Why the end goal is to get people talking

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

Forrester recently published research proving, yet again, that people overwhelmingly trust what their friends say about a brand.  And they rarely trust what brands say about themselves.

If we apply this to Facebook, it means that your community talking about you is much more powerful than you talking about yourself.

This is why People Talking About This (PTAT) is the ultimate metric on Facebook.

Now, if you ask any marketer to choose between People Talking About This and the number of fans they have, or to choose between People Talking About This and the number of people they reach, any honest Facebook marketer will admit that they fantasize about millions of people sharing their content. And while they might brag about reach to their boss, they certainly don’t fantasize about it.

Why do marketers brag about reach?

If brands ultimately care about people talking about them on Facebook, why is there such an emphasis on increasing reach and fans? Especially because increasing reach and fans doesn’t lead to an increase in virality.

Maybe overvaluing reach and fan quantity is a carryover from pre-social marketing practices: impressions, eyeballs, exposure, etc.

Or maybe it’s just hard to accept that getting people to share your content often feels impossible.

Whatever the reason, valuing reach and fan growth over PTAT is like valuing:

• Delivered emails more than click-throughs
• Landing page views more than conversions
• Handshakes more than new sponsors

Reach and fans are means to an end

Don’t get me wrong, reach and page likes are important. But they are both means to an end. People Talking About This is the ultimate end on Facebook.

Just like the ultimate end on your website is conversions.

To use a baseball analogy:

The Red Sox focus on runs as their ultimate end. The means to that end include having the right number of players (fans) and a nicely mowed field (reach).

Why is valuing PTAT above all other Facebook metrics important?

Imagine the shift in your Facebook results when people stop asking:

“How can we increase our reach on Facebook?”

or: “How can we get more Page likes?”

And they start asking: “How can we get more people to share our page updates with their friends?”

What do you guys think? Does your organization focus on getting others to spread the word? Post your hate mail below, marketers!

The post The only Facebook metric that really matters appeared first on Socialbrite.

Allow posting, tagging and replies to increase engagement

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

Most of what you read about creating more reach for your Facebook page either has to do with Facebook ads or optimizing content.

But there are three little settings for your Page that can also dramatically increase reach.

Turn on posting ability

1Allowing Facebook users to post photos and videos to your page increases exposure to their friends.

For example, the friends of the Facebook users who’ve posted these photos of rabbits will see a story in their news feed, exposing them to the National Wildlife Federation.

To allow others to post photos, videos, text updates and links to your page, click “Edit Settings” under the edit page menu item in your admin panel.

Turn on tagging

2Let Facebook users tag themselves and their friends in photos you post to your page.

This way when you post pictures from an event, you can invite your fans to tag themselves and their friends. Tagged friends (who may not be fans) are prompted to visit the photo and like the page.

Turn on replies

3Allowing for threaded commenting helps create more engagement on posts in two ways:

• With notifications to users who’ve been replied to with a comment.

• With threaded comments that organize conversations better.

Once this option is selected you’ll notice a second level of commenting, like in this update.

Go to your page now and make these changes!

The post 3 Facebook page tweaks that maximize reach appeared first on Socialbrite.

Engagement leads to trust, which leads to results

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations and NGOs on Facebook.

Facebook is about friendships. It’s about reconnecting with old friends and keeping up with close friends.

Facebook is not about buying things or getting the lowest price. There are already websites for that, like Amazon and eBay.

Facebook is relational, it’s not transactional.

In their new book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” authors Beth Kanter and Katie Payne talk about the “ladder of engagement” as a way to visualize how nonprofits move people in stages from awareness to action.

The diagram at top might be called the “Facebook Ladder of Donor Engagement.” Keep in mind that his diagram is just one way to represent how donors relate to your nonprofit or organization on Facebook.

Interactions increase as trust goes up

You’ll notice two data points:

1Trust and affinity: As people become aware of your organization and interact with you at different levels of commitment, trust and affinity increase (or decrease if you’re not trustworthy or likable).

2Audience size: Similar to the sales funnel model popular in the for-profit world, audience sizes very become smaller at each stage of the game.

In this diagram, each step represents an action someone can take on Facebook to express their relationship with a cause, but it may look very different for your nonprofit.

Tell us: What does this ladder look like for your organization?

The post The Facebook ladder of engagement appeared first on Socialbrite.