5 tips to help you take advantage of Facebook’s twin feeds

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

Facebook’s enhanced News Feed and Ticker has changed the engagement game for Facebook Page admins. And those who know the rules of the game will be able to get more results simply by shifting strategy.

Facebook now has two News Feeds

Facebook users now have two News Feeds in one — the Ticker and the main News Feed (see image above).

The main News Feed is similar to what we’ve been used to, but “Top Stories” and “Recent” stories are more prevalent. The “Ticker” on the right is a Twitter-like feed of stories published by a user’s Facebook friends. These News Feeds present content in very different ways:

• The Main News Feed – This includes stories by friends and Pages you’ve liked. “Recent” is simply posts in reverse chronological order. What appears in “Top Stories” is entirely determined by Edgerank.

• The Ticker – This includes only stories by friends. Your Page only gets exposure if a user is “Talking About” your Page.

How the two News Feeds impact Facebook Pages

According to EdgeRank Checker, soon after Facebook tweaked the News Feed, impressions (the number of times a story is displayed throughout Facebook) were down 25%, but likes and comments were up by 9% and 21% respectively.

This makes sense because when a user engages with your Facebook Page, the Ticker pushes it to all of their friends. Likes and comments can also increase if users see your Page story in their main News Feed.

How to shift your strategy

There are at least five ways you can tweak your current Facebook Page strategy to take advantage of the new News Feed:

1. Increase your post frequency. To make up for the overall decrease in impressions, post more frequently. Make sure you use Insights to determine how many posts per day work best for your Page.
2. Create even more engaging content. Posts that have a high EdgeRank will now remain in the News Feed longer.

1. Get fans to stay connected. Deepen and broaden your relationships with fans so that they share your Page content consistently. You can do this by rewarding fans or using a content calendar.
2. Push engagement with other channels. Use your email list or Twitter to drive engagement on specific posts.
3. Get more airtime with Facebook Sponsored Story ads. You can create an ad featuring one of your Page stories to get you even more attention near the News Feed (ads are displayed right below the ticker).

How have you changed your Facebook Page strategy?

The post What Facebook’s hybrid News Feed means for engagement appeared first on Socialbrite.

How a few simple changes can make your Facebook Page more visible & engaging to fans

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, community managers, marketing professionals, NGOs, businesses, brands.

What is your nonprofit doing to engage with your Facebook fans? I put that question to attendees during a talk I gave recently at a gathering of New York nonprofit organizations — and heard about some great practices:

• Planned Parenthood was able to move its Facebook fans to successfully defend the organization against legislative attacks.

• MASA Israel found that including a media image (photo or video) with every wall post update increased wall post engagement. MASA Israel also developed a successful Facebook application that streamlines the program enrollment decision-making process.

• The Partnership at Drugfree.org held a successful Facebook wall chat, most recently with the actress Melissa Gilbert.

The importance of the newsfeed

At the event, convened by my colleagues Michelle Perrault and Seth Giammanco at Minds On Design Lab, I talked about how to ramp up your Facebook engagement. The presentation covered understanding Facebook post engagement, matching goals to engagement, practices and ideas for designing Facebook Page, and how to measure engagement and ROE (return on engagement).

Most fans never visit a Page but instead rely on the Page’s content to show up in their newsfeeds. A recent ComScore study reports that “Facebook users are 40-150 times more likely to consume branded content in the newsfeed than to visit the Fan Page itself.” However, the problem is that not all content will show up in the Top News section of the newsfeed, which is the default newsfeed setting.

Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank that dictates which content will be featured prominently in an individual’s newsfeed. (See J.D. Lasica’s explanation of how EdgeRank works.) EdgeRank takes into account three factors: how recent was the content published (on a site, on a Facebook Page), how much interaction did the piece of content create and how regularly the individual interacts with that organization or brand. Thus, if an organization publishes a video to its Page, and no one Likes or comments on it, the video may never show up in the Top News newsfeed of someone’s home page. However, if an individual often Likes, shares or comments on that organization’s content, there is a higher likelihood that the video will show up as part of the Top News.

Setting goals is important

A recent Idealware study on the use of Facebook reveals that nonprofit organizations that set Facebook goals felt that goal-setting correlated with success on Facebook. In particular, organizations that had the most success with their Facebook page set goals of driving constituents to action and attracting particular kinds of constituents. A recent Hubspot report of Facebook brand pages reveals that businesses with 501-1,000 Facebook fans saw 3.5 times the amount of website traffic than Pages with fewer than 25 fans.

Designing Facebook Engagement

Creating Facebook Page engagement is challenging, which is why it is so important to help your fans engage through good Page design. There are four elements to good Facebook Page design:

• creating a welcoming portal with a custom welcome Page

• identifying what the main conversation within the Page will be about

• offering unique content to your Fans (found only on Facebook), and

• creating a content calendar for your Facebook Page.

In addition, you can design your calls to action for a higher return on engagement, as shown by this study by the PR firm 22Squared.

Practicing engagement

The slide deck from my presentation offers some good practices for creating more engagement, taken from a variety of sources. Ideas include posting five days a week, what time of day to post and which days of the week garner the highest engagement.

Measuring Facebook engagement

The last section of the presentation covers thinking about how to measure Facebook engagement, including mapping goals to actions and setting deeper benchmarking goals. The slide below from the presentation demonstrates this approach to Facebook measurement and quantifying return on engagement.

How are you using Facebook to create engagement? Please share your experiences.

Related

• Nonprofits: Are your Facebook fans engaged? (Socialbrite)

• Four-part series on how to use Facebook strategically (Socialmedia.biz)

• Tutorials on how to use Facebook well (Socialbrite)

The post Tricks to ramp up your nonprofit’s Facebook Page appeared first on Socialbrite.

One self-evident requirement for nonprofit marketing on Facebook is regularly posting interesting content on your Facebook Page.

Don’t be scared by the word “content” – its definition includes a lot more than blog posts and videos. Status updates count.

I recently conducted a few informal experiments with some Facebook Pages and my own Facebook Profile. I wanted  to see how people engage with status updates alone (no links, videos, photos) versus shared URLs, videos and photos (with no status update). I found that folks were three or four times more likely to engage with a pithy status update over a shared URL, photo or video.

I wasn’t surprised at the results. Status updates are the language of Facebook users. It’s what they engage with most of the time.

8 simple ways to engage your Facebook fans

1. Don’t Be All Work And No Play – It’s OK to ask people what plans they have for the weekend, or if they saw Toy Story 3. Facebook users love sharing the human details of their lives. You’re human too, right?
2. Ask Simple Questions – Ask your connections how they’ve been personally affected by your organization’s cause. For example, the Brain Aneurysm Foundation (an Inbound Zombie client) might ask “How has a Brain Aneurysm personally impacted your life?”
3. Play Tag With Like-Minded Pages – This is a way to create awareness about your Page on another Facebook Page. The best way to avoid coming across as spam is to 100% promote the other Page on your Page. For example, I noticed Mari Smith asking people to share their goals for the second half of 2010. I simply shared her post on my Page in an effort to send her new fans.
4. Tell Them You Love Them – Your Page connections (fans) make you who you are. They give you their money, tell others how great you are, and keep coming back. Say thanks once in a while. And mean it when you thank them. They deserve it.
5. Shine The Spotlight – Facebook users love to look cool. They love to be recognized in front of their peers. Post a status update that expresses appreciation for one of your die-hard supporters. The other fans won’t feel left out.
6. Comment Back To The Clusters – When your Page gets a lot of updates from fans, like during an event, don’t worry about responding to every single person. Ask yourself where your organizational voice is needed most. For example, focus on the posts that have the highest number of comments.
7. Get Some Insight – Use Facebook insights to quickly find the posts with the highest engagement. Focus your blood and sweat on those fans.
8. Ask Simple Choice Questions – Try asking your fans simple preference questions. For example, Centerville Pie (another Inbound Zombie client) can ask “Which do you like better – Blueberry Pie or Apple Pie?”

Put on your lab coat

As with anything related to Facebook marketing, result will vary. No two Facebook Page communities are alike. See what works for you – and measure, measure, measure.

Let us know: What’s worked for your Facebook Page?

Cross-posted from JohnHaydon.com.

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