October 28, 2009
The Power of Facebook’s New News FeedGreat news for Facebook Page owners: Facebook has just pushed out a substantial and thoughtful redesign of its News Feed. On the bare surface, the changes might not look that exciting. But make no mistake. With this redesign, Facebook Pages have gained a lot more communicative power.
What are the details? Among other changes, Facebook has re-added “user activity stories” (including fan-join stories) to the News Feed. This means that stories like “John became a fan of your brand” can now serve as powerful and continuous viral drivers to your Page: if I become your Facebook fan, this action can now be broadcast to a majority of my network via my friends’ Facebook homepages.
In practical terms, this is huge. One user’s single fan-join can translate into hundreds of brand exposures.
In addition, Facebook has separated out its real-time stream from the new News Feed. The former will still be accessible via a “Live Feed” link, while the latter has been refreshed in order to present more relevant stories to Facebook users.
Here, “relevance” is part of Facebook’s secret sauce: no third party has access to the algorithm that determines more relevant and most relevant News Feed stories. We do know, though (based on Facebook’s on-the-record statements), that the algorithm gives a lot of weight to the publicly determined popularity of individual content items. In other words, the more likes and comments that your story (e.g., a status update published on your Facebook Page Wall) attracts, the more chance it stands of being featured on your friends’ and fans’ News Feeds.
Page owners should see this news as a welcome opportunity — or, more exactly, a friendly invitation from Facebook to keep on one’s toes. If you’re committed to growing your fan base, promoting brand exposure and loyalty, and reaching a viral tipping point, it’s in your interest to create and frequently post engaging content on your Facebook Page Wall, in order to win prime placement on News Feeds everywhere. Otherwise, your competitors might beat you to the punch.
Need some tips for generating Page engagement? These have worked well for a lot of our customers:
- Don’t depend too much on any one particular form of content. Text and images are one thing, but it would be much better, for example, to provide your Page fans with interactive polls, shareable videos, live Twitter streams, etc. Rich content creates more points-of-entry for your current and prospective fans to discuss and spread your brand.
- Share directly with friends and fans who are likely to view your updates and like/comment. Don’t be afraid to tap into your personal networks in order to seed your Page. Often times, participation from this sub-segment is enough to catalyze significant fan base growth.
- Make sure that your status updates contain clear calls-to-action and clear statements of value. What do you want your audience to do, and what incentive are you creating for them to act? Publishing a Wall post that says “We’ve just posted a new video!” is not nearly as good as saying “Watch our exclusive new U2 video interview right now — you’ll only find it here on our Facebook Page!” The former is rather general, while the latter provides more direction as well as a better sense of what’s unique about your Page (in this case, exclusive content).
- Ask your fans! If you need help figuring out what kinds of content you should feature on your Page, consider asking your fans directly via an Involver-powered poll/survey. This is an easy way to do audience research, while showing your community that you’re committed to incorporating its feedback.
Sep 15, 2009
New apps released: Flickr for Facebook Pages, custom landing tabs, and moreWe’re happy to report that our Facebook marketing platform is growing tremendously. Over the past few months, thousands of companies have used Involver applications to do a whole lot…
Aug 11, 2009
What can we learn from 262,985 Facebook Pages?Recently Inside Facebook published some great commentary on the curiously titled “Gesundheit! Modeling Contagion through Facebook News Feed,” an April 2009 research article co-written by Facebook’s in-house sociologist Cameron A. Marlow.
Jul 28, 2009
Three great examples of our Facebook apps in actionEvery day we’re amazed to find fresh and ingenious examples of brands supercharging their Facebook Pages with Involver’s marketing apps. I wanted to highlight three Pages that really stand out to us.
Jul 17, 2009
It’s official: Americans spend more time on Facebook than on any other siteThe big news from this week: Facebook is now the stickiest site on the internet for U.S. users. According to a Nielsen Online report released recently, the average American internet user spent 280 minutes on Facebook last month.
Jul 14, 2009
How to Deal with “Pollination” on Social Networks“Pollination” can’t be avoided in most cases anyway. Chances are your brand is already being talked about on Facebook, Twitter, and other places, so you might as well try to track and benefit from these conversations as much as possible.
Jul 10, 2009
There’s no stopping Facebook (its user base, that is)By all accounts, Facebook is continuing to grow at a breakneck pace. This week we can add one more proof point to the mix: According to Compete.com, in June 2009 Facebook’s unique U.S. audience grew by 10.7% to 91.7 million unique visitors.
Jul 08, 2009
Considering Involver? The Proof Is in the EngagementWith the release of Involver Pro and Premium late last month, we’ve seen some other great brands sign up to use Involver’s complete marketing suite for Facebook. Leaders like Ford, Time Magazine, Southwest Airlines, and Warner Brothers to name a few.
Jun 30, 2009
Reserve your custom Facebook Page URLA quick heads-up — if your Facebook Page has more than 100 fans, you can register a custom username/URL for your Page right now. If you’re a Page administrator, you can set your custom username at facebook.com/username.
Jun 26, 2009
What’s Your Favorite Facebook Page?More than 6 million users become fans of Pages every day. Assuming even a zero percent growth rate, this means that over the next year alone organizations with Facebook Pages will attract about 2.2 billion fan joins.
