I get dozens of invites from friends or followers to like their Facebook pages every day.
I decline all of them. I don't click the like button. Chances are that I probably don't like your fan page either, in case you have one and invited me.
So here's the thing. I'm doing you a favor. I'm doing you a favor not liking your Facebook page. Yes, that's right. I'm not an egoistic a**hole. Well, maybe I am. I don't know..
So let me explain you real quick what happens when you like your friends Facebook fan page:
You kill their organic reach. You kill their Facebook page.
Facebook has all sorts of crazy algorithms running to make sure the updates on your page only reach the people who want to see them. And one of these algorithms (or hundreds combined) seems to serve the updates you post to your Facebook page to a very limited amount of people to see how good the post is.
Let's say they serve it to ten people. And if out of these 10 people you won't get one interaction (like, comment, click, etc.), your content won't be shown to the other folks who like your page. That way Facebook makes sure the content they show to folks is really, really good.
According to my own experience, everything above a 10% interaction rate will lead to your post being displayed to more people. Once it drops below this number (or any other similar number) your post won't be shown to other people anymore.
And here's the reason why I'm doing you a favor by not liking your page:
I think it's wonderful that you start living your dream, follow your passion, start your company or whatever. But the probability that I'm not one of your customers and not interested in individual updates is 100%. Just like most of my friends don't care about the stuff I do. Matter of fact..
And the fact that I don't care about the new feature your startup just launched, that new new thing or whatever, will lead to the fact that I won't like it. Or click on it. Or comment on it. Or share it. Only true fans do so. And that's the tricky part.
Let's take a look at the perspective of a page owner for a second.
Whenever you invite all of your friends to like your page, none of them will like your individual updates. They will like your page but not the updates. Because they're not your target group or customers.
So when your update is served to 10 people and 9 out of 10 are your friends, you won't get a like. Or a comment. Or a share. Or a click. What's going to happen is that your update won't be served to your true fans out there anymore.
And that's why you shouldn't like your friend's Facebook pages. That's why I won't like any of your Facebook pages. As a matter of fact, as a Facebook page owner you shouldn't invite your friends in the first place. That's why I'm doing you a favor not liking your page.
It might kill your friend's Facebook page reach.
So be a good friend and don't like your friend's Facebook page. Unless you're a true fan, user or customer. So be a good friend and only like my Facebook page if you're a true fan...