Definition: Fans (Page Likes)

Fans are the people who have liked your Facebook page.

In the early days of Facebook, there was a “Become a Fan” button on all Facebook pages. This has now been replaced with the “Like” button.

So, fans and page likes means the same thing, and the terms are used interchangeably.

Why Measure Fans (Page Likes)?

As a social media community manager, part of your job is to increase the number of fans (page likes) on your Facebook page. A growing Facebook page is a sign of a healthy community.

However, it’s reckless and lazy to look at only the number of fans.

You could have millions of fans, but if none of these fans engage or interact with you, then the number of fans is meaningless.

Fans are still valuable to measure, but must be used in combination with other metrics to have any value.

At the end of the day, more relevant fans means that you have the potential to engage, reach and convert more people.

How is Fans (Page Likes) Calculated?

The number of fans is basically the number of people who have liked your page minus the number of people who have unliked your page. Keep in mind that people unlike pages.



If fans want to clean up their news feeds or do not find your content appealing, they can opt-out and unlike your page.

How To Measure Fans (Page Likes)?

We can look at the total number of page likes as well as the change in page likes over time. The change in page likes tells us a lot about the impact of our Facebook activities.

There was a huge spike on June 7th and the page gained 3,000+ fans. This was much higher than normal.

In the next post, we’ll dig deeper to investigate what caused this spike of 3,000+ page likes.