Are Facebook Page Likes important?

​Is it important to have lots of Likes on my Facebook Page?
 
Good question. Difficult answer.
 
Let’s start by understanding the 2 roles that Facebook Page Likes play. 

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​Firstly, a large number of likes provides an audience who you can communicate with.

Secondly, it builds up credibility.

So far, so simple. 

Except both of the above points come with a large asterix next to them. 

Let’s look at them in more detail. 

Building an audience
When you grow your Facebook Likes you are growing an audience who you can communicate with. You can engage with them in many different ways which ultimately will allow you to promote your products to them over time. 

In simple terms, a large Facebook audience provides a potential market of receptive buyers. 

The trick is to balance posting engaging content and posting promotional content but that’s a different conversation all together. 

Back to Likes. 

So, on the face of it, it would seem obvious that we should all try to attract as many Facebook Likes as possible, right…?

Well, just hold on for a second. 

Sadly it’s not quite that simple because the power of a Facebook Like has been diminishing for some time.

Let me explain why….

If we rewind a few years, Facebook Likes were everything. If you were a business page and you had 1000 Likes then the vast majority of that 1000 would see your content every time you posted. 

Gradually though, over the last few years, the organic reach of Facebook pages (i.e the number of your fans who see your content without you having to use media spend) has been dropping. 

In our experience most Pages receive around 2-8% organic reach meaning a Page with 1000 Likes will reach roughly 20-80 of it’s fans with new content. 

The reason for this is that Facebook has too much content to show us and thus the Facebook algorithm has to determine what content each user sees in his/her feed. 

Quite reasonably FB prioritizes content from friends over content from pages and thus it’s become harder for Facebook Pages to reach their fans. 

There is a way of course. 

We simply have to pay to reach our fans. 

Put some spend into Facebook ads and you can promote your content and target your fans.

That’s the reality. Unless you’re a major brand or celebrity and you have super high engagement with your audience, you’re going to have to employ media spend to reach your fans.  

So, in fact what a lot of Facebook Likes give you is the ability to target engaged fans using Facebook Ads. 

Therefore, in my mind, I think Facebook Likes remain important because they give you a warm audience to communicate with over time, albeit not for free. 

However, it’s important to remember that you can target other warm audiences on Facebook as well such as:

• Your website visitors
• Your email database
• People who have engaged with your FB page 
• And more…

So, from an audience perspective Likes remain important. Just not as important as a few years back. 

Building credibility 
The reality is that a big audience gives a brand credibility. 

If you visit a page and you see a large audience, it carries a lot more weight than a page with a low number of likes. 

It shows people that you’re an established brand with engaged followers. 

For some companies this will be important. 

We work with several clients who are building Page Likes for this exact reason. They see it as an important part of their brand presence. 

Others however are less bothered. A large number of likes isn’t important to them from an image perspective. 

You’ll probably relate to one or the other. 

Summary
So, in summary, are Facebook Likes important? 

Answer: Yes, they’re important but just not as important as they used to be. 

Thanks for reading. I hope this blog has given you some clarity around Page Likes. 

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AD HOC offers on demand Facebook marketing support. Most of our clients pay us $350 per month. Sound interesting? Drop us a line.