Hi all, I started this site years ago to blog about all things digital. Since then a lot has changed and I have blogged elsewhere and on different things. I always thought I’d come back to this one but alas, I haven’t.
From now on I will be blogging at RKTumbles tumblr so check it out, I will also be editing and blogging about football from One Foot In the Game again from April 2013, so check that out too.
More about me at my portfolio site too – RobertoKusabbi.co.uk
Image via CrunchBase
I haven’t blogged here for awhile, something I am very keen to change in 2012, but for those who don’t know I do blog every other day (if not every day) on my football blog though.
But today I felt compelled to blog again, and that’s because I came across new Facebook advertising package “The Reach Generator”.
As we all know, Facebook ads tend to have a low click through, especially the basic link ads. What we also know is that as a Facebook Page we never reach 100% or even 30% of those who like our page.
That’s why Reach Generator is a very interesting prospect for brands and organisations.
In a nutshell Reach Generator allows advertisers to pay Facebook on an on going basis rather than the CPC or CPM model. Once switched on Reach Generator (and Facebook) guarantees a 75% reach of one story every day, over a month long period.
Apparently Ben and Jerry’s have been using this and they were able to reach 98% of their Facebook which is pretty astounding.
There is little more information at the moment, but what an opportunity for brands to reach even more people. Some may be cynical and say but we should be able to reach everyone who likes us, and yes I can see the point of view, but at the same time we know the game and we need to play it. It is also worth noting that the more engaged your page is, with better content, the more likely you are to reach more of your fan base too.
The only documentation on Facebook’s site I can find is a PDF of basic Reach Generator info but I can’t wait to get my hands on it. I also agree with as @BenAyers that you need scale and backing for it to work, which makes me think that the best use will be for big launches, big campaigns (like @TheBHF Vinnie Jones CPR anyone?) and brands with big existing reach.
The price? Not sure yet…
I came across SoloCo during Social Media Week Scotland and was immediatlely intrigued.
I remember when the Obama campaign was in full swing and I was working in my first charity job (many years ago) as Assistant Web Producer and my then CEO asked how could we fundraise like Obama did.
Not easily I remember thinking.
But that may change, SoLoCo is in Beta and is already looking pretty slick. At the moment it is Scottish based and there are 11 projects bidding for funding, including:
But in the current climate for charities with reduced incomes it could be one to watch.
So what do you think of the crowd funding model? Is SoLoCo the future for community and smaller projects? Will other charities follow (CRUK are already doing something similar with MyProjects)?
Be great to hear your views.
Image via CrunchBase
From today you will start to see a ‘new’ newsfeed on your own Facebook profile. The two biggest features are ‘Top Stories’ feature and a ‘Ticker’ feature.
Top Stories
All of your news is now in one place with the most interesting stories featured at the top. If you haven’t visited Facebook for a while, the first things you’ll see are top photos and status updates posted while you’ve been away. They’re marked with an blue corner.
If you check Facebook more frequently, you’ll see the most recent stories first. Photos will also be bigger and easier to enjoy while you’re scrolling through.
Facebook determines whether something is a top story based on lots of factors, including your relationship to the person/page who posted the story, how many comments and likes it got, what type of story it is, etc.
How does this impact your page?
Well. We don’t know yet. But…I will be keeping an eye on how this impacts on our Facebook posts and engagement.
My theory, and it is just a theory, is that this should be a good thing for pages. Mainly because Facebook needs to be seen as a major media platform so you would imagine that they are doing this to make Brand Pages more obvious in the newsfeed. Keep today in your diary as a date to keep a close eye on your engagement stats
In addition, we may see that stories have a longer shelf life, maybe up to 5 days as people who don’t log in as much see our top story when they log in, which may be a few days after the story was posted.
The Ticker.
The ticker, on the right-hand side of your account, lets you see all your friends’ activity in real-time – yes, that’s right, just like Twitter…
When you hover over an item on ticker, you can see the full story and join the conversation as it happens….just like when you click on a Tweet on Twitter it opens that up for you.
Ticker updates itself as stories happen. This gives you a more complete picture of what your friends and Pages you are following are up to right now.
How does this impact your page?
Be really succinct, we have a rule that every Facebook post has a question or first line hook, this will become even more important to make sure people engage with us.
Finally, it will also mean – and again this is my theory – that less people will come your actual page wall but engage with you on posts that come up on their newsfeed, which is what happens already but I suspect will increase even further.
What do you think? Good or bad?
I have to say I think good and generally love the new design, wider and more relevant to me.
Image via CrunchBase
UPDATE: October 2011
Seems that with the new Facebook Insights that you can now export all the data that you need to make the below work again without using Export.ly. Plus there are some new metrics too, individual users who have seen each post as well as reach.
Good times!
UPDATE:
Export.ly seem to have been taken over by Simply Measured and don’t seem to offer the same, very cost effective, solution as what we did below. Hoping to find out more, but as you can imagine, I’m very keen to keep using them!
I was having a chat with a colleague last week and she asked me why we update our Facebook page twice a day and how do we make that decision? Was it just a guess or a hunch?
The answer to both was by using data.
At the BHF we have a very healthy Facebook community with lots of engagement, take a look – I am very proud of it. We have worked very hard to make sure that we are talking to our ‘likers’ every day and engaging them in conversation not just broadcasting at them, using our top class content to build better relationships.
But how did we make decisions about when we should post a Facebook update?
In April, we used Export.ly to export the previous 12 months Facebook data to a huge Excel file.
Our Analytics Executive Dan manipulated the Excel file and in a few hours we knew:
Now we had all that data we could cross reference the time of our updates by comments and likes and find out when updates had higher levels engagement – allowing us to make decisions on when we post using data rather than just a hunch.
We are due another data mine soon and due to the substantial increase in ‘likes’ that we have had since April I think that our timings may change slightly. I’m keen to find out whether our updates with a question are more engaging with our ‘likers’ than one’s without too as well as some more extensive work into what topics get more engagement (if you’re reading this Dan then that’s what I’m going to ask next week..).
For the record, our highest engagement came between 11:30-13:00 and 18:30-19:30…
N.B We had to pay $50 dollars for our Export.ly file due to the size of our Facebook page, but if you’re managing a page with less ‘likes’ then you may not have to pay at all. (We have 100,000+ likes now).
