Facebook Page Conundrum

I'll admit it, I prefer having a Facebook page much better than an actual account. I mean, it's nice to see what friends and family are up to on my 'real life' account, but for business purposes, a page is perfect. What I've noticed, however, is a mass of invites to 'like' other pages. Among the author/writer community, this has almost become an 'you scratch my back I'll scratch yours' type of deal. As in, let's trade likes. Authors will post things such as 'I've liked your page, will you please like mine?' And 99% of the time I will do it. Not necessarily because I'm interested in the page, but because it seemed like the polite thing to do. After all, they asked nicely. Isn't this, essentially, what social networking is all about? The more people that know about you and your work the better? In theory, yes. If we're talking quantity in numbers, participating in one of those Facebook page-like-swapping parties, for example, is a good bet. Actually, it's quite easy to boost your page likes that way. 

But I wonder...

Are these likes doing any of us any good? See my comment 'not necessarily interested'. What good is liking a page if I'm not interested in the content? Chances are, if I'm not interested in a page, I won't pay any attention to it. That does neither me nor the page owner any good. True, he or she has my 'number', but if I'm not engaged in their page in any way, that number is pretty useless. Isn't it? With that in mind, what could authors (or anyone, for that matter) do to find the right people who will be interested in their page? Is it like the lottery? Do we keep tossing our invites out, in the hopes that we'll hit a bulls-eye along the way? Is there a better strategy?

For what it's worth, I don't think it's wrong to reciprocate a like, or to help boost someone's page like numbers. As I said before, I have no issues clicking a like button (unless it's something I really can't stand, or completely disagree with). Ideally, however, I would want everyone who liked my page to be genuinely interested in me and my books. I guess this is just one of those random things I think about that has no right or wrong answer.