3 Things to Check Before Deleting Your Company’s Facebook Page

A few weeks ago, Kissmetrics reported that a number of well-known businesses were deleting their company Facebook page due to decreased engagement. That shocked me, since it seems like everybody who’s anybody has a Facebook page. I know reach has shrunk dramatically since the beginning of 2014, but that doesn’t mean companies shouldn’t be there. 

Or does it?

LeadG2’s Facebook page is new, and as such, doesn’t have a huge following. I wondered, should I delete our Facebook page? 

That didn’t sound like something I wanted to do without any information (other than the article on Kissmetrics) so I thought I’d check a few things out before bringing this up to my colleagues. 

1. Check Facebook First

I went to the admin section to see if any of our fans got to see our posts, and here’s what I found: Every time we post something on our Facebook page, between two and nine people see it (with the occasional outlier of 15). That’s not great. But it is something, and when some people are clicking through to the blog, that counts, in my book.

 See also: What to Do About Your Loss of Reach on Facebook

2. Check Analytics Second

Next, I went to Google Analytics, and drilled down into the social referral section: LinkedIn is considerably more effective than both Twitter and Facebook (and for the time period I looked at here, LinkedIn does better than Twitter and Facebook combined, which is a discussion for another day), but there’s still traction on Facebook. Again, not a lot, but way more than zero.

3. Check Engagement

People are clicking through from Facebook, and in my opinion, that’s better than commenting on our brand’s Facebook page. Why? Because we’re not in the business to chat with people on Facebook, we’re in the business to attract visitors to our website (from wherever they are). Once they’re checking out the website, we’ll do our best to turn visitors into leads. So, engagement is working, too.

We’re Not Deleting Our Facebook Page

All right, so the numbers aren’t great. Facebook brings in less traffic than the other social networks. But we’re not leaving. Why? Because we’re all Facebook users.

If everyone in our company uses Facebook, it’s likely that many of our prospects are on Facebook, too. So are yours, most likely. In fact, according to a 2014 survey, Americans spend more time on Facebook than they do with their pets (and, therefore, more time than they spend making cat videos!). 

And don’t forget that Facebook collects user data for companies like mine and yours, to help us engage the right kind of people.

Think about it. Once you define your target persona, you can target them directly. Create an offer your target persona will appreciate, set a budget, and advertise directly to them!

Facebook advertising is inexpensive (certainly if you compare it to the “olden days” of buying a big ad in a newspaper!) and it’s targeted. You can even filter by people who have engaged with your competition—how crazy is that?

So, we’ll be keeping our Facebook page alive and well, and we think you should too, unless when you checked the numbers, your Facebook referrals were zero (and you’ve been doing this at least six months).

But we won’t be hanging out over there too much, so if you want to talk with us, send us a note, okay?