What’s the value of your “likes”?

The Value of a Facebook ‘Like’

The objective of social media marketing is to be genuine, to represent the softer, approachable side of your brand.

It’s less stiff-collared corporate CEO and more hip barista at your neighborhood coffee shop kind of vibe that encourages engagement with your content.

It’s real, it’s raw, it’s you.

So why can’t this authentic content that you’re putting out into the world seem to generate shares or comments?

Especially if you have tons of likes?

Especially if you use Facebook advertising to get those likes?

The Ingenuous Side of Social Media Advertising

News has been brewing for several months about the fraud behind advertising on Facebook.

You need only look to YouTube, marketing blogs, or even the U.S. government for examples on how thousands of dollars spent on Facebook advertising increased likes…but not from – as Facebook puts it – “more of the people that matter to you.”

So why the insincerity, or “fake” likes?

Turns out, click farms (groups of people in developing countries that spend their time “liking” pages to turn a profit) are getting through Facebook’s fraud algorithms even when ads are not being targeted to developing countries.

Sure, they’re real people, but they’re not really interested in your page.

And that becomes obvious when these “likes” have no engagement with your content.

What’s worse is that Facebook charges companies to advertise and generate more “likes”, but because it ends up attracting a huge number of fake “likes”, it also decreases the engagement.

The less engagement your ads receive – in the form of likes, comments and shares – the less reach given to your ads.

On the one hand, Facebook is charging companies in order to gain “likes”, but then when those likes aren’t engaging with the ads, then the companies have to pay more money to try and reach more people.

Something doesn’t add up.

And it’s not the “likes.”

Is anyone else experiencing these results?