The answer to the question is – in my opinion at least – NONE AT ALL – or at best NOT VERY MUCH.

The lack of importance is the elephant in the room, very few people have been willing to talk about it.

So imagine that you havelike 4,300 likes on Facebook and want to get to 5,000.

So imagine that you run a competition and the likes go up, you crack the 5,000 mark. Congratulations all round, break out the fizzy wine, but – just what have you achieved?

Well, assuming all 700 people actually do like your product, and actually do want to receive information about you, you now have 700 more people to talk to. 700 more people to sell to….

Don’t you?

Well not really no – you could argue that you have 700 more people with slightly more clogged up newsfeeds who are slightly less likely to be interested in anything at all.

But anyway because not all of your posts go to all your followers , you have around 20% more people who will receive your posts.

So straight away that’s down to 140 people.

Take the 140, and bear in mind that the average post lasting for at most 3 hours before it disappears so far down the newsfeed it does not exist (3 hours is an estimate, personally I think it is far shorter).

So how many of the 140 people actually are in facebook, and actually able to see, read and engage with your post during that 3 hour period?

Well, if you read around you can see that generally an engagement rate of over 1% is good, but the average is between 0.5% and 1%.

So, lets assume our post is good, its not just you shouting about yourself, and you get 1%, that means you have just run a competition to get 1.4 more people to ‘engage’ with you.

Remember engagement is not the same as actually buying from you, or even visiting your website. It is, on its own, relatively valueless.

So, was that a good days work – well you could argue it cost almost nothing, and took very little time…. yes, true, but so what? 1.4 people! From 700,,,,,,, how many people would have to actually like your page to make a genuine difference to your business?

So, think about how you use Facebook,, just what is the point of it for your business? Once you have worked this out, then start again, but remember every 1,000 likes gets you 200 more people who get your stories and 2 people who engage.