New Layout for Facebook Pages to De-emphasize Likes

Facebook seems to be an ever-evolving machine, making updates and changes just when we’re getting used to things. Recently, they’ve implemented a few new things to shift the norm for social media engagement. Facebook is updating page layouts and management options for Public Figure pages in order to make it easier to find insights into their audience. They are also looking to find how they can better show creator relevancy through “Followers” versus “Likes”.  In this blog, we discuss why Facebook “Followers” are becoming more prominent and how this can impact how people engage on Facebook and social media.

Followers are a Strong Indicator of Relevance

Facebook has been putting more emphasis on Followers versus Likes, especially in the past year. A Like is often not as strong of an indicator of relevance anymore. A page that has a lot of Likes doesn’t necessarily mean better, and furthermore – their posts may not show up in the Liker’s News Feed regularly. On the other side, Followers get alerts about any new content or updates on the page, making the follow option more desirable for business pages. It makes sense that Facebook is emphasizing Followers because of this difference in engagement with the pages. Facebook’s thought is that the more Followers a page has the more relevant or popular. In the image below you can see how the Like button is completely removed from the creator page.

Updates for the Creators

Facebook has also emphasized followers over Likes in other ways. Taking it to the comment section of a post, Facebook has added a new Follow option for verified pages. As you can see in the below image, there is a callout to Follow the commenter’s page. This is another effort to get people to connect quickly to pages on Facebook.

Another update for the page creators is to ease the management of the Facebook page. There are new safety and integrity features to better detect spammy content and phishing. Facebook also updated analytics and insights for pages to help creators better understand their audience and create meaningful messaging. The update came with a notice from Facebook that includes what stayed the same and what exactly changed.

The Future May Be Less About “Likes” and More About Conversation

Instagram (which is Facebook-owned) removed Like counts in 2019 to get rid of the popularity element of posting. Facebook has tested this as well but has kept Likes so far and instead shifted to promoting Following without totally getting rid of Likes.

Social Media platforms including Twitter have found that conversation and engagement are the future for social media and may be more important than looking at likes on a post or page. So, the idea of removing Likes is to encourage more people to comment, share their thoughts, and connect with others on a deeper level within the platform.

Tell Us What You Think!

Social media is changing all the time, especially how people use it. De-emphasizing Likes will expand beyond Public Figure pages in an effort to see the real relevancy of the fan base or following of Facebook pages. Another goal of this is to build the conversations happening on Facebook and other platforms instead of being a popularity contest with a fight for Likes. Let us know what you think – are you more concerned with how many Likes you have, or what the engagement looks like? We would love to hear from you!