Would you march on Facebook?

Interestingly enough there is a Facebook page called Send in the Troops that has a crazy number of people who “like” it – over 14,000. Why I say crazy is that the page is all about you marching (in the dead of night, well 9pm UK time) and liking 100s of pages in that time frame with both your personal profile and business page. On their page they “brag” about getting 16 pages (between them) over 1,600 new likers in one night…

Why do they do it?

The idea is to… 

• Increase the number of people who “like” your page.
• Promote your business to other “marchers”.
• Promote your page through having other pages “like” it. 

If you are getting excited about this now and are about to run off and check out the page then DON’T!

Why I say DON’T

I totally disagree with the marching idea on all fronts… Here’s why:

Yes, you will increase the number of “likers” on your page BUT that doesn’t mean…

• Increased sales.
• Increased engagement.
• Increased impressions.
• Increased comments.

Yes, your page gets “liked” (aka recommended) by another page, but…

• It doesn’t mean that your page will show up in their page favourites on the left of the page, they may just have the five they want in there.
• It doesn’t mean more sales.
• It doesn’t mean more traffic.
• It doesn’t mean much!

1. Yes, more people will have seen your page and therefore business, which might mean….

• More awareness, but unlikely, I mean if I was “liking” hundreds of pages in the space of an hour would I really check each one out?

You want people who “like” your page to be people who are:

• Actually interested in what you do.
• Want to know more.
• Ask questions.
• Get involved.
• Comment and like posts you put up.
• Aren’t going to hide your updates in their newsfeed.

Yes, it’s great for the ego to have 10,000 people on your page, but if only 500 of them are actually interested there really is no point.

You may say, “well that’s alright for you to say as you have hundreds on your pages”, true for Mocks and Social Rabbit.  However, my Brand New Day page has had no advertising and only organic growth and is on about 150 “likers”, so not massive, but they are all people who want to be there and as a result there is a lot of commenting and liking considering the size of the audience.

Now considering all this do you still want to march?

Lara Solomon is the founder of Mocks mobile phone socks, Chief Rabbit at Social Rabbit – your guide in the world of social media, founder of Steps – the online Facebook and LinkedIn training course and author of ‘Brand New Day – the Highs & Lows of Starting a Small Business’. Lara’s business LaRoo was the winner of the NSW Telstra Micro-Business Award in 2008.