Archive for news feed
Facebook News Feed Redesign Presents Serious Brand Challenges
"Goodbye clutter, hello beautiful new stories," Facebook said last week when it showed off its redesigned news feed. But none of those beautiful new stories will be from branded pages. The news feed redesign presents some serious challenges for brands and marketers.
Facebook’s News Feed Update Makes Room for Non-Friends
Facebook today unveiled a redesigned News Feed that finds a place for company pages, music, and even ads among friends. Reporters from two of our sibling blogs brought home the details from a press event in San Francisco earlier today.
Wrote Justin Lafferty of AllFacebook:
“Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ironically enough, compared the company’s vision to that of a newspaper. If users just want to see stories about Wall Street, they can flip to the business section. On this new Facebook news feed, if users just want to see posts from their friends, they can simply select that, and their news feeds will only be populated by their personal connections. Facebook feels that this redesign will make it easier for users to access and read what they want.”
The media world has yet to see a newspaper quite like this. The other verticals, which include “photos,” “music,” and pages people are “following,” have more to do with the type of media or the source of the information than the subjects of the posts.
Facebook’s new Time Line will also feature larger ads. Wrote Brittany Darwell of InsideFacebook:
“Just as user stories are richer, advertisements too get more engaging visuals in many cases. At the same time, ads have a new prominent ‘hide’ button that is not hidden under a drop-down menu, as it continues to be for most non-sponsored content.”
Existing ad units like Page posts, ads, and Sponsored Stories will still exist, but they will be laid out differently and will now include social context, or the names of friends who have liked the advertiser’s page.
The company will be rolling out the changes gradually. To get them sooner rather than later, click here.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
14 Ways To Get More Facebook Shares [INFOGRAPHIC]
Share is to Facebook as retweet is to Twitter. It’s all about how VIRAL you can get your fan page wall posts. Of course, you want plenty comments and likes on each post — this activity certainly helps boost your post visibility in the news feed of your fans. But, if you can craft the majority of your wall posts in a way that inspires your fans to say:
“Wow, I just *have* to share this with my friends!”
…then you’ll begin to notice a nice uptick in shares. Shares have more weight in the news feed. Basically, Facebook’s algorithms determine that the more people share a post and make it go viral, the more people want to see it. Makes sense.
In this fun INFOGRAPHIC, prepared for me by the good folks over at ShortStack, you’ll find 14 different ways to help boost your Facebook visibility and inspire more SHARES!
Plus, for examples of profiles/pages that consistently get large numbers of shares, check out folks like Roger James Hamilton (see this post), Robin Sharma and, of course, George Takei … and do subscribe to my Facebook Lists: Facebook Candy to Inspire, Inspirational/Spiritual, Facebook Experts & Resources.
You can download a PDF version of this infographic here.
ShortStack, a self-service custom app design tool used to create Facebook apps for Facebook Pages, websites and mobile web browsing. ShortStack provides small businesses, graphic designers, agencies and corporations with the tools to create apps with contests and forms, fan gates, product lines and more.
9 Tips for Integrating Your Facebook Page With Your Facebook Profile
Do you have a Facebook Page and a Facebook personal profile?
Are you trying to figure out how to work your business life into your personal life on Facebook?
Well, have no fear. I’m going to lay it all out for you and dive into some of the reasons the two sides of your Facebook life should be linked together.
You may also want to review your Facebook privacy settings to help you understand what’s visible on your personal profile.
Here are 9 tips for understanding how your Page and your profile work together.
#1: Understand That Your Page and Your Profile Are Very Separate
Even though you log into your profile to get to your Page and they look like they are linked together, no one else knows which Pages are attached to your profile.
When you log in using the email address you use for your personal profile, you can then switch to use Facebook as your Page. Think of it as having to get to your Business Page via your personal profile.
You can switch to using Facebook as your Page by clicking the down arrow in the upper-right corner of Facebook. Then select the Facebook Page you want to log into.
Switch to using Facebook as your Business Page by clicking the down arrow.
Remember, no one can see that you are the admin of these Pages except for you.
#2: Access Your Page From the Left Sidebar
Your Page is also bookmarked on the left sidebar of your Home page so that you can easily access it with one click.
Access your Pages from the left sidebar of your Home page.
All you need to do to navigate to your Page is click on the name of the Page. But remember, when you get to your Page, you’re logged in as your personal profile.
See the next tip for more information on how your personal profile affects your Facebook navigation.
#3: Watch How You Are Logged Into Facebook in the Top Right Corner
How do you know how you are logged into Facebook? Look at the top of the Page to see which name appears—either your personal profile name as shown in the image below, or if you are logged in as your Page, you would see the name of your Page in the top blue bar.
Watch the top of the Page to see how you are logged in on Facebook.
When you are logged in as your personal profile on your Page, you can see by the Voice indication how you will post on the Page.
Right now the Voice indicator shows that if I post on the Page, I am posting as the Page. You always want to post a status update on your Page as your Page, not as your personal profile.
If I were posting a status update as my profile, the post would appear in the Recent Posts by Others section with my personal profile name and would not go into the News Feed of all my fans. So it’s important to always post status updates on your Page as your Page so they go out into the News Feed.
To avoid any confusion on this point, always switch to “Use Facebook as your Page” with the arrow in the upper-right corner when you do any Page activity, just so you are always clear what account you are logged into.
Also remember that when you’re logged in as your Page, you’re acting as your Page on Facebook. So any Pages you like and any comment you make on other Pages will be as your Page.
I highly recommend you use Facebook as your Page in the same way you use your personal profile. Comment on posts, connect with other Pages and be social as your Page. Your Page will be much more visible to other Pages and the fans of those Pages.
#4: Comment as Your Profile on Your Page
The default setting is to always comment as your Page when you are on your Page (even if you are logged in as your profile as shown in the image above).
But you can either switch your Voice by clicking on the link at the top of the Page, or you can change your posting preferences.
Make a comment as your personal profile by clicking the link at the top of the Page.
Access your posting preferences by clicking on Edit Page, Update Info, then select Your Settings in the Page dashboard.
Note that you will only see the posting preferences when you are logged in as the Page and have navigated to the section titled Your Settings. Yes, we know Facebook is confusing!
Check your posting preferences and notifications in Your Settings.
You may want to be able to post as your profile from time to time on your Page if you want to add your personal profile’s voice to the conversation. But for the most part, you will probably be carrying on the comments and conversation as your Page.
#5: Get Notifications on Your Personal Profile for Your Page
If you notice in the image above, you can also get notifications about activity on your Page on your personal profile’s Notifications bar by checking the Onsite Notification checkbox.
This can be very handy if you want to see what is happening on your Page without switching back and forth. No one else sees these notifications on your personal profile. They are only visible to you.
See your Page activity in your personal profile notifications.
If your Page gets a lot of activity, this can become overwhelming. You can switch notifications off by unchecking the Onsite Notification checkbox. Also, the email notifications can be turned off in that same section.
#6: You Will See Your Page Updates in Your Personal Profile’s Ticker and News Feed
One thing that is sometimes confusing for people is the News Feed. Remember that your personal profile’s News Feed is your own and is private.
You’ll see updates from everyone you’re friends with, you subscribe to and Pages you like. If you like your Page (note that you can be an admin of a Page you haven’t liked), then you will see updates in your News Feed.
Your Page updates appear in your News Feed if you like your Page.
You will also see activity from the Pages you like in your Ticker, including your own.
Ninja Trick: It looks like more Page activity is appearing in the Ticker than before. To have your Page more visible to your fans, be more active as your Page!
Notice the Page activity is showing in the Ticker.
Again, remember that no one can see your Ticker, only you.
#7: Highlight Your Page as Your Employer in Your About Section
You can intentionally add your Page as your employer in your About section to highlight your Page as we mentioned in tip #4 of this article: 10 Ways to Grow Your Facebook Following.
If you’re interested in letting people know about your Page, I highly recommend doing this. But if you want to keep your Page separate from your profile, this is optional.
You can highlight the Pages you are the admin of by adding them as your employer.
#8: Have a “Business-Only” Facebook Page
I highly discourage this option, but you can have a business-only Facebook Page. When you go to www.Facebook.com without logging in, there’s a link to Create a Page underneath the signup form. This will create a “business-only” account.
You can create a business-only Page.
If you create a Page like this, it will not be linked to your personal profile at all. You will use a separate email to log into this Page. A business-only Page has several limitations including:
- No Search bar at the top of the Facebook Page. You will not be able to search for and navigate to other Pages when you are logged into this account.
- No way to like other Pages as your Page. If you have a business-only account, you can’t like another Page to show your support for that Page or connect with that Page.
- No Page Home Feed. Since you can’t like other Pages as your Page, you won’t get updates as your Page through your own Page’s News Feed.
- You may have to provide a separate cell phone number to verify this account. This feature is different and not consistent, but many people who have created a Page this way report that they need a separate cell number that is different from their personal profile account to verify this business-only Page. Not everyone has two different cell numbers.
- No ability to use the Invite Friends feature on the Admin panel. Obviously if you are intent on keeping your Facebook profiles separate, then this may not be a feature you are interested in. However, it’s an easy way to connect some of your personal friends to your Page.
I don’t think there’s any need to create a business-only Page. The Page and the profile are very separate on a Page that is attached to a personal profile. No one can see who owns the Page and the limitations of the business-only Page are significant.
If you have created a business-only Page and want to rectify the situation, all you need to do is to add a personal profile as an admin and you will have all the functionality of a regular Page.
#9: Feature a Page Owner
If you want to be able to showcase the personal profile that is attached to the Page, you can feature a Page owner.
Just go to Edit Page, Update Info and select Featured. You can highlight Pages you want to feature in your likes and the Page owner.
Feature the Page owner if desired.
The Page owner appears on the About Page.
Ultimately know that your Page and your profile are separate, even though they look connected.
Hopefully we’ve made the navigation of Facebook clearer and easier to understand so you know how you are interacting as your personal profile and as your Page.
How about you? How are you using your profile and your Page? Do you find yourself using one more than the other? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
How To Take Back Control Of Your Facebook News Feed
Screenshot from my own Facebook iPhone app – notice this one post takes up the whole feed. It’s also a Promoted Post which the Facebook Marketing Page is doing more often.
As more and more content from the one billion Facebook users and the tens of millions of business pages pours into our News Feed on a daily basis, it’s getting harder and harder to see the content you really *want* to see. Not to mention all the paid features such as Offers and Promoted Posts that also go into the News Feed on both desktop and mobile.
And, of course, as a marketer, how do you compete for that valuable real estate with your own posts? Especially given that well over half of all Facebook’s users access the platform via their mobile devices – that’s a very small piece of real estate, despite the fact mobile users tend to be at least twice as active!
Well, my recommendation hands down is to make use of the awesome Interest List feature. Facebook introduced this new tool back in March of this year; the feature is designed to organize your news feed into a “personalized newspaper,” if you will. In other words, you can take back FULL control of exactly what you see in your News Feed by creating your own lists with your favorite people (friends and people to whom you subscribe) as well as your favorite business pages.
Once you create — or subscribe to — your favorite Interest Lists, you can add them to your Favorites at the top left side of your home page. And, voila! These become your own personal bookmarks, visible on both desktop and mobile, through which you can now browse the EXACT content you wish.
Browse Interest Lists
First, let’s take a look at existing Interest Lists to give you an idea of who has compiled what lists. You may find some Lists to which you’d like to subscribe. There are many!
Subscribing to a list allows you to see all the content from the people and pages featured on the list, without having to like the fan pages or subscribe/be friends with the people. 
To find where Interest Lists are listed, on your home page, look way down on the left hand column. You may need to click the ‘More’ button, then you’ll see Interests and click the next ‘More’ button. (See screenshot below). This is the direct link to that page: https://www.facebook.com/bookmarks/interests.
Find Facebook Interest Lists on your Home Page navigation
On the next page, click on the Add Interests button and you’ll end up here: https://www.facebook.com/addlist
On the list of Lists, you can hover over any List title and choose to subscribe from the hovercard (see screenshot below). Or, click the title of the List to see the stream (News Feed) of just that list and decide if you wish to subscribe. (The button is at the top right of the actual List page).
Browse and Subscribe to Facebook Interest Lists
Create your own Interest Lists
To create your own Interest List, go through the same process above and you’ll see the button for “+ Create List” at the top of the Interests page (visible in the top right of the screenshot above).
Remember, Lists can have any combination of Friends, Subscriptions and Pages! To start with, Facebook displays a list of all the Pages you’ve already liked, all your Subscriptions (personal profiles to which you’ve subscribed) and Friends. (By the way, when you send a friend request to someone on Facebook, you immediately become a subscriber – which means you’ll see their public posts in your News Feed.)
Select the choices you wish and click Next.
Choose from Pages, Subscriptions and Friends in this first step of creating a Facebook Interest List.
Choose your List privacy
Now, another cool aspect of Facebook Interest Lists – similar to Twitter Lists – is you can choose to make the list visible to Public, your Friends, or Only Me (completely private). My suggestion is that you make your lists private (Only Me) at first while you work on adding new pages and people to build out the list. Private lists are also VERY handy to keep an eye on your competition, for example.
Type a name for your Interest List and select the privacy level.
Add your Lists to your Favorites
This part can get a bit tricky to maneuver but once you’ve done it once, it’s easy! First, go back to your list of Lists (bookmarks page), you’ll see the little pencil icon next to each list. Click the icon and select Add to Favorites as shown in the screenshot below. (By the way, the little blue Interest List icon is for Lists you created; the green icon is for Lists to which you subscribe).
Add an Interest List to your Favorites
Next, now go look at the list of favorites at the top left of your home page. Hover over any item and then click the little pencil icon. From there, click Rearrange. Now you can drag and drop the order of anything you have in your Favorites. You can have Interest Lists, Friend Lists, Groups, Apps, and Pages as Favorites by going through this same process. If this is new to you, you’ll soon wonder how you ever managed Facebook without Lists and Favorites! Your Favorites are visible on mobile, too.
Rearrange your Facebook Favorites
Add more people and Pages … without liking, subscribing or friending!
PROFILES: In order to add a personal profile to your Interest List(s), the Facebook users MUST have their Subscribe button enabled. You cannot add anyone to an Interest List who does not allow Subscribers*. You can choose to subscribe to the person, or not. Either way, you can still add them to your Interest List. Just look for the little gear icon to the right of the Friend/Subscribe buttons as shown in the screenshot below:
Add a Facebook Personal Profile to your Interest List
PAGES: Of course, as a fan page owner, we *want* people to click that magical LIKE button. That’s the only way Facebook users see our page content in their News Feed, right? Uhm, not quite! Facebook users can “subscribe” to your fan page, meaning they can add your page to a list without becoming a fan first. Here’s how:
Next to the Like button of all fan pages, you’ll see a little gear icon. Click that, then select “Add to Interest Lists…” (see screenshot below). A list of your Interest Lists pops up; click on the list or lists to which you wish to add the page. You can also create a new list right from the same menu.
You can add Pages to your Interest Lists – without liking the Page
SIDENOTE: As a fan page owner, you might wonder how you can tell who has added your fan page to Interest Lists without being a fan. Easy. Go to your fan page > show your Admin Panel > next to the New Likes section, click See All > select Subscribers.
See who has added your fan page to an Interest List.
Got Facebook questions? Come join my community of over 466,000 fans and subscribers! Just click the Subscribe and Like buttons below to connect with me on Facebook!
Discover other people’s lists
To see what lists other Facebook users have created and/or subscribed to, just go to their personal profile and click on the thumbnail for Subscriptions. That displays all Interest Lists the person has created, the ones to which they subscribe, plus all the individual people to which they subscribe. By way of example, here are my Subscriptions.
Check out these lists!
My most popular list by far is my Facebook Experts & Resources with 118 people and pages featured on the list and with currently over 29,000 subscribers! I look at this list multiple times per day to stay up to date with news, tips and creative content pertaining to Facebook. As you can see in the screenshot further above with my own Favorites, this list is the top item (under News Feed, which can’t be reordered).
Other popular lists I’ve curated are:
- Social Media Marketing Sources
- Facebook Candy to Inspire – great for sharing images on your page or profile!
- 100 People To Follow on Facebook – inspired by this post on SimplyZesty
Enjoyed this post? Tweet to let me know – just click the button below (opens in a popup, you’ll have a chance to see and edit the tweet!):
Tweet to @MariSmith
Now, it’s your turn: go create and subscribe to some Interest Lists! Then feel free to share the URL to your favorite lists in the comments below. Plus, let me know who else I should add to my own lists.
FREE Facebook Subscribers Report
*If you’re still confused as to what the Subscribe function does, what Subscribers can see, and whether to enable your button or not, please enter your name and email below to download my free 20-page report: 5 Fantastic Ways To Build A NEW Facebook Marketing Channel
FREE Online Mega Event! Get Your Business and Social Media on Track for 2013!
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5 Ways to Improve Your Facebook News Feed Exposure
Does your business have a Facebook page?
Getting your posts seen by your fans should be a top priority.
But in order for your fans to see what you post on Facebook, they must first interact with your posts if you have any hope of getting a bottom-line return on investment from Facebook.
Why EdgeRank Matters on Facebook
Facebook has a news feed algorithm (often referred to as EdgeRank) that hides a significant portion of your updates from your fans, even when you’re getting good interaction. Most pages aren’t reaching a very high percentage of fans.
PageLever’s seminal research on this topic revealed that the average page only reaches 7% of its fans daily.
When some marketers see this, their knee-jerk reaction is to use ads to acquire more new fans. But if you already have a decent fan base, it makes more sense to first focus on reaching your fans before you shift your focus to growing your audience.
In this article I’m going to share with you the tips learned by examining a recent social media success story.
BrandGlue‘s client Jackson Kayak was only reaching 20.1% of their fans in January 2012, but they were able to increase that to 39.8% within 3 months. They accomplished this by using the same tips shared in this article.
#1: Calculate Your Reach
Before you begin to work on extending the reach of your posts on Facebook, you need to know how well you’re doing at reaching your fan base. Remember, if you’re not getting the results you want from your Facebook fans, it could simply be a visibility problem.
So, how do you find out what percentage of your Facebook page’s fans you’re reaching? Go to your Facebook Insights and average your reach for the last 30 days, then divide that number by your fan count.
Of course, if you’re using Sponsored Stories to reach people outside your fan base, this won’t work. Your reach may be higher than your fan count.
In your Facebook Insights, for each post you'll find the reach (the number of unique people who've seen each post). Average this number and divide that by your fan count.
Facebook has claimed that Facebook pages reach 16-17% of their fans on average. And typically, the more fans you have, the lower the percentage you’ll reach.
Not happy about your current reach? To increase visibility, you simply need to increase engagement. The rest of these tips cover how to do that.
#2: Always Post Photos
There’s a quick and easy way to increase engagement and visibility for your Facebook page—choose the right type of content to share on Facebook.
When you post on your Facebook page, you can choose to use a variety of different types of content: most commonly photos, links, status updates and videos. And the type of content you share on Facebook impacts the engagement you get on your Facebook page.
Of all the types of content you can share, photos give the best results. Photos are most engaged with and reach the most people.
People love visual content, so EdgeRank prefers visual content too. This means that photos get more visibility for your content on Facebook.
My research using InfiniGraph shows that in almost every industry, photos have more interaction than statuses, links or videos. Photos often get from 5 to 20 times as much interaction as any other type of Facebook post.
In this research from InfiniGraph on Facebook pages from the automotive industry, we see just one example of how interactions with photos almost always dwarf interaction with any other content type.
Here’s a simple example from Jackson Kayak’s Facebook page. On a Friday, instead of just typing in “Woohoo! It’s the weekend,” they posted a picture of two excited dogs with those words written onto the photo.
Personalize your photos and put text in images so you're not just posting a status update.
That way, Facebook treats it like a photo instead of a status, and they got 125 likes, 25 shares, and 3 comments. That’s certainly much better than the results they were getting posting only text status updates (only 10 likes from this!):
This is just text, so Facebook calls it a status update and usually shows it to fewer of your fans.
Another application of always using a photo is the captioning exercise we’ll show in the next tip.
So use photos! If you don’t, you’ll miss out on up to 98% of the fans you could have reached with a photo. You’re posting to be seen, so get the most visibility you can.
Tip: When you share links on Facebook, make sure that if you put a link into a Facebook post first and it automatically shows a preview of the link, close that preview and add a photo before posting.
Use Pictures to Share Text Too
If you really want to post text, you can use text to caption a picture.
Here are three ways to generate images for your Facebook posts:
- Caption images with Meme Generator and ROFLBOT. Meme Generator is a bit edgier, and focuses on existing funny memes that may only fit a twenty-something demographic (although if you look, you can find images for older demographics such as Mr. Rogers). Just be careful with your brand and have an internal meeting to decide what kind of humor you want to use. For more control, ROFLBOT will caption any image you want.
- Use the funny e-card site someecards to create your own funny e-card.
- For PC and Microsoft users, type your text into PowerPoint, hit Print-Screen on your keyboard to get a screenshot, paste it into an image editor like Paint, crop it, then save that as an image.
#3: Stimulate Engagement
Every time you post, you have an opportunity to create curiosity, challenge people and inspire them. These are great techniques to increase interaction.
Try one of these four kinds of posts to generate engagement:
- Caption contest: Use a photo where someone appears to be talking, or a photo that features several people who might talk to each other.
- Multiple choice: The comments here might only be single letters, but they still count just as much as any other Facebook comment. To come up with multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank posts, get a few people together to brainstorm.
- Fill in the blank: Rather than asking for trivia or general answers, make the question someone or something personal, so that fans will get excited to share something about themselves.
- Inspirational quotes: There are dozens of websites that feature famous quotes. These combine very well with images and captioning.
Jackson Kayak is fortunate that they and their fans produce a lot of great photos. They use these to create caption contests, and sometimes the other kinds of posts above.
Examples of how BrandGlue used photo captions, multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank posts to boost engagement with Jackson Kayak fans.
Think about how you can source a lot more photos. And if you don’t have an easy way, consider using other people’s Creative Commons licensed photos and giving them attribution.
Here’s an example of how I captioned a photo with an inspirational quote. First I looked at what was popular on Pinterest, and found a cool photo that had been repinned many times. It was a bridge.
So I Googled “bridge quotes” and found the building bridges quote by Isaac Newton. It was a perfect fit. I then captioned the photo in PowerPoint with the quote and posted it. It was shared 101 times.
Inspirational quotes on beautiful images is one way to get mega-interaction.
Important: If you’re going to repurpose other people’s images, assuming you can find the creator of the image, make sure you know what copyrights apply to the image, and give credit to the photographer or illustrator.
As mentioned in tip #2, photos will get you a lot more visibility and interaction.
The four kinds of posts in this tip help drive fan response even higher. That means you’ll get more shares and visibility, you’ll be fresh in your fans’ minds and they’ll be more excited about your brand.
These are critical accomplishments for driving and sustaining revenue from Facebook. Do all of these, and you’ve overcome some of the most pervasive Facebook marketing obstacles.
#4: Create Viral Exposure
Jackson Kayak fans were asked to upload their awesome kayak photos, and they let the fans select the winner. The winning photo became their fan page cover photo for the month. You can do this too.
Ask users to upload their photos in a specific category. They are consciously (or subconsciously) participating in an ego contest. Often on Facebook it seems like we succeed most when we take advantage of the momentum of our fans’ self-interest.
Create a contest to give your cover photo space to an enthusiastic fan.
Once BrandGlue posted the finalists for the Jackson Kayak cover photo, folks would scramble to rack up likes by sharing and tagging.
Tagging people sends a direct notification to them, and their curiosity takes them back to the Facebook page. In order to interact with the photo they are tagged in, they have to like the fan page. This tagging, driven by the contest, creates more interaction and builds the fan base.
How do you make the contest happen?
BrandGlue used ShortStack. You may be tempted to do it by hand through page posts, but be careful! It’s actually against Facebook’s Page Guidelines to run any contest without using an app. You could lose your page.
#5: Build Fans Virally and Drive Revenue With Sweepstakes and Coupons
Sweepstakes can build fans more affordably than ads, they’re engaging and they’re fun. Lots of pages do them.
This is how Jackson Kayak's sweepstakes was structured, and the results they achieved.
Jackson Kayak gave away $2,175 worth of prizes and grew 12,763 fans for a cost of just $0.17 each.
Ad-based fan growth campaigns average $1.07, according to WebTrends, and even when they outperform the average, in my experience they tend to cost from $0.10 to $0.30.
A sweepstake can perform equally or better and builds more excitement and goodwill with fans than a mere Facebook ad campaign.
When using sweepstakes to cultivate engagement, remember that they’re only beneficial if you attract the right kind of fan.
For example, iPads are awesome, but everyone wants an iPad. Does wanting an iPad make someone a good customer for your brand? If not, beware of getting large numbers of fans who’ll never buy from you.
Here are five tips for successful fan-building sweepstakes.
- Be creative, but keep it simple.
- Make sure the prize is related to the brand.
- Give folks an incentive to share.
- Look for strategic partners to co-brand with.
- Keep the entry form short. Less is more.
Sweepstakes build excitement and grow fans. They foster the kind of passion that fuels Facebook fan responsiveness, which in turn ensures you get great visibility and excited potential customers.
The revenue from a sweepstake can be great compared to the cost of the prizes, so if you haven’t ever run one, give it a try.
Coupons are another way to build fan growth and interaction. You can incentivize fans to share them with their friends, and require people to like your page before they can get the coupon.
Jackson Kayak didn’t use coupons, so let’s look at examples from a few other companies.
Here are some examples of success with coupons and viral sharing:
- By using Viral Impressions, Monarch Truck saw their fan base increase over 120% and received over 150 coupon redemptions. Monarch Truck’s promotion generated over $15,000 in revenue and 171% ROI net of all campaign and marketing costs.
- Through Extole, J. Hilburn saw 600 new sales and more than 10,000 social shares.
- Using Viral Impressions, Ruby’s Beauty Studio experienced over 350% fan growth and generated over 200 leads! Over 150 fans shared the promotion virally.
- With Extole, Folica boosted their conversion rate by 433% and created 20,500 interactions across Facebook and Twitter.
Interested in using coupons to promote your business on Facebook? You can use companies like Extole and Viral Impressions mentioned in the examples above, as they specialize in viral fan growth and sharing incentivization. Or you can use a tab-building service like Lujure or ShortStack to duct-tape your own together.
There are many places that companies can run into obstacles with Facebook marketing, not the least of which is the actual sales stage.
Note that many of your fans may be perfect potential customers for your company, but they may not be ready to buy yet. How do you accelerate their readiness to buy?
First, build their excitement with the other tips in this article, then offer a limited-time coupon that makes it seem like now is the best time to buy. That’s how you precipitate sales.
Two businesses that used coupons to grow their fan base and secure new customers from Facebook.
Summary
We’ve covered a lot of ground in this article. As you can see, there are many ways to do Facebook marketing and a bunch of companies that provide useful tools to help you succeed. It certainly can seem overwhelming, but just remember: the best way to eat an elephant is a bite at a time.
Try one or two new tactics each week. Eventually, you’ll master them all and have your own proven Facebook system that produces good profits for your company.
What do you think? Have you used any of these tips? How successful were you? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
Category: brian carter, contest, coupon, edgerank, Engagement, facebook, facebook marketing, facebook page, How To, news feed, Newsfeed, photo, Reach, Social Media, sweepstake /
12 Tips When Using Facebook Promoted Posts
Are you thinking of using Facebook Promoted Posts?
The feature officially rolled out in late May.
Many people are wondering where this new advertising option fits into their marketing mix or if it even fits at all.
What are Promoted Posts?
Facebook has enabled you to pay for an individual post to be seen in more of your fans’ news feeds. You have probably noticed the new metric Facebook has on the bottom of every post showing how many people it reached.
Each post shows your percentage of people reached and the exact number.
Why are the Posts not Already Being Seen by Your Community?
Facebook has been trying to educate people that nothing has changed recently, just the information is new.
Facebook posts were always only seen by a portion of your audience due to the fact that people may not be on Facebook at the time of your post or they may have a lot of friends and pages, which results in too much activity for all of it to show in their news feed.
EdgeRank is Facebook’s news feed algorithm for determining what is shown to people based on weight, affinity and time. Promoted Posts are a way to push posts more prominently into people’s news feeds.
Facebook has a great Help section where you can learn more about Promoted Posts.
Here are 12 things you should know about Promoted Posts:
#1: Facebook Promoted Posts are only available to pages with more than 400 Likes. And not all countries have Promoted Posts yet—they are still rolling out.
#2: You can only run a Promoted Post on posts that are newer than 3 days old and the post will be pushed into the news feeds of fans for 3 days following the start of the campaign.
To start the campaign, just click the Promote button on the lower right side of the post.
Click the Promote button and set your budget from the drop-down menu.
#3: Once a Promoted Post is running, you can stop the promotion by clicking on the Promote button again and then click the wheel to edit. Note you can also change your budget from here.
Stop the promotion or change the budget during the campaign.
#4: Your post will show a Sponsored tag underneath the post.
The post will indicate that it is sponsored.
#5: You can see the performance of the Promoted Post while it is running and after the campaign.
Click the Promotion button (or Promotion Complete) to see the activity data.
Click the People Reached link to see a breakdown of the people who saw the post.
#6: You’ll also be able to see more statistics in your Ads Reports area. Go to Facebook Campaigns and click Reports on the right sidebar. Select Advertising Performance as the Report Type, Summarize and Filter by Campaign, select Promoted Posts, Summarize By the dates you want to see, and then select Generate Report.
Configure the Ads Report for Promoted Posts.
You’ll then see a more detailed report to show you exactly how much each click cost and how many actions were taken. You can then get a better picture of how the Promoted Posts stack up next to the other types of Facebook Ads you may be running.
Analyze your statistics in the Ads Reports area.
#7: Rename each of your Promoted Post campaigns to be more meaningful by clicking on the campaign name. Go to Facebook Campaigns and click the pencil icon next to the campaign name. Then you will be able to rename it to something more meaningful such as “Promoted Offer June 7″ as an example.
Click the pencil icon to rename your ad.
#8: Use Facebook Promoted Posts to increase engagement. One of the main reasons I see Promoted Posts as a good option in your marketing mix is to give your engagement a boost and to reconnect with fans who haven’t seen your posts in a while.
Clicks, comments and shares can get your posts back into the news feeds of dormant fans.
But if you are typically getting 30% to 40% reach naturally with each post, then I don’t see many reasons to use Promoted Posts. You’re already doing a good job getting into your fans’ news feeds. But if your reach is below 10%, you need to try something new to make your page more effective.
#9: Choose the right type of post to promote. I tested a “salesy” post and a more “fun” post and the fun Promoted Post got over twice as many clicks for two-thirds the cost. Not surprising that a fun post is going to get more engagement. If you need to increase your engagement, push something fun into the news feed.
#10: Promote your Facebook Offers. Free stuff and discounts are always a big hit on Facebook. Take advantage of two new features of Facebook by promoting your Facebook Offer. While you are at it, pin it to the top of your news feed.
Use Promoted Posts to promote Offers and special deals.
#11: Use Promoted Posts to get into the mobile news feed. Regular Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories appear on the right sidebar of Facebook. These are not visible in the mobile app, but with Promoted Posts you are now able to reach mobile users.
#12: Make sure you split-test. I would recommend split-testing your results between a Sponsored Page Post Ad sent out to only your fans and a Promoted Post to see which one gets better results for you. They have the same idea and goal, but may get very different responses from your fans.
Ultimately Facebook’s Promoted Posts are another tool to connect with your fans. I think they can be worthwhile to give your engagement a boost or to promote something fun like an offer. But there may be better ways to spend $20.
What do you think? Have you tried Facebook’s Promoted Posts? What results have you seen? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
How to Launch Facebook Offers in Minutes
It appears Facebook is giving the new Offers priority and pushing direct to fans News Feeds. The margarita offer I created in the example received 4x's more "Reach" than any other post I have done for that client. The "Engaged" and "Talking About This" figures are 2x's greater. Wow!
Category: best practice, Connect, engage, facebook, facebook offers, news feed, Reach, Social Business, talking about this, TAT /
How to Use Facebook Ads: An Introduction
Are you considering Facebook Ads but are confused by all the options?
You’ve undoubtedly heard that “social ads” are the future of advertising, but what does that mean in practical terms for you today?
This article will help you make smart decisions about how to promote your brand and engage with fans through advertising on Facebook.
As a Facebook Preferred Developer, I’ve had the opportunity to gather a lot of information from the proverbial “horse’s mouth.”
This article will provide a useful lay of the land around the new ad solutions that were introduced at the Facebook Marketing Conference (fMC) in February.
Understanding Facebook’s Sales Process and Where You Fit
Before delving into the various advertising options available on Facebook and how you can utilize them, it’s helpful to understand how Facebook interfaces with advertisers.
Facebook has three sales channels: Direct, Inside and Online.
- Direct sales deals with the largest global brands, for which Facebook has dedicated account teams to manage the relationship directly with the advertiser and their agencies. These are generally referred to as managed accounts. The first important point to note is that certain products, specifically Premium (discussed later), are only available to managed accounts.
- Inside sales handles the next tier of clients, who may be spending in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on Facebook. These clients will have a sales rep whom they deal with directly to buy advertising, but they don’t have quite the same level of strategic support as managed accounts.
- That means the rest of us interact with Facebook sales via the Online, or self-serve, channel. There are companies developing products on top of Facebook’s Marketing/Ads APIs to facilitate the buying process for self-serve advertisers. Platforms such as Ad Parlor, Blinq, TBG Digital and others can be beneficial to those spending enough to justify an investment in automation and optimization.
But when it comes to the type of advertising available, these platforms don’t provide access to anything that you can’t do yourself through the Facebook self-serve interface.
What’s the Difference Between an Ad and a Sponsored Story?
According to Facebook, users want to engage with “stories,” not “ads”—the difference being that ads are one-way communication and stories are more conversational and participatory.
With this sponsored story, you have the ability to Like the brand, comment or share.
To support this, they have presented data based on research done by Nielsen that showed significantly higher click-through and brand recall rates for ads that contained the social context of a friend’s name (i.e., “John Liked this”) versus a traditional advertising message alone.
Facebook will continue to offer options for both Ads and Sponsored Stories through the Online and Direct or Inside Sales channels. However, they have introduced a number of new formats to encourage advertisers to use these more social ads. In addition, Facebook recently began testing a button that bypasses the somewhat complicated self serve ad interface to allow Page admins to promote content directly from their Page as a Sponsored Story.
That said, you can still choose to set up a traditional ad, called a Marketplace Ad, where you supply the ad copy and creative, and can link the ad to your Facebook page or your own website if you choose.
Marketplace Ads
There are currently four Marketplace Ad types:
- Standard Ad (drive traffic to your site)
- Like Ad (drive to your Facebook page)
- App Ad (drive to an app)
- Event Ad (promote an event)
Each ad includes a thumbnail image, title and body copy.
Note that as of April 1, there is a new 90-character restriction on body copy length.
Facebook's self-serve interface makes it easy to set up a new ad.
Direct advertisers also have access to video ads, which are not available through the Online channel. However, self-serve advertisers can incorporate video via Page Post Ads described below.
Sponsored Stories
Now let’s look at Sponsored Stories. These were Facebook’s initial social ads and may now be referred to as “voice of friend” stories to differentiate from the new Page Post Ads discussed below.
These stories are shown to “friends of fans” (users whose friends are fans of your page and interact with your brand). These stories always show the friend’s profile photo and name, something not displayed with Marketplace Ads, and hence the social dimension.
Sponsored Stories can be generated from any of the following actions:
- Page Like (user Likes your page and their friends will see this)
- Page Post Like (user Likes a post on your page)
- Page Post Comment (user comments on a post)
- App Used or App Shared (user interacts with your app)
- Check In (user checks into your location)
- Question Answered (user answers a question you posted on your page)
- Event RSVP (user indicates they are attending your event)
Above you can see a traditional Like Ad alongside a Page Like Sponsored Story. Both encourage a user to engage with your page, but the Sponsored Story contains the "voice of friend" that is more likely to drive engagement from friends of fans.
The most recent additions to Facebook’s advertising arsenal are the Page Post Ad and Sponsored Story.
Page Post Ads
The Page Post Ad offers the ability to display the same content in an ad unit as on your page. If users are not already connected to your brand through a friend, they will see an ad and have the ability to Like your page.
Existing fans and friends of fans will see a Sponsored Story showing their friends who are connected to your brand, providing additional social context. For managed accounts that have access to Facebook Premium, Page Post Ads will also allow existing fans to interact by Liking or commenting directly within the Sponsored Story. This greater degree of engagement is not currently available to advertisers through the Online channel.
Page Post Ad options currently include:
- Text (you make a text-only post on your page)
- Photo (you post a photo to your page)
- Video (you post a video to your page)
- Link (you share a link on your page, which can be used to drive traffic off of Facebook)
- Question (you ask a question/poll)
- Event (you create an event)
With Page Post Ads, you can drive video consumption.
What if I Want My Ad to Appear in the News Feed?
Much has been made of the new Facebook Premium, which enables advertisers to promote Page Post Ads and Sponsored Stories directly in the news feed, including on mobile. Facebook Premium is only available to managed accounts, but that doesn’t mean your ad can’t appear in a user’s news feed.
Marketplace Sponsored Stories scheduled through the Online channel will also be considered for inclusion in the news feed. Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm will take into account numerous factors to determine the suitability of a given story for inclusion.
If I’m in San Francisco and seeing something from a plumber in Wichita, that isn’t good for the advertiser or me, and isn’t necessarily a good user experience. Facebook is rightfully concerned about this and will likely be very selective about which Sponsored Stories appear in the news feed.
If your ad does appear in the news feed, you will be paying for impressions (CPM) or clicks (CPC) just as if the ad had appeared in the designated ad position on the page.
Initially Facebook will be gathering data on how different ads perform in the context of the news feed and on mobile. Armed with that data, they will be in a better position to determine how or whether to roll out the product to more advertisers. Of course there are no guarantees that you will ever be able to pay directly for exposure in the news feed.
What About Offers?
Facebook also announced a new product that enables companies to create an Offer that can be posted on their page and claimed by users with one click. Once a user claims the offer, their friends will see this in the news feed and be prompted to claim as well.
At this point Offers are only available to managed accounts and a select number of local business Pages, but it appears the product will be more widely available soon.
Here's an offer displayed in the news feed with the ability to claim or share the offer with one click.
It’s unclear exactly how Offers will be rolled out to a wider selection of advertisers, but it is certainly an exciting tool for businesses of any size, so stay tuned!
So Now What?
I can’t provide a prescription for how to advertise on Facebook because each organization is unique and will have different objectives. However, I think it’s important for anyone not yet advertising on Facebook to think about the following, and for anyone currently advertising to take a second look at their campaigns with these points in mind:
- In general, advertising on Facebook is more effective at driving behavior on Facebook. Another new feature Facebook recently announced will help advertisers measure this effectiveness even more precisely by enabling the tracking of various actions (Liking a Page, installing an app, RSVPing to an Event) a user may take after interacting with an ad.
- Conversely, how can you utilize advertising to support your broader goals on Facebook? Page Like Ads can be a great way to build audience size and Page Post Ads can drive deeper engagement. If you’re utilizing apps on your page, you can use ads to drive traffic directly to the app.
- One of the most powerful opportunities on Facebook is to reach friends of fans. Rather than targeting anonymous users with a traditional ad, you are likely to get a much greater response from someone one degree removed who sees that their friend interacted with your brand through a Sponsored Story.
It’s important to be clear on your goals and to be able to measure your effectiveness in reaching those goals. I am a big advocate of experimentation, but not of doing it blindly.
Just because you saw your competitor advertising on Facebook doesn’t mean you should do the same. And while tallying Likes and comparing how you stack up is an easy game to play, it’s not a great measure of the effectiveness of your Facebook marketing.
Before you go out and spend a bunch of money to gain more Likes, it’s important to have a plan for how you will retain and engage those fans. Again there is no formula, but successful brands on Facebook engage with their fans through content and conversations on their pages, as well as through fun and interactive applications (i.e., games, contests).
These activities can be amplified through the use of Page Post Ads and Sponsored Stories. When utilized together, they comprise a more holistic approach toward marketing on Facebook.
What do you think? Have you had success with advertising on Facebook? Are you excited about these new opportunities? I’d love to hear about it. Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
An In-Depth Perspective of Facebook EdgeRank
You might be wondering why there are many posts made by you and your friends but why only a few of them are seen in the News Feed? In order for your post to be seen on the feed, there are three components you have to remember: affinity, weight, and recency. Each of these components plays an important role in the edge rank algorithm. Therefore, edges seen on your News Feed are not randomly selected.
