Looking at fmcg Facebook pages in the Netherlands at this time a couple of things attract my attention. Let’s look at one of the pages: M&M’s Nederland is big with almost 80.000 fans:

M&M’s Nederland FB page growth
They grow by about 387 a day (source), which is quite a lot for a Dutch Facebook page. Only 19 Facebook pages in the Netherlands have more likes than M&M’s. Posts combine humor and cheakiness of the characters with current events such as mother’s day, Easter and more recently the European Cup Football (no, not soccer). Because of the latter they should profit from the next month or so and grow even further. The PTA (People Talking About index from Facebook, check this article for some clear explanation on this metric) of M&M’s Nederland is also pretty high: 2.380.

Likes for sale
In my view PTA tops ‘likes’. Likes are for sale, amongst others driven by (fmcg) companies focussing on them. The reason? Maybe big numbers impress corporate top management. But how easy is it to like a page (push the button and it’s done)?

Relationship with a brand
Some time ago David Baser, product manager for Pages Insights, said “Likes are an expression of identity. It’s a user saying that I have a relationship with this brand.” (source). I disagree. Don’t know about you, but I still have too many at some point in time ‘liked’ pages in my Facebook account I don’t care about and actually don’t like (anymore). Everytime they post I get irritated until I actually take the effort of ‘unliking’ them. However things such as talking about, reacting, liking a specific post, each require a specific action by a consumer. Now, that is what I call ‘having a relationship with a brand’.

Shaking hands with a fellow human once does not mean you will have a longlasting relationship with that person right? It requires effort, regularly and mutually.