CHECK THOSE LIKES!

They LIKE you, but do they REALLY, REALLY LIKE you.  Here’s my story.

Suddenly I am catching headlines about what’s happening in social media and the activities of some networks that are padding their client’s accounts to make their social network look good. You know, you subscribe and suddenly you have sixty friends, re-Pinned dozens of images, you are following sixteen film stars and more – and you only clicked Confirm. Once. 

Claiming an extra million or so new subscribers is a good thing, it brings more ad revenue to the social networks. But we’re in the age of bogus social media subscribers and spam. Well, my online reading forced me to make a true study of my Facebook page and to review the data found under Insights and Likes.

The other reason I wanted to check deeper than I usually do was that Facebook had sent me an email to say my business account was due to stop as of February 16th and if I wanted to continue with my Facebook page I’d better smarten up and open a personal page and then connect that personal page to my business page. I was also asked to name various people and appoint those various people to administer various pages and ad pages and so on.

So… I thought, well before I do all that reconfiguring, let me just check out who LIKES me and double check if they REALLY, REALLY LIKE me. You see, my LinkedIn account is strictly for travel trade. If a real estate agent wants to connect, I decline. If a sous chef from Illinois wants to connect, I decline. Putin, same thing. Nada.  With Facebook, as you know, anyone can LIKE your page. You sit back and sing the social media ditty about Love me Love my Facebook Page. You want those LIKES. You want more of them. And when you have more, you want MORE!

I had 729 LIKES and you know, when I posted something that was business focused and about generating new sales… yeah, well, perhaps 20 to 50 clicks would happen. Post a wild and wacky image of myself photo-shopped into a mountainous scene with a seagull on my arm and I receive 200 clicks. Something was amiss. I eventually found all my LIKES. Captured them and then pasted the data / links into a Word document and then visited each and every link – which means I was zapped over to their Facebook page. OMG! After 150 Facebook pages my count was this: 81% of those who had LIKED my page had nothing to do with selling travel. Maybe they just liked the fact that I wrote with an English accent! Who knows?

So a word to the wise. Locate your data, review your LIKES, spend the time to check out the Facebook pages of those who LIKED you and look for signs of travel. Looks for signs of employment. Look for any signs of someone who travels, can afford to travel and is talking about travelling.  Everyone else, click remove. Clean up your LIKES and then do the same for your Twitter account followed by all other social networks where you hold a business / travel agency account. Get trimmed, get lean and mean and become a focused social media marketing machine – also this purge will save you wasted time and energy.

For me, after visiting a Facebook page of someone with “Boom Boom” as a middle name… I gave it up. Announced my Facebook page was going dormant for a while and then I’ll ponder my Facebook future. To tell you the truth, and this is a very good suggestion, I am looking very hard at starting my own social network using the www.socialgo.com website. Check it out. You might LIKE it!

Steve Crowhurst, CTC

Travel & Tourism Speaker, Trainer, Author
SMP Training Co.
  250-738-0064

Selling Travel eStore

Selling Travel eMagazine

 

Learn how to become a home based travel agent and open your own online travel agency. www.HomeBasedTravelAgents.ORG