Marketers, you might want to sit down for this. Very soon, you’ll see the number of ‘Likes’ on your brand’s Facebook Pages change. And not in a good way. Facebook recently announced that they’ve decided to update the way Page Likes are counted by specifically removing memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from your Pages’Like counts.

In an update posted on their website, they said Page admins would see a ‘small dip’ in their number of Page likes. Yes, this is probably marketing-speak for ‘please don’t freak out when the numbers change significantly.’ But we think they’re right in asking you not to freak out. In fact, we think Facebook did you guys a solid. For while losing fans is a bummer, and the more fans you have, the more fans you are likely to lose, there’s a silver lining in this dark cloud of dwindling numbers.

Here’s why you should turn your brand’s frown upside down:

–   By removing inactive and deceased users, you are left with a number that is significant, but more importantly absolute. These are active users; people who truly care about your brand and the perfect people to target and engage.

–   Considering Facebook has already been filtering out Likes and Comments generated by deactivated or memorialized accounts on individual Page posts, this will give you a concrete idea when you’re trying to calculate engagement in relation to the number of fans your brand has.

–   Just think of all the hard work and marketing spend not wasted on eyeballs that aren’t really seeing!

And if it makes you feel any better, remember when Instagram removed spam accounts from its service and people lost numerous followers overnight? Well Instagram lost 18 million followers. Considering Facebook is likely to have the most number of fans…you see what we’re seeing here.

Bottom line? The numbers will go down but the best your brand and team can do is be open and transparent about ‘the dip.’ Roll with the changes and just keep working on engaging with your fans and creating awesome content.