reach the thousands, you hit a limit. Then you may have to move to a fan page whether they are as good as the regular Facebook interface or not.
I personally don’t join fan pages. To me they seem redundant to a person or business’s regular pages.
And I don’t have a fan page of my own. At least not yet. That’s because every social network you add means more work for you, if you keep it up. Fan pages seem like a duplicate effort to me and I'm as frugal of time as I am of money.
So, until I reach the magic number (I think it’s 5,000) on Facebook. I won’t do a fan page. Besides, it seems a bit arrogant to call my friends (even my acquaintances) fans.
If you’d like to “friend” me, though, find me at www.facebook.com/CarolynHowardJohnson I really do like the word "friend!"
PS: Don't you think the friendship bracelet kit I found on Amazon (See the Widget in this post) is a fun way to make something special for your writing friends? A bracelet for those who take the time to review your book, as an example. Or bracelets for those in your critique group. (-:
PSS: Here's what Facebook has to say about Fan Pages:
Pages are for organizations, businesses, celebrities, and bands to broadcast great information to fans in an official, public manner. Like profiles, they can be enhanced with applications that help the entity communicate with and engage their fans, and capture new audiences virally through their fans' recommendations to their friends.
You can create and manage a Facebook Page for your organization from your personal account. You can create a Page here (http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php). Please note that only the official representative of an organization, business, celebrity, or band is permitted to create a Page. http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=14259
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .
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I agree. Friends are great! And a friend might turn into a fan. But I don't like to receive "Mary wants you be become a fan of Mary" emails.
ReplyDeleteI might be her friend but I may not have read her work. It's like vote for me, vote for my book pleas, when I have not read the book. Doesn't seem quite right.
I have a fan page for my series, not for me. I have regular page for me and then my series does go back to my regular page, so if I update the fan page it goes on my wall so if anyone wants to follow the series, then they will know when it is updated.
ReplyDeleteI checked out that widget on amazon.com - for the friendship bracelets and was kind of confused by how the whole thing worked so I had to find the original site and they have a video of how to do the bracelets - pretty cool idea - if you'd like the instructional video, you can find it here - http://www.alextoys.com/product/132743/737WX/_/Friends_4_Ever_Bracelet_Kit - My daughter was into making friendship bracelets many moons ago; not sure if she's still interested but if not, maybe she would enjoy this kit to be interested again, because there are many potentials with this little kit - E :)
Elysabeth Eldering
Author of the Junior Geography Detective Squad, 50-state, mystery, trivia series
STATE OF WILDERNESS, now available
STATE OF QUARRIES, now available
STATE OF RESERVATIONS, coming April/May 2010
STATE OF ALTITUDE, coming May/June 2010
http://jgdsseries.blogspot.com
http://junior-geography-detective-squad.weebly.com
I don't have a fan page either. But have not ruled out having one.
ReplyDeleteFYI, Carolyn...I'm back! :)
Allyn
I like "friend" also. My co-writers and I recently launched a fan page for our site http://thevacationgals.com - the good thing is we can have our own pages and update that as a group. It seems to be working well.
ReplyDeleteCarolyn, nice to come across your blog here. I have a regular FB page. I just published a new book and was considering a fan page but thought better of it only because it would be redundant. I already promote the book on my regular page and don't need any extra work to do right now.
ReplyDeleteI have a "friend" page for myself and a fan page for 4RV Publishing. So far I have no problems with the limits, doubt I'll ever reach them.
ReplyDeleteI don't do fan pages either. To me, it falls into the category of Farmville, Yoville and all other "ville's" on FB. I know my husband started a fan page for me on FB, but I don't have anything to do with it, and probably won't. Like you said, it takes time and effort to keep something like that going - time and effort I don't have.
ReplyDeleteI distinguish between a "friend page" where you post photos of your kids, exchange inside jokes with college roomates, etc and a fan page where the content is more oriented toward book/writing or music or whatever it is that brings people you don't necessarily know to your page.
ReplyDeleteMany authors I know have fan pages for professional use and friend pages only for people they know personally. However I find it offensive to be bombarded with requests to join fan pages and almost never do join them. To me the requests are just another form of spam. If people want to have a separate personal account maybe they should open one under a nickname.
ReplyDeleteNOT SURE HOW I FEEL ABOUT FAN PAGES?? I DON'T HAVE ONE YET EITHER.
ReplyDelete