Have you noticed a small decrease in the total number of Page likes on your Facebook Fan Page in the last week? If so, don’t panic!
In a blog post last week, Facebook announced that it would begin removing all voluntarily deactivated and memorialized Facebook accounts from the Page Insights data over the next few weeks. Page admins should expect to see a slight decrease in the number of Page likes as a result of this update.
The company says the primary benefit for this change is that it will provide more meaningful audience data to help businesses better understand what their followers care about. Facebook also said that it has already filtered out likes and comments generated by these inactive accounts from individual Page posts to maintain consistent data. If a voluntarily deactivated account is reactivated, the account will be automatically added back into the total likes for your Facebook Page.
It’s important to note that even though these likes represent real people, they were inactive users. This means you were never reaching them with your brand message in the first place, so it makes more sense for Facebook to remove them in order to provide your business up-to-date insights on the people who actively follow your page.
For example, if your Page has 100 likes and 7 of your followers click through the link in a post, that means that post had a 7 percent click-through rate (CTR) and/or response rate. Let’s say that 10 of those Page likes are inactive users – it would mean that your response rate was closer to 8 percent since those 10 were not being reached, but you wouldn’t be aware of it without this update. Because of this, Facebook Page admins are able to more accurately track the reach and success of their Facebook campaigns and get better results.
If you are still worried that the decrease in Page likes will reflect negatively on your brand, have no fear! The idea that the number of Page likes is an indicator of success for your Facebook Page has been long disproved. The quality of the content you post will always be more important than your number of followers, and a focus on quality content leads to better engagement and KPI in the long run.
Ultimately, the change will deliver more consistent data to Facebook Page owners. This Facebook update, tracking the active users and deleting the inactive ones from your Page count, means that you will now have a better understanding of which users are more likely to engage on social media and, therefore, support your brand and/or buy your products.
Source: Facebook for Business
