Why are companies with Facebook profiles on the hunt for more “Likes”?
It could be one of the following reasons or in most cases all of them:
To gain more social media fans, to gain brand exposure, to position their brands in the eyes of the consumers, and ultimately to effectively utilise this medium to run competitions and promotions.
As the Social Media Expert at SAbest it intrigues me as to why Facebook users do not want to like a Company or Brand on Facebook. I did some research to see why and what expectations people have when they do interact with a Company or Brand socially.

There are various reasons why Facebook fans don’t “Like” a Company on Facebook:

• 54% don’t want to be bombarded with messages or ads,
• 45% don’t want to give any companies access to personal profile information,
• 29% don’t want companies to contact them through Facebook,
• 23% don’t see the benefit of it,
• 4% don’t understand what it means to “Like” a company.

If a Facebook fan likes your Company page, it is very important to observe that they do so with an expectation. People don’t just “Like” every page on Facebook, they “Like” it for a reason. Fans like Company pages to gain access to exclusive content, events, sales or promotions.

47% of users “Like” a page to receive updates about the company, persons or organisation in their newsfeed. 26% want to interact with the page owner. The survey also shows that only 24% want to be contacted through other social media channels such as Twitter once they have interacted with a company on Facebook. 37% do not expect anything to happen.

Media such as photos and videos always perform well on Facebook. It grabs attention in newsfeeds and it is easy to share.

Just ask. People like to interact with each other so ask for those opinions on topics, and if you want your fans to share favourite content, go ahead – ask them.

One of a fan’s expectations is that the page owners will thank them for their replies and for sharing their opinions. From time to time, talk about things other than your products. Wish them happy holidays. Ask them fun questions or to share their personal stories.

Remember, if a fan likes your page; interact with them, because it’s one of the biggest expectations any Facebook Fan has.

After visiting search engine strategies London this past week there was a clear and increased interest in Social Media at the conference. So we thought it would be good to discuss how you should integrate social media into your business.  Before we can do this though we need to help you understand what social media is.

Well this isn’t as clear-cut as you might think as social media has been confused as being certain social platforms used to generate social media. For instance when you mention social media most people immediately think Twitter or Facebook. While both of these are social media platforms social media is not just about the platforms users use to generate social media.

Social media is seen as media that is social in nature. Thus generated by people and not only by corporations, as was the case in early stages of the Web’s existence. This description form Wikipedia sums up Social Media quite well for me – “Social media is content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.”.

This means that any platform that allows users to publish information online is social. Even Wikipedia’s 3,202,005 articles, which have mostly been generated by the public, is a form of social media.

So now that you have an idea of what social media entails would you consider the following example as a form of social media? A UK based online bank has taken customer ratings made online and started posting it in it’s offline advertising on underground trains. Is this still social media or has it become traditional media?

Customer ratings are a form of social media that most companies don’t even recognize as being social. For a lot of companies this might be a customer service agent on it’s own as it encourages people to buy products by using comments gauge if a product will suite them. In the same manner this may discourage customers from buying a product that doesn’t meet there needs. Because customers don’t buy product that will fulfill their needs it indirectly lowers after sales customers support.

So now that you have an idea of what social media is we will show why you should be implementing it in your business and who it will benefit your business. Our next post will be on why you should be implementing social media in you company.