Why is it so hard to get Facebook likes from your own friends on FB?

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Its not a contest people. Seriously. If I hit the like button, its because it was in my top 1-5% of favorite posts for the day, maybe even for the week.

Yes, I experience it. I have a public page that displays a lot of my art work. I have a couple hundred or so friends, and less than 30 of them have liked my page. I was offended at first. But what I later realized is that they are the ones that pay attention to me while the ones who didnt like the page or my post or whatever are closer to acquaintances than friends. It would be nice to have everyone like my page, but I get not everyone wants to see my art, and I get that there are a lot of people on my friend's list that I just am not close with. I sent everyone on my list an invite when I first made the page, and havent said much since.

Instead, I went to the public to get likes. I ran an ad campaign with facebook ads (which I dont recommend unless you have a lot of money... and I had a really high click thru rate, I cant imagine if I had had a low click thru rate). I also do a lot of networking - like pages that I find interesting, leave them a post linking back to your page. There are several fb pages set up to help facilitate like exchanges similar to that. There are also many like exchange sites. You have to be careful with like exchange pages/sites though because there will be an unlike ratio, as well as a fake account ratio. I am finding that less than 1/3 of like exchange likes are real and staying. On the other hand, if all you are trying to do is make the number bigger, like exchange is a good way to do that.

Then also realize that fb double charges you. For example, I paid for my ad campaign, it ran over a month long. I have 5600 likes. But only about 400-900 people are seeing my post, because unless you pay to boost your post, the only people who will ever see it are the ones looking at their news feed the instant it posts, and anyone who sees it from their friends liking or sharing the post. About 1/6th of my fan base are never seeing my posts at all, so its hard to get likes that way. This is true across board, too. Look at pages that have millions of likes..... the proportion of likes per post is low like that, sometimes a lot lower. For instance, Britney has 27mil likes on her page. The last post was Monday, and only has 3,000 likes. So, even big name celebrities arent getting tons of likes.