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Facebook Now Offering More Detailed Analytics for Page Owners

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Facebook announced yesterday that it will now be providing deeper analytics to all Facebook Page administrators.

These analytics have existed but were only available to Facebook Pages with over 10,000 friends. While not “groundbreaking” or anything, what the new analytics will provide is a snapshot of your content’s activity on a PER POST basis. Previously the only information available was an overview of all post activity (rather than each piece of content).

The new analytics will show you how many “impressions” your content has received as well as a percentage of impressions to feedback.

Impressions, in this case, does NOT mean how many unique people SAW your post/content. What it means in the Facebook world is how many times Facebook chose to “serve” your content into users’ News Feed. (See image)

 

How is this helpful? This information will allow you to “fine-tune”, if you will, your content posts to maximize “potential” views (ie. maximize how many times your content is shown in users’ News Feed).

Keep in mind that Facebook controls what people see, you don’t.

Find your content with the most impressions and try to find a consistency within your highest impression counts. It may be that, based on what your particular fans are doing, those “types” of content are considered more valuable to them than others so Facebook delivers them more.

The feedback percentage will also effect how often your content is served to your fans. The higher the percentage of people that interact with you (via a piece of content), the more likely that content will be served up.

This is just another great tool available for you to use that will help optimize your Facebook marketing efforts.

(The new analytics information can be seen only by administrators and it’s on the Facebook Page below each post just as pictured in the image above.)

 Originally published on DrivingSales.com

 

Podcast Episode Beta: Intro to Facebook Pages

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Hi everyone. Despite the rumors, I have not fallen off the edge of the
Earth. I have taken a position and have been working secretly making the
universe …. uh, well, I’ve been working. All will be revealed soon.
My blog, on the other hand, has been my red-headed step-child and I’ve
neglected him.

This podcast is the first podcast I’ve ever made.
It’s an introduction to Facebook Pages and includes some great tips that will
be new to novices and some veterans.

It is numbered “beta” because it
was also a test of quality, functionality and efficiency of many things –
software, hosting, microphone, etc.

It was unscripted and fairly
free-flowing so I hope you enjoy it and gain some insight into Facebook
Fan Pages. Your feedback is much appreciated.

Was it too long? too short?
Was the sound quality good?
Was it informative?
Was it easy to access and listen to?

Thanks in advance and enjoy!

Click the “Play” button.

Played: 20 | Download | Duration: 00:12:01

Do Not Merge Your Facebook Places and Business Page

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There’s a big hullabaloo going on right now about Facebook wanting business owners to merge their new “Places” page with their “Fan” page. The Facebook system is even prompting administrators to do this when you go to “claim” your Facebook Place page so that you can start serving up “deals”.

At the moment, the general consensus is that you should NOT merge the two but rather keep them as separate pages for the time being and administer them each separately.

Why?

The merge basically migrates your “fans” over to the Places page and makes that your fan page. The design of the Places page is poor in that it detracts from the ease at which your fans can communicate with you. It is much more difficult to interact on the Places page than on your fan page.

You also lose the ability to have custom landing tabs with the new Places page. All those nice graphic messages you had created…. gone. You will end up with a page with a big map at the top and lose a lot of your editing abilities.

It is so bad that people are actually abandoning their “merged” page and starting all over again with a new fan page. That’s how much people are not liking the loss of functionality and design capabilities.

There was even a Facebook group created and an article written on AllFacebook.com about this issue.

Here’s an example of a merged page – before and after.

Boomers! Fresno – Before Merge

Boomers! Fresno – After Merge

My advice for now is to go ahead and claim your Places page but, when prompted to merge your Places page with your Fan page, say “No Thanks”.

Once you merge them, you can never go back.

Originally published on DrivingSales.com

Facebook Page Demographics

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Have you ever wondered who the fans of your Facebook page are?

If you subscribe to Hootsuite, they’ve just released a feature that gives you a pretty comprehensive report about your Facebook fan page. They call it “Facebook Insights” and any Hootsuite user that has admin access to their Facebook page can add it to their Hootsuite account and it will show them the following:

  • New fans to your Page
  • Demographics including: region, age, gender
  • Amount of Page comments
  • Number of “likes”
  • New discussions
  • Number of new wall posts

You’ll also see historical comparisons to see which way your pages are trending. And, like other stats in HootSuite, you can create a printable report to share with your colleagues, clients and executives.

This is definitely valuable information and more comprehensive than the Facebook analytics offered within Facebook itself.

Here’s a screenshot of a report:


There is more to the report including Interaction data and Daily Page Activity (which are readily available through Facebook’s reports so that’s nothing new) but the demographic data is strong.

I blogged about News Feed Optimization awhile ago. Since page and content interaction is incredibly important in determining whether or not your fans see your posts, this information is invaluable.

In the example above, since we know that 66% of the fans are male, there would be a couple of strategies you may want to employ. First, since the goal is  more interaction, you may want to concentrate on male-oriented content. The second would be to work on increasing your female base of fans.

You should know your product’s demographics so why wouldn’t you want to encourage and/or grow your Facebook page demographics to match your products demographics?

This information will also allow you to identify which content is actually generating activity which would then allow you to utilize similar content in the future.

If posting pictures of modded cars gets you a lot of responses, you’d want to post more of those. If you have a predominately female fan base and you see that the recipe you posted for cookies got a lot of attention and interaction, you post more lifestyle-type posts.

Of course, this information requires you to be a Hootsuite user to obtain (for now at least). 

In what ways do you think this information could be used to better leverage your social media marketing efforts on Facebook? 

Originally published on DrivingSales.com

 

 

 

 

The New Facebook ‘Groups’ and Why You Should Care

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I don’t want to make this a long “what-it-is” sort of article because there are an amazing number of those available. Here’s a link to the best one, in my opinion – The New Facebook Groups: All You Need To Know (Watch the little 2-minute video on that page for an easy introduction.)

Now before I get into the reasons WHY you should participate, go NOW and secure the vanity e-mail address for your company name, group, club, whatever.. some people cannot get there via the normal path as it’s not completely rolled-out to everyone BUT there is a direct link that will allow you to get there. – Facebook Groups 
Go create your group, then, once you’ve created it, in the top right corner, click “Edit Group”. Kind of in the middle of the box, there will be an option to create a group e-mail address. Get yours. Just trust me on this. I’ll get around to explaining what it means and why you want it.
Alright, to the meat and potatoes…
In the beginning, Facebook was created and it was good. (Uh, not that far back)
Think of Facebook like your living room. In its origins and/or in its origins for YOU, you invited people into your living room. When you talked, they could listen and vice versa. 
The problem is that Facebook has grown so exponentially that many users have invited too many people into their living rooms. So now you have all these people, all talking at the same time and nobody hears anyone else.
Facebook’s FIRST attempt at solving this problem was trying to filter out the people in your living room who you listen and respond to the most by filtering your news feed into “Top Stories” and deciding who amonsgst the people in your living room deserves a spot within your news feed at all (EDGE score). Remember I said that FACEBOOK DECIDES who you hear…. not you.
Now we have the new Facebook Groups.
Facebook Groups is designed to allow you to segment your social circles and communicate only with those that you wish to at any point in time. Do you want to post those drunken party pictures? Make a group of your party friends. All of those business content shares would be shared with your business connections.
This functionality in Facebook already existed in the form of “Lists” but they were unwieldy and difficult for people to use and setup so they weren’t used. 
With the new ‘Groups’, it is much easier to do this and share the content you want to with ONLY the people you want to without creating and managing lists and tweaking privacy settings.
There can be an infinite number of groups with the same name – ie. Family, Friends, Business, etc. BUT only one of those groups can have the vanity GROUP E-MAIL ADDRESS (ie. family@groups.facebook.com ) 
What does the group e-mail address do? It allows any member of your group to email content to that e-mail address and share it with the group. In marketing terms and strategies, it’s important to understand that, to get people to interact, the easier you make it the better so you’ll want to acquire the vanity email address that is simple for you. Instead of having to tell your group members to e-mail family@groups.facebook.com, you’ll be forced to find some creative new e-mail address.. but c’mon, wouldn’t it be easier to have your company name or keyword email address?
The new Facebook ‘Groups” are like social networks within the social network. You can group chat, share and edit documents, links, video, etc. The beauty of groups is that they are group-managed. Anyone within the group can invite anyone else to join. No admin permission required (unless they have no connection and/or weren’t added by any member of the group). So ‘Groups’ lets you interact with any member of the group WITHOUT them having to be your “friend” so while you can interact and share freely within the group, you can rest assured that your Facebook profile and wall are still secure. (Caveat: An Admin CAN remove people from the group. If it’s your group and someone you invited into it invites someone in that you do not want there and/or they are disrupting the group, you do have the power to boot them from the group IF you are an Admin. Want a group of employees? When someone leaves your company, you can remove them from the group.)
Facebook got too “noisy” for some people. This is the way you’ll be able to reduce that noise by kicking people out of the living room so you can hear and interact with only those you want to at that moment BUT not kick them out of the house (ie. un-friend them). You have your family in the living room, your business associates in the kitchen, your friends in the game room, etc. and YOU move from room to room as you choose which group you want to share and interact with.
The internet is transforming AWAY from a destination place and TOWARDS a means of travel. What do I mean? People are using social networks and apps more and more every day. They’re getting the news from Facebook and Twitter and then sharing it with their friends. In the future, people won’t go to PLACES (ie. websites) on the internet… they’ll go to a PLACE (ie. Facebook). They’ll use the internet as only a means to get there.
People spend more time on Facebook RIGHT NOW than on Google Search and all of Google’s properties combined. This trend is only going to continue. 
Groups will transform Facebook, I guarantee it. They have big plans to keep adding new group functionality.
Don’t wait and find this out later. Just go grab your group vanity email address now… if you want to wait after that, feel free. 
Yesterday was like the big domain name land-grabs of the past but it’s happening RIGHT NOW. Don’t be scrambling to grab your “real estate” later. 
If you do, you’ll be sorry.

Facebook Ads – Ad Targeting Will Dominate

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I wanted to write a quick article regarding some changes to the Facebook Ads program. As time goes by, they are increasingly becoming an easier way to dial in your target audience while not wasting any of your ad budget.

Notable changes:
You can now set a lifetime budget for a Facebook Ad campaign (instead of a daily budget). This is valuable to that person who really wants to dial in their ad spend for a campaign. Rather than have to monitor your ads performance and spend daily, you can cap off the spend for the entire campaign. Their system will evenly distribute your ads across the entire campaign.
Facebook started providing social context metrics to its advertisers. These metrics, in a nutshell, will show you your ads performance when presented to a user when the user sees a “friend” that likes the ad listed (vs. just the ad). This is a great start and, as it stands, Facebook allows some very specific targeting for your ads. In the long run, however, the introduction of a targeting method which allows you to target users with a high number of friends could produce some high-performance ads. Imagine being able to only display your ad to users who fit your demographic settings AND have over 500 friends… That would be something.
Yesterday, Facebook added URLs to ads that point off-site. This is great news for Facebook advertisers. What this means is that you’ll get less uninterested clicks by people clicking, going off site, then bouncing. This should result in higher conversion rates for ads as people will know, before clicking the ad, that they will be leaving Facebook to go to your website.
Facebook’s introduction of the “Like” button is also important. I’ve talked about this in past blog articles. It’s “Like” button is spreading throughout the internet virally. How does this effect a Facebook Ad campaign? Facebook uses the information gathered by “Like” button users to deliver more relevant ads by basically incorporating the user’s web browsing history into the equation. Yesterday,Facebook shared some statistics about “Likers”. People who actively use the like button have 2.4 times the amount of friends and are 5.3 times more likely to visit an external website.
Are you a Honda dealer that wants people in your PMA who have visited your OEM or competitor’s website to see your ad? I’m betting you do.
As Facebook Ads gets more dialed in, it will increasingly become more inviting for advertisers. 
With Facebook Ads, you can target your ad delivery much more than you can with Google.
Imagine being a Honda dealer able to target your ads this way….
Deliver to users in Los Angeles who:
Are/Are not connected to my Facebook fan page and/or Are/Are not friends of someone who is connected
That are single/married/engaged/in a relationship
between the ages of 25-40 (you can even schedule ad delivery FOR their birthday)
Have a Bachelors degree or higher
are male/female
Have a specific keyword in their profile (Honda, in this case, or maybe even Toyota)
Work at a specific company (or companies)
Speak a specific language
Have 500 or more friends
Have visited Honda’s OEM website and/or your competition’s (whether its brand or dealer competition) website in the last 30 days.*

You can’t do that with Google but you can with Facebook and it’s only going to get MORE targeted. 
As the viral incorporation into apps and websites and the migration of users AWAY from Google and TO Facebook continues, the targeting will only get stronger. You’ll be able to maximize your ad performance while minimizing your ad spend in a way that NO OTHER DELIVERY SYSTEM can offer.
(*Note: The bold targeting categories do not currently exist, but they’re coming)

Forget SEO. Try NFO (News Feed Optimization)

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Recently there has been all sorts of talk about the proper way to accomplish Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I wrote a blog article about it the other day.

Something interesting that’s been happening (in case people failed to notice) was that while people are still trying harder and harder to optimize Google searches (or just coming around to figuring out they should be), that’s exactly where people are spending less time at. In August 2010, CNet reported that more people were spending time on Facebook than on all of Google’s properties combined (including YouTube and GMail). This shouldn’t be a surprising statistic what with Facebook having about 500 million users and given the amount of time any particular user spends on its site.

So, the rage for the past year or so has been to talk about Social Media Marketing (SMM). 

There are plenty of best practices, tips and techniques to make your fan page flourish… but that’s not what I want to talk about here. 

Did you know that Facebook has an algorithm for what pieces of content get placed into a person’s “Top News” area? 

If you don’t know what that is, the default view of the Facebook News Feed (where every user goes when they log in) is the “Top News”. Think of this as kind of a “greatest-hits” for the last 24 hours or so from all of their friends. Of course, you can manually then change the view from the “Top News” to “Most Recent”, which will show all of your friends posts.

So how do you – as a Facebook marketer – get YOUR content into a user’s “Top News”? – News Feed Optimization (NFO)

There’s an algorithm for that. 
This slide is from a presentation give by Facebook engineers at the f8 developer conference.
What we have here is a definition of an “Edge Rank”. 
Believe me when I say that I’m not a math freak or anything but essentially what this says is the following (short version):
  1. Everything on Facebook is an object – status updates, photos, links, video
  2.  There are three factors that determine the “edge rank” your object is given which will determine the likelihood that it appears in your fans (or friends) “Top News” area.
  3. The first factor is the ‘affinity score’ between the user (your fan or friend) and creator (you). How much and how often does this person interact with you? Do they spend a lot of time on your fan page? What do they do while they’re there.
  4. The second factor is ‘weight’. Each type of object interaction is weighted. What type of interaction happened? a comment? a like? a tag? The more “interactive” the ..uh.. interaction, the more weight it has – so someone who actually types a comment is going to be interacting more than someone who clicks “like”.. this of course, gives more weight to the comment. 
  5. The last factor is ‘time decay’ which is simply how much time has passed since your object was created.
Weights are not always evenly kept, FYI. When Facebook launches new services, those objects suddenly seem to be weighted more than others (ie. Facebook Places) so jumping onto new features and services does have advantages.
With the potential that Facebook may start sharing the “Like” data with Bing, the official release of Facebook’s Page Browser, Google indexing Facebook Pages, and the “Like” button’s viral adoption on the web… You may find it easier and easier to get lost in the crowd.. just as it is, right now, on Google Search.
Imagine, for a brief moment though…. 
What if you had started optimizing Google keyword searches for your business when Google first appeared?
You have that opportunity now with Facebook Pages, Like buttons and NFO.
What will you do with it?
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