I’m very pleased with the Facebook fan community we’ve established. Overall a very good collection of people follow our blog and regularly read and comment on our Articles. Very little moderation is required and everyone is generally pleasent.
The one thing I don’t like about Facebook is the amount of unsolicited invitations people send, and send, and send. Recently after receiving the Nth suggestion from so-and-so to be a fan of same so-and-so I posted:
“Consider yourself invited to become a fan of me.”
Well that didn’t work out as expected as my friends all began proclaiming themselves fans and asking where the could sign up. (Thanks all.)
I recently received the following Facebook message:
“hey bro, i have received the invite to your fan page about a week ago but prior to that I had sent you several invites to ours months ago… I’m all about supporting each other but was just curious as to why you wouldn’t join our fan page?”
This presented an opportunity for me to voice my opinion on the matter.
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’m actually happy to respond.
The only reason you received a fan page invite is because I received one from you. As a matter of fact I received four from you. I only send out invites to 1) people that like or comment on our posts, 2) people that friend me, or 3) people that send me invitations.
I believe that all the above situations constitute some reasonable opportunity for me to send a single invitation.
I don’t repeatedly send out unsolicited invitations, because that it spamming.
I don’t believe that one should be expected to accept every fan page invitation they receive.
I don’t think that one should become a fan of something simply so that someone else will reciprocate.
So, I think the question should be why WOULD I join your fan page, and I mean that sincerely. Have I ever shown any interest in your fan site? Please let me know. Send me a reason why you think I would want to be a fan. As a matter of fact, send me four, one for each invitation.”
The story has a happy ending as the sender had a pretty reasonable offer and I’m now a fan of their page.
