Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, Facebook users.

You may have heard of the term “social media ROI calculator.” It refers to a method of figuring out whether you’re getting an adequate return on investment for your organization’s investment in Facebook, blogging, Twitter or other social media.

The trouble is, most of these ROI calculations include factors for investments and gains, but not many include factors for loss. This means that any “collateral damage” of your campaign might often be overlooked.

Let’s consider an example. Imagine you have a fundraising campaign that includes a Facebook component. A partner gives you $2,000 toward Facebook ads. After the campaign is over, you walk away with $20,000 in donations from these ads.

But you also ticked off hundreds of people.

Financial success in this example is one thing, but without considering negative comments received during the campaign, a true ROI calculation can’t be made.

What are the loss metrics in Facebook?

Facebook has four data points that show you how people negatively reacted to your post:

• Hiding your post
• Hiding all posts from your page
• Reporting your post as spam
• Unliking your page

You can find these in Facebook Insights under the Engagement column.

Why does this matter?

You might be asking why this matters within the scope of growing your community and raising money. Negative feedback shows you how you are hurting the growth of your community (if at all). It also helps you fine-tune your content strategy with a more holistic understanding of your fan base.

What do you think?

The post 4 Facebook metrics your nonprofit shouldn’t overlook appeared first on Socialbrite.

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, Facebook administrators.

Afew days ago Facebook rolled out a new look to Facebook Insights, including some important changes to its metrics reports. Note that it sometimes takes days, even weeks, for such updates to take effect on all 1 billion Facebook accounts.

In the 10-minute video above, I’ll step you through the changes and what they mean for your organization or nonprofit. Specifically, you’ll learn about all the changes to five main reports:

1. Overview: Get a 7-day snapshot of the most important activity on your page.
2. Page Likes: See net likes over time and where your likes come from.
3. Page Reach: See how many people are seeing your posts over time.
4. Page Posts: See how people are engaging with your posts.
5. People: See how your fans are similar and different from people who see and/or engage with your posts.

What do you think of the changes to Insights?

The post Understanding the big changes to Facebook Insights appeared first on Socialbrite.

The key differences between nonprofits and for-profits

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, small businesses, general public.

My good friend Jon Loomer and I chatted the other day for the Social Media Pubcast. Check out the video above to glean some insights on some of the topics we discussed.

You’ll find out more about:

• The key advantage nonprofits have over for-profits
• Differences and similarities in approach to and struggles with Facebook between nonprofits and for-profits
• Facebook Insights and the stats that matter (Demographics, Talking About This, Frequency)
• Tips for Promoted Posts

Check out the video from our chat and share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post Building a loyal Facebook fan base appeared first on Socialbrite.

Photo courtesy of cambodia4kidsorg via Creative Commons

Break out analytics into five separate reports

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, Facebook administrators.

Facebook Insights for Pages provides critical data about activity around your Page and your Page updates. It’s like a GPS device guiding you towards successful interactions on Facebook.

Facebook breaks down its analytics into five reports that can be viewed directly on your page:

1. The Overview Report: An overview of how your page is performing day to day, with sortable post-level details.
2. The Likes Report: A report about the Facebook users who like your page.
3. The Reach Report: A report about the Facebook users who see your page content (organic, viral and paid reach), what websites are referring traffic to your page and more.
4. The Talking About This Report: A report about the Facebook users who create content about your page, and how those stories generate viral reach.
5. The Check Ins Report: A report about the Facebook users who check in to your Facebook Place on their mobile device.

Going beyond Facebook Insights

The five reports listed above provide more than enough data to navigate toward most destinations. However, there are times when you want deeper insights around your page. That’s why Facebook allows you to do a full data dump (up to an 89-day range) of all your Insights data.

Following are examples of some of the data unavailable in the standard Insights reports that you can view by exporting data:

Page level data:

• The number of people each day who saw your page content
• The number of people each day who engaged with your page
• The number of people each week who engaged with your page
• The number of stories each day created about your page
• The number of stories created about your page over the past 28 days
• The number of people each day who liked your page who are also friends with current fans
• A breakdown of how people have liked your page each day (through a Like Box, on the page, in a hover card, etc.)
• The number of people each day who saw your page or its posts from a story published by a friend
• Data on post impressions. Impressions are the number of times a post is displayed, while reach is the number of people who saw those posts.

Post level data:

• Date and time an update was published
• The number of people who saw your post in a story from a friend
• The total number of impressions each post received
• The number of people who gave negative feedback on your post
• The number of people who hid your post
• The number of people who reported your post as spam
• The number of fans who saw your post
• The number time your post was displayed to fans
• The number of stories about your post by fans

How to export your Page Insights

You can export either page level or post level data from your Page Insights simply by clicking the Export button on the top-right corner of any of your Insights tabs, and selecting page level or post level data, the date range you want to analyze and the format for your export (as shown above). Insights data is not available before July 19, 2011.

The post Dive deeper into Facebook Page Insights appeared first on Socialbrite.

Now that Facebook has rolled out the new Insights to all Pages, you’re probably wondering what some of these new metrics mean.

But you’re also wondering which ones really matter.

Yes, you can still view how many fans you have, and you can even see how many collective friends your fans have! But these numbers really don’t matter if no one cares about your organization.

The Insights metrics that matter

Some of you might be saying: “Yeah, but this Page has over 3,000 fans!” Still others might be saying “3,000 is nothing…We have over 50,000 fans.” Whether you have 3,000 fans or 50,000 means nothing if:

1. No one’s seeing any of your Page stories.
2. No one’s talking about your organization.
3. No one’s telling their friends.

How many people are seeing your Page stories?

One thing that really matters is if people actually see your Page stories – right? Insights shows you how many Facebook users are seeing your Page stories in their news feed or on your Page. In the graph below, almost half of the Page’s fans are not getting this Page’s updates in their news feed.

Fortunately, many Facebook users are taking action on what they see (commenting, liking, sharing, etc.), and those actions are seen by their friends:

Viral reach (the number of people who see stories about your Page from their friends) is what Facebook is all about!

Metric: People are talking about your Page

So how many people are talking about your nonprofit? And what are they saying?

You can see a rollup of all these actions on the Insights Dashboard, right above data about the posts you’re publishing.

Knowing how much they’re talking is one thing, but knowing what they’re saying is what’s meaningful. Are they liking your post? Liking your Page? Commenting and sharing?

“Talking About This” includes the following actions:

• Liking your Page
• Liking, commenting on or sharing your Page update
• Commenting on or liking a Sponsored Story
• Answering a Question posted by a Page
• Posting to a Page’s Wall
• RSVPing to an Event hosted by the Page
• Mentioning (or tagging) your Page
• Tagging a person or Page in one of your photos
• Checking in (if you have Facebook Place)

So what metrics should you pay attention to?

In one sense, social media measurement is like using a compass. Both answer three essential questions:

1. How far you are from your destination (our compass includes GPS).
2. When and how you need to change course.
3. When you’ve arrived at your destination.

And now the really important question:

What’s your destination?

The post Which Facebook Insights metrics matter to your nonprofit? appeared first on Socialbrite.

Why embracing data should be an important part of your leadership strategy

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, businesses, social media managers, marketing professionals, individuals.

I recently presented a workshop titled “Data Driven Leadership” at the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network/AGM annual conference along with colleagues Marc Baizman and Steve Backman. The question we addressed in the workshop was: What online data can help a leader make informed decisions around programming, advocacy and fundraising? Marc, Steve and I have expertise in Google Analytics, in understanding customer segmentation and databases, and in identifying social media metrics, respectively. Each of us thought about how the data from our respective areas of expertise could shed light on an answer. The hardest part was choosing what to eliminate from our presentation, as we only had one hour to cover this enormous topic!

Getting started with gathering data

We created a DIY worksheet for the session titled, “Make Your Data Work for You.” It offers sample questions to get you started thinking in the areas of marketing, programs and services, development, and volunteers and advocacy. For every sample question, it asks you to set the priority level, consider what data you’ll need to answer that question, and where you can find the answer. There are a lot of spaces for you to customize the worksheet to your needs. You can read and download the worksheet.

For every leader, thinking about the real organizational questions that the data could offer is the place to begin.

Below are summaries of our segments of the presentation, written individually by each of us. You can also view the SlideShare presentation above for the complete takeaways.

Using data from Facebook Insights

I focused on four questions that have implications for advocacy, programming and fundraising:

• How many people care about the organization, and how deeply?
• What do fans care about the most, and how deeply?
• What is the organization doing to reach the most people?
• What do you know about who cares about the organization?

Facebook has made answering the question of how many people care about the organization, and how deeply, very simple: Look at the “People Are Talking About” metric on the organization’s Facebook fan page. Facebook Insights is all about fan engagement now, and helping page administrators understand what content fans want to engage with the most. For a deeper dive into the newest version of Facebook Insights, take a look at my post about the upgrades to Facebook and Delicious.

To understand the power of page post metrics, I highlighted a news story republished by Hebrew University that questioned Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Looking at the per-post measurements, the wall post had higher engagement than the general PATA metric and was shared by so many fans that it had tremendous viral lift. By looking for patterns in per-post engagement, we can also see that similar news and science stories are popular with fans of The Hebrew University’s page. Knowing what fans are most interested in hearing about from the organization should guide future alumni communications and fundraising.

Last, thinking about demographics also offers programming, advocacy and fundraising guidance. Facebook Insights break down the demographics of your fans as well as the demographics of who is talking about you (that PATA metric). In some cases, who is talking about your page, “the super-engaged,” may have different demographic characteristics than page fans.

The value of Web analytics

Marc Baizman focused on Web analytics. Web analytics can be a great tool for you to use, but you need to clearly define what indicators are important to your organization, and then you need to take action based on what the data tells you! Marc focused on asking several simple questions that Web analytics can help answer, such as:

• How many people look at our site?
• How do people find our website?
• What are people looking at?
• What do we want people to do, and are they actually doing those things?

While he offered these sample questions, you should formulate your own questions based on what’s important to you. Remember that although Google Analytics is free, your staff’s time isn’t, so get help if you need to. A good place to get free help is the Analysis Exchange.

Use smart segmentation to sort data to your advantage

Steve Backman focused on “smart segmentation.” Segmentation often comes across at first as an alien, corporate marketing concept. Steve discussed how any organization, large or small, with the best of contact management software or a collection of spreadsheets can begin to benefit from a smart segmentation framework. To reach the largest possible audience in the most effective way, you need to understand and operate from your organization’s constituent groups.

Organizations may take satisfaction in how their monthly e-mail stats rise and fall, or overall response rates to a fund appeal, advocacy campaign or event. To go deeper, you need to look proactively at how you characterize your contacts. You need to work through how to connect critical data from these separate connections and activities to generate a full picture. Steve encouraged data managers to have more passion in understanding their organization’s constituency and putting the available data at the service of organizational goals. He used quick examples from Constant Contact stats and Salesforce reporting to stress an overall framework: Find indicators that support you goal and measures you can collect.

The post How nonprofits should be using data appeared first on Socialbrite.

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, social media managers, individuals.

Although Facebook has changed what liking a Page means to users, acquiring Facebook fans will always be an important part of any nonprofit Facebook strategy.

Fortunately, Facebook’s platform includes many opportunities for Facebook users to like a Page. Below are 12 ways Facebook users can like your Page:

1 From a new Facebook user registration.
People who are registering for Facebook can like your Page in the registration wizard.

2 From creating a Page.
When you create a Page, liking it is now part of the process.

3 Admin registration.
People can like your Page when you add them as admins.

4 Invite friends feature.
Admins can use the “Invite Friends” feature to ask their friends to like your Page (as shown at top).

5 On the Page.
People who like your Page from the Page itself.

6 Sponsored stories.
People can like your Page in a sponsored story ad.

7Recommendation.
Someone can recommend your Page when they like it.

8 From a mobile device.
People can like your Page directly from a iPhone or other mobile device.

9Pages can like Pages.
In addition to profiles, other Pages can like your Page.

10From a profile edit.
Facebook users can add your page to their “likes” if they edit their profile.

11From a Facebook search.
People who liked your Page from Facebook’s search results.

12From a like box or like button.
People can like your Page from an external site using these Facebook social plugins.

Use Facebook Insights to track all of your like sources

In Facebook’s new Page Insight Fans report, you can view how many likes you’ve received for a specific date range, and where those likes came from:

Were you aware of all these “like” sources?

The post 12 ways Facebook users can ‘like’ your nonprofit Facebook Page appeared first on Socialbrite.

What you need to know about recent changes to two key social networks

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, businesses, brands, Web publishers, bloggers, educators, social media managers, individuals.

The social media landscape continually evolves, and it’s hard to keep up with all the changes. Platforms and apps I know and love suddenly have new capabilities, add-ons and new wrinkles. In this new feature, “New and Improved on the Social Web,” I’ll be highlighting some of the latest changes to social media platforms, apps and tools, and commenting on their implications. Let’s start by tackling the recent changes to Delicious (social bookmarking) and Facebook.

Delicious stacks

Delicious, the social bookmarking site — acquired not long ago by the founders of YouTube — just rolled out a completely new Web interface as well as a new product, Delicious stacks. The new interface is fun and updated and brings the brand experience in line with today’s Web experience and expectations. While Delicious has always enabled users to bookmark, tag and publicly share bookmarked URLs and tags, users were not able to compile sharable topic areas. The new feature, Stacks, is Delicious’ version of publicly curated content streams. Any Delicious user may create a topic (called a stack) and add links from around the web to create a stack of the topic. Delicious users can follow stacks, share stacks with others and save individual links within others’ stacks.

With the stacks rollout, Delicious is clearly trying to be a player in the content curation trend. If this succeeds, stacks could easily compete with other curation tools such as Google Reader, scoop.it and Pearltrees.

Open commenting allowed on Facebook pages

Facebook announced a lot of upcoming changes at their F8 developer conference in September. Some of those changes are rolling out now, with implications for your organization’s page.

One of the more significant changes to your page is that any Facebook user can comment on your posts and on your wall, without Liking the page first. Just as you had previously managed your settings to allow fans to write or post content to your Facebook wall, the new permission allows “users” to do so. One note: this is a change that you can opt out of – if you allowed fans to post, the new settings automatically allow any Facebook user to post.

Potentially more people will post to your page and Like (or Subscribe to) its content because they can interact with it more easily. Ideally, more Facebook users will see your content because the increased commenting will appear in users’ newsfeeds (now called “tickers”). A user still has to Like a page for that specific page’s updates to show up in his/her ticker. On the other hand, there is less incentive to Like a page if a user just wants to post or comment. The largest implication I see is that page admins now have an even better incentive to create engaging and sharable content.

New Facebook Insights & the ‘People are Talking About’ metric

The new “People are Talking About” metric appears below your page’s Likes, on the left-hand side of the wall. It is Facebook’s attempt to benchmark and reveal how engaging your page’s content is. The PATA metric includes people who:

• like, share, or comment on a post or on the wall
• answer a question on your page
• mention your page by tagging it, or tag a photo of yours
• like or share a check-in deal, or check-in at your Facebook place

The new Facebook Insights offers a more subtle breakdown of engagement by individual post than the old Insights did. The previous individual Post Impressions metric has been replaced with multiple engagement metrics: Reach, Engaged Users, Talking About This, and Virality.

According to Search Engine Land’s comprehensive summary of the new Insights:

“The goal of Pages Insights for Page admins is to understand what drives that number and how they can best engage their advocates, so that they can get a sense of how to optimize their Page content to increase the people they’re reaching with their messages. Which means that no matter the size of your Page’s audience, you can really get a good sense for which posts spread and get shared with others.”

I believe the new Insights will offer admins a more accurate sense of how engaging their pages’ content is with fans. If nonprofits are using social media to move online fans to take action, and to help the organization further its mission of changing the world, then creating more online engagement is a critical step in that path.

Related resources on Socialbrite

• Video tutorial: How to use the new Facebook Insights
• Facebook nuked the Like button, now what?
• 7 ways Facebook’s subscribe button could be a nonprofit game-changer

The post Inside the upgrades to Facebook & Delicious appeared first on Socialbrite.

Facebook Insights allows you to view daily interactions by type in a report called “Daily Active Users Breakdown.”

This report can be found by selecting the “Users” report on the left-hand side of your Insights panel:

Understanding the breakdown of Daily Active Users

Halfway down the Users report, you’ll find the Daily Active Users Breakdown chart:

This chart provides daily numbers on five different stats. Mousing over any data point in this chart will allow you to see details for a specific day.

• Unique Page Views – This is the number of users per day that have viewed your Page.
• Post Views – This is the number of people per day who have viewed your posts. This number is typically higher than the other data points because posts receive a large amount of exposure in news feeds.
• Liked a Post – The number of unique fans per day who have liked a post.
• Commented on a Post – The number of unique fans per day who have commented on a post.
• Wall Posts – This is the number of unique fans who have posted to your Page (includes updates, photos, videos, links).

What does this tell data me about my fans?

Like any set of data, it always makes more sense in context. The quickest way to get context is to view a time period of at least 30 days.

Two trends that stand out in the above example:

1. Concentration of active fans – You’ll notice that Post Viewers is much higher than Unique Page Views. This means that most of the interactions are from a small group of fans.
2. Creators need reminders – Wall Posts were apparent on days when five or more fans commented on Page posts. This could mean that active fans like to stand out from the crowd with their own ideas.

I’ll be taking a deep dive into Facebook Insights with Charityhowto on May 18th, 2011.

Related

• Facebook Page Insights analytics: Users vs. Interactions
• What does “Active Users” mean in Facebook Page Insights?

The post How to understand Daily Active Users in Facebook Insights appeared first on Socialbrite.

Facebook Insights lets you view metrics on fan growth, fan demographics, and how those fans engage with your Page. This is your No. 1 tool to get the most bang from your efforts on Facebook.

Questions you can answer with Facebook Insights:

• How fast is my fan base growing?
• Where and when are the growth spurts?
• Why are people “unliking” my Page?
• What are the demographics of my fans?
• Do they share photos more than videos?
• What content strategies and tactics are most effective?
• Which websites send the most traffic to my Page?

This video will show you how to use all the reports in Insights.

The post How to measure Facebook Page fan growth and engagement appeared first on Socialbrite.