“Kush, how much time should I spend on social media posts and do Facebook page likes matter any more?”

This is one of the most common questions I get as a coach for people who are looking to promote their products and services using social media.

One biggest mistakes you can make as an amateur Online Course Creator is to rely on your Facebook page to promote your online course business.

The first thing you have to understand is that Facebook likes don’t matter as much as they used to 10 years back.

But why is this the case?

This is the case because over the last couple of years, Facebook’s organic reach has decreased massively. In simple words, organic reach refers to the reach of the posts you create on your Facebook page, i.e, how many of the people who liked your Facebook page actually saw your post.

For example, let’s say you have 1000 likes on your Facebook page. You create a post where you are giving out an offer for your online course. You are hoping that once this post goes out on your page, all the 1000 people who had liked your Facebook page will see your post.

But that is not true at all. The number of people who will see that post depends on a lot of factors, the main one being how many of them have been consistently engaging with your past posts. The people who always engage with your posts are more likely to see your future posts also.

But one thing is sure – not all 1000 people will see your latest post. In fact you’ll be lucky to even get more than 100 people to see it.

According to this article published by Social Media Today, the average organic reach in 2019 was only 6.4%. Going by our example, that would mean only 64 out of the 1000 people see your post.

Let me also show you this phenomenon with the help of my own Facebook page at my other online course business called Creative Pad Media. Here is a screenshot of one of the posts on my Facebook page:

You can see here that this post has reached 607 people. But guess how many likes Creative Pad Media has? 32,248 at the time of writing this article.

That means this reached only 1.72% (609/35248 *100) of the people who had liked the Creative Pad Media Facebook page.

You can see that this is a disastrous reach if I was to rely on it to achieve my business goals.

The engagement and reach that you will get will also depend on the type of post. Usually I’ve seen that when I post a funny meme or something that has the ability to go viral, the reach is much higher but then such posts also don’t help the business much.

But the overall point is that you’ll NEVER reach ALL the people who have liked your page and more often that not, you’ll have to do exceptionally well to consistently reach even more than 5% of the likes.

This is why one the biggest blunders you can make is to run Facebook Page like ads. They are really the most worthless ads as not only do you not get an instant ROI (like in the case of Converison based Facebook ads), but they also don’t do anything in the long term as shown from the above example.

But Kush, will it not affect my business when people see I have very less amount of likes?

This is a very valid question and it comes under the realm of social proof.

First of all, let me give you an answer which is based out of my personal real experience. The answer is that I HAVE NEVER seen or felt that my business has under-performed because of having less likes.

There have been quite a number of times where I have started brand new Facebook pages to run Facebook ads and I’ve always managed to achieve my goals like filling up a workshop or a webinar without any issues at all.

That’s probably because out of all the people who see your Facebook ad, very few people actually take the effort to go and check how many likes your Facebook page has. Usually they just click on the ad and are taken to your landing page.

Currently the Click Trainers Facebook page has only 183 likes but I’ve already conducted 4 live webinars and faced no issues in filling up the slots. In fact during the first two webinars that I did, I barely had more than 30-40 likes and yet it was not a problem.

Even last year, I was having some issues with my original Creative Pad Media Facebook page so I had to create a brand new temporary page just to promote some photography workshops I was doing in Pune. Even with a brand new page, I promoted around 5 workshops and was able to easily fill them. You can see in the screenshot below, this alternate page still only has 63 likes:

If you still want a bit of social proof, then you can always promote your Facebook page to get likes via Facebook Page like ads, but you should only do this till you get a decent amount of likes and then stop the ads and never use them again.

Does this mean that I don’t need a Facebook page?

No, you still need a Facebook page because other type of Facebook ads still work and are the best advertising mechanism to generate traffic and sales for your online courses, like I show you in Online Course Launchpad. And for those ads, having a Facebook page is mandatory.

Okay, so does it mean that I don’t need to post anything on my Facebook page and only use it for the ads?

I would again say no. I still like posting on my Facebook pages because at least some people see the posts and there’s no harm in getting free reach.

Also, for the slightly more inquisitive customers, it also serves as a proof that you have a business that is very much alive and running.

It’s just that you should NOT RELY on the your Facebook page posts to get anything substantial. At least not when you starting out. Once you have a very high number of likes on your page and at the same time you are willing to take the effort to create engaging posts, then it can become an integral part of your marketing strategy.

But when you starting out, relying on only your Facebook page or any other organic (free) method is basically like opening up a business in the middle of nowhere. You can shout at the top of your voice but no one’s listening.

Let me know your own answer to the question -“Do Facebook Page Likes Matter?” in the comments below.

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