Playing Catch-Up
With Facebook’s forthcoming announcements about the changes to Fan Pages, it seems relevant to bring up the odd situation that marketers and their agencies sometimes find themselves in when things like this change. That old favorite for the digital world: Catch-up!
(Some elements of the coming changes were leaked here on ClickZ where it states that the news was sent in an email to some agencies).
Facebook knows what it has in terms of an audience marketers want access to, and users know that they have a lot of control when they’re in the FB walled garden, so changes like the move from “Become a Fan” to “Like” as an opt-in call-to-action are sure to put lots of people into a lather, and sure to get Facebook some of that user backlash they have gotten so used to lately.
A big question for me, is how quickly are marketers ready to make changes based upon this new shift? In some ways, and especially in the case of Brands that actively use social platforms, changes like this can sometimes feel like someone keeps re-coding the internet every few months. As soon as you get users acquainted with how things work, the rules change. Most improvements seem to head the company/platform in the direction of streamlining or simplifying, but some missteps are bound to happen (I don’t think I ever really understood the difference between my newsfeed and livefeed).
The question, is, are you ready? Do you have your specifications documented and know how the new changes will affect your users? Do you have people looking into how the other changes coming can help make this change less of an issue?
Or are you planning to play catch-up all summer? 
