If you are browsing Facebook™ on any given day, it is impossible not to encounter at least one page celebrating a milestone: 5,000 fans, 10,000 fans, 100,000 fans. The numbers are great – some of them even impressive, but we have to take them with a pinch of salt. The question is: what do these page Likes really mean? Do they stroke your ego? Good, then you’ve reached your target. Do they bring you more business? This is a very different story….
What Are the Mechanics behind Facebook™ Likes?
The story is simple and repeated with slight variations across all Facebook™ pages. It is one of these:
- Someone sees a post you shared, they like it and they also like your page on impulse;
- One of their friends or family likes your page, so they also like them out of a sense of solidarity;
- You hosted one of those barely legal contests where people should Like your page to enter (presumably, before Facebook™ took an active stance against such contests).
All the people in these three cases are your Facebook™ followers and their Likes add up to the final number you proudly display as achievement. But what else do these people do for your business? Have they made a single purchase? Have they recommended your business or any of your products to their friends? Chances are, they didn’t and will never do so.
Why is that? This is because they are not interested in your business. They had a single spark of interest, generated by one of the above mentioned situations, and once that situation ceased, so did their interest. They just did not bother to unlike your page.
What Really Matters for Your Business on Facebook™
The true metric which shows how many people are actually interacting with your posts, talking about your business and taking action on your calls to action is engagement. Instead of celebrating the Likes, you should celebrate Post Reach, Post Engagement, Shares and other relevant metrics.
The age of racing for more Likes is gone. The age of engaging people through organic posts is likewise gone. What you need is not an empty Like, but a meaningful engagement with a user who will become your customer, and later a brand ambassador through word of mouth recommendations.
So, Are Facebook™ Likes without Value?
No, this does not mean that you should stop actively seeking new followers. However, you should seek them for the right reasons. For instance, it is easy to go on Fiverr and instantly buy 1,000 new likes. You can also go to some shady websites which sell throngs of Likes for small change.
But what are these Likes valued at? Zero. Nothing. Absolutely no benefit for your business. These Likes come from click farms, they come from fake profiles, from inactive profiles, and they will represent nothing more and nothing less than a number on your Facebook™ page.
And in the long run these empty clicks will hurt your business image. What is your first opinion, as a simple user, when you see a page with 100,000 Likes and just 1-2 comments on their posts and barely 2-3 Likes and shares? How much confidence do these numbers inspire in you? That’s right – none!
What really matters is a fair balance between Likes and engagement on the page, the guarantee that there are actual, living people who follow that business, interact with it, and are happy with its products and services. This is the true value of a Facebook™ Like. It cannot be put in monetary value precisely (though some people claim that one Like is worth $174 for a business), but it has a more enduring value: that of validating your business in a popular public forum and giving guarantees that you are genuine, trustworthy, and able to satisfy people’s needs and solve their problems through your products and services.