Facebook

Yes, Facebook is trying to make money off of business pages

There’s been a lot of controversy since Facebook made a recent change to the EdgeRank algorithm and many pages are employing any tactic they can find to get around EdgeRank. This controversy began when reach on posts published by Page admins started taking a nosedive around September 20th. 

There is no doubt that many Page admins, in particular businesses, are upset at what’s been going on. Others are more philosophical.

Realizing that the page you’ve built for months or years has lost so much ground in such a short time can be so discouraging, but here are five things that every Page admin and Facebook user needs to keep in mind:

  1. Facebook EdgeRank has been around for well over a year. You’ve had the affects of this algorithm showing up in your newsfeed for this entire time. It was only last year when third-party apps were being treated differently than native Facebook posts that people started to really pay attention to EdgeRank. Just like Google’s search algorithm, Facebook is making occasional tweaks to EdgeRank. Ultimately, it forces Page admins to deliver better content more consistently.
  2. Facebook Pages are free to use. Promoting posts isn’t required, but it’s sure nice to be able to do for the right posts that you want to get attention. Consider this a new line item in your advertising budget. Advertising isn’t free, but that’s exactly what Page admins get for the use of Facebook - it’s a tool and we’ve had it free to use since they launched in 2007. That’s a lot of free promotion!
  3. Advertising in a newspaper, on TV, magazine or any other traditional media is not a guarantee of eyeballs. It is even less a guarantee of response to the call to action. Do you track the return on investment for traditional advertising? You have to do the same for Facebook advertising. If there’s no return, the investment isn’t worth it. 
  4. If your content is boring, predictable and lacks a reason to respond, it will not be noticed and your EdgeRank will suffer. However, engaging content that gets your fans talking helps your EdgeRank and increases your reach.
  5. There’s a myth out there that you have to promote every post. Let me give you some financial advice: Do not promote every post. It’s a waste of your money and totally unnecessary. The interesting thing about promoting posts is that it seems to have a lasting effect on reach. Promote a post and watch your reach continue to soar, then gradually drop for about 4-7 days after the promotion ends. That means that the content you share post-promotion is even more important to add extra punch! 

Bonus point: Facebook is now a public company that has to assure shareholders and board members that it is going to deliver ongoing profits. Promoted posts are just one of many ways they’re doing that.

If you’d like to know more about promoted posts, click here or ask us questions in the comments! Feel free to leave your thoughts about this issue as well. 

Facebook: interest lists are great but they don't ensure people see everything you say

The latest Facebook update that is being shared tells you that only 10% of the people who like your page see what you’re saying and that you can solve the problem by adding pages to your interest lists.

1) It’s true - most of your fans don’t see what you’re saying. The only way to see everything that a page posts is to go to their page and read it there.

2) The more people engage with a page the more likely they are to see what you’re saying in the future. The more compelling the content, and the more often you ask for response, the more likely you are to get engagement.

3) Although Facebook interest lists do show up in your main newsfeed, nothing about adding a page to one will guarantee that you see everything they say.  They are meant to be a way to focus on a specific topic or grouping, but still  scroll through quickly and you would have to purposely visit the list regularly if you didn’t want to miss anything.

We know it’s frustrating to think that people don’t see everything that you say on Facebook just because they liked your page. Think of it like an ad on tv or the radio, if you don’t happen to be on when that information comes through, you could very well miss it.

The best solution is to post frequently (at least daily, preferably more like 3-4 times spread out throughout the day), to make sure you are posting information that is of interest to your audience, and to create opportunities for engagement.

Let’s give each other ideas on what works best. Leave a comment below telling us what kind of posts get the most engagement on your page?

The Facebook private message controversy: how to hide posts from your timeline

If you haven’t heard already I’m sure that it won’t come as any great surprise that another controversy with Facebook privacy came to light last week.

This time the issue is private messages showing on users public timeline.

Are they or aren’t they?

Facebook has investigated and they are saying that it isn’t so, with the explanation that wall posts and private messages are two separate systems coded in different languages. However, quite a few users have gone and examined the messages that are showing from their friends and maintain that they were once private messages.

We’ve become much more aware of privacy concerns since the time of these posts (pre-2010), as the Facebook interface has become more and more open. So, whether or not private messages have become public, if there is content on your wall that you don’t want public, now is the time - as Facebook finalizes the Timeline rollout - to hide or delete those posts from your timeline. 

The posts in question all seem to be from before 2010, which happens to coincide roughly with the timing of when we went from wall-to-wall conversations to having likes and comments on posts. So, when looking at the Timeline, these posts will already look different.

To hide them, go to the year you want to hide posts from others. You’ll find a box labeled “Friends” with all the posts from your friends for that year (it’s usually right at the top of each year on the right side of your screen. The process is the same for any Timeline story:

I hid the friends box for all years, so all those posts still exist and I can still access them from my Activity Log, which you can get to by clicking the button at the top of your Timeline page.

One other step I took to be certain that private messages wouldn’t be made public was to delete my old private messages. 

PLEASE NOTE: Hiding content from your Timeline does not mean it is deleted. It may be viewable in other places on Facebook - a friend’s wall, company page, etc. If you don’t want that content to exist on the live Facebook site anymore, select to delete it.

Regardless of what anyone believes about this particular incident and how it happened, it is disturbing to think that “private” messages are no longer private. But this situation is a very effective reminder that nothing we do on the internet is ever private. It’s important to remember this before posting, because data posted to the internet never truly goes away.

If you have something truly private to say/share with someone, do it via email or text if you have to communicate electronically. Don’t rely on a social network to keep your private business from going public.

Facebook in ten minutes a day

If Twitter is the best networking event around, then your Facebook page is your bricks and mortar store. Someone walks into the store: how will you entice them to stay or want to come back?

One of the biggest keys is consistency.  You need to post every day (even and especially on weekends)!

Time

We all struggle with finding the time to fit social media into our days; we’re busy people after all. Though using social media well IS going to take time, I believe you can get a good start in just ten minutes a day. Unlike Twitter though, we’re going to break this down into two 5 minute visits, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon or evening.

Challenge

Try doing this daily: 

1) Post something every day.  This can seem overwhelming, but if you have a plan you’ll have the content ready to post.  Remember to give people reasons to engage, the more they engage the more they’ll keep seeing your posts in their feeds in the future.

2) As your page, go and visit some other pages and like them.

3) Check your home feed of the pages that you follow and, when possible, comment on or like other pages’ posts as your page. Look for content that is relevant to your readers and share it.

(Don’t share many things to your page all at once, this is where popping into Facebook a few times in a day can help break things down. Posts should generally be published about 3 hours apart. We don’t recommend more than 4 posts spread throughout a day, and that should be the exception not the rule unless you have a very engaged audience.)

4) Respond to anyone interacting with you on your page or who has tagged you in a post.

That’s it! Just a few simple steps to keeping your Facebook activity consistent and on target.

How often do you update your Facebook page? Leave a link to your page in the comments, I’d love to come see what you’re up to!

Should I use my personal Facebook profile as a business tool?

Facebook has a reputation for being the place that you go to share the minute details of your life with the people you went to highschool with (whether or not you ever had had any desire to reconnect with those people in the first place.) But is that really what it is and is it a place you should be connecting with people for business?

Facebook is different for everyone

How I use my personal Facebook profile and how you use it are probably very different. Some share very personal information, some are very private and don’t want everyone seeing photos of their families, and some will say anything and everything and don’t care who knows.

My belief is that no matter where you are posting, you shouldn’t post information online that you aren’t comfortable with everyone (including your mother and your kids when they are adults) seeing.

This means that although I post personal information on my Facebook profile, it isn’t information I worry about others seeing. When people request to be my friend on Facebook *I* generally say yes. 

Connecting via your personal Facebook profile

Do I recommend that you connect with everyone on your personal profile? Do I think there’s a value?

There really isn’t a clear answer so here are a few points to remember about personal profiles:

- You can have a maximum of 5000 friends. Though this isn’t a problem for me now, some can hit the maximum amount so would need to pick and choose who they let in.

- There is a subscribe function which allows people to see your public updates in their feed without seeing the more personal information you don’t want everyone knowing about. You can always tell people you don’t know well that they should subscribe to you instead of friending you.

- Social media is about building relationships.  I build the strongest relationships on Facebook.

- Pages are a much better way of interacting with your client base as a business. Profiles are about you. 

What should you do?

Think about why you would or wouldn’t connect on Facebook and know that there will be people who will try to friend you on Facebook regardless of what you’d prefer.  

Once you’ve figured out if there is any value in being friends with people who aren’t actually your friends and if you decide if you feel comfortable with letting people into your inner Facebook world you’ll know what the right decision is for you.

Let’s connect!

Come connect with me on Facebook now. You can subscribe to my public Facebook updates, you can add me as a friend and I’ll probably friend you back if you tell me it’s because you read this post, and most definitely go like the Wellman Wilson Consulting and sign up to our newsletter for more tips and tricks when it comes to social media!

Then leave a comment letting me know if you connect with people you meet for your business with your personal Facebook account.

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