Facebook: Do You Really LIKE them that much?

CHR

CHR

Design matters
Nov 28, 2002
8,951
8,442
113
Anaheim
www.avantegardens.com
State / Prov
CA
Be careful which business pages you 'like.'

When you 'Like' a business on Facebook, do you see it as an endorsement of that company? Facebook and Bing now do. They're showing your 'likes' to friends when users are logged into FB and searching on Bing.

Your 'like' may help a friend make a purchasing decision - but do you really want them to choose TF's FindaFlorist.com over a local flower shop? Or Wesley Berry? Or ProFlowers? Or Kremp? Your 'like' of that company is apparently being carried down through all pages of a site, so it's not just the root URL that displays your 'endorsement'.

Here's a query for 'Los Angeles Flower Delivery' and note how PF is ranked #2 and FindaFlorist.com is #3 (thanks in part to more than 80 of my friends 'liking' the page.) The friends' images and names certainly draw attention to the listings.

Los Angeles Flower Delivery.jpg

This should be a serious concern for all of us. The national brands have been aggressively promoting folks to become 'fans' so friends will influence friends.

Note: Google is also using a similar feature, highlighting links share from twitter and via Reader & Google+. You can see them when logged into your G account and performing queries - but they're not as abundant as the data pulled from FB - yet.)

It seems I can only add one image at a time so I'll post the other two queries just to illustrate how prominent our/your 'likes' are in Bing results.
 
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Here's a query for "Send Flowers Phoenix AZ). It's great the Phoenix Flower Shops - real brick and mortar stores - rank #1, but look at all the florists who liked OGs, dOGs and drop-shippers. And what's up with 1-800 getting a call-out box bigger than any other local store?

Send Flowers Phoenix.jpg
 
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One more: "Send Flowers Pittsburgh PA"

Send Flowers Pittsburgh.jpg

HonestFlorist.com is #1. Just shows me how rife with spam Bing really is.

Ludwig's Blumengarten Florist is #2 and I made sure to go and 'like' their FB page after taking this screen shot. :)

Again, we see dOGs and PF - and they all appear far more prominently on the page than any local flower shops.

I can't believe any florist would endorse those companies over real local flower shops in Pittsburgh.

Don't forget, we have family and friends who don't know a thing about the flower business, so when they see our 'likes', they may well believe we support purchases from those queried results.

Time to spread the word that our 'likes' are helping drive attention to the very companies with which we compete.
 
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Go to the business page on FB and scroll to the bottom of the left column. Click 'Unlike'.

Here's more about privacy settings on FB. IIRC you can block Bing from displaying your likes entirely by turning off Instant Personalization on the site. I'm OK with displaying my likes, but if anyone sees a 'like' from me that looks weird, please let me know. :)
 
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I'm confused- who should I not be liking....regular shops or what- sorry- I'm not getting what's wrong other than it has something to do with dOG's
 
I think it is more about what you 'like' Shannon......For instance, I'm in San Antonio at the moment. You're in Alberqueque New Mexico. How does me likeing your business page help or build your business? Cathy is in Anaheim, Same thing.....I see the 'like' as endorsements. In other words....If I like you, I want to shop with you, I want to go to you and spend my hard-earned dollars with you. That's the correlation.

and yes, I misspelled your city.......sorry.
 
shannonlovesflowers said:
I'm confused- who should I not be liking....regular shops or what- sorry- I'm not getting what's wrong other than it has something to do with dOG's
Click to expand...

Shannon, the simplest way to put it is, if you don't really recommend somebody, then don't like them. When you like a page, like Ricky said, Bing takes that as an endorsement by you and shows that to others who are your friends.

Cathy is friends with a whole lot of people/shops. 80 of them "like" one of the ogs. I'm sure they "like" the page of the og simply to keep an eye on what is happening. When Cathy does a search on Bing for a florist in Los Angeles, and as always this og shows up in the search, they are given "extra credit" to CATHY because so many of HER friends "like" this og page.

What this means is if one of her customers does the same search and is also friends with her, that count could show up to the customer. A pretty big endorsement. The worst of it is that Cathy herself probably does not "like" that og page but 80 of her friends do so it could still show up.

That is some serious stuff!
 
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Ok- Well I don't like any OG- so I hope everybody here "likes" my Shannon Loves Flowers page!

I guess I need to go clean up my page likes-eh?
 
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I believe the Bing 'like' displays are dependent on the privacy settings by the individual FB members - plus perhaps a mix of Twitter followers.

Check your FB privacy settings (Account --> Privacy Settings --> Custom Settings) AFAICT when you show Everyone 'posts by me' and 'websites' they can be included in Bing results. Also, if you click on a 'Like' directly on a page while surfing the web, I believe it becomes public.

Still puzzled how Teleflora 'likes' are migrated over to FindaFlorist.com since FAF doesn't appear to have a public 'like' button - or even a FB link - on the site. The FindaFlorist.com page on FB only has 13 'likes'.
 
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shannonlovesflowers said:
Ok- Well I don't like any OG- so I hope everybody here "likes" my Shannon Loves Flowers page!

I guess I need to go clean up my page likes-eh?
Click to expand...

OK I "un-liked" your Shannon Loves Flowers page for you.......;)
 
Sandy -

You can still read everything on their pages. Just click 'Wall' on the left navagation and 'most recent' at the top right side of the middle comulmn to view all the posts.

I honestly don't think it's a good idea for local florists (competitors) to post on their pages anyway. (Not that I think you do, but some florists chime in there and those same folks would be mad as heck if the opposite happened to them.) Mad as we may be at WSs and OGs, IMO we should let their flower consumers do the talking on their FB pages.

JMO
 
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Reactions: daisy mae, anytimeflowers, sandytf and 1 other person
Just FYI- Onmy business page there are many flower shop who have "liked" my page- BUT what they post on their pages don't post on my page- and vice versa. ALso- Only people likes show up and the pages likes are hidden....How 'bout that. I have no idea how this happened- but it's good.
 
Shannon they do show up, it's just a different page. If you log in on your business page, leave and come back it should take you there.
 
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