Facebook LIKE exchange – is it worth it?

Hi there, today I want to talk a little bit about a very common thing between travel bloggers. I am sure you all know it. “Hey, like me on facebook and I will like you back!” I am talking about the exchange of LIKES or fans on facebook. Is it worth it? Does it make sense to exchange LIKES? Here is my personal opinion.

At the time when we had around 200 facebook fans, it seemed like nobody was interested in working with us. Not for an interview, photo story, or anything else. It seems like the holy number on every blog is the facebook counter. The more fans you have, the better is your blog, right? No, of course this is bullshit! But a lot of people think exactly like this.

We decided to contact other travel bloggers to exchange LIKES and we were surprised how easy it was. However, we just wanted to exchange LIKES until we get 500 facebook fans. That was our magic number. When we started to ask for LIKES, the feedback from international travel bloggers and German travel bloggers was totally different.

We asked 400 bloggers from the US, UK and the rest of the world :). We received the following answers:
Yes, let’s exchange: 292 = 73%    No, I don’t want to exchange: 11 = 3%     No answer: 97 = 24%

We asked 75 bloggers from Germany and received the following answers:
Yes, let’s exchange: 31 = 41%    No, I don’t want to exchange: 38 = 51%     No answer: 6 = 8%

As you can see, most of the German bloggers where not so amused about an exchange. Some of them where quite pissed to be honest. The reason could be that the Germans don’t have as many competitors. For them it might be easier to gain followers on facebook. Again, this is just a guess and not a fact! I also think that the German bloggers just want real followers who are really interested in their site and their story. It is not a big secret that especially people in the US are more superficial.

But does it make sense to exchange LIKES? I mean, it is super to have more fans, right? For us it was good to have a certain number of so called “fans”. Magazines (online and offline) are more interested in BoB now, but we won’t exchange LIKES anylonger. If you have a closer look on maaaany facebook pages, you will see that many of them have just fake fans. If you see pages with some hundred or even 5,000 fans and their posts only get 10 or 20 likes… tzzz. I don’t know. I think it is embarrassing and I am not interested at all in visiting their blog. (But that’s not what you want, right?)

You have to choose for yourself, if you like real facebook fans or just fake fans. Maybe the number looks good on your blog, but believe me, the readers find out very quickly, if you just fake the numbers. They will never come back to your blog again.

Last month achievements and statistics

Okay, enough facebook. What happend in October? As you know we volunteer in a hostel in Valparaiso, Chile, and luckily we had some time to write posts and do some soft marketing again. We wanted to write 10 posts but of course we didn’t :). Nevertheless, we are really happy with the last posts we published. With our golf course review in La Paz we finally have something for our golfers and the German online golf magazine GOLF POST published it on their website.
Also, the German travel website merian.de published an interview with BoB and a short photo story. Of course these publications bring some traffic  on our blog, but unfortunately the readers leave the blog very quickly when they see we write in English. The US and UK magazines are not that interested yet, but we work on it :).

Analytics:

Visits: 868 (+312)
Unique visitors: 607 (+223)
Page views: 2,151 (+823)
Bounce rate: 55.18 (-0,58)

Social media:

facebook: 617 (+8)
twitter: 2721 (+244)
google+: 81 (+2)
instagram: 712 (+167)
pinterest: 166 (+121)
youtube clicks: 5,020 (+599)
email subscriber: 31 (+4)

Ranks:

Google page rank: 0
Alexa rank: 1,58 M (+37k)

Goals for NOVEMBER

We have one more month before we will head to Argentina. More time to write… that’s what we need :). If we manage to write a post every week, I am more than happy! A big goal is still to get more e-mail subscribers and more fans on facebook, without cheating of course.

That’s it for now. What do you think about facebook LIKE exchanges? Do you also do it? Is it worth it?
I am not the godfather of blogging, so please share your opinion and let us know, what you think. If you don’t want to miss a blog report, please sign up for our newsletter. Oh, and you can also like us on facebook… but just, if you really like us :).

Have a great and successful November!

Cheers and keep on posting!

Lars