Study: Facebook “Likes” mean less than you think

FastCompany details a new social media analysis by Dan Zarella that has some surprising results. Contrary to popular thought, Facebook likes do not mean that more people will read your posts. In fact, posts that are viewed more tend to get fewer likes.

Zarella’s study looked at the correlation between impressions per post (essentially the number of page views a post gets) and feedback per post (a tacit measure of how interested the public is in the post material, measured in comments and “likes”). Using Facebook Insights data, which is only accessible to page admins, he looked at 12 months of data and found merely a “weak negative correlation.” In other words, the posts that get slightly more views actually have fewer likes and comments.

This study, if it pans out in broader review, knocks a sizeable whole in the social engagement metrics that many companies are using. It will be interesting to see if this report reflects a blip or an actual trend.