Or is that impossible?

Here is my case: As of today, the Like counter on the Page for my organization, the Missouri Arts Council (the State agency supporting Missouri arts), says 878. BUT when I go to the Like panel in the upper left corner and actually count all the thumbnails that pop up in both People and Pages when I click “see all” (scrolling down and continuously clicking “see more” to make sure I have them all), I get only 742. BUT when I calculate using the reach percentages under individual posts, I get between 875 and 910. AND I know for sure there are people who Like our Page but whose thumbnail does not appear in the Like panel.

So what is the accurate number of Likes?

Speaking of the Like counter, I am very frustrated that when an individual Likes our Page from their personal Profile, it registers in the counter, but when another Page likes our Page, it does not. Our organization builds relationships not only with individual lovers of the arts but with arts organizations. Because of the way Facebook registers Likes from Pages, our ongoing outreach as we Like their Pages and ask them to Like ours is not helping each other’s statistics. It’s great that mutual communication is taking place when their updates appear in our News Feed and theirs appear in ours. But it’s important for us to be able to demonstrate sheer numerical growth of Likes as well. 

@russellallert Hi Russell,

Thanks for your response. Believe me, I’m very aware of the importance of engagement vs. sheer number of Page Likes. I pay close attention to which kinds of posts get responses, and I ensure that our Page promptly interacts back. But I still need, for business reasons, to be able to have an accurate picture of the number of Likes, which is why I took the time to count the thumbnails. (It didn’t actually take that long!)

I realize that FB has set up the situation, but I know I’m not the only Page manager who is frustrated by it. If FB wants businesses to use FB to promote themselves, with the ultimate goal of FB making some money off said businesses through ad sales, I would think it would be a prudent move to make their product more business-friendly.

- Barbara