How many pages have you seen on Facebook with a huge number of Likes? Many people have sworn for some time that Likes are what drives people to your page. The trouble is that now Facebook is taking a long hard look at the efficacy of Likes and is trying to determine whether the Like model continues to be relevant. This has left a lot of businesses and individuals asking whether Facebook Likes are really worth the trouble it can take to earn them.
Nowadays getting tons of Likes is as easy as hopping on a website like Fiverr.com and paying someone $5 to go out and run up your numbers. Do NOT get me wrong. I am definitely not condoning this behavior. It is misleading at best and downright wrong at worst. Sure it might make your business look extremely popular at first glance, but once people actually look you up and see that you could be a mom & pop shop located in a small town they may start wondering just how so many people know so much about you!
Tactics such as this are exactly what is pushing Facebook to revisit Likes in order to determine whether or not they are still relevant. There has been talk of Likes going away or being morphed into more relevant terms such as Read, Visited, etc. Still though there will exist the potential to take advantage of the situation. In the end it is really going to come down to whether or not page relevance will continue to be influenced by Likes.
Best practices will hinge on businesses accepting the fact that simple Likes are not a valid indicator of their success on the social media giant’s site. It will come down to looking to see how many people actually take part in conversations on the pages through replies to posts or by sharing posts to their own Timeline. Anyway you look at it, the time of the Like is almost at an end. Change is in the air. Will your business be ready for it, or will you be left scrambling to find a way to super charge your posts and get more people to comment and share.