You all have probably seen something similar to the picture below. I bet you even liked or shared that businesses status if you like getting posts from their page. The truth is you did not have to do it to continue to get content from that business. As you may recall their have been similar Facebook hoaxes with similar themes over the years. Combine this with the Facebook announcement from earlier this month and you have lots of businesses panicking and putting posts like below on their pages. So is Facebook deleting likes from business pages?
The Truth
Facebook did announce changes to the business likes policy and yes it will delete specific types of users. What types of users you ask? Let’s hear it straight from Facebook.
“Businesses use Page audience data to understand what their followers care about. To make audience data even more meaningful for businesses, we’re updating the way Page likes are counted by removing memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from Pages’ like counts. This change ensures that data on Facebook is consistent and up-to-date.
Over the coming weeks, Page admins should expect to see a small dip in their number of Page likes as a result of this update. It’s important to remember, though, that these removed likes represent people who were already inactive on Facebook.
Going forward, any accounts that are voluntarily deactivated or memorialized will be removed from a Page’s like count. If a deactivated account is reactivated, the account will be re-added to a Page’s like count.”
Only accounts that are voluntarily deactivated or memorialized will be removed from a businesses Page like count. So this means that if you are an active user on Facebook you don’t have to worry about being deleted from a page’s feed subscription and, if you are a business, you don’t have to worry about losing legitimate active users on Facebook.
But my business lost 500 likes.
Some businesses have lost many likes over the last month. It is very alarming to see your likes plummet overnight and I imagine that business owner are going to want to know why this is happening. There are a couple of factors that could be in play here.
- Purchased Likes – If you have a wide net and decent budget you can accumulate likes very quickly. The downside to this is you do from time to time get bots that like your page and are not legitimate likes. These bots don’t interact with your page and can inflate your numbers. Facebook is constantly cracking down on these accounts and deleting them, thus deleting your like. The best advice to correct this is to limit your campaign to as specific as you can get to avoid this practice. You may not get there as fast, but you have a better chance of having real people who are legitimately interested in your business.
- Customers Died – Life goes on and people die. You cannot market to a dead man and you don’t want them potentially taking up that valuable organic 10% that sees your posts. Facebook is doing you a big favor by getting rid of these likes on your account.
- Deactivated Accounts – As hard as it is to believe, some people don’t want to be on Facebook anymore! Facebook allows them to deactivate instead of delete so if they change their minds they can resume their activities. This means that all of their likes that were taken away this month will be reinstated when they come back. This means that lost like in March could be a gained like in May.
What does it all mean?
For most individuals the recent Facebook changes will not effect your likes or your feed. If you do get one of those posts that beg for a like or share, it can’t hurt, go ahead and do it. After all you liked that business for a reason. For those businesses who lost a lot of likes, really the only thing you can do is tighten up your Facebook ad campaign. Make sure you are casting a smaller net that focuses on a specific target group and run multiple campaigns if needed. As always, Baggies Web Solutions can help your with your Social Media Ads, just give us a call.