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.