Is Facebook’s New ‘Subscribe’ Button More beneficial Than ‘Like’ For Publisher ?

Previously in the month of September, Facebook launched its ‘subscribe’ button for personal profile, which allowed users to subscribe with anyone, where they got the public updates of that person in his/her news feed. But recently some of the users saw the new Subscribe button on the business pages.

Facebook Subscribe button for Business pages:

Facebook is currently testing this feature for business pages that will allow users to subscribe to them and get all their news feed updates. Recently Marketing land noticed the subscribe button on their page.

A Facebook spokesperson commented to Marketing Land:

“We are currently testing the ability to subscribe to pages with a small group. This feature allows people to receive updates from pages without liking the page. We have no further details to share at this time.”

But what is the real cause for the ‘Subscribe’ button where in one can already ‘like’ a page, especially with the availability of the subscribe option that was launched last year?

Subscribe VS Like:

So by now most of the analysts would question the exact purpose of the Subscribe feature, compared to the Facebook ‘like’. For instance, assume that 7000 people have liked a particular business page, so you might think that all those people would receive news updates related to the business, but that is not the case exactly. Only those people will receive the updates who have visited or interacted in the past 7 days with a specific brand page.

Users need not necessarily be a friend with anyone in order to subscribe to any page. However, a user can allow others to subscribe to them by editing the subscribe settings, where people other than friends can get your public updates. Also one can subscribe to “All updates”, “Most updates” or “only important” updates. Also a user can control over who can comment on your public posts.

But with the Subscribe feature that is currently under testing, users might get regular news feeds until he/she unsubscribe from the page. This actually makes some sense than the traditional ‘like’ feature. There is also a possibility in the future that brand owners might be able to find out the user’s interest over products via Facebook.

But if such option is enabled for the branders in the future, they might be charged for that. But what ever the case is, it would be more beneficial for the business professionals than the common Facebook users.

Benefits for Publishers:

With over 3.2 billion likes on Facebook everyday, ‘like’ improve the popularity and importance of a brand, as it depicts the number of people who like a brand page. But the subscribe feature could benefit the publishers (a firm that publishes ads on its page). How, you might ask? As more and more people subscribe to a particular page, regular new feeds would reach to all of them, including the ads (either on news feeds or directly on the main page that was subscribed).

As a result of which, the users might get more engaged with a particular subscribed news updates where users are more likely to click over the targeted ads.

Lets wait and see for the official implementation of the subscribe option for the business professionals in the near future.