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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And 4 other big changes to Facebook pages that nonprofits will love

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, anyone with a Facebook page.

Facebook recently pushed out five big feature changes to Facebook pages that will help admins more easily manage their pages, plan content and get more airtime for updates in the news feed.

Page post scheduling

1Facebook rolled out a new feature to pages that allows administrators to schedule updates for a future date and time. You can schedule a post up to six months in advance in 10-minute intervals, from your page’s sharing tool by following the instructions in the video at top.

Facebook page administrator roles

2Facebook pages now offer five different flavors of admin roles. This is huge, especially for organizations that have various different people accessing administrative rights with in a single Facebook page. Some of these people might need access only to view Facebook Insights, while others need admin access to post content and respond to comments.

The five roles are described in the table below.

Promoted posts

3Promoted posts are an easy and inexpensive way to ensure that more of your Facebook fans are seeing your page updates. Previously, the only option for smaller Facebook pages was to purchase sponsored stories through Facebook’s ad tool, which required a number of steps. Now, Facebook admissions can simply choose the number of users they want to reach from a drop-down menu underneath a recently published post.

Facebook Pages Manager

4Facebook Pages Manager is an iPhone app that allows page administrators the ability to post updates, manage posts from Facebook users, and even view high-level Insights data from their smartphone. This is a huge leap forward from using the standard Facebook iPhone app.

With Facebook Page Manager (for iTunes) you can:

– View multiple Pages you admin
– View high-level Page Insights (as shown below)
– View post-level Insights (Reach and Talking About This)
– View Page notifications and new fans
– Filter Timeline views to Posts by Page or Posts by Others
– Manage Administrators
– and more

Post-level insights

5Facebook Pages also have Insights data and charts at the post-level. This new data can be found directly under each post.

What do you think of these new features?

Head to Razoo for the full post.

Related

• What time of day should you post to your Facebook page?

• Post Planner: A branded publishing app for Facebook

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How one foundation increased Facebook fans by 1000% in 13 days

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

Afew weeks ago, Facebook announced that Facebook was doing away with Welcome pages. As with most changes that Facebook makes, the people who hate change were very upset.

The assumption was that fan gating would be less effective. (Fan gating refers to the digital welcome mat that organizations put out to attract new fans. Some nonprofits and businesses display certain content or contests only to users who like your Facebook page, inducing newcomers to “unlock” the content behind the tab.)

But the critics are wrong. Strategy will always trump technology, and the only real limitation is simply a lack of creativity.

For example, Community TechKnowledge increased their Facebook Page fans almost 1,000 percent in 13 days by having Facebook users like their Page to vote for a nonprofit hero.

They accomplished this using the following strategies:

• They promoted their voting app to organizations that had a participating nominee. Email and Facebook were used to promote the initial push.
• Participating organizations naturally used their networks to promote the voting app in hopes that their hero would win $5,000.
• Finally, users of the app were encouraged to share the campaign with their friends, exponentially expanding each organization’s network.

Fan gating can still be used to give away something valuable in exchange for liking your Page. What matters is what you offer and how you promote it (without violating Facebook’s Terms of Use for pages).

How are you using fan gating?

Socialbrite articles on Timeline

• What story should you tell in Facebook Timeline?
• How to clean up & optimize your Facebook Timeline
• Make Facebook Timeline about your community

The post One way to attract new fans with Facebook Timeline appeared first on Socialbrite.

You may already know about the Nonprofit Facebook Guy, a resource I created a few months back to help shorten the Facebook learning curve for nonprofits.

Following are the top 13 tutorials from the Nonprofit Facebook Guy that I think are especially useful for nonprofits, foundations and NGOs:

1. Create a Custom iFrame Tab for your Facebook Page with WordPress (video)

 

2. Four Ways To Deal With The Death Of Static FBML

 

3. How to toggle between a Facebook Profile and a Facebook Page (video)
 
4. A Visual Map Of Facebook Pages, Profiles, Places And Groups – All In One Slide

 

5. How to display “Featured” Page’s on your Facebook Page

 

6. How to post as a Profile or Page without going insane (video)

 

7. Facebook now lets you tag friends and Pages in comments

 

8. How to engage a subset of your Facebook Page fans

 

9. How to use your Facebook Page’s photostrip to sell your cause

 

10. Two ways to import email contacts into your Facebook Page

 

11. Three Awesome Facebook Search Engines

 

12. How to change the name of your custom Facebook Page tab

 

13. How to measure Facebook Page fan growth with Insights (video)

If you have an idea for a blog post you’d like to see, please leave your idea on the Nonprofit Facebook Guy’s Facebook Page.

This article originally appeared at JohnHaydon.com.

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But don’t despair, nothing is wasted in the land of Facebook Custom Tabs.

Why iFrames is better than Static FBML

• First of all, the good news is that using iFrames for custom tabs means that you can now use any Web technology (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) that used to cause a gag-reflex in Facebook.
• This also means that you can use scripts like Google Analytics within a Facebook Tab.
• You also can swap out different Facebook tabs simply by editing the tab url in the application settings.

How to get started with iFrames

If you’ve spent time learning how to use FBML and HTML to created custom Facebook Pages tabs, you’ve got a massive head start.

For you, there are two excellent tutorials on creating iFrames applications:

1. How to Make a Custom Facebook Page Tab With Iframes by Kim Woodbridge. Kim is one of the most respected experts on creating custom Facebook Page Tabs.
 
2. How to Add an iFrame Application to your Facebook Fan Page by Tim Ware at HyperArts. Tim is another super-smart developer who has a kick-ass example of his work over at the HyperArts Facebook Page.

What if coding gives you a migraine?

If the thought of dealing with HTML, iFrames, CSS and Javascript gives you an eyeball headache, consider these (not free) tools:

1. Lujure – A application that enables you to visually create a Facebook Page tab.
 
2. iFrameEngine – The makers of FanPageEngine have their answer to iFrames going live on 3/1/11.

What if I hate templates?

If you don’t like what you see over at Lujure or iFrameEngine, consider hiring either Kim or Tim to design a custom tab for you.

What iFrames resources can you share in the comments?

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It’s the heart & soul of Facebook — and few people understand it

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, NGOs, government agencies, educators, Web publishers, journalists, individuals. Also see Part 2: 15 ways to increase your Facebook stature

Over the years, Facebook has become a central part of our online social presence — for nonprofits, organizations and our personal brands.

So why do so many nonprofits and organizations know so little about how the heart and soul of Facebook actually works? I’m referring to the Facebook News Feed, featured in a Chevy Cruze commercial in the second quarter of yesterday’s Super Bowl.

In this series, we’ll offer tips on how to use Facebook much more effectively as a professional by taking charge of your News Feed. We’ll dissect Facebook’s secret sauce, called EdgeRank, to help you build authority with the right touch, tools and tactics. And we’ll give you tips on how to expand your organization’s reach and influence on Facebook.

How Facebook’s news feeds work

Facebook is far more than a social network: It’s also a personalized news network powered by a highly dynamic engine that’s personalized, relevant and timely. The crown jewel of this dynamic landscape is the News Feed. The News Feed consists of the content continually fed into the center column of your home page from people and Pages you follow on Facebook. You’ll see status updates, photos, photo tags, videos, friend requests, event RSVPs and group memberships.

Facebook’s news feeds have evolved significantly since the first one was introduced in 2006. With close to 600 million members, Facebook handles billions of individualized feeds — an impressive feat of engineering, if you to stop to think about it. Some members may not realize it, but the news stream you typically see on your page displays only a small portion of the updates posted by your Facebook friends.

Your News Feed comes in two flavors:

• Top News contains what Facebook calls “the most interesting content that your friends are posting.” This filtered feed is the default view on Facebook (until you change it), and Facebook said in late 2010 that more than 95 percent of its nearly 600 million members using the Web interface see the site through this prism. (This figure doesn’t count members using mobile apps and third-party apps.)

• Most Recent shows you “all the actions your friends are making in real-time,” Facebook says (though that’s not literally true, as we’ll see below). On Dec. 22, with little fanfare, Facebook updated the Most Recent feed, giving you more filter options, including just photos, just updates from Pages, and posts from the Friend Lists you create. Pretty cool! Behold:

If you’d prefer to see Most Recent as your default, you can scroll down to the very bottom of your Top News or Most Recent page, click Edit Options, and select: Show posts from: All of your friends and pages. (See this Help page for more details.)

You can also choose to hide certain kinds of applications — if you hate quizzes, you can banish quiz apps from your feed — or you can hide posts from selected individuals or Pages. This can come in handy if you have a garrulous buddy you don’t want to defriend or a brand that you’ve changed your mind about. Roll over the X at the right of any post and you’ll see options, which are different for Pages and friends:

A few things to note about the Most Recent feed:

• If you use the Facebook for iPhone or Facebook for Android app, this is the feed you see — the Live Feed gusher, not the filtered Top News feed.

• Does your Most Recent feed contain absolutely all of your friends’ updates? Well, it probably contains 98 percent of them. At the Daily Beast, Tom Weber conducted an experiment and found that updates, links, photos and videos posted by a Facebook newcomer did not appear in some of his friends’ Most Recent feeds. And others have noticed that the Most Recent feed doesn’t contain a few of the updates you see in the unfiltered Live Feed on your mobile device or a third-party app using an API like TweetDeck or Hootsuite. Try it — it’s an interesting experiment!

• I should also mention that an update by a Facebook Group — as opposed to a Facebook Page or personal Profile — does not appear in either anyone’s Most Recent or Top News feeds. Groups may contact their members via in-box messaging up to a maximum of 5,000 members, which Pages cannot do. But today it’s almost always better for a brand to create a Page, rather than a Group, to maximize visibility within the News Feed.

You may also want to check the settings found by clicking on the “Edit Options” button of your Most Recent feed at the top or bottom of the page.

Fine-tuning your Top News feed

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. We don’t recommend turning your Top News into a Most Recent firehose. The idea behind Top News is this: You want to see news from the Facebook members, brands or causes that matter most to you. And we agree: You want to be selective about who to devote your attention to, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of friends and follow scores of Pages. Your time is valuable, right?

So you need to teach Facebook’s Top News feed how to behave. And you want to set up lists for more targeted updates, which we’ll cover in part 2.

What makes it into your Top News stream? Facebook uses a formula called EdgeRank, which takes into account just three factors:

• Affinity: The more often you engage with content by a person or Page over time, the higher your affinity will be for that content creator.
• Weight: As posts are commented on, liked and shared by other Facebook users and their networks, their overall weight increases, even if you’re not connected with those users. A posting with 10 comments and 15 Likes carries a greater weight than one with no comments or Likes. Not all interactions are equal. A comment probably counts more than a Like does.
• Timeliness: The more recent the post, the higher it ranks. As time goes by, its value decreases.

Top News will show you hours-old updates from some friends while ignoring newer posts from others. You probably wonder which of your friends see which of your posts. It comes down to this: A high EdgeRank leads to visibility while a low EdgeRank leads to obscurity.

New tool: The EdgeRank Checker app

Last week social media strategist Mari Smith wrote about a new tool that measures your Facebook Page’s EdgeRank score. If you have a Facebook Page, EdgeRank Checker — pictured at top — steps you through the process of determining how effective your Page is in reaching your followers. No download necessary.

Here’s how it works. Just log in as an administrator, go to your Insights page and select the Page you want to check (image above). Choose a date range, click the Export button and be sure to tab over to select CSV (not Excel). Then upload the CSV file to EdgeRank Checker and it spits out your score in a few seconds. The resulting page will show what your score means. Facebook expert Chad Wittman, founder of social media management firm SBN, created the tool. There’s also a fan engagement checker at Fangager.com – enter your Page username to get a full summary (hat tip to Brian Solis).

The exact way EdgeRank works is part of Facebook’s secret sauce, but we’ll explore how to increase affinity and weight — that is, how to enhance your influence and visibility — in part 2 of this series.

Thanks to Bryan Person of Liveworld for fact-checking and editing this series. Cross-posted to Socialmedia.biz.

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Facebook Pages has undergone so many enhancements over the past few months that even the simple act of creating a Page is different.

So I put together the following “tactical guide” summarizing the steps required to create a Facebook Page as well as all the new Page features. Nonprofits and cause organizations may want to bookmark this blog entry and return to it when making changes to your Facebook Page in the weeks and months ahead.

How to create a Facebook Page

The very first step in creating a Facebook Page hasn’t changed. You can still find a link in the bottom left of every Facebook Page that says “Create a Page for my Business.”

Official Pages vs. Community Pages

Facebook came out with Community Pages earlier this year in response to users creating “unofficial” Pages around experiences or topics.

While Somerville, Mass., is a town in Massachusetts, its culture is also a common experience that many people love. Now there’s a Community Page for Somerville that pulls in updates from users who mention Somerville, Mass.

Like Somerville, the cause you fight for is a common experience in people’s lives. And because your organization is an agent for that fight, you should use a Facebook “Official Page.”

Creating an ‘Official Page’

The first step in creating an “Official Facebook Page” is to select the right category. Then you enter your Page name, which can be changed for Pages with fewer than 100 fans. Accept the Facebook terms and you’ve got yourself a Page!

Using the Facebook Page wizard

The six steps in the wizard are not all necessary. And some steps don’t make much sense for new Pages.

For example, for most Pages, you’ll probably want to create a custom tab before importing contacts or posting an update. Nonetheless, the wizard is very easy to follow for newbies.

Uploading your main image or avatar

If you can upload an image to Flickr, you can add your main image. The key here is being creative with the maximum dimensions that Facebook allows: up to 200 x 600 pixels for your main profile image.

Importing existing contacts

You can now import up to 5,000 contacts from Outlook, Constant Contact, Gmail, Hotmail or a CSV file.

This is a great way for nonprofits to get an initial bump in fan growth when they start a Page. (Pages that have an established fan base don’t seem to have this import ability.)

New admin sidebar panel

I wrote about this in October, but it’s worth mentioning again. The back-end panel of your Facebook Page has a new interface that’s easy to navigate.

How to hide or display the spam filter to admins

The spam stream, which I also mentioned last week, is never seen by fans. But there is an option to even hide it from admins.

How to tag spam on your Facebook Page

You can now mark specific updates as spam by clicking on the “X” to the right of the offending post.

Marking a post as spam will also put future posts from that connection into the spam folder. You also have the option of removing the fan.

Pages with fewer than 100 fans can now change their name

If you have fewer than 100 fans, you can change your Page’s name. Simply click on “Basic Information” and the name field should be editable.

Adding applications is much easier

Adding recommended apps is also a lot easier. Simply click on “Add Application” and you’re done. No more going to an app, adding it to your Page and then clicking the back button in your browser 37 times.

Export and manipulate Insights data

You can now export Insights Data in Excel. Click on “Insights” in the sidebar, then “Export” on the next screen. You can select a date range and choose Excel or CSV as formats.

See top viewed tabs and external referral sources

Within Insights, admins can now view the top viewed Tabs as well as top external referrers for a seven-day period.

If you want deeper traffic analytics on your Facebook Page, you’ll need to integrate it with Google Analytics.

What did I miss? Comment below

Cross-posted to JohnHaydon.com.

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For months now, Facebook has been saying they were going to be removing the boxes tab and setting a limit to the width of custom tabs on Facebook Pages.

On Friday they finally put a date to those changes: During the week of Aug. 23 (or sooner).

Details on the changes to Facebook Pages

So what do these changes mean and how do they impact your organization?

1. No more boxes tab
   First, the boxes tab across the top of your Page will disappear. This is a welcome change for most Facebook admins because, for the most part, the boxes tab was nothing more than a place to throw leftover crap. Kind of like the college dorm closet with all the dirty togo sheets.
2. Custom tab width limits
   This change will have an impact on every organization that has created a custom tab with a width greater than 520 pixels. Facebook Page admins will have to go into the FBML / HTML code within the Static FBML application and tweak the code for a 520 pixel width limit. In many cases only images will have to be resized to fit the new dimensions. In other cases, more code tweaking will be required. (See image at top.)

   Facebook will allow you to preview your custom tabs in the new 520 pixel width so you can modify as needed.

Why were these changes made?

These two changes are meant to simplify the navigation of Pages, make life easier for app developers, and enable Facebook to build the next generation of tools for growing your business with Facebook.

So what do you think? Please add your comment below.

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Here’s a simple guide to getting started in 5 easy steps

Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, businesses, educators, citizen publishers, individuals. This is part of Creating Media, our ongoing series designed to help nonprofits and other organizations learn how to use and make media.

Guest post by Azin Mehrnoosh
Founder, HiDef

Facebook isn’t just a potential market that many nonprofits haven’t yet tapped. It’s also a place for real-time personal conversation and feedback from your constituents. You shouldn’t treat it trivially, but you shouldn’t be afraid of it, either.

Many posts emphasize the need to get started on Facebook and offer a long list of tips. Those lists can be quite daunting, so in this post we’ll help you get up and running from ground zero — nice, easy and simple.

To start off, you should already have a personal Facebook account and be logged in. Don’t worry, you’re not going to share any of your personal information. Facebook just needs an administrator for your organization’s new Facebook Page, and you can do that via your personal account. You can add other administrators later.

Now, if you’re already familiar with Facebook for personal use, you’ll quickly notice how similar creating a Page for your organization is to your own Facebook profile. Most of the functions — like uploading pictures, posting updates, updating your organizational bio — are almost exactly the same.

Let’s get started!

Create an official Page

1For this step, navigate to http://www.facebook.com/page.

Note: Don’t create a “Community page.” Those are used for creating communities around ideas that don’t necessarily represent anything tangible.

Select your page type, give it the name of your organization, click the terms and conditions checkbox, and click “Create Official page.” It’s that simple.

Now you’ll do some configuration before you promote it to the world.

Upload a logo or image for your organization

2Make sure you have your logo or a clearly identifiable branding image that your potential Facebook fans will be able to draw lasting connections with. It’s important that this image match up with your website and even print materials. Photos of people are often more effective than a logo — sometimes you can incorporate the logo at the bottom of the image.

Put your mouse over the big gray “?” image and click “Change Picture.” Upload your logo or image by selecting one of the upload options.

Enter your organization’s bio and mission

3You’ll need to make sure to update the organization details under the “info” tab. Write a well-crafted and concise bio of your organization and put it in the Company Overview box. Facebookers like short, sweet and fun, and the more you deliver on that in your overview and bio, the better.

When you’re done updating your organizational information, click “Done Editing.”

Note: Jill’s Habitat for Horses isn’t real, but if you’re a horse enthusiast and your name is Jill, you now have a stellar concept for a nonprofit.

Invite friends

4With these basic steps accomplished you can start adding people. This process works the same way as getting people to sign up for an event or any other “suggest to friends” workflow on Facebook. You’ll find the “Suggest to Friends” link in the left sidebar beneath your image.

The key here is to get at least 25 people to Like your Page — that’s the magic number that will allow you to register your own unique Facebook URL, like facebook.com/jillshorses, rather than facebook.com/pages/Jills-Habitat-for-Horses/115950995087518. The former is much easier to market on websites and print media. To get to 25, a true friend’s recommendation goes a long way, so take advantage of the “viral” nature of the network!

Invest time in posting regular, quality content

5Upload some photos, start posting news and events, and get engaged as soon as possible. At minimum, commit to posting and interacting with your fan base at least once a day. One day could be a simple text post — a unique stat, a bold statement, a question. The next day could be a photo.

There are also many applications and features that you can start deploying on your Facebook Page to help with engagement, so start trying some out.

The key is to stay engaged

We can’t speak enough to the need for nonprofits to stay engaged in their Facebook Pages. The more you post and update, the better your chances of engaging your constituents on a deeper and ongoing level. Eventually, your fans will want to come to your Page to get the latest scoop about your organization, events and other goodies about you, like how to donate!

Those are the basics. At a later date you can start fine-tuning your Page by reworking the tabs at the top of the page and by customizing the left sidebar. But don’t worry about that for now.

There are so many other things you can do to give your Facebook Page the best chance at success. So get going!

Azin Mehrnoosh is founder of HiDef, a top-tier team that creates Web solutions for great causes.

Related

• How to set up a Facebook Page — screencast (Socialbrite)

• Facebook tutorials: Plug-ins, Facebook Insights & more (Socialbrite)

The post Facebook 101 for nonprofits appeared first on Socialbrite.

One critical feature of your nonprofit Facebook Page is giving your connections easy ways to donate to one of your causes.

It’s easy to post a link to your donation page in your status update, but it’s not a long-term solution. After all, status updates get buried within a day or two, maybe even hours if you have an active fan base.

There are at least three ways to link your Facebook Page to a fundraising application.

1. Include a link within your info tab. Pro: Very easy. Con: No one visits info tabs.
 
2. Use a Facebook fundraising app. Pro:Integrates with Facebook. Con: Running two donation platforms.
 
3. Create a custom tab. Pro: Uses your existing donation platform. Con: Requires custom work. See the following.

Creating a custom donation tab: Easy and hard

• Easy – Use the Static FBML application with a linked image that points directly to your donation page. The image should include a call to action to donate and share the donation app.
 
• Hard – Create a sweet-looking tab by hiring a Facebook Page designer, like Inbound Zombie.

Custom Facebook fundraising tabs are relatively easy to create – check out the Facebook Landing Tab Wiki by Debra Askanase for tips, resources and examples.

What else would work? Leave a comment below.

Cross-posted from JohnHaydon.com.

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