The Scientific Reason No One ‘Likes’ Your Facebook Posts

Written by Chandrama Deshmukh  • 

Like Chandler Bing, you have a million-in-a-minute witty remarks about the conversation you just heard while doing your groceries. You head over to the frozen foods section, where you can quickly update your Facebook status. Even as you are typing the post, your mind is buzzing with ideas about the comments your network will make and the number of ‘likes’ you expect for the post.

You expedite the grocery shopping, confident that you will have plenty of responding to do on your post on the way home.

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Three hours later…

You refresh the feed a couple of times because you can’t believe what you are seeing – 0 likes, 0 comments!

The red shade of humiliation and embarrassment sweeps upwards from your neck gradually because you now realize that for over three hours, your entire network saw and read your post, but used their discerning taste to move on without reacting to it.

There is a different kind of million-in-a-minute ideas buzzing in your brain now – delete the post, shrug it off as “whatever!”, pretend you don’t care, delete and post it again. Maybe people were genuinely busy or chose to detox from social media on this particular day…

And then, of course, you think of your next dilemma – how can you generate content that your network will react to?

Well, we might have a solution for you! We spent a lot of time browsing ideas on the world wide web to bring you the best ideas that will generate reactions to your post every single time. Because let’s be honest, we don’t post only because we have the time, we post because we want to inform our world about what is going on in our lives.

1. Let’s Get Physical

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Now, say you update your profile photo. No matter how grainy or how poor the resolution, people will instantly react. They will go even as far as commenting on your loss or gain of weight, which is so not visible in the photo. Isn’t that why you posted the grainy picture in the first place? There’s a simple explanation – our friends and acquaintances are far more likely to react to content that reflects their own physical existence.

Here are some examples of posts that will definitely garner reaction: “How to lose water weight on the face through face yoga” or “You won’t believe this baby’s reaction to seeing its own potty!” or “Improve your sex life in just two minutes.”

2. Emotionally Yours

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Speak to any therapist or reach for any self-help book, and you will find that the first thing people want help or guidance with is their relationships. How can they find a partner, how can they be a better partner, how to know when to leave their partner.

People are also interested in other people’s relationships, or the lack thereof. Celebrity gossip and Page 3 news, for example. What’s more comforting than knowing that your favorite television actress was cheated upon at the same time as you, or that a certain actress has the same complicated relationship with weight as you do. Doesn’t this definitely go a little way in helping you get over the news that your college roommate’s perfect life just became even more so? Yes, she’s pregnant, and was promoted at the office too!

3. More IQ, Less EQ

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Then, there is your set of friends who couldn’t care less about your weight gain or Britney Spears’ reinvention, but will jump at the chance to comment on your post on “10 energy spends successful people don’t waste”, or a seasoned journalist op-ed on the recent British elections and the impact on Brexit.

The thinkers in your network focus their energy on posts that improve their chance of success or provide them with informed opinions. It doesn’t mean they don’t care about you personally, they only prefer to react to posts that stimulate their IQ more than their EQ.

4. Less Self, More Selflessness

Seeing more posts in your feed about taking your creativity to the next level or a course on finding your calling in life? Chances are that some of your friends are interested in topics and themes that relate to spirituality, creating a better world, finding alternative solutions to global issues, and evolution of the human consciousness.

These are friends and acquaintances who believe in collective action and collaboration to achieve common desires and goals.

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At the end of the day, it is important to remember that social media is a medium to engage with the people in your life. But it is also important to remember that you shouldn’t go out of your way to generate only the type of content that will garner maximum reactions. Although Facebook is a virtual platform, your network can sense inauthenticity. Inauthenticity is also another reason your network may not be engaging with you on some of your posts. Some of these people may also know you in real life, and if they sense that you are trying to create a separate, virtual personality, they may choose not to engage with you on such a platform.

Do you have any other pointers? Feel free to share them with us in the comments section below.

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