Over the last few weeks the Facebook announcement mill has been pretty busy. At their f8 conference Facebook announced the new profile called Timeline that will be released to the public within the next few weeks. However, before the announcement of Timeline and updates to Open Graph, Facebook also released the News Feed Ticker in the right sidebar of your news feed, changes to what type of content you see in your news feed and the ability to subscribe to people in order to see their public posts without being their friend.
Updates to Pages
We now come to a change that has already been made live and is something all Page admins needs to pay close attention to. There were two updates made to Pages recently which are the the Friend Activity tab and the ability for users to comment on and interact with a page without having to “Like” the page.
With the advent of business pages on Facebook, companies and marketers have put a lot of time and money into gaining more “Likes” on their Facebook Page. Getting people to Like your page on Facebook truly has been important because if no one’s on there with you how can it be effective? Unfortunately, a lot of businesses and marketers have put all of their efforts into gaining more Likes. The effect has been a lack of quality content, community and interaction. If you use the number of “Likes” that your page has as your only metric for measuring Facebook success then you’re doing it wrong. The best metric that you can use to measure your Facebook success is the quantity and quality of interaction with the people who already “Like” your page.
What These Changes Mean for Your Business
Is the “Like” button going away? No, not technically at least. With the ability for people to comment on and interact with your brand without being forced to “Like” your page you now have a few responsibilities that are not new but that will now be forced on you in order for your business to succeed on Facebook.
Use Your Page to Create Quality Content
This is something that I have been pushing for a long time. The simple truth is that if you don’t use your Facebook page (or any other social media outlet for that matter) it will be of no benefit to you. If you use your page to do nothing but sell something in every post then you won’t succeed. Content is king and it always has been. But now that Facebook news feeds only show the most popular posts at the top you really have to develop good content that creates interaction for your posts to even be seen.
The plus side to all of this is that once you start engaging the people who already “Like” your page their friends will notice when they interact with your posts. Now that users don’t have to “Like” and promote your page just to comment on your posts you have an opportunity to create even more interaction than what you can project by looking at the number of “Likes” that you have. Now you don’t have to force people to “Like” your page to do what really matters on Facebook – which is to create community and interaction.
To say that getting people to like your page is not beneficial would be a lie. You should continue your efforts for getting more likes on your page by promoting your page in your print media, running Facebook promotions and offering something of value to the users that like your page. Just be sure that you continue creating quality content that keeps your community engaged and participating.