Every time I post to my Facebook page for my law firm, Facebook (‘FB’) suggests that I pay for a campaign to drive likes to that page. But, having used FB for quite a while, and having kept up with changes to how FB populates user’s newsfeeds, I know that spending money to drive likes to my page is worthless. To understand why, you have to understand how FB works, and then use that knowledge for your own benefit.
Facebook’s goal is engagement. They want everyone on their page, everyday, 24-7 checking out the posts of their friends. Content that creates engagement (birthday pictures, wedding photos, silly pics, etc.) gets pushed to the top while boring content (legal how-tos, marketing non-sense, text-only-articles) gets buried, never to be seen. It does not matter if your page has 1000+ likes because If the content is boring, FB will not push it up. Period. Unless you pay them, but even then, it is not guaranteed .
As a result of this, I couldn’t give two excrements how many likes my page has. But I care deeply about the likes, shares and clicks of my posts. Here are some quick stats from my law firm page, excerpted from the pics above:
- Total Page Likes: 136
- Weekly Reach of all Posts: 728
- Weekly Engagement of all Posts: 34
The reason my reach is higher than my likes is because I write interesting articles, with interesting pictures, that my audience wants to see. There are plenty of pages out there with thousands of likes but terrible content, and as a result, equally terrible engagement. Also, these stats are often incorrect because the data from FB for clicks generally does not match the hits recorded on my webpage.
If you want to use FB effectively, you have to know your audience and write content they find interesting. Then, post or share it in a place they will see, such as on your personal wall or on a group’s wall in addition to your page. FB is an engaging place, and they only reward engaging content.
