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Hey Sports Teams Quit Telling Me to LIKE your Facebook Posts

August 28, 2012 by Adam Sherk

Lately I’ve been noticing a lot of Facebook posts in my news feed with a specific request to “LIKE” the post.

Sports teams are among the biggest offenders:

Philadelphia 76ers - Andrew Bynum Press Conference Facebook post

Now don’t get me wrong. As a marketer I appreciate the use of a call to action to increase activity and engagement. It is an effective tactic and there are plenty of good ways to do it.

But as a user I find it annoying to frequently see posts in my Facebook news feed that directly ask, cajole or downright beg me to “LIKE” it.

Brands of all shapes and sizes do it, but as I mainly follow news organizations and sports teams on Facebook it is the teams that negatively caught my attention.

The counterpoint is that most of these posts are getting a lot of likes, comments and shares. So at a minimum the “LIKE” begging isn’t turning users off and maybe it is even helping to increase engagement. But popular sports teams tend to have such a large following that I suspect these posts would do very well regardless.

Maybe I’ll do a quick study in a future post or perhaps someone like PageLever or EdgeRank Checker has good data on this.

Here are some more recent examples.

What do you think – annoying or effective?

Chicago Bears - Brian Urlacher Facebook post

Chicago Bears - weight room Facebook post

Philadelphia Eagles Facebook post

Tim Tebow training camp poster

Philadelphia Phillies - Cliff Lee Facebook post

Abby Wamback Olympics Facebook post

US Soccer Facebook post

Manchester United - Chicharito Facebook post

Philadelphia Union Facebook post

Related posts:

  1. My Top Posts of 2010 on SEO, PR and Social Media for News and Sports
  2. The Most Popular MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook
  3. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook
  4. Which NBA Teams Have Seen the Most Growth on Twitter and Facebook?
  5. MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook: Two-Year Growth Rates

Comments

  1. Michal Smetana says

    September 3, 2012 at 4:00 am

    “Maybe I’ll do a quick study in a future post or perhaps someone like PageLever or EdgeRank Checker has good data on this.”

    If I may recommend you something for your study, you could try our tools from Socialbakers. http://www.socialbakers.com We offer very good data, statistics and insights for Facebook (as well as for other social networks) so it may be useful for your study, because it is easy for you to track the engagement of FB posts as well as many other metrics.

    Michal Smetana, Socialbakers

  2. Adam Sherk says

    September 4, 2012 at 4:17 pm

    Thanks Michal. Actually if there is any data that you have access to on the backend that would help to demonstrate the effectiveness (or lack of) of like begging, it would be great if you could share it.

  3. Michal Smetana says

    September 25, 2012 at 8:53 am

    Hey Adam, sorry for the delay in answer. What I would recommend you is trying our free trial of the Analytics PRO, where you can enter the social media profiles of sports teams or any other profiles and you can compare them. There, you can track the individual posts that you want to analyze and you can compare them to the other posts that didn’t contain the CTAs.

  4. Adam Sherk says

    October 2, 2012 at 12:34 pm

    Thanks for the suggestion Michal.

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About Adam Sherk

Adam Sherk is an SEO and PR consultant helping publishers with digital strategy and audience development, including enterprise SEO, public relations and social media marketing.

Adam is VP SEO and Digital Strategy for Define Media Group.

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