Have the likes on your company page recently started to go down, instead of up? There's a reason for this. Facebook have been having a tidy up... Facebook is attempting to make the 'likes' of business pages more genuine. A blog released by Facebook on 5th March 2015, entitled Making Page Likes More Meaningful, explains the changes.
Company page likes
Companies use Facebook Pages as a platform to showcase their business and engage with their target audience. To make sure the number of likes each company page displays is a genuine figure, from currently used accounts and active members of the Facebook community, the changes to the algorithm used to display these figures has been adjusted.
Likes from memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts will no longer be displayed in the company page likes total. This ensures that when you visit the company page, you are not given the wrong impression of how many people have actually liked this page.
As a business, the reduction will only prove to give you more genuine and up to date insights on the people who are engaging with your company page.
Page admins - What to expect
The next few weeks will possibly begin to show reductions of your pages likes figures. As Facebook said in their blog, 'it is important to remember though, that these removed likes represent people who were already inactive on Facebook'.
The good news is that if the deactivated account becomes active again, it will automatically be recounted as a like on your company page.
The information, insights and analytics of Facebook will become more meaningful, more genuine and will only serve to benefit your business. Your engagement with your 'fans' will also become more meaningful and this way likers will have increased trust in your company page.
Personal Users
If you've seen or heard the rumor that Facebook is going about deleting inactive accounts or friends, from the social media platform - then worry not. Whilst Facebook did indeed change their algorithm last week (12th March to be precise) , there will be absolutely no impact on the personal user. That includes your friends, no matter how actively they 'like' you.
Facebook hoaxes and chain mails are common. If you've seen a message or post like this, it's a hoax and you should probably just delete it and pay it no mind...
