Stop asking your friends to mass share your facebook page for likes – it’s hurting your business

Friday, 17th April 2020

engagement | facebook | likes | Social Media

If you’re like most of us, you’re on facebook and very recently you’ve been receiving dozens upon dozens of ‘like my friends page‘ as notifications.

If you are a small business and you’re asking your friends to send your page as a recommendation to ‘like’ to all their friends as a mass notification .. stop it.

STOP IT!

It will not help your business and could drastically harm it. So cut it out!

Facebook page likes are NOT a popularity contest.

The best way to gain new likes on your page is to actually market (i.e. talk) to the people who want your products or services. If you do want your friends to help promote you, then ask them to write a post on their profile and talk about your business. That way the people who visit your page to like it will actually be the ones who are interested in what you do.

The only time page like numbers have a semblance of relevance is in a social media numbers press release in order to find sponsorship. Otherwise, don’t pay too much attention to it.

Most networks and social sphere’s make it feel like it’s a popularity contest because instinctively we think, big numbers mean good. However, I’d like to flip your thinking to focus on your ideal customer, not a random person.

What do you care that a random person likes your business page, if they don’t do anything else and don’t buy your service or products?

Like most social spheres, we are presented content based on engagement.

The best kind of likes on a page are those who are genuinely interested in what you do, not the masses who are not! Otherwise facebook can’t tell is this just a fluff like because a friend is being kind, or is this a genuine like. So it looks at some other values.

It looks how well you engage with your viewers, do they like your post, comment and click through to see your website and at the pinnacle, do they buy your product or service? Facebook has a complex and always shifting algorithm of how to they show things within the general news feeds. We can complain, gamify and do all sorts to try to raise our visibility but realistically there are a few ways to improve your page being shown to those who are interested in what you do.

Share your key content into your business group, have people visit the post on the page and engage with it there. Ask questions, when someone replies, engage with them. Post at the times when there is the best engagement of your page, check your pages insights for when that is. Share images and funny memes, it doesn’t have to be 100% business .. a sense of humour goes a long way. Comment and interact with other businesses as your business page. It’s a long slow haul to improve your visibility, sowhat appears to be a quick fix of page likes isn’t a good fix in the long run.

I have a question for you: Is it better to have 1000 ‘likes’ on a page but only 10 people are ever going to engage with what you do. Or, is it better to have 100 people but those same 10 people regularly engage with you?

Percentage-wise, it’s far better to have fewer page likes but higher engagement and interactions. That way Facebook (or any other Facebook controlled social media *cough* Instagram *cough*) can see what is useful or interesting content, so it will show more of that.

So here’s why asking to invite hoards of random likes to your page is bad: you will have higher page likes, but your percentage of engagement will rapidly go down. Why would a random who only liked your page to be a friend and boost you by one like, why would that person then want to engage with you on your future business posts, they have no interest to do so? So your engagement numbers go down.

Don’t be swayed by page like numbers, chase engagement .. connect directly with those who interact with you.

If you like what you’ve read, please share this blog post .. cheers!

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