So after reading lots of our Facebook Pages articles you’ve become dead set on skyrocketing your fan base. After investing in advertising and growing a user base, you suddenly realize that you’ve extracted little benefit from the page despite having an ever growing number of fans. What went wrong? Is this new type of marketing a sham? Here’s how Facebook marketing can end up being worthless.
Your Page Has Become A Joke
The author Gregory Levey recently saw his Facebook Page sky rocket to over 693,000 fans after the new title of his book, “Shut Up, I’m Talking”, became the brunt of a joke. Rather than using clever marketing tactics, Levey ended up sparking a mass wave of new fans who found the phrase to be clever. Unfortunately, those fans didn’t actually care about his book.
Becoming the brunt of the joke is not a good situation. In all honesty, this appears to be a rare fluke. However if your Page title is extremely catchy, you could end up with a lot of fans who don’t care at all about what you have to say! I can’t say that I have a solution to Levey’s problems, however I’m sure he can figure out some useful way to benefit from the page.
You Targeted The Wrong People
Driving a few initial fans to your Facebook Page to get things going is always a good idea. As I explain to others on a regular basis, you need an initial boost to help you gain traction. It’s the effect of social validation. When someone lands on your site and sees that hundreds (or thousands) of people already like your Page, you are much more likely to attract them as other people also like you.
However if you run a Facebook ad campaign which targets all people who like shopping for Versace clothes but you sell ebooks on making money online, you probably aren’t going to get much conversion. As I covered in our Facebook Pages guide, defining your target market is a critical step in your Facebook marketing campaign.
Conclusion
There are a million reasons why Facebook marketing can be extremely effective, however there are a number of instances where people use Facebook’s various marketing tools ineffectively. While there are numerous examples of Facebook marketing gone wrong, the two examples here should help give you some perspective about why the fan count of a Facebook Page is not all that matters.
![[Inside Social Apps 2012]](http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/allfacebook2/images/ISA2012_336x100_F_RegisterNow.gif)
![[AllFacebook Stats: Facebook Analytics for Your Business]](http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/allfacebook2/images/stpro_allfacebookstats.gif)
![[How can Facebook change your business?]](http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/allfacebook2/images/FMB_A_MAY2011_336x100_F.gif)
A fellow forum member asked recently why they shouldn't join a "like" farm to get more fans and I tried to explain that they wouldn't be true fans, and hardly worth marketing to (they sell them for £15 for 5,000 fans on ebay now). The response was – "well it will make the page look more popular." Next time when they ask for advice – I will just redirect them here. No helping some people…
Comment by Emma Ewers — August 30, 2010 @ 9:59 am
What! My fans worthless??? You must be joking, I know each one of them and that to me is worth a fortune!
Comment by Eva Ulian — August 30, 2010 @ 10:00 am
Eva, did you read the article?
Comment by Joe Jiko — August 30, 2010 @ 10:06 am
Joe, this article is all about selling and not socializing as facebook is such a service- so I am just trying to put the emphasis back where it belongs.
Comment by Eva Ulian — August 30, 2010 @ 10:19 am
For a lot of people Facebook Fan Pages are about monetizing Facebook. Like all other new marketing ideas it will work for some and not others but as time goes on people will figure out how to make it work better.
Comment by Alan Gross — August 30, 2010 @ 11:55 am
EXACTLY! Same goes for Twitter! People will pay for 10,000 followers, but in the end are stuck in a sea of useless tweets and no one will connect back with them. What good are page fans or followers if no one will engage in the content?
It's also why your "How to get XX,000 fans in XX days" is great advice, but a little misleading in terms of cost per fan. Gathering qualified fans that care and interact where with your page doesn't always come as cheap at $.05 in certain fields…especially when spam-ish tactics are not condoned (working for .edus)
Let's keep reminding people what they really need to focus on- great content, communication, and concentrated audience segments
Comment by Christa Watson — August 30, 2010 @ 1:38 pm
Great article. Fan count at some point is irrelevant. Relevant engagement is everything. I check the pages of many brands and people. I think Monster Energy is one of the most well run and effective pages. They use the page globally and seem to have engaged the planet on a level that few, if any other brands can match.
Comment by Tim — August 30, 2010 @ 2:37 pm
I love my page and i hope facebook wont change the rules anytime they like
Comment by Chanel — August 30, 2010 @ 11:07 pm
2 Emma Ewers, actually your friend had a point.. people are more likely to engage in case there are already thousands of people in in comparison to a page with less than 100 fans.. but that's the only benefit & I think there's no point of going way more than 1000 fans
Comment by fbml guy — August 31, 2010 @ 3:57 am
You're right! Half of the fans on your page may not even care about what you do. I have thank a couple of people for becoming a fan and they were not sure what the heck I was talking about. So, targeting the right audience is the key. At least, they can provide some feedback and participate on your wall discussion.
Comment by Nan ross — August 31, 2010 @ 5:53 am
i reject anyone people who have more than 300 facebook fans to be my facebook friends! they have enough "friends" they dont need me, I dont need them, b/c most likely, they are marketers selling stuffs I dont even need in my next lifetime!
Comment by dollsaga — September 24, 2010 @ 5:49 pm
"Your comment must be approved by the site admins before it will appear publicly"–coward, aint you afraid of letting people to post the truth!
Comment by dollsaga — September 24, 2010 @ 5:50 pm
I totally don't agree with buying fans for your facebook page to increase numbers won't increase your sales. But don't forget the more "likes" you have, the higher your rank in the search engines. there has to be a happy medium between the two tactics here.
Comment by @doodledaisies — October 27, 2010 @ 12:58 pm
I guess if you dont interact with your fb fans enough, sooner or later they will dislike your page. Many people are simply using their page to post advertisement
Comment by Steven — March 1, 2011 @ 1:37 am
[...] much is a Facebook fan really worth: 20 additional visits, $136.38 [...]
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