Facebook Likes – Are They All That They Are Cracked Up To Be?

A Million likes – What does it really mean?

Facebook is a very powerful marketing tool. It is a great way to spread brand awareness and interact with consumers online. However, having a million likes on Facebook, does it really mean you have a very popular page, or is it just a cover and something to make you look like you have a big following.

I agree that you have to get people to like your page to stay in the know about your Facebook page updates. With Facebook’s edge rank it means if you do not post consistently or if the person that has liked your page doesn’t interact with your page, then you will find that your page will find it self lower on the top stories feed on a Facebook account. So a good way to see how well your Facebook page is doing is to see how many people are talking about your page.

You may see that some brands post very regularly with just very dull content, or perhaps are constantly trying to sell. This would cause a low amount of interaction, hence there would be a small figure of people talking about that page. So Pages that have really high interaction will see that they have very high numbers in terms of people talking about that page. This would also help with your edge ranking, with more people commenting and liking your posts, the more likely you are to appear in people's news feeds.

You will also be very easy to spot accounts which have bought fake followings. As a page which has millions of likes but only has 4 people talking about them. This would suggest you have brought a huge amount of followers. Although this might not always be the case, it may be that the account has been poorly run or was formerly popular. You may also see on certain pages such as Nike, Oreo and Coca-Cola that it actually has more people talking about their page than they do likes. This happens when people who have not liked the page may interact on it anyway. For example if one of your friends has commented on a post you will see it in your news feed, you may find that you want to comment on this specific content as well. Meaning that although you are not a fan of that page you still have engaged with it, thus increasing the reach of the post as well.

So you might say to me now, I haven’t got a massive following like the previously mentioned brands. Not to bother, this is the joys of social media it gives everyone an equal footing. It is all down to your content, you need to provide content which is going to engage with your customers. It’s also really important to look at your insights, to see where your audience is coming from. This will help you in planning what content you could use. If you see that you have a very local audience remember that you don’t just need to talk about your own company, you could talk about local news, weather and other things going on locally.

Using images and quizzes also create high engagement and will help build likes for your page as well. The reason I have highlighted growth of likes is, as your page becomes more popular and people see that their friends are constantly commenting on different posts, they are going to want to join in and this is how you are able to make successful Facebook Pages.

Just to summarise, it always looks great to have huge amounts of likes on Facebook; however, it isn’t always beneficial, as having more people discussing your brand on Facebook is more important, and you will see more benefits from this as well.

Alex Carson

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