How Many Friends See Your Facebook Posts?

Robin Davey posted an interesting article on Hypebot yesterday called "Only 10% Of Your Friends See Your Facebook Posts, And Only 1% Like It." The underlying premise was that the number of Friends that respond via a "Like" is small, so as a result, Facebook posts are just marginally worth it.

Robin used the empirical evidence he received by a post on his  personal wall asking his friends to "Like" it, and received about a 10% response. He determined the 1% portion of the article by looking at the following (an excerpt from the post):

"The Black Keys have 800,000 fans and they get around 800 likes per post, although they did reach 7,000 when they said 'Lotsa Grammys".

Justin Bieber has 22,000,000 fans and gets between 25,000 and 50,000 likes per post.

Mumford and Sons have 1,300,000 fans and have recently pulled an impressive 17,000 likes on one post that simply said, "TOUR!!!"

But how impressive exactly is that?

Well the Black Keys, at 800 for the less popular posts, works out significantly below 1% of their fans choosing to like it, and just under 1% for their most popular post. Bieber's rampant fans achieve similar numbers. Mumford's impressive number is actually only just above 1%."

I think the flaw in this thinking is that if someone doesn't register a Like, then they're not actually reading the post at all. We all know that's not the case, and in fact many of us see and react to posts without actually registering a Like.

The reason why an artist should continue to post without worrying about getting Likes is the same reason why advertising works - it's all about the impressions. The more impressions, or views, the more likely the viewer will take some action, like download some music, go to a show or buy a T-shirt. 

As long as the information you post is valuable to the reader in some way, it's worth doing because you're reaching him in some way. In other words, it's nice to be "Liked," but it's not necessarily a sign of a successful post.

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