Did Your Facebook Audience Shrink? Here’s Why.
If you see a drop in your Facebook Page Likes tomorrow, don’t panic.
Starting March 12, 2015, Facebook will remove inactive Facebook accounts from Facebook Page audiences. These inactive accounts include “memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts.”
The cleanup effort will continue over the course of the coming weeks, and Facebook warns that “Page admins should expect to see a small dip in their number of Page likes as a result of this update.”
In a blog post titled “Making Page Likes More Meaningful,” Facebook explains that the business impetus for this decision is rooted in providing a more accurate understanding of a Page’s Facebook audience:
“Removing inactive Facebook accounts from Page audience data gives businesses up-to-date insights on the people who actively follow their Page and makes it easier for businesses to find people like their followers through tools like lookalike audiences.”
Most obviously, this cleanup effort will affect the targeting capabilities via the Facebook ads platform, which offers targeting based on attributes similar to a Page’s Custom Audience list.
Will This Change Affect My Facebook Interactions?
The good news is that while your Facebook audience may see a “dip,” these users were inactive on Facebook to begin with. Therefore, this change shouldn’t adversely impact the interactions or reach of your Facebook Page.
According to Facebook, it was previously the network’s policy to exclude likes and comments from deactivated and memorialized accounts from interaction counts on individual Page posts, so this change creates overall consistency in the network’s treatment of inactive Facebook accounts.
What About Deactivated Accounts? What Happens When They Re-Activate?
Should any deactivated Facebook account owners decide to rejoin the Land of Active Facebook-ers, you can count on their Page Likes and interactions. Any Page Likes or interactions stemming from re-activated accounts will be automatically added to the Page’s audience and interaction counts.
TrackMaven customers, keep an eye out for the impact of this change in your TrackMaven Scorecards!
Want best practices for engaging your Facebook audience? Get your copy of our Marketing Maven’s Guide to Facebook and learn from our analysis of 1.5 Million Facebook Pages!
Kara Burney is the Content Marketing Maven at TrackMaven, the Competitive Intelligence platform for Digital Marketers. Have content marketing questions or topics you'd like covered on the TrackMaven blog? Tweet her your ideas! See more of Kara's posts
