This past week I spent a few hours working on my Facebook Business Page for my real estate business. Honestly, I was actually multitasking while listening to a good buddy do a Facebook LIVE in a group I am a part of. He was sharing some excellent insights into ways to make your Facebook page more powerful with these recent changes that have taken place with business pages.
We were discussing the importance of understanding the main components to the Edgerank algorithm and how sometimes we mess up our own work by having begging people to like our page. How do we beg? I’m glad you asked. Let me share a few ways:
One of the first ways we beg for likes on a business page is when we initially set up the page. We go through the list of people we are friends with and send them requests immediately to go “like” our page. I cannot begin to tell you the number of people who send me friend requests and the moment that I accept their friendship immediately follow it up with a request to go and like their business page. I’m sorry, we just met, why do you want me to like your business page for your makeup selling business in California? I’m 3,000 miles away and don’t wear makeup, so I’m not sure how me joining your page helps your business or me personally.
The second way I see people growing their page incorrectly is when they create contests and one of the requirements for the contest Is to like a business page, comment on a post, and share it with all their friends. While in theory this sounds good because you were getting a bunch of attention on a single post but what is the real meaning that people are liking your page? Are they doing it because they are interested in your products of what you sell all your services? Or are they liking your page in paying attention to it for a small period of time to just win a $25 Starbucks card? These are things we need to take into consideration when we run these contests. The people who come to your page are not there for business but to win a prize. Once the contest ends, you will never see them again.
The third group which I see people begging to like their Facebook page are colleagues. As I mentioned, I am also in the real estate industry in addition to being a Social media speaker. I get invited to speak at many real estate conferences all around the country each year. One of the problems I run into is that when I am sharing examples of what works in social media for real estate, the people who are in attendance immediately send me a friend request and go searching for my business pages and like them right away. These people are following my business page not because they’re interested in Myrtle Beach real estate, but because they want to mimic what I am doing in my real estate business in their local market as well.
They are not interested in buying or selling a home here, so they are not going to be paying the tension to what my real estate business page says on a regular basis. They are not going to be liking the content and commenting on it because they do not know what things are like here in Myrtle Beach in may have never even visited here. As I shared with a good friend the other day, if you want to know what a business page is doing, you were better to stalk them instead of liking their page. I’ll explain why in just a few moments.
The final way that I see people garnering fans on their business page that is just completely wrong, is when people are using services where they can purchase the likes. I see many friends that hire a social media “expert” to help them with their social marketing and the only metric that they want to look at is number of likes on a page. That’s an easy thing to achieve by using one of the services will you simply pay them some money and they put a few hundred fans on your page. Normally these people are from India and Africa and Asia and have zero interest in your business in most of the time can’t even understand what you were sharing because it’s in a different language.
Why I Deleted 300 Fans
So why did I delete 300 (I removed 50+ before screenshot) people from my business page? When you look at the Facebook Edgerank algorithm, there are three key components to it. The first is affinity, the second is weight, In the third is time decay. We as the owners of the business page can really control two of these three areas.
The first segment, affinity is what is your relationship with the users. It has to do with the amount of interaction a user has had with your page in the past. If they clicked on the links, liked or commented or shared something, then edge rank figures they like your stuff and gives it a higher priority in that users feed.
Wait is how much a priority and bring gifts to your post based on the type of post it is. Facebook still gives more priority to recorded videos, Facebook live videos, and images. If you were simply posting text what constantly sharing links to posts outside of Facebook, then they are going to get less weight and be less likely to show up in a fans newsfeed. The interactions that these posts receive also play a major role on whether or not the content will show up in more of your fans newsfeed. So, if you post a video that gets five comments 30 likes and three shares, it will show up in more users feeds than a post that only has one like. Relevance to the user is one of the most important aspects of your content.
This is the reason why I went through my business page and deleted 300 people recently. These were other REALTORS®, Speakers, and social media gurusWho had liked my page over the past several years while I was traveling the country and they heard me speak. They wanted to keep up with what I’m sharing so that they can mimic it in their own businesses. While I get the reason that they did this, they were actually causing my page to suffer in the long run.
What’s The Difference Since
Since removing all the excess likes from my page, I have noticed the interactions on my post in the reach of them becoming much greater. Here’s a quick snapshot from the past 28 days insights on this page:
My reach is up almost 59% over the previous month and my engagement is up 32%. I have not really changed anything related to the type of content or number of times I am posting to my business page over the past month in comparison to previous months. Also, unlike some of the other “gurus” Who tell you you must post on your page 2 to 3 times a day, I post on my page at most once a day and sometimes not for a few days at all.
The best part about these changes to my page, have been that I do not have to spend a bunch of marketing dollars on boosting my post to get them seen. I’ve heard a lot of people over the past month complaining that their numbers have been going down due to the new changes in how business pages are seen by users in their newsfeed. They have to spend money on almost every single thing that they post so that it gets some exposure. I on the other hand have been able to get more reach, more engagement, and just more overall interactions on my page without spending a single penny over the past month.
So, was it a wise idea to remove 300 fans from my page? I have to think so. How many people do you need to remove from your business page?