This week in my 5 Week E-Course: How to Increase Your Visibility on Facebook Easily, Ethically and Free we are discussing low quality Likes, how to remove them, and how to prevent them from decreasing your visibility.  Below are some of the actions steps I shared with my enrolled course members:

 

Stop Participating in Like Ladders

These get you a bunch of low quality likes that make you invisible to your high quality, interested fans.  Learn all about how Like Ladders and Like Exchanges are hurting your reach and visibility in this detailed blog post.

 

Recognize the Signs of Most Fake Fans

There are people on Facebook who get paid to like pages. It’s not legal but they are out there doing it. To remain under the radar these paid Likers will also like random pages that they are not being paid to like to throw off any suspicions that they are doing anything wrong. So you don’t actually have to buy Likes to acquire these fake Likers as fans. I have ever purchased Likes nor have I paid for Facebook Ads on many pages I administer, yet they have these suspicious Likers in their fan base. So I can assure you, just because you have not bought fake Likes or paid for advertising, these guys can still find you. Some of the clues to look out for are listed below:

• Unpronounceable or strange, unrecognizable (to you) names or languages, and fans from foreign countries that your business does not service  

• A person that likes an unusually high number of pages

• An account that seems fairly new or has minimal Timeline activity and postings (could have been created for the sole purpose of liking pages)

• Something doesn’t add up in their About section

• They are a member of Groups that are mostly about making money online or get-rich-quick schemes

• A lot of their Interests or the Pages they have liked are inappropriate or questionable in nature

 

 

• If an account seems questionable to you, check for a number after their user name (especially if it is not a common name).  When you back those out, you may find they have another account (their real account) in the same name.  They are most likely using the fake account to get paid for likes.

 

 

Individually these signs and account characteristics could be perfectly acceptable and normal, and part of a legitimate account, but when you find a number of them all within one account, it may be worth investigating further.  The next step explains what to do if you find you have some of these Fake Likers in your fan base.

 

Remove Unwanted Fans Regularly

Go through and remove anyone you acquired through a Like Ladder (that only liked your page to get a like back and is NOT your target market), friends who liked your page just to get you started but aren’t really your target market, and fake likers or scammers who only liked your page to hide the fact that they get paid to like pages. There are detailed instructions in this blog post about how to view “all” (well, most) of your fans.  

You will be asked to confirm your request to remove the fan and have the opportunity to permanently ban a user if you feel it is necessary.  I have yet to ban anyone.  None of the low quality Likes I have removed have re-liked my page.

 

Protect Your Page From Low Quality Fans

You can adjust your Page Settings to restrict access to your page.  You can choose to only make your page viewable by users in certain countries, or block users from certain countries.  To edit these settings click on Settings, then General, then on the Edit link to the far right of Country Restrictions.  If you have not already done so, this would also be a good time to check out the other restrictions and filters available to edit under the General Settings tab.

 

If you make a habit of attracting quality fans and keeping low quality fans off your page, you will notice a significant increase in your organic reach.  You will become more visible in the News Feeds of your fans which will lead to more engagement, provided the content you share is valuable and relevant to your followers.

Have you tried some of these techniques and noticed a difference?  If so, please comment about it below.  Or if you have anything to add, I would love to hear what has worked for you.