Happy International Women’s Day !
“The future of our world is only as bright as the future of our girls” – Michelle Obama
Who Run The World? Girls.
Four Easy Ways to Translate Facebook’s New Page Insights into Action
Today we upgraded our Schipul Facebook Page to preview the new and improved Facebook Insights!
Facebook is always rolling out updates* – and we are especially excited when those updates include tools that help our clients make smarter decisions about their social media efforts!
*Note: insidefacebook.com is a great resource for keeping track of all things Facebook – news, stats, and updates!
For now, the new version of Insights is rolling out to a small group of Facebook Admins (log in to your Facebook Page and view your page Insights to see if you’re prompted to preview it). The new Insights will roll out to all pages later this summer.
Actionable Analytics:
4 Easy Ways to Start Making Content Decisions with the New Facebook Page Insights
We love data – and we also know that data is even more powerful when you are able to take action based on it. So we’ve put together a quick list of easy ways to translate the data from Facebook’s new Page Insights into action!
1. Post the Types of Content Your Facebook Fans Engage with Most
Under the “Posts” tab is a report called “Best Posts Types.” Previous versions of Facebook Insights have shown you the engagement of posts of different types, but this new interface aggregates that data into one easy to read report. This report shows average engagement for each type of post (Photos, Videos, Status, Links, etc.).
My one suggestion to Facebook would be to include how many of each type you’ve posted to give you perspective on these numbers. For instance – if a page rarely posts video, higher than average engagement for one video may skew the report.
2. Post Content When your Fans are on Facebook
Under the “Posts” tab is another report titled “When your Facebook Fans are Online.” This report shows the times that your Facebook fans saw any Facebook posts – by day and time. The report shows popularity by day and overall time of day patterns. Roll over any day of the week to see how that day’s time of day patterns vary from the average. Take this information to post your content when your fans are most likely to see it.
For instance, Schipul’s Facebook fans are online between work hours (9 AM-5 PM), and then we see a small lull until they’re back home and online again from 7-9 PM.
3. Create Facebook Posts that Drive People Back to your Website
You obviously want your posts to be seen by more people, but also want those people to click through and visit the content you’re sharing – particularly if that content links back to your website. Facebook can be a great way to drive traffic to your website by sharing your fantastic content.
Sort your posts by Engagement (choose “Clicks” from the drop down) to see which posts compelled people to click through most.
For us, most of these clicks were to Facebook photo albums – but others were posts about topics like Branding and Marketing – and Job Postings.
4. Create More Facebook Posts Like the Ones that Reach Beyond your Fan Base
You can also sort your Post Data by how many Facebook Fans vs. Non-Fans were reached. Non-Fans may see your content if one of their friends shared it, or if you Boosted a Post.
Above the table of All Posts Published, click the small arrow next to the “Reach” label. Filter to Fan/Non-Fans.
This will update the Reach column to show Fans and Non-Fans reach. Keep an eye out for posts that reach beyond your Fan base, and continue to share more things that are similar to this “viral” content.
Want more? Here are some more great resources on the new Facebook Insights!
- Step by Step Tour of the new Facebook Insights
- Review of the new Facebook Insights by Social Media Today
- Three Most Useful Metrics in the new Facebook Insights from InsideFacebook.com
30 Days of Thanks: Privacy Controls
Happy Thanksgiving Day, from All of Us at Schipul – The Web Marketing Company!
I am thankful for my ability to control privacy settings and share the stories, photos, and conversations online with only the people that I want to. I realized this as I struggled to come up with a topic for Schipul’s 30 Days of Thanks because many of the things that I truly appreciate in my life are also very private and personal just to me and my family.
In most aspects of my day to day life, I have to be a transparent, “public” persona on the web. Much of what I do is only possible because of my accessibility, credibility, and trust from my community that I keep my word to keep some things that are private… well, private. Because I also have a young son and a personal life away from work, (yes – it’s true), I highly value tools that empower me to be in complete control over what information about me and my personal life is available to anyone on the Internet.
Giving Thanks
As a Schipulite, I have a deeply rooted desire to share my knowledge and teach others how to use the awesomely geek-tech playground that we call the Internet. I’ve spent a great deal of time learning how to protect my online privacy, and I want to give thanks by sharing my recommended resources to help anyone who is trying to figure out how to better protect your personal information, your private data, and protect your online community of staff, volunteers, members, and users.
Security First!
Last week, I went to the Nonprofit Developer Summit (NPDev), hosted by AspirationTech.org in California. I wrote a wrap-up blog post about the 3 day conference on the Tendenci Blog, and I came back with a better understanding of what to watch out for and how to better protect my content and personal information when I’m exploring the internet. Throughout the conference, I participated in discussions that answered highly technical security questions like “Should you find a hosting provider with disk-level encryption?” and “How do I enable collaboration while also protecting my personal data?”.
FYI – the best way to secure your personal data is to take a hard look at your passwords. Check out the Mind the Gap Article: You’ve Been Hacked and find out how to follow password management best practices.
For the visual learners, here’s a great Infographic via Lifehacker (the #1 place on the web dedicated to converting ordinary users into super-users) that walks you through selecting secure Passwords.
Here’s three more important considerations for managing your online privacy settings:
Me, Myself, and iMe!
There’s a new saying “Once it’s on the Internet, It’s There Forever” and so before you spend even one more minute “surfing the web” – I recommend you read this overview guide to Protecting Your Online Privacy on Mashable.com to get a better idea of what’s involved in fully controlling your online privacy settings.
Mobile Super-Users Need a Guardian, too!
If you’re using online tech while on the go, then you’re going to want to also take a moment and equip yourself with basic privacy protection tools for your mobile devices.
Droid and Linux devices should check out The Guardian Project’s Free and Open Source Apps that give you protection tools for voice, data, and SMS communications that you want to keep private between you and the person(s) you sent them to.
Read Cnet’s article for iPhone and iPad users on How to protect their personal data on their mobile devices.
Social Media REALLY Loves Sharing Your Data!
Social media networks are often the “worst offenders” of mis-managing their users’s online data. Most of the time, these offenses are unintended and the result of a fairly new communications medium figuring things out. When someone’s personal data is shared publicly across a social network like Facebook or Twitter, it is almost always because of complicated privacy settings and an inexperienced user colliding in disaster.
We all know the saying “The best Defense is a good Offense” and that’s why I recommend you check out e-Crime Wales YouTube Channel which has videos that walk you through the different privacy and account protection settings on several social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more) plus learn how to control your privacy settings in web browsers like Chrome and Firefox.
You can also check out some of these popular social media network’s privacy settings Help documentation:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/privacy
Twitter: https://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics#topic_107
LinkedIn: http://learn.linkedin.com/settings/
Facebook Fan Page Management Webinar with Erica Bogdan
Facebook Fan Page Management Webinar with Erica Bogdan from Schipul – The Web Marketing Co. on Vimeo.
Businesses are relying more and more on Facebook Fan Pages as a way to connect with their target audience and reach the right client demographics. But having a large, engaged fan base is something that doesn’t just happen overnight. To make the most of your Fan Page you must think strategically and use the right tools to help drive traffic to your site.
Erica Bogdan is Web designer and developer at Schipul and Facebook page admin for AIGA Houston. She will show you how over the past few months she’s increased her page’s number of fans and gotten them to interact on her page. This Webinar will cover the following:
- How to use Facebook admin tools effectively
- How to increase your fan numbers organically
- What strategies to use to ensure your content is being seen by the most amount of people.
Slides of this Webinar and previous ones can be found here also.
Four Easy Ways to Start Using Facebook’s Timeline View for Pages
As of today, Facebook began rolling out Timeline view for Facebook Fan Pages. This update will be mandatory on March 30, but you can update your page now and start taking advantage of the new features.
The Facebook team implements changes all the time as they come up with new and innovative ways to connect their users, and these changes are always a little overwhelming as you figure out the new interface and the new tools you have available. The new update will mean changes to the way your Brand appears on Facebook and the web. But don’t fret!
Here are four EASY things you can do RIGHT NOW to get started with Timeline:
1. Read up on the New Features
Some of the new features include Cover Photo, Larger Stories, and an enhanced Admin panel to give you more data and control over your page.
Check out this article from ZDNet is a great overview of all of the new features
2. Switch your Fan Page to Timeline view
The update will be required across all pages eventually, so go ahead and dive in now while everyone is still figuring out the best way to take advantage of the new look.
To Switch Your Facebook Fan Page to the New Timeline Look:
When you log in & go to your Fan Page, you’ll see a flag at the top that prompts you to preview this page in the new look. Click “Preview” to see what your page will look like using Timeline.
From here click “Publish Now” to permanently make the switch.
3. Add a Cover Photo
Like on a personal page, your cover photo is a larger photo (specifically 850×315) aside from your profile picture that shows off who you are and sets the tone for your page. You can use this space to make a custom image similar to what Coca-Cola has done. Or in the short term, use this space to show a shot of your main product, your team, or your facilities – choose an interesting image that shows off who you are.
4. Add your Founded Date & Story
You’ll want to go back in and fill in highlights from your company’s history, but you can start right now by adding the story of how you were founded.
On the right of your page, click “Founded” at the bottom of your timeline & you’ll see an Edit icon where you can edit the details and add a photo.
Check out Schipul’s Founded Timeline Milestone and fantastic photo of Ed and Rachel from 1997!
Our Favorite Facebook Pages
Some of us at Schipul spend a lot of time on Facebook. A LOT. But don’t judge, it’s totally part of our job. Whether we’re sprucing up a profile picture for a client, building out an iframe, checking out the latest Facebook updates (and there’s ALWAYS an update) or trolling to see who’s doing what with their audience, this social networking site commands a good deal of our attention. As such, we’ve seen it all when if comes to the best and worst of Facebook fan pages. Check out the faves from some of the Schipul staff:
Katrina’s Favorites
No surprise here. Our fashionista/Creative Services Team Account Executive, Katrina Esco, LOVES how Nordstrom uses their Facebook page to highlight their services, and they keep fans coming back with beauty how-to videos hosted by their beauty director using a Beauty Central app.
Katrina also gives Sephora’s Facebook page props for always keeping their content fresh with new promotions as demonstrated on their Exclusive Deals tab. But Katrina gives Sephora the most points for recognizing the importance of photos and fan engagement on their page by feeding in customer pics taken in photobooths installed in select retail locations. You can even browse by location and date.
Scooter’s Favorites
As for me (Katrina *Scooter* Kokoska), I get a kick out of the Skittles Facebook fan page. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t like the candy even a little, just their marketing. The Skittles page encourages fan engagement by soliciting fan photos and featuring a different “Rainbro of the Week” each week as their profile picture. Also, their posts are random, silly and make me smile (and their not self-promotional). My favorite random post from them this week: “Sometimes I sneak up on my alarm clock when it’s sleeping and yell ‘How does it feel!‘”
I also have mad love for the (client) Tony Chachere’s page. Now this page doesn’t flaunt a lot of bells and whistles. Why? Because it doesn’t have to. Tony’s skips the games and apps and gets right down to what Facebook is all about: Community. They post content about real people doing real things in real life, and their fans love it.
Erica’s Favorites
Creative Services Team Graphic Designer, Erica Bogdan, totally digs Red Bull’s Facebook page for their fun videos and games, and loves the aesthetics of the Anthropologie page because: “It’s sooooo beautiful and makes my closet sad.” But Erica’s favorite page? Franklin the Dog of course.
Garrett’s Favorites
Creative Services Team Assistant Account Executive Garrett Thomas has some interesting favorites of his own. While he doesn’t ‘Facebook like’ the Barbie page, he thinks they do a great job of bringing together Barbie’s multiple personas in a palatable format for their target market.
And he loves the Stride Gum page because, well, who doesn’t love a Yeti with a sense of humor?
What are some of your favorite Facebook fanpages?
Google is Crawling Facebook Comments Social Plug-In
Word on the Schipul SEM gossip street is that Facebook comments are being indexed by Google, which means BAM! More SEO love for your site — if you’re using the XFBML implementation.
A recent post on SearchEngineLand.com explains how at one point add-on commenting systems made it difficult for search engines to index content on sites. But now that Facebook comments are being crawled by Google, things are changing.
Apparently, the XFBML type comments are specifically the ones being crawled. That means it’s in your favor to add the Facebook Comment s social plug-in to your site. (Yes, I feel like we’re feeding the Facebook monster here…but…eh…whatchagonnado? (._.)/) Here’s how to add the plug-in:
1. Go to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/ and select Get Code:
2. Select the XFBML version of the code and copy it.
3. Go to your site and add the code just below the first <body> tag. (This is in the index template of your site. If you have a Tendenci site, contact support if you need help with this.)
4. Select the line of code on the last line and place the line of code for the plug-in on the page where you’d like it to appear:
This should add the FB Comments social plug-in to your site. Of course it will vary across browsers, so be sure you follow the proper steps for the browser most of your site visitors use to access your content.
Schipul Heads West “Virtually” to Share Social Media Graphic Design Tips with IABC Silicon Valley Members
If you’ve ever found yourself standing up in front of an audience while some sort of technical glitch prevents your presentation slides from magically appearing on the big screen behind you’ then you understand how important the visual element is when trying to communicate in business. We all find it harder to communicate with words alone, and images keep your audience focused on your words.
When you communicate online through your social media channels’ it is no different. The images, layout, and design that your online audience sees when they visit your company’s LinkedIn or Facebook Pages is critical to relaying your organization’s missions, vision and Brand across the internet.
The Silicon Valley chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, (SV-IABC), understands how important it is to include the right graphics when talking to clients and prospects and all of us at Schipul’ The Web Marketing Company were honored and excited when SV-IABC invited us to host the webinar for their members ‘Good Design Matters in Social Media Communication†this past Thursday.
Erica Bogdan, Schipul’s Creative Services Designer, shared ways to improve your business communication using graphic design tailored for social media platforms. Erica shared how to unify your organization’s online brand across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social channels to engage your audience and increase traffic to your website.
Erica also shared design tips for ensuring your images looked great including sizing your images for each of the different online social websites and how to find free graphic design resources online even for the novice designers… (or those folks like me who have trouble drawing a straight line with a ruler, let alone a professional vector logo.)
In case you missed it, we’ve posted the slides and a transcript from the presentation on Erica Bogdan’s Slideshare.
Erica lists some terrific and free online resources for graphic design, images and stock photos, and tools to edit graphics to use on social media websites. I want to share some of my favorite tools online that I use when I want to incorporate a better design or add more color to a social media page for the design-newbies like me.
If you’d like to watch the webinar in it’s entirety, you can watch it or download it here.
5 Free and Easy Ways to Incorporate Graphics on Social Media Websites:
- Try CutMyPic and in 3 easy steps you can upload a picture, crop it and add a drop shadow.
- ColorLovours’ Themelon has free themes, backgrounds, and custom layouts to give your Twitter Page a truly personal appearance without any design experience whatsoever.
- Befunky is the easiest way to add special effects to photos and puts the FUN in photo editing.
- Recommended by AllFacebook, Pagemodo offers tools to generate professionally Branded Facebook Fan Pages without any design skills. Pagemodo gives you one free Facebook page then offers additional tabs and pages for a low monthly price.
- Aviary offers a suite of design tools for web and mobile graphics including a vector editor, image markup, and even music and audio editing software.
Try out these online tools and then come show off your creative new social media designs with us on Schipul’s Facebook Page!
You can learn more about the Silicon Valley IABC Chapter on their website and if you are in the northern California area’ be sure to check out their upcoming events and stop by to learn how to improve your business communications both online and off. Thank you again to everyone from SV-IABC who joined us Thursday and we hope you’ll come Hang Out With Us Again soon!
Good design matters in Social Media
Graphic Design for Social Media Webinar with Erica Bogdan from Schipul – The Web Marketing Co. on Vimeo.
Compelling graphics are essential to effective web marketing – especially in the realm of social media! Join Schipul’s Creative Services Designer, Erica Bogdan, as she demonstrates what key tips and tools you’ll need to know for creating stellar graphics for your company’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
Here are some of the cool tips this webinar covers:
- How social media is growing for businesses as a free and effective marketing tool to create open dialogue with clients. Kick-butt graphics will make your Facebook and Twitter pages stand out from the crowd!
- Awesome resource links to find images, fonts, and free alternatives to Photoshop so you can start creating your own graphics today!
- How to incorporate branding consistency across multiple social media platforms and how to uploading your graphics onto your Facebook and Twitter once you’ve finished creating them!
If you’d also just like to view the slide presentation by itself, the slides can be found here.
The Real Cost of Social Media
When I got out of school and landed my first job in marketing, my very first client came to me with a reasonable request: “Tell people about my product,” he said. “I want everyone to know how amazing this thing is.”
Fair enough. I was in marketing and that was absolutely my job, but there were a couple of catches:
1. This was a product launch. There was no existing brand awareness, and we were launching in a market I knew nothing about, across the country.
“That’s cool,” I thought. “I love challenges. This will be great experience.”
2.) Beyond the monthly retainer we were on, there was NO marketing budget. Nothing.
‘Sarcastic Me’ to ‘Realistic Me’: “Ooooh, this is AMAAAAZING! Remember? You just LOVE challenges. I bet you’re soooo happy.”
‘Realistic Me’ to ‘Sarcastic Me’: “Shut up! If you weren’t so witty and gorgeous, I would hate you right now. How am I gonna pull this off?!”
After I made up with myself, I sat down at my desk and created a Facebook page for the product, took to Twitter, started reaching out to the blogging community, the whole nine.
“I can do this,” I thought. “Social media’s free, right?” Wrong. I pretty quickly discovered that:
- This was taking WAY more time than was covered by the retainer we were getting paid.
- I still needed a marketing budget.
While my career has taken a few turns since then, social media has never not been a part of it, and I still constantly come across folks who think it’s free or almost free to effectively market on social media.
This is not true. There are very real costs associated with SMM. Let’s take a quick look some of the costs involved and why it’s totally worth it. Then we’ll hit up some tips on looking at ROI.
What Costs So Much?
1. Time: The number one cost associated with social media marketing is time. Unless you know of a magical place where you can get time for free, or your time for some reason costs nothing, the reality remains that keeping up with the constant flow of communication online takes a lot of time. Whether you do it yourself, you hire a social media manager, or you outsource your social media marketing, time is costly. And because I really don’t feel like people get this one, let me repeat, TIME IS COSTLY. Just the time it’s taking me to write this blog post is costing somebody something somewhere. Y’all, there’s even an infographic about this, so it must be true.
2. Development: Can you design, code and securely host your own Facebook iframes? Cool, this still takes time, see #1. If not, you’ll need to: a.) Find someone who can and pay them to do it, plus find a place to host your files and get your SSL, because that’s now required by Facebook. or b.) Find a cool third party software that allows you to build tabs through a simple interface. These types of programs are plentiful, but they do come at a cost. Check out North Social, Wildfire and ShortStack.
3. Promotions:It’s hard to run a promotion if you’re not, like, promoting something, so you’ll need to budget in discounts, giveaway product and the like.
4. Listening: There are a lot free tools to help you listen about your brand, organization or industry online like, Google Reader, Google Alerts, etc. (To use these, see #1). If you wanna really pay attention, like Big Brother style, you can, but you’ll need to pull your wallets out for that. Check out Radian 6 as an example. And to be fair, software programs like this are costly, but they do a lot more than just listen. Read through the features, they’re pretty awesome.
5. Evaluating: You’ll want to see how well your strategy is working for you as you go. Radian 6 has some pretty awesome analytics, as does Vocus and some other guys. Sprout Social and HootSuite also offer some pretty nice numbers at a relatively low cost, in addition to helping you manage your outgoing and incoming social media messages, among other things.
I could go on and on, but 5 things feels like a good number, and I think the point’s been made. So, moving on.
Is It Really Worth It?
While running an effective SMM campaign does come at a cost, there is VERY real value in social media marketing.
1. Communicating with versus at your audience: With social media, you get to communicate with your audience. Fans opt in for content, they are already engaged. Those who don’t opt in can still see your message when they have a friend who engaged with you online – the messages have built in third-party endorsements. It’s awesome. With traditional media you just get to communicate at your audience, with a limited amount of very costly time, and hope the impression lands.
2. Message Shelf Life: The average commercial is 30 seconds. Links posted on Facebook and Twitter have a shelf-life of 2.8 to 3.2 hours according to one report, and AllFacebook recently reported that a Facebook post actually lives for 22 hours and 51 minutes (I totally don’t like the photo they chose for this article, sorry).
3. It Works!: 43% of US companies are successfully finding new business with SMM. Enough said.
4. It’s Relatively Cheap: Average CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) on radio for adults 18+ is anywhere from $6 to $11 (depending on which report you’re looking at). And that’s just on the media buy, y’all, that number does not include production. I recently did some math on a Facebook post on the Cheetos Facebook page. I worked on the assumption that a this Facebook post was created by someone working at $100 per hour, who needed half an hour to draft and publish the post, and one hour on and off to monitor activity. I factored in impressions that were created when fans engaged with the post, subsequently exposing their friends to the message. CPM was $.0002.
Measuring ROI
First things first, guys. Getting an accurate measure of the return you get on your social media investment is impossible. I would argue that the formulas we live and die by in traditional marketing aren’t much more accurate than the social media numbers we get. Tell me you have a ready-to-use formula that accounts for all economic, market and political factors with your sales versus ad spend numbers, and I’ll take it back, but I’m betting you don’t. There are, however, a few formulas that can help you see you it stacks up against your traditional efforts, etc. Here are a few to chew on:
- MEV (Media Equivalent Value) = Social Media Impressions X Equivalent Targeted CPM
- Data Value (Acquisition Cost) = Proportional Channel Value X Acquired Customer Numbers
- Average Fan Value (this one’s a doozy by Dan Zarrella)
- Unlikes-per-month/Total Likes = Churn %
- 1/Churn = Fan Lifetime Length (FLL)
- FLL X Posts-per-day = Opps per fan (OPF)
- OPF X CTR = Clicks per fan (CPF)
- CPF X Conversion % = Sales per fan (SPF)
- SPF X Avg. $ per Sale = Avg. Fan Value
Learn more about the real costs of social media with the slide deck below, and stay tuned for my SchipulCon video presentation on this topic.
The REAL Costs of Social Media
View more presentations from Katrina Kokoska