I am doing a campaign to get Facebook likes on a business page for a client. During this process I got asked by several people, “Why are likes important?”. So I decided to write up what I know and understand. The information is consistently changing, so if you have updated information, please message me and let’s discuss!
Facebook changed in 2019 about how they handle Business Page content. With that, they cut the amount of content that is seen organically aka unpaid. This was when they also introduced the “following” option for business pages, where you can follow but not like or like but not follow.
Depending on who you ask, each expert has a number, but Facebook does not officially publish any, but roughly 1.5 – 5% of your likes and followers see all your content that you post. The rest of your likes will “hit & miss” your content, meaning if they happen to be online right when it posts, if they have a lot of news feed, etc – they might see it, but no promises by FB. To ensure they see it, they would have to go to your page.
Some Facebook built in “Milestones” based on your Like Count your page has:
- less than 100 = hardly no feedback on your audience
- 100 likes = the insight info on the post which allows you to see to post reach, engagements and click through info.
- roughly 200-250 likes = the “insight tool” this tool allows for easy comparison of which posts got more engagement, and adds the “when your audience is online”
- 500 likes = content views bump up to 3-8% ** This means instead of only 1.5 to 5 % of your contents being seen by all your likes, now it’s almost doubles!
- 1,000 likes = content views bump to 5-12 % and added benefit that cost for any boost or paid ads goes down (by the way, you pay per view/reach on these)
- 5,000 likes = next view bump and price reduction for paid boost or ads
- 10,000 likes = FB charges you less and allows even more of your audience to see your content.,
They stopped giving percentages that view after 1,000 likes, so I can’t share those. The reduced cost for paid services is great if you use them, but the biggest factor is the organic reach. Math lesson time:
If you have 100 likes and FB says 1.5-5% will see it, that is roughly: 1.5 to 5 people.
If you have 250 likes, then that bumps to 3.75 to 12.5 people
If you have 500 likes, and it bumps to 3-8%, then roughly 15-40 people are seeing ALL of your content!
Now, there’s ways to make sure you are seeing more of the content of your favorite companies:
- Like & Follow the company
- Engage with the company content at least 3 times — Facebook made some decision in some boardroom somewhere that if a person comments or shares 3 different pieces of content from the same business page, they must think that company is worth promoting, so suddenly they will see more of the content AND their friends will start seeing that they interact with that business (BIG WIN for Companies!)
- Invite your friends to like the company – this tells FB you trust the company and will allow you to see the content.
- Check in or tag the company in a comment or post. This will be counted as engagement.
- Comment or share a post by the company at least every few months. Once you have 3 engagements, you will see the posts, but over time that gets old. Facebook will actually remove “followers” from business pages for what they consider “dead connections”. So if you stop interacting with that company, Facebook assumes you have moved on and stop showing you the content. They will also remove likes if someone closes their Facebook account.
