Are Your Wasting Your Facebook Likes?

We use the term ‘following’ because Facebook Likes create a dynamic and relatively disconnected database of leads, from which the Facebook Page owner can’t necessarily extract lasting client relationships – and this warrants a further explanation that will be important in relation to achieving business performance goals.

Followers will have the opportunity to interact with the Facebook page, post comments, like comments, like photos or other media etc, all of which are reflected on their own pages. There is a relatively passive connection between the Facebook Page owner and its follower. At any time the follower can ‘opt out’ very easily with ‘unlike’, and at all times, it is the choice of the follower to like or share an individual post made by the Facebook page owner, so there is a heavy reliance on post quality, engagement and posting frequency that can influence the number of shares or likes. Posts made too regularly, or of insufficient quality can have a negative effect on following, resulting in ‘unlikes’. It’s therefore important to monitor and manage post quality, engagement and frequency in relation to organic acquisition and loss of followers – a churn rate.

Furthermore, Facebook is now controlling any posts placed on the owner’s page and the extent to which those posts are pushed out to followers of the page – meaning, only by paying for Pay Per Click promotions is it possible to push out posts to all followers – restricted by budget. It’s aniticipated that in the future, Facebook will take even more control over organic reach – converting currently organic connections into paid ones, thus driving revenue for Facebook.

For these reasons, we recommends that Facebook be used with the future in mind, and the possibility that a Facebook following will no longer be organically reachable, or reachable to only a very small extent. Facebook should be seen as a lead source tool, providing micro-conversions to a main conversion in a more owner-controlled medium such as email databases, website(s), website memberships, loyalty programmes etc to which the business owner has greater control of and access to the client data.

Need more advice about growing your Facebook following? Call us. 09 302 0447

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