PTAT – Remember This…
May 21, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Interesting article sourced via @markjhenry which also confirms much of what Dena Walker was saying at her recent Refresh Dublin talk… when you’re next looking at PTAT (People Talking About This) remember that the figure contains initial liking; liking specific content on a page, posting to a wall; commenting; sharing a post or other content from the page; answering a question; photo tagging; check-ins or RsVPing to an event.
This study by Karen Nelson-Field and Jennifer Taylor stripped out the initial likes to see what the real level of PTAT was for 200 of the top brands on Facebook over a period of 6 weeks (in late 2011).
What they found was that:
- Less than 0.5% of fans engage with the brand
- Only 1 brand scored engagement of over 2%
- 20 brands reached 1%
The results, showing very limited levels of engagement, are predictable to those familiar with empirical patterns of buyer behaviour. Consumers don’t love their brands; rather, they are polygamously loyal to a small group of offerings in the category (Goodhardt et al, 1984). In effect, we are loyal switchers rather than brand loyals (Uncles et al, 1995, Ehrenberg et al, 2004).
You can read the article here:
Facebook_Fan Engagement WARC 4.12
Careful Now! Facebook Timeline
February 29, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Facebook introduced timeline today for Pages and already people are having some troubles. Here are the top things to watch out for:
- Don’t flick the switch! If you are an Admin and you’re in your Page, tread very carefully as some smarter people than you have been caught out and have flicked the switch and are now stuck with the new Page without having tested it.
- If you have Apps that are fan-gated, you may find that they won’t work as they should. This is probably the biggest one and definitely one to check with your reputable Facebook App Developer.
- If you are a Place, you might find your description box being replaced by address details.
A solution that was shared by Betapond to this:
First go to the newly merged places page, click Edit info, and delete the address completely and save your changes. Then go back into Edit info again, and there should be some sort of dialogue underneath where the address used to be that says “Disconnect this page from a street address” or something to that effect. Hopefully soon Facebook can figure out how to have multiple locations linked to one fan page.
Tags: Facebook page, timeline for facebook pages, tips for facebook pages
Facebook Introduces Timeline For Pages
February 29, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Today at around noon GMT, the first Pages wearing the new timeline launched on Facebook. Big bold prints are in for spring/summer 2012, ladies and gentlemen… some of the earliest sightings include:
Red Bull
Starbucks
Old Spice
For these are the couture clients of Facebook; the chosen ones…
…whose advertising budgets reach the loftiest of heights.
Facebook contacted a handful of selected advertisers and gave them an early in on the new Page design. They were able to test how their Page looks and launch today. For the rest of us, indeed the vast majority of Pages, the new Page design will be rolled out on 30 March. You can choose to go before then. On 30 March all Pages will be switched over to the new look (and we can laugh at all the brands that aren’t prepared for it!)
I haven’t seen any Irish brands sporting the new Page design, but that’s hardly surprising when you look at the list of top Facebook brands and many names – Pringles, Skittles, Disney – are not among the chosen ones either.
Update: Many quick off the mark Pages are taking the leap and here’s a nice cover image that makes a change from the large pic favoured above:
What Does This Mean For You?
You’ve got time to play around with designs and copy and get your Page ready for its timeline debut.
Cover Photo: Use a unique image that represents your brand. All the early adopters seem to have gone for one large image, but you might go with a montage of smaller images showing your product being used by happy people. You could go with just text? Image dimensions 399 pixels and of course there are rules!
- No pricing
- No calls to action
- No contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
- No references to Facebook elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features, ie no ‘like us’ and an arrow?
- Nothing misleading, or infringing on other people’s IP
If you are a marketer, you might find it very difficult to produce the requisite image. Take my advice – hand it over to your most creative designers and let them rip!
You can change your pic as often as you like, so make sure you factor this into your seasonal content planning.
There are several other elements you can fixate on, don’t just concentrate on the large cover photo. Here are the main ones:
Profile Pic: has now been freed up so now you can go with something different to your previous profile pic. This is a hugely important asset as this is the bit that most fans will engage with through their wall. You could play safe and go with your logo. Or choose something quirky and colourful that works well in a tiny square shape of 180 x 180. I like that Old Spice has chosen not to go with their logo. Imagine this face peaking out at you every time their post appears on your timeline!
Display Panels On Top: what were your left hand links are now perched prettily at the top of your Page. Photos are locked into the first spot, but you can change the order of everything else to highlight apps, fan numbers, etc.. I like this as it’s a much more visual display of good quality content from your Page. The max number of items here is 12, and 4 is visible ‘above the fold’. Note that the ability to set a default landing tab is now gone.
Lift the skirts of design and look at the quality of the fabric, the text, where attention to detail and getting the mood right is all important.. you can start by taking a cold hard look at your ‘About Us’ description.
Red Bull’s is too long at 26 words/150 characters. Old Spice adds a URL and it pollutes what I think should be a clean and simple message.
Starbucks nails it, adhering to best practice and keeping to 20 words or less. Know that the first para of your About Us info is being picked up to display on your ‘home’ Page, so go in and have a new look at that.
Pin Stories to the top of your Page, so you can keep popular posts on the go for even longer! Is this marketer’s nirvana as even loftier numbers of likes and comments can be achieved?
Get to work on crafting your company timeline. This is the newest feature and one for the content people to shine. You can highlight key dates in your company/brand’s growth going right back to inception. Choose stories you want to tell, add pics, and locations, and make this into a really rich resource to detail growth and take your fans on a little journey… I am really looking forward to some of the brand stories that come out of this. In the meantime, Starbucks has done it rather well. Note that fans can comment or like each point in your timeline.
Overall?
I’m happy that control for the initial image that a user sees is back with the Page owner. I have found the ‘top 5′ images of the old design very annoying as they are largely beyond the control of the Admin. The random displaying of all images from the Page has actually entered my dreams, replacing the “never-ending site map” dream that happens occasionally when I go to bed with my brain fully switched to On.
I’m dying to see what Smashing Magazine and Mashable come up with in the next few days and weeks as the world’s great designers get down to playing with the large space that Facebook has now given up to us.
I’m also considering the impact all this will have on results brought in using Social Media Monitoring Tools. Right now, in all honesty, exploring the social web for Facebook results tends to bring the most insignificant results because all of the action takes place behind the closed doors of many people’s profiles. I’m wondering if people will be more likely to engage with each other via the Page’s timeline, ie. if I post a hugely witty comment on a brand’s timeline, will my friends who see that enter the conversation there as well? Will this be the Godsend that lifts conversations out of the private and into the public domain?
But, I’m also thinking about workload – and updating processes for producing and managing content. It’s a no-brainer that we’ll have to create a content schedule around the cover image alone… Keeping on top of comments posted on events in the timeline will be new. But chnage is good. And I can safely say I’m more excited about the launch of new look Facebook Pages than the damp squib that was Google + Pages in late 2011.
What about you?
What do you think of Facebook Timeline for Pages? Please post any gorgeous examples in comments below.
Read on for top things to watch out for … careful now 
Here’s another great post on the changes from Fluffy Button.
Tags: Facebook Pages Timeline, Facebook Timeline for Pages
Is Facebook Playing A Game With Me?
November 17, 2011 at 9:28 am
OK I’ll confess – I tend to fail capcha tests on the first go. It doesn’t make me any less of a person, just makes me concentrate more on the second go. But since yesterday Facebook has either been playing a big joke on me, or it’s ‘add admin’ function is broken.
I’ve completed about 12 capcha tests and have ‘failed’ them all, but I haven’t (see below). The black box on the last one said to me ‘game over’.
Tags: capcha
Facebook Landing Tabs – Yes or No?
August 15, 2011 at 8:01 am
I’m doing some testing at the moment as to whether having a landing or welcome tab on your Facebook Page increases the likelihood of a like, or whether it acts as a barrier (like an old school ‘skip intro’ page on websites). I don’t think there is a hard and fast answer; it depends on YOUR fans and their preferences. But I’ve carried out a little research into what some brands do, and collate below my thinking towards best practice on Facebook landing tabs. If you’re trying to decide whether to have one or not, I hope this helps.
Important Features of Facebook Landing Tabs
- Engage and get the max impact with the first 10-15 words
- Ask for the like and be human about it – I like this “We like you, do you like us?”
- Show the best of the Page’s content, and give people an idea of what they can expect as part of your community
- If you’re in hotels, or car hire, or ecommerce, it can be a good idea to offer some form of incentive to encourage visitors to become a fan – such as a money off coupon.
https://www.facebook.com/threadless
Design Led Landing Tabs
Here are some of my favourite examples of landing tabs that go straight in and ask for the ‘like’ but in a visually creative way:
http://www.facebook.com/VirginItalia
https://www.facebook.com/EnjoyEngland
http://www.facebook.com/TescoIreland
http://www.facebook.com/Microsoft
http://www.facebook.com/redbull
Getting The Tone Right
It’s really important to set the right tone. Don’t overwhelm people who are browsing, and don’t demand that they DO stuff straightaway – “upload all your pics and tell us why [our brand] is so great”. Kind of like what these guys do, but that could just be a cultural thing {smirks}.
Here are some of my favourites that get the tone right:
http://www.facebook.com/holdenaustralia
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sweden/49607452291
http://www.facebook.com/sonyericsson
And finally, I have to give this one a mention – Ford.
I like the way they creatively use the profile pic and landing tab image, and very neatly show off their team. Ford gets a lot of kudos online about how great they are on social media, yet I have contacts on the inside who tell me that they are only now nutting down a strategy for Facebook and are in the process of rolling out monitoring software. I think the reason they get such good press is because they are doing better than most other car companies. If you are a car company and you want to earn yourself lots of online love, get started, invest a little and create a community.
Tags: facebook landing tabs, facebook welcome tab
Great Pickup
March 17, 2011 at 5:16 pm
When you read stuff like this after a long hard week that isn’t over yet, it makes it all worthwhile..
Tags: Ireland Town
Understanding Edgerank
March 1, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Now don’t come over all cold sweats please, this is a non-mathematician’s take on Edgerank!!
You may have heard of Google Page Rank which is a number Google gives to a web page based on its algorithim – the higher the number the better, and the further up the search engine results page your site will be displayed. Google Page Rank is all about relevant content. Similarly Facebook has an algorithim that it uses to display what goes in your Top News feed. It’s called Edgerank and you need to understand it if your message is going to be found by 95% of your fans.
Fact:
- The Top News feed is the default feed that everyone sees, and 95% of users don’t bother changing this setting – so it’s extremely important that you get your message into the Top News feed.
- Only 35% of commercial news gets into the Top News feed (according to this post).
Too many brands only focus on the numbers when it comes to Facebook metrics. Edgerank is is a nice qualitative metric that you can use – and it denotes a more accurate picture of success. What’s the point of having thousands of fans if your wall posts aren’t getting into the Top News streams? It’s like sending emails that are going straight to the spam folder. If you’ve thrown a whole lot of money at building fans through advertising, ensuring you engage with them through their Top News Feeds is the follow through.
Understanding Edgerank
Techcrunch has written the clearest explanation yet. Go read the Techcrunch Edgerank post for the detail.
Lifted directly from Techcrunch, Jason Kincaid succinctly explains the following (I wonder if he’s any relation to Flesch-Kincaid of the readability index fame?)
In its simplest sense, every item that appears in your news feed is an Object.
Whenever another user interacts with that object, it’s called an Edge.
Each Edge has three components important to Facebook’s algorithm:
- First, there’s an affinity score between the viewing user and the item’s creator — if you send your friend a lot of Facebook messages and check their profile often, then you’ll have a higher affinity score for that user than you would, say, an old acquaintance you haven’t spoken to in years.
- Second, there’s a weight given to each type of Edge. A comment probably has more importance than a Like, for example.
- And finally there’s the most obvious factor — time. The older an Edge is, the less important it becomes.
Multiply these factors for each Edge then add the Edge scores up and you have an Object’s EdgeRank. And the higher that is, the more likely your Object is to appear in the user’s feed. It’s worth pointing out that the act of creating an Object is also considered an Edge, which is what allows Objects to show up in your friends’ feeds before anyone has interacted with them.
My take on this – Facebook values engagement more than anything else.
To optimise Edgerank, you need to create content that people engage with – and do that frequently. But don’t worry – it’s a lot easier than optimizing Page Rank!! Here’s a handy tool you can use to calculate your Edgerank.
Start by checking your Edgerank now as a baseline, then work hard to ensure you’re engaging. Make every wall post work for you. Invite answers through questions. Be a good Facebooker and give lots of engaging content. Then go back and see if your Edgerank has increased. If it has, use your Insights to see the kind of content that delights your fans. Then give them more of it.
How Well Do You Use Facebook?
February 23, 2011 at 2:37 pm
I posted a status update on my Facebook wall last week about how you can adjust the settings in your profile to display all your friends and not just top stories. This made me think about a statistic I read somewhere where Facebook said that 95% of people only read top news. So I thought it might be helpful to show people a few things you can do to control your news feed on Facebook.
Firstly, know that there are two types of news: Top News and Most Recent.
Have you ever clicked on the arrow beside Most Recent?
You can set it to show you just updates from friends, from pages, games, or even just photos. If you’ve got lists set up, you can choose to see just updates from your lists, eg. “Close Friends & Family”, “Cool Thinkers”, etc.
What happened last week was that Facebook rolled out a change that defaulted people’s settings to Top News. So if you noticed that your news feed changed to only contain a few of the regular faces you interact with – that is the reason why. I put out a message on my profile to let people know how to change this (go to the bottom of the page, click edit settings, and change to “all of your friends”.)
Another little thing I noticed, while changing my settings, was that you can set your Facebook to NOT receive wall posts from people you don’t like – but are too afraid to unfriend! How do you do this?
Hover to the right of their most recent post and an X will appear. Click that. You get the option to hide just this post or all by that person. If you want to keep someone out of your feed but are too afraid to let them know that, then this is what you’re looking for. I am using the example of Ian above because he writes in Portugese which I unfortunately don’t understand.
So there you have it! A few little tips on how to make your News work for you. I really had thought that we’d moved away from the ‘how to’ guides for Facebook, but that statistic about 95% of people not knowing / bothering how to change their news feed demanded some action.
New Facebook Page Design
February 17, 2011 at 4:12 pm
On 10 February, Facebook introduced its new look for Pages. Designed to bring ‘consistent experiences across profiles and pages’ it will be applied to all pages from 10th March. Between now and then you can view how the new page will look when logged in as an administrator. You can make the switch before 10 March – in research I carried out of one industry more than half of the leading pages have already done that.
Appearance:
- Photos at the top: The most recent photos that you post to the Wall of a Page you admin, or photos you tag your Page in, will appear here.
This area will not include any photos posted by people who like your Page, so you can control this. What you can’t control is the order in which they appear. While you can manage this on personal profiles, on pages it’s random.
- Information box is gone, but you can put information up top, alongside the page name. None of the leading pages in my study are doing this.
- Wall logo has been reduced in size from 200 X 600 to 180 X 540.
- What we were calling tabs are now navigation links on the left hand side. It seems to allow for up to 7 at a glance. Admins will be able to re-order these menu items and they will be able to set a selected one as the default for non-fans.
- New page design is preset to display page owners on bottom left. Remove that by clicking edit page/featured/page owners. While this could be a good way of adding personality to the page, I think it’s safer to continue to add personality through the wall posts and not display pics. It could potentially be a minefield – what if fans friend request the admins? Should they accept? What if your page has a high turnover of staff and the faces keep changing? And what if your admin forgets she’s also visible on your page and changes her profile pic to something wildly inappropriate.
- Mutual connections: on the right hand side, it shows how many of your friends like this page. It also shows other liked pages the brand and you share. It’s a good idea now to think about your strategy for which pages you will like that you wish to associate with.
- Wall Filters: fans can now view wall posts by ‘everyone’ or just us. If they choose ‘everyone’, they will see all posts with the most liked/commented ones first. This has not gone down well and many people are demanding the chronological order to be brought back in place. The posts by brand filter will display only brand posts in the order they were posted. The new pages can also filter out wall posts in a language you don’t speak.
Administration:
- It’s great news that Admins can now like and post on other pages as the fan page. It overcomes the problem we’d been facing of when you want to interact with fans off the page, how to do it? Not as your personal profile, now you can do it as your page. To do this, simply click on Account in top right corner/use Facebook as page and there you can select the page you want to administer.
- Manage permissions – you can add keywords to a moderation list. When users include blacklisted keywords in a post and or a comment on your Page, the content will be automatically marked as spam. Comments will appear in grey to admins, but will not appear to the public. Or you can set the Profanity Blocklist to medium or strong. In these cases, Facebook will block the most commonly reported words and phrases marked as offensive by the broader community.
- Email notifications – you can opt to receive email notifications whenever someone posts or comments on your page. Probably more useful for sleepy pages, or if you’re managing a whole load of pages on behalf of a number of clients. With this feature, there’s now no excuse for a delay in replying to questions or comments from the wall.
Apps:
According to Facebook:
We are now ready to move forward with our previously announced plans to deprecate FBML and FBJS as a primary technology for building apps on Facebook. On March 11, 2011, you will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app.
• If you have apps installed that are built in FBML, they will continue to work but you will not be able to add any new instances after 10th March. If you’re getting new apps, make sure they are developed in an iframe format.
What To Do Now
- Rethink your profile picture as the size change may affect it.
- Check your ‘page category’ is correct as this will now be displayed.
- If you previously posted important links in the information box, ie. your phone number or twitter link, make sure they are included in the about us section.
- Very important to consider the 5 images that will display at the top of the page. Upload 5 images that you wish to set as your default, but do not rely on the order in which they are presented.
- Remove the page owners and page admins.
- Consider carefully what pages you like as the top 30 of these will now be displayed.
- Uncheck the email notification settings (edit page/your settings).
Sources:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/02/11/facebook.page.redesign.mashable/
http://blog.neworld.com/?p=886
http://www.hyperarts.com/blog/facebooks-new-fan-page-design-reduced-tab-width/
Facebook Privacy Setting Change Was A Bug
December 13, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Phew! It turns out that the Facebook privacy setting change from last week was in fact a bug and it has now been fixed by the folks at Facebook.
You can read more about it here. But rest up now and know that you can talk to your fans from your page despite privacy settings!
