Why? WHY?

So today, I fell down the rabbit hole of analyzing our Facebook statistics.  If you aren't familiar with the business page interface on Facebook, it provides a page where you can see the new likes to your business page...and your page unlikes.  You can also analyze the number of people who like your page, but don't follow your page in their feed.  And as an added bonus, Facebook will also tell you statistics about similar businesses in your area and their performance over the week. True to my competitive nature, I feel the Facebook "Like" pressure.  I've considered sponsored ads to target people who might like us on Facebook if they haven't already.  I've suggested the PJP page to friends on my personal page.  I found myself looking at a Facebook page for a restaurant we visited over the weekend and feeling a twinge of "yyyeeeeeesssssssss" when I realized PJP had more likes.  And look, I don't tell you this because I'm proud of myself...but because this blog is about keeping it real. (Yo.)

And so when I see a dislike or two, I obsess about who and why.  Do they hate our pie?  Do they hate our personalities?  Do they think we post too much or too little?  Is our content annoying?  Is our content irrelevant?  Do they hate pie in general and only liked our page in the first place because Facebook suggested so based on their secret voodoo algorithms?  Did they think we sell pizza pie and were sorely disappointed to find out we don't?  Did they think we sell jeans and were sorely disappointed to find out that we don't?  Did they accidentally sneeze and click the "Like" on our page a few months ago and they live in Canada somewhere and they will never visit us so what is the point and so then they just unlike us???

Jeanne and I spend copious amounts of time trying to figure out how to do what we love and make everyone love us while we do it (and I would bet this makes us no different from most other business owners).  But without question, one of the very hardest lessons I've learned over the past 15 months is that not everyone is going to love us all of the time.  Ouch.

I think in a pre-social media world, all this was easier.  Knowing not EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE WORLD would like you was a logical certainty.  And how can you obsess about who likes you when you don't even know that someone doesn't?  But now, our value is tracked on likes and unlikes, follows and retweets, favored images on Instagram, and more.  And if social media wasn't enough, Google breathes down your neck like a big hairy monster that whispers "Search Engine Optimization" and "Mobile Friendly Site".  And we go along with it...because not having a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google +, or Tumblr is like refusing to get electricity or running water...it just doesn't work in our world today.

So how do you balance wanting everyone to Facebook "Like" you forever with your sanity and the reality of the world we live in?  I have no idea.  But for my even having to question it, I'm totally blaming Mark Zuckerberg forever.