Tips to make Facebook work harder for your website

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

How you reach people is not limited to your Facebook Page.

You reach people with your e-mails, your YouTube videos, mentions in the local newspaper.

And you reach people with your website content.

In the same way that people share your Facebook Page updates with their friends (via likes, comments and shares), they can also share your website content. For example, someone sharing a blog post by clicking a Like button. With both a Facebook Page and a blog, your ability to reach people gets amplified!

7 Facebook hacks for your website

Think about how your webpages look on Facebook.

• Is it easy for people to share your website content on Facebook?
• Do you know what links look like in the NewsFeed?

If you said “no” to both of these questions (or don’t know the answers), you’ll find these seven tips useful:

1) Add Facebook Like Buttons to Content

We all know the like button. A single click generates a story in the news feed, which is great for website traffic! To add the Facebook like button to content, follow these steps:

• Visit the like button plugin page.
• Configure as shown
• Note preview
• Click “Get Code”
• Add code to webpage

If you use WordPress, check out the Facebook Plugin.

2) Embed Facebook Sharing in Text and Images

Let’s say that you write a blog post about an upcoming event. In addition to having a like button for the post, you embed a call-to-action for people to share the event on Facebook. When people click on it, a Facebook sharing window appears.

To embed Facebook sharing in text and images, follow these instructions:

• Visit https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=
• Enter your website after the equal sign (?u=)
• Embed URL into text or image (target new window)
• Test sharing

3) Optimize Images for Facebook Link Posts

Link images are now bigger in the News Feed (desktop and mobile), which means that your website images are now more important than ever!

Some guidelines for your images:

• Facebook’s default image is the largest one associated with the URL
• Images that are at least 1200 x 627 pixels look awesome on Facebook – desktop (full screen) AND mobile
• Aspect ratio for all link images is 1.9:1 (1200 X 627 pixels)

Note: If you plan on posting links as photos, huge images will also look beautiful in full screen.

4) Debug Your Website for Facebook Graph

You also want to make sure that your website code plays nicely with Facebook. You can run a quick audit with the Facebook Debugger:

• Enter your URL
• Click Debug
• Show the results to a developer
• Keep in mind that you may need a web developer to help you

5) Track Facebook with Google Analytics

Make sure you’re tracking how people share your website content on Facebook with Google analytics. You can quickly see your most popular content on Facebook by following the instructions below.

• Visit Google Analytics
• Click on Acqusition
• Click on Social
• Click on Facebook

6) Embed Top-Performing Posts

You may already know that you can embed Facebook updates into a webpage or blog post. But are you doing it? If not, try it – you’ll kill two birds with one stone:

• Increase reach for your best Facebook Page updates
• Source blog content that’s already been vetted by your Facebook fans

7) Make a Likebox Web page

Most marketers use the LikeBox to turn website visitors into Facebook fans. But with a few tweaks, you can use to highlight your latest Facebook Page updates on a single webpage. This “Likebox webpage” increases reach for your Facebook Page updates, and gives your website visitors content that’s awesome.

What do you think? Have you used any of these tips for your website? If so, let us know in the comments below.

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Why your benchmark depends on your organization

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

Are you familiar with the term virality — at least how it’s used on Facebook? Of the overall number of people who read an update on your Facebook page, virality refers to the percentage of people who then liked, commented on or shared it.

For example, if 1,000 people saw a photo you posted on your Facebook page and 100 people liked, commented on, or shared it, the virality rate would be 10 percent.

Because virality highlights how people talk about your posts, it’s essentially a measurement of content quality. The more relevant and interesting your update is, the higher your virality will be for that update.

What is good virality?

It seems like everyone wants a quick answer on this one.

The challenge is that every single Facebook page community is very different. Each community responds to content differently on Facebook. Some communities are more social than others, and each community is also at a different stage in maturity.

What all communities do have in common is that they respond more to content that’s awesome and ignore content that’s boring.

And if you’re like most Facebook page community managers, publishing awesome content is something that you’re always looking to improve.

Ignore virality benchmarks

Let’s say NTEN suddenly announced that its latest study showed that 10 percent is the average virality for nonprofit Facebook pages. You might feel really great (even arrogant) or really crappy depending on your page’s average virality.

So in the end, a good benchmark for virality is this:

Better than your most recent best.

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How to make text updates as effective as photos

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

It seems like all the “experts” tell us is to post photos on our Facebook page to get more likes, comments and shares.

Text updates aren’t as sexy, but they can be equally as effective.

Why bother posting text updates on your Facebook page?

Why should you care about posting text updates when the research says photos work best?

There are at least two reasons:

1. Research is always biased. All studies about how content performs on Facebook is based on aggregate data from thousands of Facebook users, and never a true benchmark for your unique community. It’s like comparing apples with a huge bag of fruit.
2. Posting diverse content helps you engage more users simply because people have diverse preferences for content type and content topics.

Here are three specific ways you can boost the number of comments on your text updates:

Ask closed questions

1Closed questions take advantage of the brain’s built-in auto complete feature.

Instead of sucking up RAM formulating an answer to an open question, your brain simply has to spit out a “yes” or“no,” “true” or “false” or some other choice between two predetermined answers. Research also shows that closed questions work better on Facebook then open questions.

Be hyper-specific

2The more specific your question is, the more likely it will receive comments. The reason why is because people don’t have to do a lot of homework to come up with an answer.

For example, asking people what their favorite species of bat is will get more responses then asking people what their favorite animal is. Even more specific (and more fun) is asking if what species of bat would they’d be if they could be one!

Do their homework

3Make it easier for people to answer questions by pre-fixing the question with the type of question being asked. For example, write “QUICK POLL:” before you ask a poll question (like the example above). This instantly prompts the brain with what’s required to participate (“A poll question? I can do that!”).

Friends first on Facebook

It’s not that people are lazy, it’s that they’re distracted and busy. The key is to make the hurdles low enough so that more people can participate in your community. And greater participation leads to increased viral reach, increased affinity (a factor that influences EdgeRank) and increased fan growth.

How have you been using text updates? Share your wisdom below!

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Great images boost your place in the news feed

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, marketers, Facebook page administrators and users.

Facebook launched an enhanced news feed that’s rolling out to all users in the next weeks on both mobile and the Web.

The enhanced news feed now allows users to tailor and focus more easily on specific feeds:

• All Friends: a feed that shows you everything your friends are sharing.
• Photos: a feed with nothing but photos from your friends and the pages you like.
• Music: a feed with posts about the music you listen to.
• Following: a feed with the latest news from the pages you like and the people you follow.

What does this mean for your nonprofit?

The enhanced news feed means that you’ll have more engagement, but you’ll also have more competition.

More engagement: One of the biggest changes in the enhanced news feed is the size of photos. They are huge! This will create more photo views, comments, likes and shares.

There is also a new following feed that allows Facebook users to see all of the updates from every page they follow. I personally doubt many Facebook users will view this feed, but people who do use this feed will be more intentionally engaged with the updates.

More competition: Up until now, photos were competing against text updates and links in the news feed (in addition to other photos). Photos, which have 39% more engagement than text-only updates, had a clear advantage. But now those same photos will be competing for attention with other photos in the photos feed.

Here are five things you can do to compete for attention more effectively in the new news feed:

Post better photos

1The photos feed means that you need to post photos that are even more remarkable and relevant to your audience. This will allow you to stand out against other pages that are also posting photos.

One way to instantly improve your photos is to make sure they all tell stories, like this one:

Promote your best photos

2Go to your Facebook Insights and filter your page posts by photos, and rank them by virality. Every couple of days promote one of your top 10 photos to fans — yes, it costs a bit of money, if you can afford it. This will give your top photos even more likes, comments and shares, which will in turn generate more organic viral reach, which is way better than paid reach through Facebook ads.

Make your page beautiful

3Whenever Facebook receives a new coat of paint, users tend to explore a lot more, which can give your page a fresh burst of new visitors in the short term. Make sure you upload a new cover photo, fill in gaps in your milestones, and weed out boring content. This will increase the likelihood that visitors will engage even more with your page content.

Be useful and present

4Because users can now view all pages they’ve ever liked in the “Following” feed, unlikes will spike in the short term, especially for pages that boosted likes with fan gate contests, but failed to be useful. Make sure that you publish content that is useful, and also work hard to create useful discussions within your posts by replying to commenters.

Build a stronger fan base

5Leverage your email list, your website and other social media channels to build a stronger, more engaged Facebook fan base. You should also promote your Facebook page as a secondary action for new donors and subscribers. This strategy will always win out in the long term, regardless of how Facebook’s news feed changes.

What do you think about the new news feed?

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Encourage likes by using exclusive offers

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

One powerful strategy for acquiring Facebook fans is to encourage likes by using fan-gating, where exclusive content is available only to people who have liked your page.

The critical part is the incentive behind the fan gate.

You have to offer something that’s valuable enough to overcome the hurdle of liking your Facebook page.

For example, a free ebook or a photo contest like New Hampshire PetSave just completed:

New Hampshire PetSave used ShortStack for the contest app, putting it behind a “like gate” with this messaging:

Using static HTML to create custom tabs

Static HTML is by far the most popular app to create custom tabs that include a fan-gating feature.

You can create almost any type of custom tab – except ones that require the complexity of a database, like a photo contest (where I recommend ShortStack).

The 3-minute video above shows you how simple it is to create a fan-gate custom tab with Static HTML.

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Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, fundraising pros, marketers.

Guest post by Jim Belosic
CEO, Shortstack

Anyone who works for a nonprofit knows all too well about the donation scramble. This is why creating an impactful Facebook Page should be an integral part your marketing efforts is a no-brainer.

Facebook serves as a doorway to donors, allowing nonprofits to provide brief updates and news bites to constituents. It’s also a one-stop shop for photos, success stories, and calls to action, which reinforce the mission. Plus, Facebook is a favorite tool among nonprofits because of its low, low price of … free!

Using custom apps like ShortStack can help increase donations during fundraising campaigns. Check out these three ways that nonprofits can use Facebook apps to motivate donors.

Create a photo and video gallery

1When a nonprofit can establish emotional ties between its cause and its community, donations happen. One way to do this is to let pictures — photos and videos — tell the stories. With ShortStack, setting up an app with our video cascade template allows you to keep a permanent home for your nonprofit’s promo videos, special event video footage, news stories and commercials.

Share stories about the people who benefit from your work

Photo courtesy of Mike Grenville (Creative Commons)

2The people who benefit from your nonprofit’s efforts may have inspiring and moving stories to share. Facebook and Twitter offer a great venue for small pieces of inspiring status updates, but it’s easy to do even more with ShortStack’s Share Your Story template. Share Your Story engages users and raises awareness by making public the inspiring stories that drive your nonprofit to do the good work it does.

Use this template to run a contest or incentivize people to post their inspiring stories to your Facebook app. Once you have some contributions to your Share Your Story campaign, you can augment the impact by plucking inspiring quotes from these stories and posting them in your Timeline feed.

Give your constituents news right on your Facebook page

3Depending on their missions, nonprofits can be deeply affected by decisions made in Washington, DC.

For example, when researchers begin finding clues that may lead them to cures for diseases, when a group’s civil rights are in question or when budget issues affect a certain community, nonprofit administrators can share the news with their followers right on Facebook.

ShortStack offers a pre-made Blog/RSS template that keeps your donors privy to breaking news. If your nonprofit already has a blog, this template is also a great way to give it some more publicity.

These are three of the many ways that ShortStack can help nonprofits inspire and educate their donors, helping raise critical dollars that allow these organizations to continue doing the good work they do.

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The dos and don’ts of hosting a Facebook contest

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, marketers, Web publishers, marketers.

If you’re confused about Facebook’s terms for promotions and contests allowed on your page, you’re not alone.

The other day I received an email from a subscriber asking about this specific example:

The terms clearly say you can’t use a comment, like or share a as a condition of entry to a page, like the above example.

But the Facebook Terms of Service aren’t that clear about liking a page:

Liking a page IS all right – This part of the Terms of Service seems to say liking a page is fine: “You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page.”

Liking a page is NOT all right – This part of the Terms of Service seems to say liking a page is not fine: “You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.”

Scott Ayers had this to say in a recent discussion about this language: “I take it as meaning you cannot require someone to comment, like or share a post. But you can require they like your page to see the contest via an app.”

Use a third-party app for entry

The best way to make sure your contest abides by Facebook’s rules is to use a third-party app. Once they see your app (after liking a page), users can then enter the contest via the app. ShortStack has an excellent contest app.

In other words, you can require that they like your page to see the contest app, whereby liking the page simply displays the contest app. Then they enter the contest by filling out a form or using Facebook Connect.

This approach also makes sense because then you acquire emails in addition to engaging Facebook users. Remember: Building your email list is essential!

Have you run contests on your page?

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Use social media to encourage youth volunteerism in your organization

Guest post by Alison Richmond
easyfundraising.co.uk

Young people can be an incredible source of volunteers for nonprofits – they tend to have much more spare time than adults and often see volunteering as a good way to gain work and life experience to add to their resumé. But attracting young people can be difficult.

DoSomething.org released an index toward the end of last year in which they interviewed young people discussing their attitudes toward volunteering. With their suggestions in mind, here are some steps toward attracting young people to your nonprofit.

Communicate by embracing social media

The current generation of young people are highly invested in social media – Facebook, Twitter, blogging and more. For them, almost everything happens online, in a public space. Emails, newsletters, newspapers and even TV news tend to be ignored, while social sharing has become the paramount media channel.

To engage teenagers via social media channels, nonprofits should set up a Facebook page and Twitter account and regularly post content that engages potential volunteers and asks them to spread the word to their friends.

Ask your existing volunteers to share on their Twitter or Facebook accounts the work that they’ve been doing and what they’ve gotten out of it. For example: “Just spent the morning dog-walking at my local animal shelter – keeps me fit, plus loads of cute puppies!”

Interact and engage with your supporters

Be aware: These channels work best as a two-way street, with comments and questions being replied to swiftly. This generation is used to quick responses so leaving someone’s question hanging for two days is likely to turn off potential volunteers. Make sure that you’re checking in at least once a day, monitoring your social accounts, and replying to any comments.

Use your existing audience to engage their friends. Name-checking people who have volunteered at an event via your social media channels can be extremely effective in spreading the word, as the young people in question tend to share or retweet the post.

Facebook and Twitter are great but don’t give you the space to write more lengthy articles, so set up a blog for your organisation and post regular content, then use Twitter and Facebook to link to the posts.

Events, photos, videos and more

Photographs get shared on Facebook a lot, especially those that are cute, funny or shocking. Find a photo that represents your organisation and post it, remembering to ask users to share. If your nonprofit has regular events, make sure you take photos at the event, and post them on Facebook, tagging those volunteers who have Facebook accounts.

Having a recruitment drive or a big one-off or semi-regular event? Use Facebook’s Events feature to invite your existing volunteers, and then ask them to personally invite their friends. Include a lot of information about what the event will entail. In DoSomething.org’s study, many teens said that they were put off volunteering because they didn’t know exactly what would be expected of them.

Offer incentives to your regulars to bring a friend with them, such as a prize drawing entry – this doesn’t have to cost anything. You can ask local businesses to offer a prize and in return they will receive publicity and a partnership with a nonprofit organization that boosts their brand image.

Short videos are a great way to increase your audience and attract new volunteers. It doesn’t have to be shot by a famous director or scripted by a comedy genius, just show your volunteers working, explain what they get out of volunteering and the benefit that they are providing.

You can also create a YouTube video channel for your nonprofit, and upload videos regularly. Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts to link to the video. Ask people to share it – videos and images are more than three times more likely to be shared if you simply add, “Please share this video/image” at the bottom of the post.

Social media has really taken off over the past decade and it has brought us new ways in which to communicate. With the power the internet possesses, don’t neglect the various social media channels available when looking to encourage young people to get involved with your nonprofit.

How does your organization encourage young people to volunteer?

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3 ways nonprofits can boost their social interaction

Guest post by Jim Belosic

For nonprofits, money and resources are often tight, but social media is free to use and can be a very effective fundraising and volunteer-recruiting aid.

Facebook in particular is one of the most powerful online resources a nonprofit organization can use. Those who choose to fully leverage the platform are at major advantage because it’s the perfect place to rally together sponsors, supporters and volunteers.

Facebook apps can be created for little to no cost by using third-party applications. Third party applications — which is what we make at ShortStack — also save organizations a lot of time and stress.

To boost engagement and Likes for your nonprofit’s page, here are three effective and simple ways to use Facebook apps.

Use an app to inspire volunteering

As many nonprofits know, there are lots of people who are motivated to help. They just need an invitation, some encouragement and some direction.

To recruit time donations, try creating an app to display volunteer information, directions, volunteer site locations, and most importantly, sharing features so people can invite their friends and family on Facebook to volunteer with them.

A Facebook app like this can also be designed to collect volunteer information. Have an entry form for app visitors to submit their email addresses so that your nonprofit can send them volunteer information later via email.

Always remember that volunteering makes people feel good and it can be a lot of fun! Your Facebook app should communicate that.

Ask sponsors to match your nonprofit’s efforts

If you’re a nonprofit, set a goal and ask sponsors to match a target dollar amount.

To use Facebook to raise your nonprofit’s portion of the donation, try creating a simple contest app. The user who shares your nonprofit’s app with the largest number of Facebook friends wins a donation made in their name to your organization.

Your nonprofit can even take a cue from the Prostate Cancer Foundation’s Movember efforts. Use your app to inspire users to take your nonprofit’s fundraising efforts into their own hands.

Encourage sponsors to use a Like-Drive

What’s more powerful than having the backing of your sponsor? The answer: having the backing of your sponsor’s community

Team up with your sponsor to host a Facebook app on your sponsor’s Facebook Page. Use the app to either display information about your nonprofit or use it as an opportunity to pull from your sponsor’s community to enhance your fundraising efforts.

Last year ShortStack created an app using the Like-Drive template to help a family in need. The Like-Drive template is special because it allowed us to drive and track new Page Likes while earning money for a really important cause. For every new Facebook Like we earned, we donated a dollar.

What boosts engagement with your Facebook Page?

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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.

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