Lost Facebook Page Likes? This might be why...

by Startacus Admin

Feeling the Facebook fan fallout?

If you were one of these social media savvy startups with a lot of Facebook followers, you probably noticed a sharp, sudden or even just subtle drop off in your numbers - however don’t panic! It’s not actually the end of the world; Facebook are simply doing purge work on a lot of their databases.

In a bid to ensure accuracy of pages, as well as maintaining their membership information, Facebook are choosing to remove the likes, and as such pages, links and numbers shared, from various business and promotion pages across their platform. In a Facebook blog post, they describe how it will help businesses utilize their site more accurately by removing ‘in memoriam’ pages and pages that have not been active over prolonged periods, so basically, people who don’t use Facebook and those who are deceased and can’t use Facebook.

What does this mean for startups?

Well, depending on where a startup’s ‘likes’ came from, it could mean a rather severe and drastic decline of their numbers and as such social media reach, or it could mean literally losing a few followers more than you would have any other month or so. Of course a lot of these can also take on a more serious tone, when you play the percentage game – more followers before the purge could mean more of a downturn in comparison with a page with less, despite both only losing the same percentage.

Should you be worried?

Despite a few hiccups on the initial purge, like for example, Etsy losing nearly all of their followers, a lot of these problems and mistakes are being dealt with and are usually rectified within a day or two of it being reported. Facebook’s team seem to be very much on the ball, so it’s nothing to be terribly worried about. In fact, apparently likes are only purged from people who have manually removed their own page – either permanently or temporarily. As for startups or small businesses having to worry – it seems unlikely, unless you had obtained your likes from less than legitimate sources.

What to do?

Relax and wait for the purge to happen, take stock of followers you may have lost, and actively make sure that your marketing strategies stay in effect. If you lose a few dozen, it’s not the apocalypse, but if you lose thousands, damage control is absolutely advised.

Speaking of Facebook, why not take a look at our own Facebook Page, give it a like and stay up to date with your daily dose of Self-Starter, SME and Startup news :)

And of course, if you are feed up with Facebook, then feel free to read up on the 99 Days of Freedom Project

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• #facebook likes
• #facebook
• #facebook cull

Published on: 20th March 2015