Your Likes Come From Your Community

Everyone is chasing likes, but we should really be chasing friends.

I’ve been on Facebook since the day it blew up. The same with Instagram. And also LinkedIn.

My generation also had MySpace – which was the doorway into this culture where we seek approval from our digital audience. Were you in anyone’s top eight?

For most of us, we are just using our personal channels. Not everyone is looking for validation or approval from their posts. Some post to share with the world and never come back to look or respond. Power to you. That’s a difficult thing to do, but maybe I’ve just been programmed to look at the metrics.

Regardless of the reason you post, we all hope someone sees our content, likes it, and engages. Even if you aren’t into the numbers, if you really didn’t care you wouldn’t post it. That image could stay on your camera roll for just you to enjoy. That thought could have stayed in your head and never made it to Twitter / X.

So we all want a little love online. And for those who are operating a business, you need some of that love to help you achieve your goals. And this is why there are thousands of social media experts giving you tips on how to “beat the algorithm” or “increase your digital reach”.

Sure, I’ve been in that party before. There are certain dos and don’ts – but if you are a standard mom-and-pop, service-area business…good luck. Social channels are not necessarily made for you. All too often, that post goes unnoticed and unliked. You give up and your channel goes dark.

As I’ve told many business owners before, you are not failing. You are just measuring incorrectly.

Take Notice of Local Business Content

Naturally, I’m probably not liking many business pages on any platform. There aren’t a ton of local businesses whose every move I’m interested in. I have some local favorites that I will frequent, but I’m not sure I need to see their “happy holiday” post or some sales pitch designed as an educational graphic. But, because of the nature of my business, I follow a ton of local content.

And it’s not always best to judge the content by how many likes, shares, or comments it gets. I know for a fact that many of the businesses we represent are focusing on a handful of potential clients and making sure their pages aren’t dark when someone is looking to hire. There’s a need for this content and also a price tag that makes it worth it.

But, I do tend to scroll through the feeds and look at what the local businesses are putting out and how people are reacting.

What Agency Is Running the Campaign

The first thing to note – you can tell what agency is representing a client. Look at the likes. Agency owners always tend to throw some love to their clients’ posts. I mean, it’s a bit foolish not to. So if you are scouting (other agency owners), it’s not hard to find out who is running the campaigns.

AI vs. Human

Next thing that is fairly easy to see is if there’s a real person taking the time to create the content. Granted, there are users out there that understand how to use AI correctly and won’t just plop the response to their prompt right in, but most novice users won’t make any edits.

• If you see emojis starting and ending each sentence – AI.
• All of the posts end with a URL and same call to action – usually AI.
• A ton of hashtags – AI (or someone who isn’t paying attention to what works on social).

Of course, there are more ways to tell, but these are the easy signs that the person posting put as much effort into the content as you did today putting on your socks.

Multiple Campaign Managers

This is a bit more difficult to track and you almost need to be a bit more stalker-like to notice – but there are plenty of accounts that just let anyone in the office post when necessary. You can tell by different tones and imagery.

You will randomly see a post that is super direct with a link and then the next post will be a Canva graphic with a ton of color in the language. Better yet, you can always tell when a manager tells someone in the office to drum up business. You will get a very salesy post out of the blue.

Inconsistent and Uninspiring

Yes, if you take a look at 95% of the local content on social media, you will be disappointed. You can tell most people find this to be a necessary evil and a chore. They have their list to post three times a week and they figure out the path of least resistance to get this done.

And those that hire agencies are just a bit above that. The agency is probably pulling their hair out trying to create content while the client ghosts their emails and calls. This creates your “Monday Myth” and “Friday Focus” content. Every social media holiday is posted because it helps them hit their deliverables. We’ve all been there.

Return on Investment

There comes a day when you, the agency, have to meet with the client and go over your social media results. Many of our earlier clients were really focused on the return on investment. How much money did they make from posting on social media?!

Early on, we weren’t so prepared. We were confident that we could create engaging content to BEAT the algorithm. INSPIRE people to love the brand and engage with everything we posted. We don’t care that your business is boring and no one on your staff will follow your page. WE CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN!

And we would sell that. We had many clients that we brought on and created great-looking graphics, strong content, and out-of-the-box ideas. We saw initial gains – but everyone soon realized that it was harder to go “viral” than originally anticipated.

We’ve changed our ways and we are way more upfront with realistic expectations these days. We can help make your brand consistent, helpful, and sometimes lovable, but YOU need to do a little bit on your own.

Community Comes From Real People

Okay, I’m aware there are plenty of businesses that have thousands of followers and a great social media following. There are exceptions to what I’m going to say – but this will apply to the majority of you with 400-600 followers on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

If you want more likes, go make some more friends.

If you go back through and scan the majority of the social media posts online, the same people will like and share your content. Do an audit. You will find most of the general content you post (aside from a random employee birthday or community event) will get the same likes and views. It might be your longest-tenured employee always sharing or a heart from your mother, but the general content doesn’t change that much.

If you get 10 likes per post, good on you. You have some advocates.

If you are looking to double this, posting more isn’t going to help. Changing your strategy probably won’t change things either. It’s tough to get that user to see your content again once the algorithm has determined that they are not interested in it.

If those vanity metrics really matter to you, it’s likely that you need to expand your circle. Make people care about you enough in real life that they want to support you in the digital world. And if you want those likes bad enough to go out and network, you will see success.

Now you might want to say those extra likes on your post were the reason for more sales, leads, etc. That’s certainly a possibility – but the real result usually comes from the effort. How many hands did you have to shake to get those extra Facebook followers? My guess is the actual work getting to know people – and them getting to know you – is the real cause for any uptick in business.

Again, I’m not saying that the content you create can’t generate the additional likes and visibility. People will follow and engage with good, helpful, humorous, and inspiring content. But that comes with a cost. It won’t come from AI captions, a fly-by-night agency, or your secretary posting.

If you want those likes, you have to figure out how you wanna pay to play. It might be a little elbow grease from you and your team. So sign up for a networking event and get working.

Or settle for those same likes.