May be the real "truth" about FACEBOOK Advertisements + Likes

[Wozcreative]

A friend of mine had posted a very surprising (to me) but logical explanation of how the Facebook advertisements and "like's" work. If you're a business that advertises on Facebook to collect likes, you may want to watch this video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

[Wozcreative]

Though here is another article explaining why it may have seemed to be fake:
Facebook Fraud Response: Are Facebook Ads a Waste of Money? - Jon Loomer Digital (http://www.jonloomer.com/2014/02/11/facebook-fraud-response/)

[LeadMaster]

Came across this vid with decent insight into what kind of likes you are likely to obtain through FB advertising. Yes we have obtained a number of likes from questionable profiles when conducting Facebook advertising.


http://youtu.be/oVfHeWTKjag

[Wozcreative]

lol i think i posted this before you.. i guess its going around on FB.

[JohnF]

Not sure about Facebook ads, but likes are easy to overrate. Wouldn't quite call them meaningless, but it's far, far better to have your content shared by a few than "liked" by many. I've met people who measure social media success by likes- it's madness. He makes a great point about wanting to actively avoid phony likes- I generally follow the rule of assuming disengaged audiences aren't worth having, but it's great to see an algorithmic explanation of why that rule works. Sounds like a good argument for having a Facebook page, but promoting it entirely through off-Facebook means. Or you could just become this guy:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/CK62I-4cuSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[JohnF]

If you look at the kind of bullshit that usually gets advertised on Facebook, the fact that your favorite brands aren't using it should tell you something. All I see using Facebook ads are stupid viral sites, and tiny startups who likely just don't know yet if it works or not. I don't see it being used by companies that are a) legit and b) have the expertise to know for sure that it works.

[Freelancier]

I have a customer who is using FB advertising to gain users for their web site, not "likes". "Likes" aren't cash, and smart business people want the result of any marketing campaign to be revenue at a lower cost. My customer wants paying customers and he's finding that he can acquire his paying customers at a lower cost using FB vs. Google.

[LaurenEll]

On my timeline I have seen image ads featuring social media queens I follow as well as Nature Box but I have liked their pages already. I immediately noticed faulty results when doing facebook advertising for likes because many profiles were not complete and did not jive with the keywords I used.

[Harold Mansfield]

I have a cleint that has used FB advertising for months now and it seems to generate genuine likes, at least it seems so from the interactions on the page.
However, I've also tested it. Once it seemed to work well, and another time it didn't. Again these were just tests, not an actual campaign so I'm still torn.

Promoted posts seem to work better than "Like" campaigns. And straight ads seem to work better for website traffic.
That's just my experience. The kind of business and ad has a lot to do with which is going to be better for each.

[RickGrantham]

This is a great video. The results are consistent with my results, but I hadn't yet put all the pieces together yet.

Looks like FB is done for me

Rick

[JohnF]

After thinking it over a little more, two things come to mind. First, Facebook is probably best used with the goal of channelling people to your actual website- separate the really engaged users from the ones with only passing interest. And second, go for quality over quantity with Facebook posts. Low-quality posts will actually hurt you by increasing the ratio of fake followers to real ones.

[Harold Mansfield]

This post promoted me to check out my page followers to see where in the world they are from.

Countries

United States of America
United Kingdom
Germany
Italy
Canada
Australia
India
Mexico
Romania
Philippines

That all makes perfect sense. Most of those are heavy Trance and House Music markets

Cities

Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
London, England, United Kingdom
New York, NY
Chicago, IL
Dallas, TX
Detroit, MI
Bucharest, Bucuresti, Romania
Silay City, Silay, Philippines
Bacolod CIty, Bacolod, Philippines

Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Huge dance music and nightclub markets.

I'm going to run a cheap "like" campaign and compare.

[Harold Mansfield]

I'm running a small like campaign right now, targeting specific cities, interests and age groups.

I've been checking each new like to look at the profiles and for the most part they all seem to be real people who live where I targeted, are active and have been for a while on Facebook.

Also, judging by what I see on the walls that are accessible to me they are interested in what I targeted them for.

So I'm not really seeing any likes from fake or inactive profiles.

[KristineS]

Likes are really just distractions and noise for the most part. We've run several Facebook ad campaigns, and they've worked well for us. Our target market uses Facebook extensively, and we've been able to narrow our target groups based on interests. Each campaign has had a call to action though. We ask people to ask for a sample or request more information or something. We also do push liking the page, but that's secondary. The results have been positive. We've seen people who've made requests turn to customers, which is what we want to see.

I don't believe we're getting many fake likes. When I've looked, most of the people seem to be in our target market or target interest groups. I've purposely kept the growth of the page slow, as I didn't want an artificially inflated like count that had no real relevance. So far that seems to be working for us.

[Harold Mansfield]

I've purposely kept the growth of the page slow, as I didn't want an artificially inflated like count that had no real relevance. So far that seems to be working for us.

Exactly! I want to engage with each new like as long as I can. Part of the campaign that I'm doing is promoted posts, which actually works pretty well. At the moment I'm promoting an event with my affiliate link for ticket sales and I'm pretty surprised that it actually works, even though I made a few mistakes on it.

I'm sure when I get the method fine tuned it will be even better,

[SkyyCreaTech]

Facebook is good for branding but not sales. Also, not all likes are fake.

[KristineS]

Facebook is good for branding but not sales. Also, not all likes are fake.

See, these are the kind of blanket statements that make me nuts. In your experience, Facebook has been good for your branding, but not for your sales. That doesn't mean it's bad for sales for everyone. We've used Facebook quite successfully to create new customers and generate sales. So it can work. It depends on how the page is managed, what sort of content you create, who you present that content to and whether your market is or isn't on Facebook. Every company will have a different experience, so any kind of universal statement about what does or doesn't work should be qualified. There is no absolute when it comes to social media.

As for all likes being fake, I don't believe anyone said that. What we are saying is that likes may not matter as much as people want to think they do. At best, they're a measure of a momentary capture of someone's attention. What counts is not that someone liked something, but that you inspired someone to do something, whether it was comment on your page, share something you posted, or buy from your business. Likes are meaningless, it's action that counts.

(Can you tell I'm gearing up to do a social media seminar next week? :) I've been thinking about this stuff way too much!)

[Harold Mansfield]

There is one thing that I'm not happy about with Facebook. The limited exposure that you have with your own fans. Some people have estimated that Facebook only shows your posts to 1%-2% of the people who have asked to see your updates. To me that's BS and defeats the entire purpose of having pages, but what are you going to do? Complain? Would it even matter? Besides, it's free.

I have tried promoted posts and (according to FB's metrics) $15 can get you exposure on 1000's of news feeds. Engagement fluctuates, but I haven't tested it thoroughly to pin point whether is FB or just me not writing engaging enough copy on some things.

[Freelancier]

What we are saying is that likes may not matter as much as people want to think they do. At best, they're a measure of a momentary capture of someone's attention. What counts is not that someone liked something, but that you inspired someone to do something, whether it was comment on your page, share something you posted, or buy from your business. Likes are meaningless, it's action that counts.

This. It needs to be yelled from the rooftops. And it needs to be applied to ALL marketing activities you do for your business. If you aren't measuring your marketing tactics by some outcome you want that will move your business forward, then you're probably wasting your time and money on that tactic. A "like" to me is: that's nice, but why did the person stop short of the outcome I really wanted?

[Harold Mansfield]

OK, so after about a month of testing I've pretty much come to the conclusion that spending money for page promotion on Facebook is a waste of time.
Sure, you'll get "likes" that you seemingly can target by geographic location and interest. However, no matter how many fans you get Facebook is still going to limit how many actually see the content that you post.

Therefore the only way to get more eyeballs on your content, is to pay more for your post to be promoted. To me this is unsustainable. You'd be better off just running straight ads that send people to your website and giving them another way to subscribe to your content.

My wrap up? Facebook is the worst way to promote your content, because the majority of people who subscribe to it on Facebook are never going to see it. You can't sustain paying to promote every blog post just to get eyes on it. Promoted posts still seem viable, but only if it's a post that you can directly make money on.

If you ask me, Facebook for business has lost most of it's usefulness.

[Cassandra]

OK, so after about a month of testing I've pretty much come to the conclusion that spending money for page promotion on Facebook is a waste of time.
Sure, you'll get "likes" that you seemingly can target by geographic location and interest. However, no matter how many fans you get Facebook is still going to limit how many actually see the content that you post.

Therefore the only way to get more eyeballs on your content, is to pay more for your post to be promoted. To me this is unsustainable. You'd be better off just running straight ads that send people to your website and giving them another way to subscribe to your content.

My wrap up? Facebook is the worst way to promote your content, because the majority of people who subscribe to it on Facebook are never going to see it. You can't sustain paying to promote every blog post just to get eyes on it. Promoted posts still seem viable, but only if it's a post that you can directly make money on.

If you ask me, Facebook for business has lost most of it's usefulness.

Facebook boils my blood. What is the point in creating a page, and building a wonderful following of faithful 'likers' just so they don't see all your posts? They like you. They clearly want to see them. Let them stay like that. Further than that, when you're paying for more likes, they're still liking you because they wanted to, now you've paid facebook for them, and they're still not seeing your post. I wish more people (big businesses) understood that. If everyone stopped, facebook would go down, and something would take it's place. Hopefully with better management, and perhaps an actual customer support line.

However unfortunate, I have to work within the confines of facebook, because my target market is there. Ugh. I wish they would just play fair.

[MedTutor]

Wow, I was honestly thinking about paying for a Facebook Ad campaign (which I've never done) but after seeing this video I think I will reconsider! Very interesting. However, I just want to point out that Likes do matter on your facebook page - more ppl are willing to like your page if you already have a lot of likes. People tend to follow the crowd, so to speak.

[briancarter]

If you use website conversion ads and monitor the response, you will have actual sales or actual lead emails from your Facebook ads. Then you know it's not fake.