All Posts, Social Media
News Feed Optimization (NFO) is like SEO, but specific to Facebook.
News Feed is the carefully selected and optimized content that shows on your Home page. NFO is the process of improving the visibility of your Facebook content.
Why is News Feed Optimization (NFO) Important?
NFO is important because 99% of Face book users will see your content on News Feed and not on your wall!
In fact after a person ‘likes’ your page or ‘friends’ you for the first time, they’ll probably never return to your wall again. The only way to make sure they see your updates is to ensure that your content is visible on their News Feed. And that is no easy task!
Not all your updates appear on your fans/friends’ News Feed. Face book is very selective about the content that shows up on anyone’s News Feed. They decide what they want to show you.
It is not clear what criteria they use to do this, but suffice it to say that Face book uses an undisclosed, complicated method to pick and choose the content that shows on your Feed.
Generally though, the more engaging your updates are – measured by the number of ‘likes’, comments and shares – the more likely they are to appear on other people’s News Feed.
News Feed has two components – ‘Top News’ and ‘Most Recent’ Feeds.
‘Top News’ is where you (and everybody else) want to be. It indicates how influential you are within your circle. ‘Most Recent’ Feed carries less clout.
It shows most updates displayed in reverse chronological order. However, this Feed is also censored! You might think that it includes everyone’s updates based on the time they posted. That is not exactly how it works.
For example Face book can (and sometimes does) ignore some posts altogether – posts coming from brand new users are one example. New users obviously have very few friends and fans and therefore their content is not in high demand. Face book can afford to ignore it!
So if you’re a brand new user on Face book, it is likely that your content will not appear on Most Recent Feed let alone Top News! However as your audience grows, then your content will start to show on the News Feed. Persistence is the key!
So how do I make sure that my updates show on News Feed (and specifically Top News)?
There are several things you can do to increase your chances of making Top News:
- On Facebook, the most important thing is to expand the size of your audience. Facebook assumes that if you have a large following, then your content is in demand. Demand then pushes the supply of your content!
- Make lots of friends on Facebook and suggest your page to them. Also, ask them to suggest your page to their friends as well. Again, Face book gives preference to people with a bigger circle of friends and/or fans.
- Be sure to post highly engaging content. Examples of rich content are: Polls, Questions, ‘How-To’ tips and resources, free give-aways, links, pictures, videos, book or movie reviews, sharing your appreciation of other users, providing special features every now and then, and occasionally surprising your audience with new, interesting and off-topic content.
- Get more of your friends and followers to interact with your content. Ask them to like, comment and share your content. You’ll be surprised how willing people are to help you grow your audience. Besides, social interaction is the premise of Face book so it is totally appropriate to ask! The more interactions others have with your content, the more likely that it will show on Top News.
- Make sure that you’re always the first to ‘like’ your own content. This encourages others to do the same, and it is also an interaction – (even though you’re interacting with yourself)!
- Try to update your posts regularly (at least a couple of times a day). While this is not a guarantee that those updates will show on News Feed, persistence does pay off especially with a good mix of content.
Once a few people start to notice your presence (measured by likes & comments) it won’t be long before others also start to notice you, and their interaction will gradually push your updates to the Top News.
- Facebook prefers Videos and Photos to simple text updates. That’s because videos and photos are more interesting and usually receive more likes and comments than pure text. So be sure to diversify your updates by posting photos and video’s every now and then.
The key thing to remember is that NFO takes time. It takes time to obtain a large circle of friends or fans, and it takes time to build shareable content that people will interact with. So be persistent and try different things.
Finally, remember that NFO boils down to TWO things:
- Expanding your audience
- Posting rich, sharable content that people will WANT to like and comment about.
What tips have you used to optimize your Facebook content?
All Posts, Social Media
By now you will have heard all the ins and outs about how important social media is to your business. I’m not going to poke a hole in that – at least not in this post. I do agree that is it essential to anyone who has a business of any size. However a growing concern I’m noticing is how to measure its worth in terms of ROI (return on investment.
There are a host of companies and online services out there that will track your ROI. Of course at a premium fee. I haven’t really found any that were free that offered good enough services to mention. I should mention though that any type of marketing should be weighed and measured by the consumer. Regardless of who is performing the service, you should have your own check and balance system in place to gauge against whatever results someone else is providing to you.
So for starters you need to get your web site statistics. This will consist of daily page views, referring links, pages per visit, and unique visits. Most web hosting companies offer this within your online control panel. We use 1and1 for tracking all our client managed domains. If you’d like to see a sample email me and I’ll be glad to send you one. Some hosting companies charge extra for this, and if you’re does you can try a third party application like Google Analytics. I love Google Analytics and I will be doing a write on their FREE analytics application soon. All you have to do is plug in some of your site information and they generate a custom code for you to install on all of your pages. Once installed you can then accurately track all of these metrics and more.
Next thing you need to do is draw up a simple spreadsheet. Use whatever medium you like so long as you can refer to it weekly and continue to add more data to it. You’re going to measure how many tweets, posts, links, blog posts, email, etc you push per day each week for each month. Sort them by your social media apps that you are using. Create a column for responses like post backs, comments, replies, RT’s, and mentions. Lastly, create a column for your leads that were created from any of these mediums. When you look at all this data at the end of a week or the month, you’ll see how much time you’ve invested in all of these, which brought back the most traffic, which social media platform was most engaging, and those that lacked performance.
The process is simple enough when you think about it. However try juggling this with the everyday issues of your business, life, and whatever else pops up. And yes it is time consuming. It is totally justified that some companies may charge anywhere from a few dollars an hour to $2,500 per month or more. Again, with this new spreadsheet you too can see how much time and money Social Media marketing is worth to your business and make judgement on whether or not you want to pursue it yourself or outsource it. I’ve actually created a spreadsheet in Excel that I’d be happy to share if you’re interested. Sign up to the blog and its yours!
All Posts, Social Media
Years ago, the only way to really get a companies attention on a product was to picket, rally, or boycott. Even then with all of that, most of the world would never hear a message that minuscule. Well enter social media. Now if you have a product that you don’t like, fails, or has major defects, you can broadcast your complaint not just directly to that company, but to everyone that may be following them online.
Let me give you an example. Same you buy a new anvil from Acme. It arrives fine, but when you open it up, its all scuffed up, poorly packaged, and doesn’t weight a full “1 ton” like advertised. Obviously you’re going to be a little upset because your Road-Runner trap won’t work. Instead of writing an angry complaint letter to Acme, you can go to your Facebook wall and tell the whole story for all of your 300+ friends to see. They immediately read it, and decide they too will no longer use Acme and will seek other vendors. Two weeks later, this small ripple effect starts catching even more wind, and Acme stock prices start to take a hit. A website gets created from another angry user that now has a forum for all other users to unit. They talk about Acme on that site and on the new Facebook groups, Fan pages, Twitter lists, etc. all about how bad Acme’s products are.
Sad thing about that scenario is that Acme never acknowledges the “small” complaints, and before two weeks, what was a snowball has now turned into an avalanche. We are now living in an age where companies can no longer play the elitist role and not listen to their customers and consumers. The mainstream media used to be the choice medium for these types of news, and even they can’t keep up with “right now” stories.
What does this mean for you as a business owner? A few things actually. For starters, you can grow your brand easily by keeping a listening ear to your industry. Listen for complaints to the big boy companies so that you steer clear of those woes. Hone in on your immediate competitors and find out what they’re doing and NOT doing. You can then adjust your sales strategies to fit the gaps, and emerge as the one company who actually services the key niche overlooked by all others in your market.
How do you do it? Simple. Follow your competitors social streams. Why not, I mean if you don’t, they will be following you. Especially as you start to grow your brand and recognition. Engage in consumer complaints. And when I say engage, I don’t mean “sell.” What I mean is to provide alternatives to their complaints. Answer their questions and provide quick fixes to issues. They’ll appreciate you more and most will end up looking to you next time they need that particular service again. No one forgets a bad service experience. Likely, people sing praises about good experiences. I promise, you’d rather be at the tail end of a lengthy complaint that highlights the faults of your competitor, and ends off with a praise to you for providing a solution.
This all takes time, research, and dedication. A lot of businesses are waking up to this new era of “right now” media. Most want to do something about it, but a large percentage won’t take the proper initiative. It may not look like so now, but it is worth the money to hire a social media marketer. If necessary, vet a company out. Ask around, contact their clients for feedback. Or simply contact us here at Design Theory. I know, shameless plug. (could you blame me?) The bottom line is that we all know good news travels – but bad news travels farther and faster. As always I’d love to hear your comments about this. Especially if you have a similar story you’ve experienced!
All Posts, Social Media
By now you’ve already heard of the heavy hitters in social media sites. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I could easily list out a lot more, but there’s no need for all of that. Now with all these sites vying for your attention, status updates, friend requests, link sharing, liking, recommending; at what point is all of this “too much?”
I could be biased in my opinion on this because I’m a web designer. Or should I say consultant. Talking with my peers about this very subject matter recently posed the question about “social media noise.” That noise to us is getting a bit louder. Kind of like those TV commercials that purposely run with double the volume than the normal ones regardless of the volume level on your television set.
Why do we call it noise? Well that’s because on our side of things we’re inundated with it all. Our line of business demands that we are fully aware – if not experts on all of the types of media, how they work, and be versed in using them. We need to know their strengths, weaknesses, and their rank against other similar mediums. Now as a business owner, marketer, or average consumer, this may not seem like noise. Most are already conditioned to seeing such buttons and interact with only a few of these sites with much less frequency.
Now let me paint the big picture. Those of you who own or manage websites, already know the value of social media. We don’t need to explain why it is so important. Advertising is huge. And if you look at the progression of ads from just 5 years ago to this date, you can see it has come a long way. But lately, technology has given us ways to purposely limit the ads we see, how we see them, when and where we see them. With a DVR we can skip commercials entirely. With RSS feeds, we can read articles without having to buy a newspaper and fumble through ads. Spam filters block or capture ad emails. Wouldn’t it only make sense that there would be a way to limit the noise or advertisements of social media? Think about it and post your comments below. I’d like to get your feedback and/or debates.
All Posts, Social Media
So the social media giant Facebook held a joint press announcement today with Myspace about a new feature. Some people are wondering if it’s or partnership or the beginning steps of a take-over, but really its being toted as a “mashup”. I’ll let you decide once you finish reading this.
This new product allows MySpace users that also have Facebook accounts to port their Facebook interests, profile, and likes into their MySpace profile. What this does is allow for personalized MySpace media streams of these features to your Facebook profile. You’ll see more or should I say, different posts in your streams and trends in Facebook to reflect the likes, and topics, and such from Myspace. You’ll be able to “like” these options as well and share them along with your other friends. I wonder if this will also worth with Facebook Fan pages? Anyway below are some of the highlights:
- Fans within the Myspace community are connected through “friending” and “following” features of Myspace topic pages and profiles
- Facebook “likes” and “interests” are matched to relevant Myspace topic pages, profiles, video programming and other content in entertainment categories such as, music, celebrities, TV, and movies.
- Tailored recommendations of new topic pages and profiles are surfaced in real-time to enable discovery of new entertainment experiences and greater customization
- Subscriptions to a broad array of entertainment programming, including originals, exclusives and content from around the Web are automatically enabled based on personal preferences and settings
They say this new product will be available in a few hours. I would anticipate by tonight the normal time people get home from work, and normally get on their social media sites they’ll be able to configure these new options.
If you’re one of the millions of active members on Facebook and are active on your Myspace account, this is probably something that you’ll enjoy. Being able to cross polinate your likes back and fourth will help with bridging a gap between friends of different sectors of your life. Another words, the people interests you associate with on Myspace will easily seen by your parents and aunts on Facebook. I’ve always seen Myspace as underground rave party and Facebook as the clean and spiffy afterschool club. But that’s just my opnion. What do you think about this new feature? Will Myspace see more traffic because of it? Is Facebook testing the waters on a possible take-over in the near future?
