Why No One Likes You on Facebook
April 24th, 2012 • Posted by Seth Gardenswartz • Permalink
Having trouble figuring our why you don't have Facebook likes?
One challenge of Facebook is understanding a business's role in developing an engaged audience. When you buy radio you basically buy an audience, a known quantity. Radio stations create content and then give it away to anyone interested in what they are broadcasting. This is how they develop an audience. For example, you can buy "time" on a station that appeals to women between 35 and 49 based on music preferences for that "demo." Essentially you buy the right to interrupt the target audience's free music and try to get their attention for your advertisement.
Facebook is different. The traffic on any Facebook page (personal or business) comes from content its owner creates and delivers. If you want Facebook fans you must create a page that is as interesting (or useful) to your target audience as the music on their favorite radio station is to them. If your Facebook page is not relevant, fun or useful no one (but your blood relatives and BFFs) will "like" it. To put it another way, your posts have to be worth liking.
If I have a shop selling cookies, my very best friends and customers might like my page just because they love me or my product. But if my Facebook page is inconsistent and boring they might keep buying my cookies (or might not if I irritate them) but I will eventually lose them as Facebook fans. There are plenty of other interesting pages to read and only so much time in a day.
What if, instead, I post a picture of a plate of cookies with a kid's hand-written note saying "i luv u momee" or "sory i broc your window" to generate engagement? What if I invite people to post pictures or stories of cookie apology-worthy moments? Your goal is to create connections with an interesting post that will be "liked" and more importantly shared with lots of "friends" who might wonder where they could get those tempting cookies.
At Spaboom, we have created really clever ways (like Sweepstakes) to build your fan base over time, but these clever tools work best if you already have an interesting Facebook page. What makes an interesting Facebook page? That depends on your business and your customers. There is one sure measurement of a quality on a Facebook page, the number of likes, comments and shares you get from your posts. If that number is 0 you have some work to do if you want to be liked.
• Trackback • Posted in General, Social Media, Spa Marketing
I think this makes sense… somewhat. At the same time, number of likes isn't truly as important as how your word is spread. & if it's spread. You could have hundreds of fans and no activity. We found that sweepstakes mostly built up superficially. I agree about the engaging content & what we may think of as engaging may not be engaging to our clients or prospective ones. We try to mix things up… to not always promote ourselves, but also wellness tips, cool yet related images or YouTube videos. By having a diverse mix of postings we hope it is more interesting and we can see what is most "engaging" to our subscribers. I understand the cookie thing, but truly if I did that exactly… it wouldn't be perinabt. I also have tracked how frequently I post to see what is most effective. I would be interested in others comments too!
Jessica– I think you are right on track! You can "promote" your Facebook page and get lots of new "likes" with programs like Sweepstakes, and other strategies but as with any promotion you are ultimately responsible for the engagement yielded from those new prospects. The good news is every post you make is "graded" by your fans (and by the Facebook algorithm called "edgerank." I don't mean to suggest a spa use chocolate chip cookies for engagement. But it I was selling cookies i would want people to think about them as a gift in unique ways. To take that example to the spa market lets think about spring fever. An early spring has put allergies on everyone's mind but few consumers seem to know about the wonders of a sinus massage. A post like "Get a sinus massage as my spa!" is just an ad and won't work without engagement even if you have convinced hundreds of people to like you. However, a conversation about sinus, allergies and information about alternative treatments for seasonal allergies (like local honey), might get the engagement necessary. What you are really doing is promoting yourself as an expert and connecting with your community. I would love to know what you have learned about frequency. Most of the 48% of small businesses who say they use Facebook (I don't believe that number) post less than once a month and half post three times a year or less.
Hi– I post once or twice a week with promos or articles related to health,massage and do ads to promote specials in Facebook. I have a large amount of followers but most are not even in the state we do business in and many seem quite odd people. Rarely we get any comments although I have offered discounts for customers making suggestions on how to improve our services or suggestions on new promotions they would like to see. It feels like a one way communication which is very frustrating.
Sandra– I can't comment about the odd-quotient in your social graph but I also think your 70% there, but can benefit from a few tweaks. One thing I always like to do is look at a Facebook page that is getting what you want in terms of engagement. One of my favorite examples is Bella Sante in Boston. It is a big spa in a major market and has a different voice than your business, but they have clearly invested the time and effort to find a program that works. The fact that you are looking for a two-way conversation bodes well for your use of Facebook this year. Keep experimenting and feel free to call us if you have any specific questions. Love to hear from some more spas about their successes and frustrations with Facebook.
Facebook is in my opinion extraordinarily tricky to use for marketing. Not bad, not good, just very tricky. The first rule is, know your clientele. We have a large population of *very* social media-savvy clients. (Probably around 60% of our clientele are students from nearby universities.) So because of that, we are, with each Facebook post we make, weighing whether the post is really worthwhile. And even if it is worthwhile, it might not get posted if we feel we've already hit our limit for the day/week/month — that is, we just have a sense that if we post too often on Facebook, EVEN GOOD STUFF, our clients are going to get turned off simply because there is already so much 'crap' (aka noise) out there on Facebook. In my opinion it honestly also depends on what your business' approach is to wellness. We are not a large high-end spa; we have 5 treatment rooms and offer mainly massage therapy, at affordable prices. Our atmosphere is very quiet and serene. We constantly keep that in mind, as well as the fact that a lot of the time our clients are coming to us *to get away from* 'noises' in their life, like the all-consuming Facebook etc. The last thing I'll say is that our motto is to really respect the idea of having minimal intrusion into our clients' lives when they are not with us. This is simply a matter of respecting them enough to know we don't have to beat them over the head with every new form of communication in order for them to want to return to us. This works for us, but might not work for large, high-end spas. The Bella Sante facebook page is *awesome* but would likely not work for us, just because of our approach to wellness and what our clients expect from us along those lines.
Alan raises an important point in that social media is more marketing than advertizing. Knowing your client base is critical to using social media effectively. I completely agree that what works for one spa will not necessarily be effective for another. "Noise" is generally not worth liking.