It’s not an exercise in vanity. It’s an exercise in learning. I started a Facebook Fan Page for this blog and I have roughly two objectives: to learn more about Facebook in terms of options, best practices and measuring, and to learn more about who is exactly reading this blog (and reading it enough to become a fan on Facebook). Beth Kanter’s Facebook Fan Page was the inspiration behind it all.
Beth wrote a post on Facebook metrics, benchmarks and experiments last month (which I guess was inspired by a link I posted on her fan page!), that really got me thinking about how organizations can use Facebook and got me interested in the idea of Facebook landing pages. My rough first attempt to create a landing page has a big issue: image heavy (looks good, but slow to load and worthless for SEO).
Beth also recommends that you build the page around a very focused objective and a selective strategy. So for me, that turned into “a place to discuss with colleagues how to use social media in the changing cultural environment.” Perhaps not as narrowly defined as Beth’s Facebook-only focus, but then again, classical music is probably narrow enough.
The Facebook Fan Page is an effort to complement my blog (and other social media endeavors), not to substitute it. That’s an interesting topic that arts management blogger Andrew Taylor touched on last week, based on research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
On an only slightly related note. Another complement to my blog, as you can see by the shiny new banner ad, will be my guest contribution to Drew McManus’ annual Take A Friend To the Orchestra (TAFTO) project. I’m very excited about what I wrote. Stay tuned. I’m sure I’ll post it on my Facebook Fan Page as well.
Thanks for posting the banner but know that it isn’t vain to use the banner with your name š