Why are likes so addictive? It’s almost become a kind of drug.

One thing I hear a lot about my social media marketing is “Nic, you don’t get many likes or comments”.

While that might be true, the one thing I do get, and quite a lot of, are leads. As a business owner, vanity metrics such as likes, comments and followers don’t put money in the bank for me. Clients do.

As I come up to a decade of marketing property on social media, , I’m the first one to say I got caught up in the hype when Facebook & Instagram really took off around 2015/2016.

I’d marketed myself constantly on socials for years by this point without the need to “outperform” my competitors online, because there were none.

Then one day, EVERYONE was online & I had a brief lapse in judgement moment where I actually cared about those metrics.

It didn’t take long to realise that this was something you could buy and it wasn’t a true reflection of the kind of content you put out. So that need to be “liked” disappeared pretty quickly.

The reason for my success online (without the vanity metrics) lies largely in the fact that the content I’ve put out for the past 9.5 years has been engaging, informative, educational, entertaining, controversial and authentic. I don’t shy away from being who I am, and for some it works, and for others it doesn’t.

So why are likes so addictive?

It’s almost become a kind of drug. That is because it activates a boost of the hormone called dopamine, which you also get from eating chocolate or winning a lottery.

Just like fast food, being popular online creates a cycle of reward which makes you crave more.

When social media started we were less concerned about such metrics and used it for the reason it was created. With the rise of “Influencers”, came the obsession of external validation. Needing to be seen to be popular online.

While I understand the need to be “liked” and “validated” online, I’m more concerned with my business making money from the content I put out, not how many likes I get.

In the past 14 days my business has received 30 new qualified leads that have come directly from Facebook and Instagram through one of our lead generation campaigns.

We have mastered the psychology of people and their mindset when online, and have tailored our content around that.

Keeping in mind there are two types of people in our social media audience.

The people who already know us. These are our “followers”. They know who we are and what we do, so we don’t need to push the hard sell on them. The objective with this group is to inform, educate and entertain. Talk to them the way you would your “friends”.

People who don’t know us. These are our “non followers”. They don’t know us and putting a random ad that adds no value to them or their lives isn’t going to convert them.

When on social media, I advise clients that the metrics you should focus on are your video views, your reach, leads generated and click through results.

These are the results that matter. These are the results that no one sees except the page owner. I would much rather have 30,000 people see my ad that gets 11 likes, rather than 300 likes with only a 10,000 reach. That shows me that my marketing campaign is off.

Most agents are not aware that Lead Generation campaigns are available through Facebook. A campaign that asks the viewer to submit their name, number and email, (pretty much any answer to a question you want to ask). This not only gives you data that you can now upload into your database for email marketing and can start a relationship with a qualified lead, it also allows you to re-target your content to them in a follow up campaign which reduces your cost per click, meaning your ad is seen by more people.