Facebook Page Likes v.s. Facebook Follows: Know the Difference and How it Affects How Your Content is Seen

Know How Your Content is Being Seen

Comparing Facebook Page Likes and Follows

Have you ever noticed that your Facebook business page has both likes and follows? While the difference may seem subtle, it can impact how your content is seen across Facebook.

Facebook Likes

When you come across a Facebook page, you can like it. This action automatically triggers both a page like and a page follow. For personal Facebook pages, “liking” a page shows it to their friends and can sometimes be displayed in their profile information that they like a certain page.

Liking a page is intended to show others what you’re interested in and inform Facebook of relevant ad content to display to you.

Facebook Follows

Opposed to how you simultaneously like and follow a Facebook page when you follow it, it does not automatically like it. By following a page, you will be shown content posted to that page on your Facebook feed.

How Content is Displayed to Users

As long as a user both likes and follows your Facebook page, they will see your content. However, if they unfollow the page and just continue to like it, they will not be shown page posts in their feed. Rather, their page like will only be represented to their friends on their profile and on the business page.

A great example to understand the two is you could choose to like your favorite restaurant on Facebook to show your friends how much you enjoy it but you don’t wish to see content from them popping up on your feed. Or, you could follow a favorite clothing brand so you never miss news about an upcoming sale or new items that are being added.

Follows are the most indicative of the number of people who want to see content from your Facebook page, while likes simply serve as a “thumbs up” of approval to a page.