A few weeks ago, while I was delivering a lecture on effective social media strategies for companies in Malta, the delegates of the seminar were surprised by the news about Facebook’s new experimental rating feature.

Some of you might have noticed that certain pages have started featuring a star rating system (from one to five) underneath the page title. Facebook is still experimenting with it, but if officially adopted, this feature will become a game changer for the social media strategists… how? Simply because visitors will be asked to rate the products and / or services of a company. This will essentially force companies to focus on the quality of the business that they provide in the real world, instead of the amount of “Likes” they have on Facebook, a metric which does not constitute a key performance indicator, as the audience engagement level might still remain low even with thousands of fans.

Hopefully, the introduction of the star rating will also mean the end of the “Like to win” competitions which amateur social media marketers use so often in order to increase the number of followers. Should this star system be implemented, the greater the number of followers, the higher would be the chances of receiving negative feedback.

It is not clear if it will be possible to switch the feature on or off. However, should the star rating be optional, a company which chooses to opt out of it, would definitive raise a number of flags about the standard of the service it provides.