Music Marketing

Facebook Disses Pages With Less Than 1000 Fans

Engagement_change_by_fansEdgeRank Checker released a study late last week of activity related to Facebook Fan Pages and found that those with less than 1000 fans are seeing reduced activity after recent FB changes. Overall, while impressions have decreased on Fan Pages, Likes and Comments have increased. But for those Pages with less than 1000 fans the number of Likes and Comments, when combined as an Engagement metric, has decreased by 11.64% presenting an additional challenge for emerging acts just beginning to build their band's Facebook following.

EdgeRank Checker's study covered the month before and the month after Facebook's recent introduction of its hybrid newsfeed. They found that overall, page impressions decreased 22% while Likes increased 16% and Comments increased 14%.

However, upon closer inspection of 5800+ Facebook Pages, they found that the average Page saw decreases across the board including a decrease of Likes by 15% and of Comments by 19.9%.

They then looked at a smaller sample and found that when combining metrics to consider engagement, sites with less than 1000 fans saw overall decreases while gains increased in direct relationship to larger numbers of fans, thus benefitting the big fish across niches. These figures are shown in the above chart (click to enlarge) by EdgeRank Checker.

Though EdgeRank Checker does not attempt to explain why this change has occurred, they do maintain that increasing one's EdgeRank will contain to make it more likely that one's posts appear in fans' newsfeeds, thus leading to increased engagement.

If you haven't devoted any energy to building your following on Facebook or are just getting started, regularly posting interesting content on your band's Fan Page is key to success. But you might also consider a special campaign to increase your fan count. For example, unlocking special content for all your Facebook fans when your count passes 1000 might be a good place to start.

Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. He currently maintains a writing hub at Flux Research and periodically blogs at All World Dance and This Business of Blogging. To suggest music services and related topics for review at Hypebot, please contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

Guest Post on 10/31/2011 in Music Marketing | Permalink | Comments (9)
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9 Comments

  1. I suspected as much. After the changes I wasn’t even seeing my band updates in my own news feed. I asked friends from my personal page and they weren’t seeing them either.

  4. Yes this has affected me BIG TIME!! My insights were the highest they had ever been the month prior to facebooks new changes. My monthly, weekly, and daily viewership had even tripled all until… the beginning of the end. You would almost need to post about 4-8 post a day to even be seen in todays news feed…

  5. So the big guns will take over and emerging acts will be left behind. The Facrbook changes seem to be less organic and just as an even playing field had begun to evolve.

  6. I noticed a big decrease in activity recently, and we have over 11,000 fans on our page. I randomly checked the “hidden posts” tab under my wall tab (which I had at least never noticed before if it was there), and wah-lah! There are hundreds of posts that have been weirdly automatically marked as spam and hidden by FB!!!! I had to manually “unhide” each post, most of which were way backdated by then. They were all regular fan love posts, not spam. Also, the decrease in fan picture postings is due to FB changing the privacy settings. Now, your fans need to switch their photo privacy settings around in a certain way to be able to tag and post their photos on your wall to be visible to the public – and you! I found some instructions and posted them on our wall. Craziness… But yeah, we have well over 1,000 fans and have also been affected, so it’s not just smaller pages. Here’s ours. Say hi! http://facebook.com/oneeyeddollfans

  7. I found these instructions on how your fans can reset their privacy stuff to allow them to post pictures on your page.. I just copied it from a forum and reposted it onto my page as a status update. My fans gave good feedback, so I guess it works.. Good luck! -kimberly http://facebook.com/oneeyeddollfans
    *In the main menu at the top right, mouseover SETTINGS and select PRIVACY SETTINGS.
    *In the menu that appears, select PROFILE.
    *In the text that appears under the tabs, “ontrol who can see your profile and related information. Visit the Applications page in order to change settings for applications,” click the APPLICATIONS PAGE link.
    *If PHOTOS does not appear in the list, click on the tabs above the list (BOOKMARKS, ADDED TO PROFILE, AUTHORIZED, etc…)
    *Click EDIT to the right of Photos. (If you couldn’t find Photos given the instruction above, you don’t have Photos bookmarked. To remedy this, go to “Seach for More Applications,” type “Photos,” select the application created by Facebook, and mouseover Settings. There should be an option for Photo Settings in the drop-down. Click that and proceed with instructions below.)
    *Select the BOOKMARKS tab, and make sure that the box is checked.
    *Select the PROFILE tab and under PRIVACY, select MY NETWORKS AND FRIENDS

  9. What is the best way to make a simple landing tab on your FB page so people have to ‘Like’ it to enable a free download or what have you?
    Any ideas?

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