Do Facebook Likes Do Anything For Customer Love?

Before social media became everyday fun for businesses and individuals, website popularity was solely based off one’s ability to accurately advertise through grass roots methods like television, billboards, word of mouth and, soon after, email.  We’re now entering the social media generation, a period of digitally befriending the masses in hopes of having numerous friends, followers and ‘likes’.  From the normal human being’s perspective, having 1,097 friends or 15,889 followers means you’re quite the ‘dish’ as opposed to one with minuscule followings.  In terms of business status, it means that potential customers will flock endlessly to your product or service.  Well, in theory, at least.

‘Liking’ and ‘Loving’

When you’re socializing with your friends, I doubt you’ll point people out to deliberately ‘like’ or ‘love’; it usually follows the laws of natural selection based off characteristics within personas.  When dealing with Facebook, similar ideologies are adopted in terms of ‘liking’ and ‘loving’ products or services; here’s an example of what we’re talking about.

• ‘Like’: People that like an image, person, thought, object or service think its hip, cool, alright, feasible and wouldn’t mind viewing it sometime; they’ll get back to it later if time permits, or share the ‘like’ with someone in their circle who may also appreciate it.
• ‘Love’:  Individuals who love something stay atop current trends, news, embellish in new releases of said item ‘loved’ and would more than likely make their new-found love an active part of their life, much like a person.

Businesses, entrepreneurs and other webmasters have skewed both terminologies relevant to Facebook business properties which cause money wasting, time consuming and direction losing initiatives to erratically happen.

The Scramble For ‘Likes’

In case you’ve missed something while surfing Facebook, your bank account doesn’t magically populate extra digits when somebody ‘likes’ your page.  Your website hit counter doesn’t shoot towards astronomical numbers.  Finally, you’ll not retain consistent customers if they ‘like’ something because you asked them to.  In other words, simply paying for 100,000 Facebook likes substantiates ‘throwing money into the fire’, per se.  Unfortunately, social media professionals still errantly find solace when their Fan Page, or business page, has exponentially higher ‘likes’ every day.

While businessmen and women are tossing money to social media professionals to corral these ‘mass likes’, nothing is being accomplished to attract ‘loves’.  Misplaced business ideologies like this means your shopping carts remain empty, your sales plummet, and maxed-out credit cards take control of your unemployed status, sinking you further into debt instead of rising your product or service towards more amicable sales figures.

Turn ‘Like’ Into ‘Marriage’

Although it’s arbitrary to guess the common business professional’s ulterior motives of wanting ‘likes’, it should be safe to say that one’s goal is to attract customer permanency, the top rung of economic ladders.  In order to turn your thinking more towards ‘marriage’, there needs to be an element of continuity between your Facebook page and website, landing page or blog.  Ask yourself:

–  Would I love this product, service or thought if I were a consumer? If not, why?

–  What is preventing people from liking this? Does it seem ‘repetitious’?

–  Have I adequately represented the features and benefits of liking this service or product?

–  What could people gain from liking this page?

–  Will they love it tomorrow? Or just like it today?

Facebook was meant for socializing; it has turned into numerous other sub-entities, such as the premier platform for sharing product suggestions, a book or image review platform, contest site, gaming arena and much more.  Should your business seek permanent consumer interaction, tapping into the general direction of what people are loving will definitely turn common ‘likes’ into fruitful ‘marriages’.

Summary

Anyone could like anything without further recourse; businesses need to become socially astute should their product or service merit public notoriety.  In Facebook lingo, getting ‘likes’ doesn’t make your product or service plausible; you need to instill the elements of:

–  Excitement

–  Innovative

–  Improved

–  Frugality

Once you’ve developed your website, blog or landing page, and offer products or services that boast these four simplistic sales elements, simply work on developing sales angles which promote exciting reasons to marry your product or service for life, because having consumers ‘liking’ your wares won’t pay the bills or promote business longevity. These Likes should be targeted and link directly into your Inbound Marketing Strategies.