Yeah, yeah – this goes against conventional wisdom. Google “Getting Likes on FB Biz Pages” and the experts at the top of the SERP are going to sing this advice in three-part harmony. “Invite your friends.” “Invite your community.”
Don’t follow this advice. It’s just not a good idea. In fact, it’s a terrible one.
Likes aren’t just for bragging rights, boosting egos, dopamine rushes, or measuring engagement prowess. There’s more to them than a simple “thumbs up.”
As multiple news stories have made clear over the last 16 months or so, (even if you’ve been living under a rock...) the internet is a huge data-collection operation. There’s a reason why it’s called the interNET – we all get trapped in its information gathering web. When you surf, where you surf, what you surf – it’s all tracked, processed and made available. It’s a marketers dream...and a personal nightmare. The only saving grace is that, for now, actions/activity is anonymous and is useful mostly because it becomes one more ingredient that combines with other like ingredients in a very large data soup.
This soup is, subsequently, ladled out to all those who stick out their bowls. Once the serving is received, it is not eaten whole but, rather, separated into its constituent parts so that the receiver can better understand the market place and niche audience.
This data collection happens at all levels of internet activity... even likes.
Face Book has defined a minimum threshold of likes that must be obtained before the soup kitchen is opened. It has determined 100 is the magic number from which to start processing and analyzing page visitor and usage data.
This is why you DO NOT want to invite friends and family to like your Face Book Business Page. They may not be your true target audience. Inviting them only skews the data you’ll receive – for a very long time. It actually may never be possible to dilute the influence of that data which means, all decisions made regarding page content and audience targeting will be based on faulty, corrupted data.
Want to find your true digital audience? Don’t tell friends and family what you’re up to. If you must (to get those initial strokes of encouragement), beg them not to --forbid them – to like your page.
Now here’s the big red warning flag: Heeding this advice means choosing the hard road. Walking this path means you’re going to have to work on your page. You’re going to have to create solid, interesting, worthy content. You’re also going to have to truly engage – strangers. And you’re going to have to spend money to boost posts, promote your page to gain likes and for advertising. Fortunately, $50 and a week of patience combined with obsessive page watching/tweaking will bring results that will result in actionable page engagement data. You’ll make your own tasty soup with unique ingredients, ones you found in the great digital universe by creating content complete strangers found engaging. From this data, you can then further refine the content and engage more strangers by using tricks like targeting “People who like your page and their friends.”
Wait a second, isn’t that a contradiction – recommending targeting the friends of page likes instead of my friends?
Absolutely not! Your friends are going to like your page because you asked them to like it. There’s a direct emotional chord that dangles all around and through that interaction. But when you target friends of likers, there’s no emotional pressure influencing the interaction. You’ve just allowed strangers and their friends to make a pure yes/no decision about your content. This is the only way you’re going to create engagement, build a solid following for your page and gain access to actionable data.
To truly succeed with your Face Book Business Page, you need good data. To get good data, you need to have good, pure, objective engagement with your content. As much as you love them and they love you, your personal friends will never be able to provide you what you truly need to build a quality, high-performing page: pure, content-driven engagement.
Want a successful Face Book Business Page? Keep friends and family away from the “like page” and “like post” buttons.
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