Over the weekend I started a brief discussion with my better half on this article’s title, ‘My friends don’t support me’. To be clear, the type of support I’m referring to is the kind given by friends when they hit the ‘like’ button on your content. Support from friends is particularly expected when growing your digital presence or brand influence on social media. 

I saw a status update on FB where the poster said, “My friends don’t support me; they don’t ‘like’ my content.” -or something to that effect. It’s a complaint we’ve all heard or said at some point or another. And I decided to have a quick chat with Femi, my husband about it.

Not long after our chat, I considered putting my thoughts out there on social media land but thought better of it. For something I have strong opinions on, I felt a Facebook update couldn’t quite cut it.

It should be common sense.

I mean it’s common sense, isn’t it? Or it should be. Friends should go out of their way to support one another’s social media content. I think a ‘like’ should be minimum, although a ‘like’ feels somewhat languid in my opinion when done by close friends, family or those I know have similar social media aspirations. You guys need to be commenting, not every single time, but something juicy, you know, now and then. But if a ‘like’ is all you can muster up, ok fine, we’ll go with that.  

Sharing content will also do. Friends should also be sharing your content, once in a while, right? That would be a prudent call to take, right? I mean what I’ve said is common sense. These are actions we would all expect real friends and compassionate and smart people to take, right?

However, Content Creators, there are a few things we should also consider.

One – from my observations and experience, most of the people I see making this complaint aren’t so great at supporting friends themselves, in my opinion. Feel free to come for me in the comments but only after reading the rest of this article. I’m here to learn too.

I mean support is subjective anyway, isn’t it? You may think you are supporting your business friend because you liked their post last week. And your business friend is like, “No, you are weak. Why didn’t you like the 50-odd posts I shared after that?” You know one woman’s placidness is another woman’s fervency.  

But this whole, ‘My friend did not support me’ situation could be happening because of my next point.

2) The reason your friend is not engaging with your content is that they don’t see it. Ever think of that? Yeh, it’s a fact that Facebook is not showing your friend your content, or giving it priority on their newsfeed because they don’t think your friend will like it. Facebook doesn’t care about your content. They care about their users and giving them the best experience, so they can keep you and me on the platform for longer and show us more ads and make more money to give to their shareholders.

However, if you see your business friend’s content and you don’t ‘like’ it, you are wrong, mi amigo. 

Point number three – Having your friends hit ‘like’ on your status elevates that dopamine to extraordinary levels, well at least it does me. I also get the theory that engagement, which doesn’t cost your friends much at all, will help with your content ranking. I get that. But please don’t let the lack of support get you down. Redirect your energy on creating the type of content that will attract the right kind of customers who will buy from you.

And that’s all I am going to say about this for now. I’m also going to give myself a round of applause for this article because I ‘like’ it, and I guess most of my friends will not.

Also to all the CEOs, Marketing Professionals, Founders and anyone else building a brand using social media, I encourage you to join the upcoming webinar – ‘A Simple Content Strategy for Brand Growth’. This workshop is ideal for Content Marketing professionals looking to develop critical strategies to work in an organisation or build brand awareness. Book your spot here, now and today.