Every product and service goes through changes every now and then. And this very feature of not staying constant is the proof of its success. Facebook has gone through countless changes ever since its conception in 2004. When it was conceived ten years ago, it had nothing to do with advertising. But over the years this social medium has become the biggest platform for advertising. Companies invest unimaginable amount of money on facebook advertising and marketing.
When we talk about facebook advertising and marketing, the first thing that crosses our mind is “likes”. The higher the number of likes the greater is the popularity of the page. All businesses aim to garner maximum likes. However, the dynamics of Facebook advertising have changed yet again. Facebook has improved its advertising features. The focus is now on gaining engagement and reach instead of getting likes on the iframe at the top.
From the very start, Facebook engagement has been centred around the Like button. The Facebook Like button is the easiest and quickest way someone can show appreciation of a post or a Page: just one quick click and comments from a business Page will start appearing in your News Feed. This is the key purpose of the Like button: by clicking Like, users are saying they are happy to see a business’s page content in their News Feed, potentially leading to more engagement.
However, the Like button’s simplicity is also its downside. A Like doesn’t necessarily mean that a user has properly engaged with a business, it only takes one click after all. If a person LIKES a page there is no guarantee that they have viewed the posts and shared them! There is a huge percentage of people who LIKE a page and forget it. However, if someone comments on a page, this means real time interaction between them and the company!
Let us take another interesting example. When you log in to your Facebook accounts you never witness a post suggesting that so and so person has liked xyz page. That is because Facebook does not offer such feature. On the contrary, a comment or a Page post is far more likely to appear in the News Feed than a Like. Likes, therefore, rarely directly affect reach, as a user’s friends won’t necessarily see the Like activity. The only place friends’ Likes regularly show up on the News Feed is in the “Add to News Feed” section, but this has been scrapped in the new News Feed design.
So all you business entrepreneurs, next time you decide to market your company on Facebook make sure you are certain about these new developments in face book advertising.