Your Band’s Facebook Page Might be Losing Some Fans Soon
Starting on around March 12, Facebook will be changing the way it counts the likes for your fanpage. It will be subtracting any accounts that have been either manually deactivated or “memorialized” after its owner passed.
The shift won’t happen immediately although it would probably be best if it did; Facebook says it’ll roll out in “the coming weeks.”
How many likes is your band page going to lose? It’s hard to predict but one thing for sure is that anyone who has ever bought “fake likes” might be seeing a huge drop if those fake likers deactivated their accounts, which is a strong possibility.
A lot of it depends on how many fans your page has, If you have a small amount(a few hundred or less) and know your fanbase well, you might not lose any. But if you have a huge page(10’s of thousands) it could be a noticeable drop.
Although Northwest Music Scene has a pretty solid following on Facebook(51,890+) we’ve never paid a penny to build it, therefore we aren’t too worried, in fact we think this is a good thing. Unless of course they are only dropping the fan count in order to try to get you to pay for new fans, then this is a bad thing. And come to think of it, we wouldn’t put it past them.
Before you freakout though, be aware that this is only for accounts that have been manually deactivated, meaning the account owner had to have taken some action to delete it or deactivate it. Account that are simply idle or considered inactive due to the owner not logging in for a long time shouldn’t be affected.
Facebook says that getting rid of likes from closed accounts will give businesses more accurate insights on followers. Doing so draws a distinction between accounts that have merely liked the page and people who actively follow it.
Click here to read the Facebook Blog Post
Making Page Likes More Meaningful
Removing inactive Facebook accounts:
There are two primary benefits to removing voluntarily deactivated and memorialized Facebook accounts from Pages’ like counts:
Business results: Removing inactive Facebook accounts from Page audience data gives businesses up-to-date insights on the people who actively follow their Page and makes it easier for businesses to find people like their followers through tools like lookalike audiences.
What to expect: Over the coming weeks, Page admins should expect to see a small dip in their number of Page likes as a result of this update. It’s important to remember, though, that these removed likes represent people who were already inactive on Facebook.
Going forward: Any accounts that are voluntarily deactivated or memorialized will be removed from a Page’s like count. If a deactivated account is reactivated, the account will be re-added to a Page’s like count. Everyone benefits from meaningful information on Facebook. It’s our hope that this update makes Pages even more valuable for businesses.
Consistency: Facebook already filters out likes and comments generated by deactivated or memorialized accounts from individual Page posts, so this update keeps data consistent.
