It’s not you, it’s me. No, actually, it’s Facebook. You may have noticed a small drop in your Facebook Likes Count. You see, over the weekend, Facebook started removing two types of accounts from your fan count: memorialized accounts and voluntarily deactivated accounts. So basically the great Facebook purge is doing you a favor by deleting accounts that are dedicated to loved ones long gone and people who have left Facebook voluntarily by deactivating (not deleting) their profiles. Remember that this affects Pages not Personal Accounts. For Business Pages, this is supposed to be meaningful because it can help businesses truly understand what their followers care about.
Changes in Facebook are part of the game. Sometimes they announce the changes, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they clarify things such as what you can or cannot post. You can visit the latest community standards here.
In the larger scheme of things, what do the number of likes really mean? And what would happen if all that time and effort you put into posting content in order to gain likes, were suddenly to disappear? Here is what I always tell businesses and brands I work with, in the end, you do not own these social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube et al. What you do own is your message, your product, the original content you create. These platforms are but tools to help you distribute your message. They are a means to an end.
I read this article by Rachel Rofe , who experienced being banned from Facebook, and what she did about it. That’s a tough lesson but that is one of the good things about this digital age – being able to learn from other people’s mistakes.
Now if you’ve noticed a drop in your personal friends count, you can’t blame that on Facebook. People could be unfriending or unfollowing you for whatever reason. Check your posts and frequency of posts. Better yet, if you’ve lost a real-life friend on Facebook, perhaps it’s time you picked up the phone and gave them a call or met them for a real-life chat.
Here is the official Facebook update: http://facebook.com/business/news/page-likes-update
Very good advice. I think It is critical that you invite your audience to your website or email list all the time. Facebook and other social media channels are great, but as you point out in the article, they are very fleeting.
Better to use them as channels that drive action and engagement in something you own like your email list and website.
Very important to know this. Thanks so much for sharing!!
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