Useful Facebook Page Insights From The 2010 Facebook Success Summit
Written by Martin Wong on October 21, 2010
Today at the 2010 Facebook Success Summit, Jeff Widman of Brand Glue gave an excellent presentation on what he called NewsFeed Optimization (NFO) for Facebook pages. With Facebook’s growth continuing to explode and people spending more and more of their spare time on Facebook, it offers a huge opportunity to social-savvy businesses. To give you an idea of just how fast Facebook is expanding: they currently add over 800,000 users a day and have increased their userbase by 307 million in the last year alone!
Here are some of the key insights I took away from Jeff’s presentation:
Content insights for your Facebook Page
Ask yourself: What problem do you solve for your consumers? This is fundamentally connected to why people become a “fan” of your brand on Facebook.
99.5% of interaction on your Facebook Page comes from the NewsFeed NOT directly on your Facebook page. You don’t need a fancy Facebook page, you need a regularly updated NewsFeed with interesting content that provides value to your Facebook community.
You can now send updates by language and country. The more you personalize your content to different segments of your Facebook community, the more interaction you will have with your fans.
Facebook’s NewsFeed Algorithm
You may have noticed in your personal Facebook NewsFeed that you don’t get all the updates from the Facebook pages you have “Liked”. This is because Facebook uses an algorithm to filter which updates reach your Facebook stream.
If your Facebook fans aren’t engaging and interacting with your NewsFeed updates by clicking “Like”, sharing them or commenting; then the algorithm will start to hide your content from them.
Most people won’t unsubscribe from your Facebook page, but they will click “ignore” to hide your updates from their NewsFeed. Only 0.2% of fans return to a Facebook Page on any given day, so you need to optimize the content sent out on your NewsFeed. The majority of fans will never go back to your Facebook Page after they initial click on the “Like” button. They will engage with you entirely through your NewsFeeds.
Facebook SEO = News Feed Optimization (NFO)
It’s not about Search Engine Optimization or Facebook SEO, it’s about News Feed Optimization (NFO). Facebook search engine optimization will become much more important in the future. Facebook SEO and the # of likes will be closely related.
You can have staff update your News Feed from their own Facebook accounts and it won’t have any negative effect on your News Feed Optimization.
Create A Custom “Welcome” Landing Tab
The whole Facebook page experience is to get Facebook users to become your fans by click on the “Like” button.
You should create a customized Facebook Page “Welcome” tab with an effective call-to-action prompting visitors to click the “Like” button (i.e. a huge arrow to the “Like” button). A custom landing tab is important because the Facebook default is to send visitors to your Wall. A custom landing tab has been shown to increase conversion by over 40% (# of people who click on the “Like” button).
If you’re not familiar with Facebook Markup Language (FBML), the easiest way to create a custom landing page tab is with PageLever. As with any landing page, you need to constantly test it to optimize the conversion rate.
Having a video on the landing page is also very effective for introducing visitors to your company’s brand. Provide an incentive or even something like a “top 10 reasons” for visitors to “Like” your Facebook page and become your fan.
It works best if you ask people to “join” your Facebook community rather than specifically “fan” or “like” your page.
Facebook Page Measurement and Analytics
The best way to know if your changes to your Facebook page are working? Look at the visitor to “fan” conversion rate. The ROI of your Facebook page is to measure eyeballs (impressions).
You can use bit.ly links on your Facebook page to measure clickthroughs. The number of Facebook fans is misleading. Measure how often you reach them. Impressions and engagement is the best metric of Facebook success.
How To Get Your Vancouver Business on Groupon and Other Group Buying Services
Written by Martin Wong on October 1, 2010
The hottest marketing trend online at the moment is running promotions on group buying websites like Groupon and LivingSocial. With Vancouver’s highly-connected residents being some of the world’s biggest users of Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, you need a social marketing strategy. A great way to kick start your social marketing is by running a promotion on a group buying service.
Typically, these group buying services want you to discount your product or services by at least 50%. Then, they usually take 25% of the remaining discounted sale. For example, for $100 of services you would create a Groupon for $50 and the company would take $25. So the challenge for your business is to find a way to at least break even at $25, which can be tricky. Read more…
