Why a Facebook Like Has Very Little Effect

Facebook recently made an earnings announcement showing that they are making significant progress in generating revenue.  As reported here by Forbes, Facebook said fourth-quarter net earnings jumped more than eightfold from a year ago, to $523 million, and importantly mobile ad revenues constituted 53% of overall ad sales.  An impressive set of numbers.

I find it unusual now to find a brand without a Facebook page.

The discipline of social media marketing is still underdeveloped however, partly due to the fact that the success metrics are not clear and as obvious.  What makes a success?  Someone seeing a post, reading it, liking it, sharing it?  What ROI are advertisers looking for when they run a Facebook campaign?

In an interesting article just published entitled, "Brand Comparison Study: What's Really Happening on Facebook?", Thomas Baekdal looked into the engagement patterns of 8 brands over the past two years to try and unpick what trends if any could be found.

It really is a fascinating article, albeit someone inconclusive.  I'd recommend any digital marketing specialist to read it as it will probably challenge many assumptions.

One key takeaway is that the more brands and publishers use Facebook, the more people like each brand, the less chance there is of any given brand getting a share of visibility.  It becomes more difficult to get the attention of users the more users there are and the more brands there are.

The graphs below show views per unique dropping over two years.



And - remarkably (well done Facebook) - page likes per unique reach are up during the same period.

Baekdal goes on to go into some detail and helps us to realise that a "like" is not enough.  What really matters in social media marketing is if people talk about your brand in a positive way, for example, recommending your products or talking about their experience with their friends.

He says, "You need to get people to talk about you, because just liking your posts on Facebook has very little effect."

Those "likes" are just the tip of the iceberg and actually don't mean that much. They might make you feel good and make your corporate ego shine.  Just like in the real world, what matters is not how many people know you or say they like you but how many say good things about you behind your back.

That's tricky to measure and it's why social media marketing measurement has some way to go.

The Difference Between Complex and Complicated

Take a look at these two pictures below. Which is complex and which is complicated?

Or maybe you're asking, "Don't complex and complicated mean the same thing?"

Ah ha. Not neccessarily. They're not always the same thing. And it's a very interesting subtlety that defines the difference. 

A complicated system has many connected and related parts and importantly, it is difficult to understand. 

A complex system however also has many interacting parts but it has simple individual rules that deliver versatile emergent properties. 

In the example of a flock of birds, two simple rules might control the overall system; alignment of flight direction in comparison to the nearest bird and distance between neighbouring birds. These two variables are all that's needed to understand and change the system.

Complicated systems have many more variables.

One of my favourite sayings is "complicated problems do not need complicated solutions".

If you can identify the simple drivers that control emergent behaviour, you can focus on these simple changes. Complicated can be transformed to complex.

The more complicated you make a machine they more likely it will fail.

The same with business processes. 

Complicated problems are best solved with simple solutions.