The power of 'likes'

Facebook marketing has become extremely important aspect of online marketing and social media strategies.

With Facebook, one of the important tools for a successful marketing solution is the Facebook like.

The Facebook likes are very popular for many reasons. With likes, your message status, links and all other posts you place on your fan page will look appealing and worth looking at. With Facebook likes, the more likes you have on your fan page, the better authority you have on your niche. With Facebook likes, you can get a chance to meet people who actually support or follow your website or blog or buy things from you. As a business or as personality online, the Facebook likes are incredibly beneficial in ensuring that your presence is quantifiable and you know exactly how your market interacts with you.

Probably Facebook likes are good for creating awareness. It’s like when Starbucks releases its new promotion – its posts it on Facebook and if I see that my friend has liked the post – I will probably read it as well. But it greatly depends… Maybe because I am a marketing student and I act differently and I think about too many things.. Yes, it creates awareness, but it doesn’t mean I will be hooked up with the promotion. Firstly, it is all about the person who ‘liked’ – if that’s a simple acquaintance, or a friend, a colleague or a best friend? It depends how popular that person is – if it is not from my ‘close friends’ list – I may not even see this like. But when I saw it, I might not go and check that new promotion. Is it quantifiable? I am really interested in correlation between Facebook likes and sales.

So what is the purpose of a Facebook like?

Every company is trying to get as many likes with the post. The same with people – they post it to get many likes? Does it mean getting becoming popular, or just that you are social – and you post as often to be visible? Or just because Facebook is so powerful – so you just release your news there – because it is easier and faster?  I mean if Nike has that many followers – it is just an easy way to connect with them through social media – fast, quick and efficient? Probably everything combined together.

Facebook Like 

• Tool for self-expression

• It is about passion and interests

• Boosts personality and self esteem

• Social connectivity
• Interaction

• Provides a sense of belonging and existence

• Used for viral effects
•  It also gives an idea what is your ‘target audience’ like and what do they like

• It also gives an opportunity to explore which post generated more likes – the most popular ones and see if there is a pattern in topics, etc

That’s a great tool and it has many opportunities. I can list and list and list them.

Here is an example of learning of your target audience.

After watching the video, Kia’s Facebook fans can play a simple game called, “Guess What Nadal Likes” and choose seven things that they believe Nadal likes. Kia then chose two winners with the most  correct answers for a trip to the 2012 Australian Open.

Another interesting example is Snickers and its recent (early March) twitter campaign. Yes, I know – it is not Facebook, but still – Twitter retweet and the purpose of a tweet in my opinion is similar as the purpose of Facebook post.

Snickers, through its parent company Mars, arranged for five celebrities to make humorous but rather incongruous tweets in quick succession. Their initial tweets made no reference to Snickers, but contained content that you would never expect from that particular celebrity, and which therefore piqued followers’ interest and made some wonder whether the celebrity’s Twitter account had been hacked. 

For example, Katie Price starting tweeting about the current economic situation, with posts including “Great news about China’s latest GDP figures!!” and Rio Ferdinand tweeted about his new found love of knitting with tweets such as “Can’t wait 2 get home from training and finish that cardigan!!”. For each celebrity, their final tweet was a reveal tweet, showing that it had all been part of a stunt for Snickers. That final tweet said “You are not yourself when you are hungry @SnickersUK #hungry #spon” (and contained a link to a photo of the celebrity eating a Snickers).

Later, there has been a discussion from ASA point of view, but I leave it as it is. For me, it was an interesting campaign and obviously something unusual. But that’s from the marketing and advertising student’s point of view. But what I am interested in… Okay, if I saw this campaign on twitter- would I buy snickers after that? Well, actually Snickers is one of my favourite chocolate bars, but I don’t think that after seeing this campaign and seeing these tweets, I would go to a shop and buy myself snickers.

So that’s the question I am mostly interested in: do ‘likes’ and ‘tweet’ increase sales? I would like to find out more about it from the digital experts.

According to 'evidence' I have found…

Facebook likes build you a captive audience of potential customers. Likes on your Facebook page posts increase fans' desire to buy and increase the percentage of potential customers who actually buy. According to data from Razorfish, Econsultancy.com, and Social Media Today, 34.66% of Facebook fans will consider the brand when they're in the market for one of the brand's products or services. And 33.92% of fans recommend the brand to their friends. In both of these cases, Facebook is 10% more influential than Twitter.

Though my curiosity is not fully satisfied and I would like to know and learn more about the issue.