Anandan Pillai, a PhD student at MDI, Gurgaon and a Summer Research Fellow at Superchooha writes on his blog about the new introduction of ‘Like’ buttons by Facebook. leaving behind the ‘Become a fan’ tag.
And he talks about it from a perspective that most of us didn’t see – from a brand’s point of view. And he makes some solid arguments to prove his proposals right.
However, what surprised me was the context of argument, almost everyone argued from the perspective of individual users (read “customers” if you are marketer). Now, this took me aback!!!
I feel, when someone says “I like this”, it doesn’t make bring a kick in me, because I feel ya you might me 1 of other billion odd people who might be liking this. On the contrary, when you say me “I am a fan of Facebook”, this ushers the adrenaline in me and makes my stupid brain think, why the hell this person is fan of some strange animal called “facebook”, what’s so special about it?, and this curiosity leads to search for information about “facebook” (which means receiving new unique visitors), getting acclimatized with it (increasing chances of conversion), and maybe becoming a fan of it too (yeahh that’s my target at the end of the day). Does it sound good (if not great)???? Hit me back if any marketer disagrees to it.
I personally think it was a good move for businesses everywhere, maybe not from a marketing point of view because Facebook definitely wants to expand the radius of its social graph, unless it suffers the fate of Friendster and MySpace. To do that, Facebook needs to become the ubiquitous social identity. The de facto. The omnipresent. Now to do that Facebook needs to enter websites and every online operations. And by killing the more passionate word called ‘fan’ Facebook enters a more neutral ground of ‘liking’ which everyone can live with. And doesn’t mind indulging in.
I can just be interested in something and I can like it. Thus putting it into my social stream and exposing the ‘liked’ content to my friends thus making it go viral. More likes >> More content into social streams >> More hits back to website >> Facebook = happy and Content owner = Happy!
And I have seen this again and again. Brand managers get so fascinated by the phrase ‘My brand has x000 fans on Facebook’ that they start forgetting the real value of the word ‘fan’ .. A fan is a wildly passionate evangelist of your brand who loves it. Revels in it. And tells others proudly about his fandom.
How many fans of a page are actually at that stage? Doesn’t it conclude that most of them just liked your brand anyways and were NOT fans.
