What is the value of getting a Facebook like?
-
Is requesting people to like your facebook page of any real value for a small business? Is it better to encourage people to write a comment/testimonial about your product or service on their own status with a link to your website and/or Facebook page?
I have a lot of clients getting more and more into the concept of social marketing so I am now wondering how best to guide them in the right direction with regards to Facebook specifically
-
There is no value if you artificially inflate your like count through competitions or purchased likes in any other form.
Your social engagement across FB, Twitter, G+, Pinterest etc should come naturally. You should start engaging with your customers/users via the social channels. Social media provides a good extension to deliver content really fast to your audience.
It helps to have a social marketing strategy - the simplest form is to measure engagement via retweeting/sharing or commenting. More complex is to measure conversions originating from social media. Ideal scenario would be that you post something on social media which does not advertise something on your main site, and traffic results in conversion because of the engagement.
-
Thank you. And good point: there really is something comforting, as a consumer, in seeing your question visible and published. We all have that suspicion that the email is going to be ignored or misunderstood and end up becoming a waste of time.
I worked at a large audio brand that was getting daily mentions in social venues for purchases or usage inquiries. Our RNT knowledgebase pretty much had every answer they were looking for (easily searched via any engine), but that didn't stop these customers from asking their questions on Youtube or Twitter. I had to hire a full time rep just to handle that side of the service issues, and that was just for English inquiries.
-
Very well written Brian. We find customers really want to put more eyes on their questions than just sending an email to whomever manages the [email protected].
We have found that pictures are very valuable in creating a Buzz for customers to comment and hopefully end up on the site.
Assigning a dollar amount is very difficult. In our case if you use the metric Social it would appear we are wasting time with Facebook. Time on site generally increases with a good post on Facebook
-
It depends on what you are trying to achieve. I'd agree that a lot of the time people are requesting likes without any real purpose, however they can be very useful too.
A like to your faceboook page is like joining your mailing list. It gives the page owner a way to contacting people with their message (albeit it through the filter of Facebooks edgerank algorythm). Very useful indeed.
A like of your page/site makes that visible to the connections of the person who likes the page (again, some - depending on edgerank). Useful as it gets your site seen.
-
Election year answer: It depends, and it's complicated.
For your local small business clients: Is there a specific communications or customer service strategy that could be augmented by the tactical presence of a Facebook page? Is their marketing outreach already inclusive of content generation, maintaining branding impressions and buzz? Is there a competitive need in the target market for social proof: that is, within the sphere of competitors, would having a high fan count for the page tip the scales in your favor?
Is the product or service high touch, one that requires a lot of followup, training or service? Does servicing outside of consulting time affect revenue negatively or positively?
From an SEO standpoint: if a customer is willing to write a testimonial for you, that's more valuable than a like, to be sure. Why can't they do both? A good testimonial is content for the Facebook page as well.
From a search standpoint, there's little doubt that a consumer researching a business is going to probably check out the Facebook page (for certain kinds of small businesses) when that appears in SERPs.
Social media is best thought of as a customer and public relations vehicle, rather than a marketing vehicle. Customers want a way to be heard and want to know if they can trust you for the long haul, which is the CR side. And social media (not including paid ad campaigns) just doesn't scale in the way that marketing does: it's closer to a loyalty program than a net sales lead generator. The PR aspect is that if something you do, say or produce is interesting enough to get widely shared, you can get that publicity at a very low cost.
I think consumers are getting a bit jaded about being asked to like a new FB page. So there has to be determination of whether there's enough of a promotional value to justify an incentive program. Again, just ask if it fits within their big-picture strategy.
Cheers,
Brian
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Facebook won't show up in SERP
Hello! One of my clients' Facebook page isn't showing up on the SERP, even when you search "CLIENT NAME facebook" or an excerpt from a live post. Our social media team looked over all the settings in Meta, and everything looks correct, so we are stumped. Anyone encounter this before?
Social Media | | GoogleAlgoServant0 -
Becoming an expert at Ecommerce facebook
Hello, I'm looking to coach local business owners on how to run an Ecommerce business. Charging $400/hour Will entail everything someone needs to know to be good at Ecommerce I need to be better at Facebook to do this. What do you suggest to get better at Ecommerce Facebook on a strict budget? Thanks, Bob
Social Media | | BobGW0 -
Which URL should I share with Facebook and google plus ?
Hi, My question is which URL should I use with the share plugins of Facebook and Google Plus.
Social Media | | Kadel
Should I use the URL of the website or of the facebook's page / google's + page? By the way , may I ask what's the source of the FB Shares that Moz present in the advanced keyword analysis report? and are those shares are of the website or of the facebook's page? Thanks,
Kadel.0 -
Blog posts copied to Facebook or Linked? Any Duplicate Content Issues?
I wasnt able to find any good answers on this. I have two separate ecommerce websites, one with a top level blog. (www.xyz.com/blog) and different website with a subdomain blog (blog.xyz.com)***note on the subdomain blog, although it links to our website. You cannot directly shop from it. Until i can make some sort of scraper, its what I have to work with. For quite some time now I have been copying the blog posts and re-creating them on facebook as a Note. Using the same anchor text/links on facebook as my blog post. Part of the issue is that I want the facebook pages to have some content and not just links. Both get 2-3 updates per week, 1 of those being a blog re-post. Does anyone know if google or bing considers this duplicate content? Should I simply link directly to the blog everytime, as a best practice? Any insight on this would be great. Thanks!
Social Media | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Social Media Examiner - Facebook Success Summit
Hi there, I was wondering if you could tell me if you think it is worth it to pay $300 for this online conference regarding Facebook marketing. http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/fbsummit12/
Social Media | | qlkasdjfw0 -
Extremely useful facebook app. Which is it ?
Hi, Just noticed what to me and our ecomm site seemed like an extremely useful way of advertizing on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/?sk=lf#!/lindexnorge . At the time of writing its the 2nd one on this facebook site. This which I assume is an app gives in this case 30% off on dress of your own choosing. Clicking the box sends you an email from facebook with info. It specifies in pop up after clicking that your mail adress has not been shared with the ecom site. There is also a smaller line on bottom were default is to share this with your friends on facebook. You have to change this in order not to. Within 24 hours this one is up to 20k uses and that is quite a lot in a small country like norway. Anyone understand which app this is or how it can be done ? Dan Lærum
Social Media | | danlae0 -
What happens with Likes etc when we change site structure
Hi, we are planning to make major changes in our site (SEO optimalization) and recently I read post in some kind of blog speaking about problems with FB Likes, Tweet etc when we change URLs. So the question is: Is it true that we lose social rankings when we change URLs structure( e.g. from http://domain.com/aaa/213/aa to http://domain.com/category/text/text), even with proper 301 redirects?
Social Media | | DELETE_b1 -
Buying Facebook Shares?
Would it be considered buying links if you asked your Facebook fan base to share a specific product page, and by doing so they will be entered to win a drawing? How would Google look at this? And could we expect a significant increase in rankings as a result? Or would it just be a temporary "what's trending?" boost you think?
Social Media | | JerDoggMckoy1