Hi! If you are reading this then you are most likely a business owner, or at least the owner of a Facebook page and you are probably looking to maximise the amount of reach that you get with posts, improve your chances of getting customers in and maximise the benefits of running your Facebook page. You may have considered buying Facebook likes and followers, or have bought them in the past. This is a technique I do not under any circumstances recommend.
Today I am going to tell you about three kinds of followers you will want to avoid on your Facebook page.
1: Friends and Family
Most people like to feel loved, especially when they are starting out, and it can seem extremely impressive to have a large number of people following your page. One of the first things you get offered when you start a new page is to invite friends and family to like your business page. It seems like a great idea and it will definitely get likes on your page, allowing you to have a following, which looks great for business and you will have a load of friends and family looking at your posts! What could possibly go wrong?
Friends, Family and Business seldom mix. Whilst at first it can seem like a good idea, and friends and family can be supportive, in most cases the support only goes so far. People close to you lose interest because they don’t want to see your business all the time. It comes down to two things: Your friends and family may like you, but sadly they don’t necessarily like your business or necessarily have any interest in it.
The main issue here is that Facebook is a social platform, and with the huge amounts of ads constantly appearing on it, people who know you are not going to appreciate your posts which are in effect, ads for your business.
If I talk about something positive on Facebook on my personal profile, for instance, it gets a positive reaction, but if people only see my business self, they quickly become bored with business posts and stop following me and reacting to me.
There is a horrible “share this trap” going round on Facebook where people ask their friends and family to invite people to like their business. You want to avoid doing this because it can get a bunch of people following your business and seeing your posts who never react to them, ultimately costing you interactions and lowering your prestige and overall reach on Facebook.
You want strong, interactive followers who support your business every time you make a post. These interactions will help increase your natural reach and ensure that your posts are regarded as having value in the Facebook algorithm.
2: Bought Likes
Do you want to have 100,000 likes for the mere price of £20.00? Do you want to appear like some kind of resplendent demigod? Good news! There are a metric tonne of different sites out there that can help you fill your page chock full of likes! You may only have one review from a real customer, but fear not! The likes will… like you! So what should we do?
Avoid, avoid and avoid. No matter what happens, or how desperate you are, do not, under any circumstances buy likes for your page. The reasons for this are simple. A bought like is worse than a like that doesn’t exist. Likes from real human beings who actually exist see your content and your posts and occasionally interact with it. Facebook, is, after all a social website. Likes from bot accounts, which these accounts are, do not exist, and they do not like or support you. They actually ruin your ability to hit the interactions you need for your posts to have a decent and normal reach and will ultimately result in your page being a cold, lifeless husk. Much like the person writing this article.
90% of Facebook’s stupid hack marketers use fake likes to make their businesses seem popular, they then burn thousands of pounds on advertising, and their audience that they genuinely pay for is completely useless because none of them see the posts that they put out. Then when the marketers make paid posts, they end up becoming more and more expensive because their content is misconstrued as useless and unpopular. Ultimately this costs time and energy and has driven many people to financial ruin and compromised many businesses,
3: Likes from Other Countries
Most people reading this will run small businesses or small Facebook pages. Most small businesses work locally. Advertising in different countries to increase your likes has been a popular strategy for gaining genuine likes from people who can genuinely love your content, which can lead to many happy faces and heart reacts. Having worked as a restaurant marketer, I can attest to the popularity of image posts…
The problem is quite simple though. If people reading your posts and looking at your ads are not local. Then they won’t be buying your products, visiting your store or eating out at your venue. It’s not worth trying to cultivate an audience in local areas when you can get a better local audience, even if it is more expensive,
What to do if you have these Followers?
If you have amassed these followers, there are a few things you can do.
In the case of friends and family liking your page but not interacting, you can potentially approach them and ask them to unlike your page. It can be as simple as sending a Facebook message to them. This can sometimes lead to backlash but in most cases the people who care about you will understand. You can say you invited them by accident and that you didn’t understand the way that Facebook worked at the time. It’s not a great method, but it does the job. This way you can prune out those people close to you to ensure they are no longer seeing your posts, and increase your chances of your posts reaching someone who will interact positively with them.
In the situation where you have bought likes, I am really sorry to say but the best way you can deal with this situation is to completely abandon and close your page. Start a new page and run local advertisements. It’s absolutely awful and no one should ever have to do this, but at the end of the day this is going to be an uphill battle you won’t win otherwise. Your ad costs will be up and your page will struggle, and it will do a lot of damage to you and cause stress over time. Cut your losses and make a new page.
In the case wherein you have targeted people in your ads from parts of the world that don’t buy from you all isn’t necessarily lost. These people may still like your page and they may still like your posts which can help their value in the algorithm. I would suggest just targeting any of your ads into the locations you want to advertise in from now on.
I hope these help you! Thanks for taking the time to read this!
