You want a cheap, effective engagement tactic for Facebook? Fine.
Post “Like this status if _____.” Fill in the blank with something fundamental related to your brand. For example:
- Smart phones: “Like this status if you love texting!”
- Cars: “Like this status if you love to drive!”
- Cat food: “Like this status if you have a cat!”
See how boring that is?
The sad thing is that it works and it works extremely well. It’s easy for anyone to read that, think “I have a cat!” click the like button, and keep moving onto other half-assed Facebook statuses. Your page quickly builds up huge Edgerank score as more and more people quickly hit that like button.
This is what happens when you’re forced to game an algorithm to reach people. You stop creating interesting, compelling content that tells stories, and instead you just tell people to mindlessly click a button to stay relevant so you can sell people crap they don’t need.
Ugh. It’s a wicked game. But that’s the world we live in.
Just go like my status so more people will read this post.
This is the most boring way to engage people. A brand has to earn my attention and simply asking me to ‘Like’ their whatever it is they want me to like with nothing in return is a huge turnoff. In fact, it makes me want to do the exact opposite — disengage with you completely.
So, you’re not going to like this post? That’s no fun.
I consider myself lucky that I’ve never seen a single “Like my status” status amongst my Facebook friends. Only a few “Copy/paste this status and put it on your wall if you wish there weren’t starving children in the world” statuses.
You are very lucky. Very, very, VERY Lucky.
Asking people to ‘Like’ stuff is lame. I look at many band pages on Facebook and they have it set up so you can’t listen to their music unless you ‘Like’ their page first. Well, that just makes me navigate away from their page as I don’t know if I ‘like’ them yet…
In a similar way I’ve never asked anyone to like my page and it makes it super nice when somebody does. In that genuinely go ‘awwww’ inside.
I realised how much I’d mindlessly liked the other day and had a good purge. Purged some ‘friends’ too
I’m sure most people ignore what their friends ‘like’ in their feeds anyway, which is surely the point of asking people to like stuff so it appears in front of more eyes. Particularly those that ‘Like’ every status update on my personal page. It devalues the ‘like’ in a way.
“oh, Matt’s liked that, what a surprise…”
It’s all a little flawed.
Social proof is overrated. If everyone jumped off a bridge, I’d just tweet about it.
Question remains: Will i then click that “i like your tweet button”
Sadly, you just described 90% of the “strategy” of 99% of the “social marketing experts” in my area.
Like my strategy if you think “like this status” is a strategy!
Genius! You should totally give webinars on this, dude.
I have given a webinar. It was hardcore.
You are so right and OMG, I love that video! I didn’t think I could actually watch it for OVER two minutes, but, I could not stop watching it! Awesome!!!!
Still giggling over here…
This video is epic. I love everything about it.
I find a lot of posts from major companies boring. They have a formula: 1. make a comment. 2. Promote a link. 3. Ask a question/ask people to like your post.