To Like or Not to Like: Stereophile on Facebook

Whether you knew it or not, Stereophile is on Facebook! The Stereophile Facebook livefeed is updated regularly with links to articles posted on the Stereophile website, new product releases and announcements from within the hi-fi industry, and entertaining tidbits on music, sound, and the science of hearing.

Regular updates began in mid-November 2010. At this time, we had approximately 290 regular monthly users. After over two years of continuous updates, the number of regular monthly users leaped up to 2,684, well over a 900% increase, and of all those monthly users, 41% visit the Stereophile page daily.

When we first started posting, the Stereophile team was unsure of what would be the result. Would more people buy Attention Screen CDs? Would we get more members to our forums? Or would we just be totally ignored?

Over time, we developed a posting rhythm, highlighting all the new articles brought to our homepage as well as digging up old columns and equipment reviews, hoping to stimulate general conversation and passion for sound and gear.

The truth is, we are not really sure what positive or negative changes have occurred on our own website as a result of the increased traffic to our Facebook page. We tried a tracking schema where we measured the pageviews on each individual article posted on our website, before and after posting on our Facebook page. Tallies were taken both twenty-four hours after posting and one week later, but there was little discernible correlation between posting on our Facebook page and the number of page views on Stereophile.com. But these tracking figures become inconsequential when looking at our Facebook page as its own entity.

Within our own little corner of internet, the Stereophile Facebook page is now a burgeoning audio community, or as JA once put it, an audio club, where members meet to discuss the different articles posted on Stereophile and get to reap the benefits of the additional fun things we post, like this golden retriever rocking out to the guitar or this giant gong. Regular readers have become regular commenters, many hi-fi stores and distributors look at our updates as a news sources, and we are happy to inform of new product releases of gear we think is super cool. But what I like the most about our Facebook site is, as opposed to your typical audio forum where users can hide behind a username, posters now have their real name and image associated with the post. Hopefully this lessens deindividuation normally caused by the ability to hide behind one’s semi-anonymous username and creates a real-time face-to-face digital environment. One feels like he or she is actually communicating with real human beings when on the Stereophile Facebook page.

More than anything, and as it is intended, the Stereophile Facebook page is just pure fun: a totally brand new way for Stereophile to express being Stereophile, and giving our readers the open forum to respond in a familiar format. Members turn to our page for questions about Stereophile, where they can usually get direct answers from either JA, SM, or myself. We talk about music. We talk about food. And you get an inside look to many of the happenings in the Stereophile office.

If you are on Facebook, please take the time to “Like” us. It is another great way to connect to the larger audiophile community as guided by the content of our website and the exciting world of sound at large.

COMMENTS
ZombieFish's picture

but never used Facebook.  No interest at all.

King99's picture

Personally I would much rather surf your website. Good way to extend your reach though. Just don't do it at the expense of your website please!

BTW - you might want to add an icon to the Stereophile website's homepage that links to your Facebook page. It might help you generate more traffic - I hadn't even thought to look for you on Facebook previously. 

 

John Hall's picture

I only use facebook to keep up with my friends and family. I will always support your website first. Facebook looks plain and quite boring to me. Company websites are much more feature rich and engaging. Please don't let this diminish the richness of your website. 

Stephen Mejias's picture

Thank you for your comments. I just want to repeat that the Facebook page has been updated regularly since the end of 2010 without sacrificing the quality of stereophile.com.  Readers can trust that we'll only continue to strengthen our website with news, blogs, forum discussion, show reports, colorful images, music reviews, columns, and equipment reports.  We just want to let people know that the Facebook page exists, too.

Ariel Bitran's picture

the source for the majority of our Facebook content comes directly from the content of the Stereophile website

JItterjaber's picture

I appreciate Stereophile trying to engage social media platforms. Please don't forget that the social media landscape is constantly changing and needs to be managed by more than just interns. Twitter, pintrest, instagram, Facebook...the list goes on...If you don't attempt to engage these potential audiences, hifi interests among the new generation may lower even more.

I love HiFi and want it to grow!

www.hifiqc.com

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