At the moment there are Digital Marketing experts out there stating that you shouldn’t focus on building lots of likes on your Facebook Business page.
Firstly they say; “IT’S ONLY RENTED SPACE!”
I agree with the fact that you should focus heavily on building your email database because at the end of the day, for marketing purposes you’ve got control over this whereas Facebook can switch you off at any time, or they could die at any time.
Therefore ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ is a better statement.
My position on this is; Yes, you need to focus on building your database AND ALSO build your likes/positioning on Facebook.
When the average person is spending 1-2 hours a day and logging on an average of 14 times a day, you want a big presence on Facebook with your brand because you want your brand where the people are!
BUT if Facebook goes down then something WILL take its place. If it’s NOT Facebook, it’ll be something else you build.
Here are THREE REASONS why you need to grow your likes on your Facebook Business Page:
1- Credibility
If I approach an expert and see that they have 2000 Facebook likes, as opposed to another who has 10,000 Facebook likes, who am I going to perceive as the better expert to go to?
The bigger the crowd, the better the perception.
2- Organic Reach
Although there is discussion around the fact that Facebook will switch off ALL organic (free) reach on posts on a Business Page, it hasn’t happened yet! But it has reduced over the years.
However, this is what I know:
An average post for me at the moment goes out with a reach of around 1000 to 3000 people organically (no boost).
2 weeks ago I had a post go more than 100,000 in reach and an article organically went over 30,000 in reach without a boost.
Currently, as of April 2017, my Facebook business page darrenhunter.com has over 17,000 likes.
If your Facebook business page has 1000 likes, then an average post may only go 100 to 200, and better with a great post (that are hard to do).
If you have fewer likes, well you know the deal.
From out of your reach (cold audience/prospects) comes your engagement (warm audience/prospects). This happens with likes, shares and comments and your warm audience is the next step to a conversation, discussion and a transaction.
3- Builds an Engagement Audience
You can now (in Facebook Ad Manager) collect into an ‘Engagement Audience’ and send a news feed ad to anyone that has visited your page, like shared or commented or watched a video for more than 3 seconds.
Sending a Facebook Ad to a warm audience like this returns great results!
You can’t build an engagement audience if you’re not focussing on building engagement in your posts.
Facebook is just another platform that you can grow your profile and branding, and at least right now, Facebook is King!
Facebook is still growing in strength and innovation and I believe it will be the leader in social media for a while to come.
