Why Facebook Likes are just not enough!

So you’ve got your first 100 “likes” on Facebook.  You pat yourself on the back and gear yourself up for your next target of a 1,000.

After all, it’s all about the numbers, isn’t it?

Ummm, well … numbers are good.  The more people you are connected with, the bigger your mailing list is, the more friends and followers you’ve got – the better your chance of getting noticed and making your sales.

But focus your Facebook marketing efforts on just numbers and you may well find you have wasted your time.

In a recent article from All Facebook they reported that between 10% and 75% of your Facebook Fans would never actually see your updates.

75% of your fans never see your content? Whooooah! That’s crazy, right?!  You spend all that time and effort adding status updates on your fan page and 3 out of 4 of your fans may never get to see them?

Once someone has liked your page, they probably will never come back to your page.  You rely on your status updates to appear in that person’s newsfeed.

And here is where it really starts to get tricky.  Facebook’s default wall setting is “top news”.  What this means is that your fans get given the updates that Facebook thinks they most want to see, based on how much interaction they have these friends and fan pages.

If your fans have clicked your Like button but didn’t stop by to click a Like on one of your updates or add their own comments, your updates could be passing them by.

So how can you make your updates more engaging?

1. Ask questions. Don’t just put your thoughts and ideas out there all the time.  Ask for your fans’ opinions and ideas too.  The “Question” update can be a good feature to try out once a week.  But it could also be as simple as adding a “what do you think about XYZ?” at the end of your update.
2. Be controversial. Don’t just stick with the blah blah news.  How about disagreeing with someone or something some of the time?
3. Be funny. Funny videos from YouTube do well on Facebook.  Who didn’t see the recent take on the Royal Wedding?  OK, you may not want to be sharing too many of these on your wall, but once a week or once a fortnight, will attract attention.  Try it!
4. Be you! If you tow the corporate line in each and every update, your updates are going to be dull, dull, dull.  Share a little of yourself and show a little of “YOU”.
5. Be regular.  If you drop in and update once in a blue moon, Facebook is just not going to take your page seriously.  It will soon drop of their rankings.  Facebook wants people to come back to their site time and time again so will push updates up from pages that are regularly posting.  Just think of Facebook as Google – the more recent your website has been updated, the more likely it will ranked up the search listings.
6. Be of value. Sharing news of your new product launch may be interesting to you – you want to make sales don’t you?  But how interesting is it to your fans?  Make your updates valuable.  Be helpful. Give away free advice or tips.  The more they like your stuff, the more likely they will be to see your promos.

But most of all be your customer! The more you know about your target customer, the more you can share stuff that they really do care about.  So do make sure you do your research and find out how and what they share on Facebook.  At the very least, phone up 10 of your top customers and ask them!  It will save you months of being ignored!

Click here for more articles on how to market your Facebook Fan Page

Related posts:

1. Why I think you have to have a Facebook personal account before you can have a successful fan page
2. Facebook Pages: Using Facebook as your page
3. How to get your first 25 fans on your Facebook Page