New Post has been published on Simple Biz Support Blog
New Post has been published on http://www.simplebizsupportblog.com/social-networking/facebook-likes-business-page-important-seo/
Facebook Likes For Business Page - How Important Are They For SEO?
<object width=”560″ height=”315″><param name=”movie” value=”//www.youtube.com/v/rhDOXGV24R8?hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”//www.youtube.com/v/rhDOXGV24R8?hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”560″ height=”315″ allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”></embed></object>
Hey, there everybody it’s Ryan Perry with Simple Biz Support. Today must be Wednesday because it is the beginning of a weekly hangout on Google that I’m doing with the co-owner of ICT Marketing, Sarah Giometti. Welcome, Sarah.
Sarah Giometti: Hi, Ryan.
RP: Hi, thank you for taking the time to talk with me and I’m looking forward to meeting with you weekly. And talking about social media and how it affects business visibility which a lot of people associate with SEO, getting visibility on Google. And we know over the last couple of years that the Google algorithms have started to favor brands and websites that have strong social media, and that’s why I have you involved in these weekly conversations ’cause I think it’s really important for both of our audiences to understand the importance that social media has today in making your website visible on Google.
RP: Alright, and today specifically we are going to talk about Facebook likes. And it’s not liking a picture but we’re actually talking about for your business page, how many people actually like your business page. If you can give me a quick synopsis of why it’s important not only for your brand visibility on Facebook but also from an SEO point of view. Why having more than, let’s say, 100 likes on your business page and more importantly for small businesses. Obviously national companies like, Coca-Cola, Ford, GM, they’re gonna have thousands probably hundreds of thousands and a lot of celebrities have over a million likes. However, for the small business, both of you and I are in Sonoma County, why is it important for small business owners to have more than say 100 or 200 likes for their business page?
SG: It’s all about exposure and branding. Social media is a branding and community tool. So you’re trying to build a community online with your existing and prospective customers. So obviously the more followers you that you have, the more people will be hearing your message and learning about your company, and your services. So even in a local community, like us being in Sonoma county, there are about half a million people in Sonoma county, that’s a pretty significant number, and Santa Rosa alone is about 170,000. About 85% of those people are on Facebook alone. And Facebook… People spend 80-90% of their mobile phone use on social media. So the people are there. If companies aren’t there, they’re not in front of their customers or their potential customers.
RP: Okay. So I’m a small business owner, I’ve got… I didn’t take a look, maybe I should have. I know I’ve got a couple hundred followers and I post relatively inconsistently. I’m trying to get better at it. I’d like to post at least once or twice a week. But having, let’s say, 200 followers, what does that really mean? Because my understanding is in the last couple of years, Facebook has throttled back on the amount of visibilities that business owners have. Even with those people that have said, “Yes, I like you,” and therefore I’m assuming as a business owner, they want to see what I’m posting on Facebook.
SG: You would naturally assume that and most of us would think the same thing. I chose to like a page and follow and hear their content, that means I really want to have it. Facebook looks at it from a relevant topic or relevant content standpoint. That if you, as a consumer, are not interacting with a page on a regular basis you may not really be interested in their information anymore, and so you’ll see it less and less. Facebook does throttle it and even more recently, last couple of months, there are a couple of company… They’re out there to make money. They’re a business. And so they’re pushing brands to spend more and more money on advertising to reach even their existing followers.
SG: So if you only have a couple of hundred likes, you’re gonna see less than 10%, sometimes less then 2% of your followers will see your posts. And the more irregularly you post, the less people are going to see it. So with 200, you’ll be lucky to have 20-25 to see any given post. Obviously that varies, however that’s about the average.
RP: Okay, so there’s two things that caught my attention. One, we’re lucky maybe a 10% of my viewers are actually seeing my posts. And then because I’m inconsistent, that could actually be affecting that percentage? It maybe actually driving it down?
SG: Correct. That will… Because you’re not there often enough, it’s that “out of sight, out of mind” thought process.
SG: That you’re not here very often, they don’t have the opportunity to interact with you more, so then you just become less relevant in the news feed. Because people are following tens of hundreds of pages sometimes.
RP: Right, okay. Actually that makes sense because I always tell my clients that from an SEO point of view, Google is always looking for fresh content on your website, that’s why blogging is very important. That way we’re always putting new content on the website that Google can see it. So that says, “Hey, we’re active. We’re not stale. We’re not going old.” So that psychology, if you will, as far as a business plan makes sense. So Facebook is taking the same approach and saying, “Look, if you’re not engaging why should we promote your page essentially?”
SG: Absolutely, it’s the same content that you approach with SEO with any marketing aspect and all the internet marketing parts of the puzzle, that if you’re not doing fresh new content, you’re just going to be throttled behind everyone else who is.
RP: Okay. Do you have a recommendation for users then, that maybe have been using Facebook consistently or are thinking about using Facebook for the first time in their business, what a minimum recommendation would be for posting? Do we need to post every single day on our business page? Or can we get by with once a week or once every two weeks?
SG: Anything consistent is better than nothing consistent. However, we do recommend, if you can get up to daily, that is the… Really, the recommended benchmark, once a day.
SG: And what’s great about Facebook is you can schedule posts, so that you’re not actually sitting there every single day all 30, 31 days of the month. You can schedule the month out, and you save yourself a lot of time, and then you just have to monitor interactions.
RP: Okay. And then companies like yourself also will manage that for a fee for a client?
SG: Correct. Correct. Most of our social media clients, we find all the content, and post for them, and monitor. So, they never have to touch it if they don’t want to.
RP: Okay. Then the second problem then is, okay, I’ve got my 200 followers. I’m posting on a regular daily basis. I’m getting my one post out, but if I’m only seeing or, I should say if only 10% of my like people are actually seeing my content, what’s the point?
SG: Right. And so, most of our small business clients when they come to us, we consider them to be… The first strategy would be a growth strategy to get the number of likes up so that their reach can improve, both organic and paid. Facebook is throttling it even more. Pushing people to boost their posts so that your followers, all your followers, actually see it or at least most of them.
RP: Okay. Do you have an example you can show us?
SG: I do. Let me turn up this screen share. So, here is my page, and we’ve done a lot of recent boosted posts. And we’re spending about $5, $10 dollars a post. Now we have about 1,847 likes on our page, and our normal range is anywhere, as you can see here for organic, 20 to 107. So that’s less than 10% of our page people are seeing it organically. Whereas right up here, we’ve boosted one where the boosted paid reach was 19,824 where our total reach was 20,120.
RP: Okay. Can you give me a quick favor here, Sarah?
RP: For those that don’t understand when you say organic, what do you mean by… What are those numbers when you say organic and then…
SG: Organic means… Sorry.
RP: When you talk about boosted.
SG: So, organic are people who we did not pay for them to see it. So, because of, we spent a little bit of money, the people who just naturally saw it, it showed up in their newsfeed on our side for free, or people who interacted with the post, their friends saw it. And so it’s that organic reach where you’re reaching your followers and their friends and community without spending any money. And so our normal non boosted, non paid posts, we’re seeing an organic natural reach of anywhere from 20 to over a hundred. But by spending $5 to $10 dollars to promote a really important post, we increased our… The organic side of it. Although, you know, 20,000 people total saw our post. We paid for about 19,800, exposure for 19,800 people, which means the organic free side was now 300. So, we went from anywhere from 20 to 100 people seeing it organically to 300. So we’ve tripled our organic reach just by spending a little bit of money.
RP: Alright. That’s very interesting. So by doing that, you’re getting greater visibility. I guess the big question is, if we’re, again, so me being a small business owner, I’ve got a couple hundred people that like me, and I go, “Okay, I want to start a social media campaign.” I now know I need to start posting on a regular, preferably, a daily basis. But, I know that less than 10% because I haven’t been posting are actually gonna see mine. So, by spending five to ten dollars and boosting my post, I’m gonna get greater visibility. But what’s the chance of those people actually liking my page? I mean, is that how… Are we essentially buying likes by putting quality content? Is that how I get more likes so I can hit 1000?
SG: There are several ways to do… To gain likes. Yes, by boosting these posts we did pick up about, I think, overall, we picked up about 50, 70 new likes, just by boosting the content. So, it was relevant enough content that we picked up extra likes. There are also straight ad campaigns, which are usually the main thing that we run when we are building likes.
SG: You are paying to get exposure to people. However, you’re not necessarily buying the likes because they still are choosing whether or not to like you.
RP: Alright, very good. Alright. Well, I think there’s some great content there. So, basically, I think the synopsis of what we heard today is that one, to be effective on social media, you need to post on a regular basis, ideally daily. However, a lot of small business owners are very busy. That may not be the right… There may not be enough time in the day for them to do that. There are some tools that Facebook has such as being able to post in the future, so that you can do a number of posts say within an hour, and then schedule them out for the next week or two. The other option would be to pay for services like from yourself with ICT Marketing. And also boosting… Spending a couple dollars on boosted posts can, not only drive visibility, but it can also generate more likes for your Facebook website.
SG: Correct. All of that is completely accurate.
RP: Alright, wonderful. For those people that are interested in learning more about you, Sarah, how can they find your website, find your Facebook page, give you a call, whatever?
SG: They can find us… Our website is ict-marketing.com. And on Facebook, we are facebook.com/ict-marketing dot… Not dot com on that one. [laughter] And all of our contact information are on both places. We’re pretty easy to find.
RP: Alright. Sounds good. Well, folks, if you have any questions about social media, the whole likes, boosted pages, how to get more people to like your website, Sarah Giometti is the gal. She is the one that I use for my clients. Sarah, I appreciate your time today and I hope you have a fabulous Wednesday.
SG: Thank you very much, Ryan.
RP: Alright. Thank you. And everybody else, thank you very much for joining us and have a great day. Bye.
