Even if you have never considered using Facebook to help with marketing your business, you will probably be aware of the way popular Pages are perceived – the more likes you have, the better.

While that is certainly one way of looking at the performance of a Facebook Page for a business, it is often not possible for a business to get millions, or even thousands of likes, they simply don’t have the reach, either because they are operating in a specific location, or they offer products and services that only a limited audience would be interested in.

And in a twist that might surprise businesses looking to use Facebook to promote themselves, this is actually a good thing.

It is hard to say exactly how Facebook decides what to show users, but they have disclosed that the more people who interact with a Page, the more likely it is that the content from that Page will be distributed to a wider audience.

In simple terms, your page needs people to find your posts interesting, and when they find it interesting they makes comments, share content, and hit the like button to show that they ‘get’ your business.

It is better in today’s social media world to have a couple of hundred people who like your Page because they want to interact with your business – and potentially become customers, rather than a few thousand people who have liked your Page because you have managed to hook them through a onetime strategy, and are likely never to return again.

Concentrating on providing content that your potential customers want to see (and engage with), is a better long term goal than using strategies to simply increase the number of people who have clicked a like button once.