Finding Fans on Facebook: Using Facebook’s new ‘pages’ feature to reach your fanbase

Facebook has long been associated with the heavy rotation college crowd, those on-the-go, party going, paper writing teens and twenty-somethings who have enough time to spend in front of a computer socializing and are eager to absorb as much new cultural opportunities as possible.

Add to that a user-base that is growing two to three times faster than MySpace’s current database of young people, bands, and businesses and it makes sense that you might be considering branching out to a new social network to boost your fanbase.

Facebook Pages

The Facebook Pages feature is its long awaited answer to MySpace’s long standing custom profile options. Giving people the power to load up any number of new and exciting features, businesses, bands, and politicians can now broadcast everything that makes them different to the world on a custom built, easy to create and easier to navigate profile space.

Applications integrate easily to allow the addition of video, music, and flash content for your fans while the ability to have fans sign up directly on your page to join your fanbase makes them feel more involved than simply being your “friend.”

The Pages feature allows you to post updates that your fans will see on their login screen as well. The best part is that Facebook is an open source platform, meaning that millions of programmers and companies have access to dev kits to build custom applications that integrate easily into the Pages feature. If you cannot find what you want to promote your band, simply hire someone to make it. Companies, bands, and new websites have exploded with new fans and users simply by creating an easy to use application that millions of Facebook accounts soon adopted.

Why Facebook’s Pages Feature is More Advanced than Current MySpace Technologies

MySpace may be the standard, but it is also a bit of a mess. The coding is loose and slow to load at times. The artist pages look the same as they did four years ago and the number of options to customize are severely limited. While Facebook may be a fairly straightforward interface, it is that basic interface that makes many people flock to it.

Not only is the demographic slightly older - with more disposable income - Facebook has the resources needed to reach fans, their friends, and anyone who visits their friends’ pages. For everyone that listens to a song or reads a post on your Page, a chain reaction of social news stories are posted on peoples’ own pages that will lead new fans to your page. It’s the perfect way to both interact with existing fans and find new ones