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 info@example.com.
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
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Hi guys, I need to create a subscribe end-off to my YouTube videos. I need something like this - https://www.youtube.com/user/SeattleCoffeeGear - where the red gear at the bottom pops up with a bright red "subscribe" CTA. How do I do this?
Hi guys, I need to create a subscribe end-off to my YouTube videos. I need something like this - https://www.youtube.com/user/SeattleCoffeeGear - where the red gear at the bottom pops up with a bright red "subscribe" CTA. How do I do this?
Social Media | | Bev.Aquaspresso0 -
Can you redirect old abandoned Twitter/Facebook accounts?
My client has a Facebook profile and a Twitter account that they have abandoned. These pages also have old branding and we would like to redirect these pages in some way to the current Facebook and Twitter accounts. I did find this article but it's 3 years old and not sure this is works: http://www.thesearchagents.com/2011/12/how-to-do-a-301-redirect-on-twitter-even-though-twitter-doesnt-allow-it/ What's the best way to do this?
Social Media | | RosemaryB0 -
Facebook Like Button vs Like Box
We want to add the Facebook Like and Google Plus One functionality to our website but had a question. Is it better for SEO and usability to use a global Facebook Like Button for people to Like the home page of our website or a Facebook Like Box to Like our Facebook page from our website? I know that we can specify the URL in the Like Button but I wanted to get some feedback. Thanks!
Social Media | | Prager0 -
How can I track on my facebook page shared links without using short url redirect service?
Hi, I wondering how can I track and analyze on all my shared links in my facebook business page without using short url redirect service like: “Tiny” url or “bitly”? Thanks in advance.
Social Media | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Does buying thousands of Facebook Fans/Likes affect SEO?
To begin with, please pardon me if this question is ignorant. I'm completely new to this whole social media thing, and somewhat feel it is overhyped. I find it really difficult to believe that social media will actually help the majority of small business owners out there like me, and that most of them are probably being misled about the powers of social media to increase sales. Because it's mentioned so frequently, I've decided to delve into it a bit more to see how this could possibly help me business. Over the past few weeks, I've become familiar with a company that sells Facebook Likes, Twitter followers, as well as YouTube and SoundCloud plays. Since my official Twitter and FaceBook accounts really didn't have that many followers, I decided to buy a few thousand followers for each account. Initially, I bought them because I wondered what would happen if a customer that visited my online store happened to go to those Twitter and Facebook pages. If I personally see a Facebook page with few followers, I probably wouldn't give them my business. I would want to go with a company that seems to generate a bunch of traffic to their pages. Originally, I only had about 200 Facebook followers (now called Likes, it seems) and maybe 25 Twitter followers. I now have over 12,000 Twitter followers and 2,000 Facebook Likes. I may end up buying more since the service was pretty quick and affordable. I'd like to know if Google factors Likes and followers into it's formula for creating SERPS. Will my website rank higher if I have 10,000 likes, rather than only 200? If so, would it be a notable increase? FWIW, I found that more people organically started following my Facebook and Twitter accounts once I had more followers. I didn't change anything about how I maintained the page; I just had more people following them. One other thing of note: these companies are almost certainly using fake/hacked accounts to like various pages around Facebook/Twitter. You can tell because my Facebook page says some city in Croatia has the most amount of 'likes' of my page. Do you think this might come into play at all? Thanks for any and all help!
Social Media | | CHEATERS0 -
Adding large facebook like box
How do you add a facebook like box to the home page here nlpca(dot)com It's a large like box with pictures. I added this below the body: and this on our site (Joomla site): http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-NLP-Coaching-Institute-of-California/187804434598142" data-width="217" data-show-faces="true" data-stream="false" data-header="true">
Social Media | | BobGW
What am I doing wrong?0 -
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 -
What's up with the #! in twitter & Facebook URL's?
I was just wondering why Facebook and now Twitter have added "#!" into the url structure? Does this mean we should link to a twitter profile like this - twitter.com/profile - anymore? Should we now be linking like this: twitter.com/#!/kevinbarnes Kevin
Social Media | | KevinBarnes0