Oh dear.
Many bloggers and commentors have read Mark Cuban‘s recent blog about Facebook‘s edgerank story sorting algorithm. One could argue that at the level of Cuban’s business, small problems become big problems quickly. But, on Facebook as in most walks of life, being “large” does have some advantages.
One advantage is Facebook’s Page Insights. Let’s take the smallest business. In Facebook terms, it’s this:
- a one person profile with no friends
- one page owned/managed by that person with several likes
If you want to build up a following quickly, you need to build up some Likes. Be Liked. Or, at least, look like you’re liked. You probably get the idea. This is marketing, after all.
So, how about running a competition? Provide an incentive for someone to come and “Like” you. How about asking current customers (those who, presumably, like you anyway) to submit a review and hit “Like”. Great.
Except it’s not great, really. To use Facebook’s Page Insights, you need 30 Likes. Yes, it’s not a tall ask, but why? The problems with Facebook for small business start with this innocent enough little idiom. No, there should not be a 30-Like threshold to see who Like’d you. There should be 1.
Facebook’s habit of making it hard to access and understand your own data, or data relating to you, stems from the misguided notion that building up more visible momentum in your brand’s page means you’re more like to find Facebook “sticky”, and consequently more important (vital, even) for the success of your on-line marketing.
Does Google Analytics insist that you have over 30 visitors per month to your site before it can be bothered to report this back?
Related articles
Mark Cuban: Facebook Is Straying From Its Original Mission(allfacebook.com)- The problem is EdgeRank – in a way Mark Cuban is right(socialmediaphilanthropy.com)
- Four factors behind Facebook’s EdgeRank(adigaskell.org)
