o.k.. lets talk about edgerank..
It's funny how worlds collide sometimes, and it was whilst reading the aptly named Blog River Drive (the blog of Black River Drive front man Sam Browne) who inhabits the same rock band world my partner does (evidently one i stand on the outside of staring in confusedly in my beau coops) that i felt compelled to finally talk about my view on the whole edge rank, Facebook advertising push...
"Facebook isn't free and always won't be.
I'm quite averse to the whole "Hey you guys, like this post and/or comment on this thing I just wrote" thing that Facebook seems to demand of us as musicians these days. It's not that I don't want to communicate with our fans - actually, I love sharing stuff and hearing what they think about things. The problem for me is the constant requirement of musicians to pump out endless status updates about the next single going to a particular radio station, or the next video being played for the first time on a tv channel, or the next tour even though it's three months away, just to keep your band "top of mind". "....
Sam Browne: Blog River Drive
http://blackriverdrive.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/facebook-isnt-free-and-always-wont-be.html#comment-form
You should read his post, its interesting to read about what we have all ready about 2029029 times but from a creatives perspective.
Whats below was meant to be a short and sweet comment in response, but turned into a massive mind dump of my views on the changes.
Its clearly evident that there is a major platform push to monetize Facebook more effectively which is not surprising, the rise in mobile use paired with the current platforms inability to serve marketplace advertising to mobile customers means that time line monetisation was going to have to happen. We can all cry evil traitor but at the end of the day the reason that the content is free is because of the data mining and advertising side of the business.
The thing is that this whole knee jerk reaction to the recent edge rank changes and literal push from Facebook account managers to spend money on sponsored stories only highlights terrible marketing practice in general. If the fact that only 10% of your fans see your posts actually damages your brand, there is a lot more wrong with your business model than Facebook. As Thomas Scovell wrote
"Admit it to yourself – you bought most of your Likes didn’t you. You ran a competition, had a Like-gate, offered an iPad in exchange for a couple of clicks. And now you’re surprised that these same people, who were more interested in a freebie than your business to start with, aren’t receiving all your posts about you?" The quote is pulled from a great piece Scovell wrote that i suggest (strongly) all digital marketers, brand managers or frankly people with two bit stakes in the SOME world read. Appropriately titled .. They never really liked you.
http://socialmedianz.com/opinion2/2012/10/29/they-never-really-liked-you/
The thing is that this change to Facebook edge rank came from two angles, firstly monetisation, secondly customer feedback. Facebook users were complaining in droves about their service, which had become crowded with share and like campaigns and quite frankly, shrewd and terrible advertising. The problem can be summed up by this facebook page which highlights some of the worst offenders in this marketing scape. Including a brand that shared a photo of a dieing child and asked its customers to click "like" if they wanted him to stay alive....the brand sold picture frames.
If your customer base is un liking as many brands as it likes, and the rates of unlikes are growing then that to me is a reason to hugely re-asses the way that those brands preform in a social sphere. Which is exactly what Facebook did.
And its this degrading of customer experience, which i think was a major issue. The edge rank changes and pushes for brands to spend money to advertise instead of essentially tricking people to "like" is in reality a move that is beneficial to the user experience, and at the end of the day. The user is the one that matters.
So what does this mean for the businesses/bands/creatives who had their page virality and reach drop overnight?
The truth of the matter is the smaller and more personal your brand the better your engagement should be. A band or artist should in reality have a higher level of true engagement (likes,posts and wall comments) that will buffer them against the changes in edge rank. The 10% of your posts being scene is a worst case scenario, probably only really witnessed by larger corporates who had very little true engagement. And there is more positive side to the coin I mean, for someone like you who - you say would prefer not to post things for the sake of it, edgerank changes (at least at this point) seem to work off a truer algorithm, which looks at engagement in proportion to posting. If you post less and have high engagement, it wont matter as much for visibility.
The users for a bands or artists page should be in all likelihood the kind of user that would in fact check back as well to see what you are doing, spend time looking at the photos you are tagged in after a post and possibly message you with inappropriate fan girling dms. Who knows? What i do know is that people in the throes of artful creation are going to have a lot more true interaction than someone selling a dishwasher.
Moreover the changes being put in place are like obvious stepping stones to a marketing platform from within Facebook. Something that will benefit all. A Facebook premium kind of service that makes tools made available previously to SOME managers with the only the largest budgets available to a wider market, cutting players like wildfire off at the knees. Yes you will still have to advertise.. but at least this way the mum and pop businesses of the world will have the same access as someone like me, with a wildfire account.
As for Gotye id argue there was definitely a plan there, and social media strategy.. universal did leverage that song to insane levels in the radio play market and we all know that radio is the biggest external media driver to online. I can see there were ad words drivers and definite SEM pushes and pulls put in there but like you said even then it dosent matter, if its good they will see it. It will go truly viral because its fantastic/they are talented/ its well produced; which i guess is the reason why the Facebook problem isn't one.
