Posts Tagged ‘Facebook Marketing’


Get Notifications: The Free Way to Reach More Facebook Fans

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

Now your fans can get all of your business page updates with the new Get Notifications button. Here’s how.

Ever since Timeline was introduced it seems as though the only way we can get in front of our Facebook Business page fans is to pay to do so. Well, let your heart not be discouraged, Facebook recently introduced a new FREE way to stay in front of your fans. Enter ‘Get Notifications.’

By checking off ‘Get Notifications’ you are telling Facebook what you are interested in and what you want to see in your news feed, rather than Facebook guessing. Once checked you will see all updates from that particular page in your news feed.

If you’ve been updating your news feed 5 or more times a day in order to improve your Edgerank, you may want to rethink that. Otherwise you’ll hijack the news feeds of those followers who get everything.

At this point we aren’t sure if Facebook will give you the information on how many of your fans have opted to get notifications. However, you may have noticed that some pages are already marketing this function.

Here are the steps we recommend to get your current fans to sign up for your notifications.

  1. Create an update asking your fans to click the ‘Get Notifications’ button. Let them know that you will not be burdening them with an obscene number of posts.
  2. Instruct them on how to they can get notifications. It can be found one of two ways. 
    1. You can hover over the ‘liked’ button on the Facebook page that you want to receive the notifications from (see image above) 
    2. You can hover over the liked button in the newsfeed to click off ‘Get Notifications.’
  3. Create a Promoted post, so that more of your fans can see the update.

You may not have this on your page yet. Facebook is slowly rolling it out. It will be interesting to see if the reach percentage on posts goes up or not. 

Is “Get Notifications” available on your page yet? Which brands would you subscribe to on Facebook?

Joan Crocker
Facebook Marketer

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Posted in Social Media, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »


How Do I Determine Which Facebook Posts Perform the Best?

Thursday, June 21st, 2012

Improve your Facebook Engagement with Better Updates.

Recently I read a fantastic post over at Hubspot on How to Analyze Facebook Insights to Improve your Content Strategy. Here are some key takeaways.

As business owners we are all short on time. It’s important for us to use our time wisely, and that means finding shortcuts, analyzing processes and creating a strategy that produces the most fruit from our labor.

Many times when it comes to social media strategies we are all over the place, wasting time trying everything because we aren’t quite sure what is or isn’t working.

So, what are the best ways to discover which posts are benefiting our business most?

We need to start by analyzing our Facebook Insights data. However, the reports available to us through export on Facebook are riddled with columns of useless data making it difficult to discover what data we should actually pay attention to.

Enter Hubspot’s awesome post from yesterday which provided us with great tips on how to weed through the data leaving only what’s important to creating better content on your Facebook page.

So, yesterday, using the methods outlined in the post above, we took a peek at out efforts on Facebook to find what was working for us and what is really a waste of time.

Once you’ve cleaned up your data leaving only the columns that are important you can create a couple of stacked line charts that will allow you to gain insight with a quick glance. Next step is to pull up your Facebook insights page so that you can compare the chart with the posts and analyze the dips and spikes. So, in other words, which posts created the most interaction.


In the chart above (which I’ve minimized for purposes of fitting into this post) I matched up the date of the spikes with the posts on Facebook. To do this, simply visit your page, click view Insights, and then from the overview tab scroll down to page posts. You can click on a particular post and it will give you a preview of what the post was. (see example below)

Here’s what we found…

Things that work!

  1. Photos are the most engaging content that we post to our Facebook page. This can be something as silly as a photo of George as the new flyte guard dog or a picture of some not so well hidden Easter eggs. It also includes photos that are part of an update asking a question, such as “iPhone or Droid: Which are you?” or “Iced Coffee or Iced tea?”, which leads me into number 2.
  2. General, easy-to-answer questions are the second most engaging content on our Facebook page. These questions can be silly like the above examples or a little more business relevant like, “Are you currently using Pinterest for business?” or “Is your small business prepared for the end of Facebook?” Some of the formats that work well for us are Pick One:, Multiple Choice, Thumbs Up If, True or False, fill in the blank, in 5 words or less… and Open ended questions.
  3. Facebook related content – Many of our posts that have something to do with Facebook, whether it’s a blog post, image, link or question, tend to perform well. We believe this to be true of course because chances are if you follow our page, you are looking for more information on how to use Facebook for your business. These tips and highlighted stories about Facebook on Facebook make sense.

Things that don’t work so well

  1. Automated posts, in particular our blog posts that are syndicated using NetworkedBlogs. While there is some engagement with these posts, and they are something we will continue as the information is valuable to our customers, and the blogs themselves are great for SEO. We cannot rely on these posts to draw engagement on our Facebook page. Meaning we need to still post other content several times a day even if the blog is being posted to our page. [We may stop automating them and see if this improves engagement.]
  2. Not Posting At ALL – As you can imagine our engagement hit rock bottom if we missed posting on a particular day, which means we need to be posting every day.
  3. Dry Posts- Meaning they lacked flyte’s usual snarky, humorous, irreverent, fun personality. These posts were possibly too safe and lacking a controversial vibe that generates conversation.
  4. Salesy posts. Here at flyte we very rarely get salesy or promotional on our Facebook page and this is exactly why. While these posts may get a few sign ups for an event, they usually don’t receive many shares, likes comments etc. Meaning: use this sparingly as these posts are not going to increase your engagement on Facebook. However, although they don’t get high engagement per se, they can be useful for that extra registration or sale.

What type of posts work best for your business? Please let us know in the comments below!

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results” – Winston Churchill

 

Photo Credit: By stoneysteiner

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Posted in Social Media, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »


Facebook Offers Competitive Research Tool with New “Likes” Tab

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

There are so many features of the new Timeline Facebook design that I like. But, one really cool one is the new insights that can be seen on the “Likes” Tab. Facebook has moved all of the custom pages and apps into one place and now you have up to 12 app icons to show below your cover. Photos is fixed and always has the top spot, but the rest you can move around at will. The “Likes” tab is provided by Facebook and also has a pretty cool function other than just telling you how many likes are on that particular page.

If you click on the “likes” tab, shown in the image above, you will notice that some interesting insights also pop up. (shown Below)

Here you can see how many folks are talking about your page, the total likes, and most importantly some page insights. However, you don’t just get this information when you click on the “Likes” tab on your page, you get it when you click on the Likes tab for every page. This is a great tool to dig in and do a little market research to see how your competitors are doing. Here are a couple things you can tell below:

1. What was the most popular week for the page? Look back at that week and see what your competitor was doing on their page that made it so popular. Was it a particular post? Was it a holiday? Were they offering a deal of some sort? What made that week so popular?

2. Where are their fans coming from? If it seems that most of their fans are local, than they are probably doing a great job spreading the word locally about their business and services. If they seem to be from a target city, maybe they are targeting that area with ads. If they are from India, and it’s a local business, then perhaps they purchased some of their likes – eek!

3. You can check out the demographic. Do they have the same target audience you’ve been targeting? If not, should you be targeting a different demographic?

4. Check ins – you can see when the business was most visited. Again, check to see what was going on then. Were they having a sale or an event of sorts? What made that week popular?

5. Now, this is where it gets really interesting. The People Talking About This/New Likes per Week Graph. This is a great way to get some insight into what types of posts they are creating that get shared/liked the most. Is there a spike on a particular day? What did they post about, or how did they word their post? Is this something you can duplicate and try out for yourself?

The “Likes” Tab may seem small and insignificant. But, with the recent changes it seems it could pack a lot of heat. Before we could go to our competitions page and scroll down the page and look for ourselves what posts were performing well. Now, we can still do that, but we have a little extra help in the market research department from a simple little button.

Have you tried this out yet? What do you think?

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Likes Likes

 

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Posted in Facebook, Social Media | 2 Comments »


Facebook Changes Everything…Again

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Here’s a rundown of recent stories on the changes happening at Facebook, and what they mean to your business and your free time.

Still coming down off the high of the 3rd annual Social Media FTW Fall Conference (#ftw2011), and I’m taking a day off. But it’s hard to spend any time on the Internet this morning without running into chatter about the changes going on at Facebook.

Quite honestly, I haven’t had a chance to digest it all myself, but if you want to dig into some of the stories, here are a few of my favorites this morning:

Facebook Changes Again: Everything You Need to Know: An overview of the changes Facebook has rolled out. Long story short, Facebook wants to become Scrapbook, creating a digital timeline of your life. Cool, but super creepy because you know they want to sell all that information to marketers. Damn, evil marketers. In other attacks on your privacy, an app only has to get permission from you once to share your information, not each time. That’s going to cause some embarrassing moments for sure.

How to Enable the New Facebook Timeline Now: Don’t want to wait for your Facebook overlords to capture every moment of your life so they can sell ads next to it? This step-by-step tutorial is for you.

What Facebook’s Changes Mean for Marketers: If you’re using Facebook to connect with your customers, then you’re a marketer. Best read this article to learn about the new challenges ahead of you. Takeaway: it’s going to be more difficult to stay in front of your customers, and you better be ready to put out some kick-ass content to keep them engaged. (Nice quote from #ftw2011 presenter Jenna Lebel.)

Does Facebook Really Care About You? Thoughtful piece reminding us that we are not Facebook’s customers, but rather their product. Since we don’t pay for Facebook, their real customers are the people who are paying to get in front of us. (Which is weird, because of course Facebook just made it more difficult to get in front of our customers. At least for free.)

What’s your takeaway? Are you happy or upset with the changes Facebook rolled out?

Rich Brooks
Find Us on Facebook

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Posted in Social Media | No Comments »


Facebook’s Dirty Little Secret

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

EdgeRank FormulaWhile everyone and their mother knows that you need to have a Facebook page for your business, here’s a dirty little secret people don’t talk about: even your fans don’t return to your Facebook page.

It’s true: the last time people visit a Facebook page is when they like it. Most of us never return to a Facebook page without some sort of prodding.

So what’s a business to do?

The goal is to get into people’s News Feed. You know, the recent updates you see from your friends and pages you’ve liked once you’ve logged into Facebook.

So how do you get into someone’s News Feed?

Well, that’s where this funky little thing called EdgeRank comes in. Edgerank is Facebook’s algorithm about which updates get posted to your News Feed, and which ones are buried under the “Most Recent” link where few people think to look.

Understand the EdgeRank algorithm, crack the Facebook code, and you’ll know how to increase your chances to be shown in your fans’ News Feed. Once you’re in the News Feed people can see your updates, comment on them, like them, and follow your links. This in turn helps your updates reach more people for a virtuous cycle.

Where can I learn more? I’m hungry for more!

For more on how EdgeRank works, what type of updates and behavior will increase your EdgeRank, and how to conquer the world, you need to check out this month’s flyte log article, What Is Facebook EdgeRank and Why Is It Critical To Your Business?

Rich Brooks
As Seen On Facebook

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Posted in Social Media | 4 Comments »


Post to Your Facebook Business Page As You…And More!

Friday, February 11th, 2011

Facebook rolled out some changes to their Pages this week that should give businesses more control over their presence on Facebook. Here’s a quick overview of what page administrators are likely to see.

When you visit your Facebook Page you’ll have the opportunity to “upgrade” your business to the new page style, to take the tour or to preview what your page will look like. Below are some screen captures from the tour.

Your latest photos will show up at the top of the page, just like they do on your personal profile. Fans photos won’t appear here, and you do have the ability to delete/hide photos.

The navigation now appears on the left column, similar to the profile pages on Facebook. File under “Big Whup.”

Posts won’t necessarily appear in chronological order only. You can promote specific posts, making you look even more popular than ever. Better hope that someone slamming you isn’t the most commented and liked post on your wall. Right, Cooks Source?

“Use Facebook as Your Page.” That’s a confusing turn of phrase, but basically you can use Facebook as your page in the same way you would as yourself…within reason.

Actually, it’s the first bullet that’s the most interesting I think: “Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts.” This is a great new feature, as in the past someone could put up some Acai Berry spam on your wall and you might not notice it for days. Up until now I’ve been using Nutshell Mail, which sends you an email which includes new posts on your wall, whether from you or a Fan.

There are some new features in the administration panel as well. Facebook now lets you “set defaults for your email notifications and how you post to your page.”

SWEET! That was the number one request we heard from clients who have Facebook pages…the ability to comment and like items as themselves. To do so you just need to edit the setting in the admin area.

There’s no turning back now…once you upgrade your page there’s no CTRL-Z. However, Facebook is going to kick you to the new design in March anyway, so there’s little reason (that I see) to hold back.

The new features and controls administrators now have over their pages make the switch well worth it.

What do you think about the new layout and features of the Facebook Page Makeover?

Rich Brooks
As Seen on Facebook

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Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business, Social Media | 26 Comments »


Posting to a Business Page from Your Business: Facebook Tips

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Yesterday I posted How to Post to Your Facebook Business Page As You (And Not Your Business). That post (and accompanying video) got a lot of good response and some great follow-up questions.

One of the questions was from a woman who wanted to post to a business’s Facebook page, and have the post attributed to her business, not to herself.

I created a video which you can watch on YouTube or below, but here are two critical steps:

  • You need to become a fan of the business in question (and what do you know, I created a video on that, too!)
  • You need to use the Facebook convention of “mentioning” the other business in your post with the @ symbol.

That’s it! Of course, it helps if the other business has their default wall setting to show all posts, not just their own posts.

UPDATE: You can now post, comment or like something on your business page as yourself.

Rich Brooks
flyte: extremely likeable on Facebook

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Posted in Social Media | 15 Comments »


Fanning a Facebook Page from Another Page

Monday, April 12th, 2010

The other day a client of ours wanted to know how she could fan a business page on Facebook from her own page…not her profile. Turns out it’s pretty easy…but that didn’t stop us from making a movie on how to do just that.

The way we figure it is, maybe a bunch of people don’t know how to do that. Who knows, maybe you just Googled “how to fan a facebook page from another facebook page.” If so, no worries; your secret is safe with us.

You can also watch How to Fan a Facebook Page from Your Fan Page on YouTube. It looks pretty much the same over there, but then you can watch videos like the intro to ABC’s Saturday night lineup from 1982.

Rich Brooks
Untitled Tagline

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Posted in Social Media | 28 Comments »


Customizing Your Facebook Fan Page

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

If the number of invitations I receive every day to become a fan of yet another eatery in Des Moines, or an interactive agency in Tuscon, is any indication, companies of all sizes are realizing the benefits of a Facebook fan page.

Then how come they’re all so boring and repetitive?

Without taking some steps to customizing your Facebook presence, your fan page will look like every other page on Facebook. It’s time to stand out from the crowd and customize the look.

Using FBML (Facebook Markup Language) you can add a box (tab) to your fan page where you can render HTML or FBML to enhance, customize and brand your little area of Facebook.

(As you can see, flyte has recently created a branded landing page for our Facebook fan page.)

You should customize your landing page with complimentary graphics that you use in other marketing material, especially your Web site, blog and email newsletter.

You can make it the landing page for non-fans in the Wall Settings section of your fan page admin under the setting “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else.”

Special kudos to Ryan Goan, our creative director who designed our new landing page, Gloria Maher who developed it, and Chrystie Corns who inspired us to add more color to our own landing page.

If you’d like to customize your Facebook landing page, contact flyte new media today.

Rich Brooks
Facebook Marketing for Small Business

flyte new media on Facebook

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Posted in flyte news, Social Media, Web Marketing | 3 Comments »