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The moment I found out Facebook would be testing the new Timeline in New Zealand, I immediately clicked over to my friend’s page. He lives in Auckland, and I was really, really curious to see how the Timeline worked on someone I have known for years. Several weeks later, when it was released to users in North America, I couldn’t WAIT to upgrade my own profile. The Timeline rocks!

A flood of status updates positively reviewing the Timeline has since illustrated that I’m not the only one who appreciated the upgrade, however, there has been diverse sentiment about many of the changes Facebook made this year. As we move toward the New Year, let’s recap some of Facebook’s greatest moments of 2011.

Timeline
The highlight of the year for the majority of users was the implementation of the new Timeline. Historically, users push back and struggle adjusting to the changes Facebook has made, but most people just rolled with this one, and have been delighted as it pops up on more and more profiles. The Timeline was announced in October at f8, so there was plenty of time to build anticipation around its debut. There were many creative presentations explaining it. One of my personal favorites was the video of Don Draper presenting the Timeline. Watch it here.

News Feed
The changes after f8 simplified and emphasized that ability to categorize your friends (a much needed improvement for the underutilized Lists feature). Following suit, the News Feed was also restructured into the main feed, taking up the majority of the space, and a new feature, the ticker, which was a smaller view of what is going on with all of your friends. This allowed more targeted content in your main feed, while the more superfluous news was filtered through the ticker.

GraphRank was introduced as a new component into EdgeRank, the algorithm that determines what shows up in users’ News Feeds. GraphRank takes into consideration edge signifiers generated from users’ activity that takes place outside of Facebook. This leads to more information competing for News Feed visibility. This move reinforces the “Content is King” slogan marketers have to adopt. Brand content has to be relevant and engaging for users to have a chance to appear in users’ News Feeds. This in turn helps the brands because users will interact more with the brand and its content, which ties in perfectly to our next greatest Facebook moment of 2011:

Sponsored Stories
Advertising on Facebook is evolving into something much more organic than when it first popped into the side of our News Feed a few years ago. Remember the ads that would ask for an explanation about why you didn’t like them when you tried to delete them? The Sponsored Stories are essentially word of mouth marketing which highlight user’s interactions with their favorite brands for all of their friends to see. The varieties of Sponsored Stories have increased in leaps and bounds this year and include:

1. Page Like Story

2. Page Post Like Story

3. App Used / Game Played Story

4. App Share Story

5. Check-in Story

6. Domain Share Story

A year from when they debuted, Sponsored Stories will be moving into the News Feed in January 2012. Users activity will ultimately decide if sponsored stories will stay in the News Feed (there’s a lot of speculation on their success).

Privacy
Facebook’s security technologies earned the nickname “Immune System” in the media this year. The system cleared out some of its most common digital maladies by implementing the following fixes:

• Partnering with Web of Trust has enabled the site to identify and block posts that include insecure web addresses
• A social verification system provides a means of recovering lost passwords through trusted friends
• Log-in approvals send code to mobile devices so users can authenticate attempts to access accounts from unrecognized machines
• Smart friend lists create groupings of contacts with things in common, all but forcing people’s hands to use this features for microsharing instead of publicly posting everything for all to see

Facebook also introduced Inline Privacy Controls by co-locating privacy controls near content sharing spaces on Facebook profiles, empowering people to take control over their own privacy. The options for what you share and who you share it with increased, and the process became more streamlined and user friendly.

Metrics
The Talking About This metric was introduced. This new page insight was visible for all to see and provides information about how engaging a page is with a quick glance. Read all about it in our post People Are Talking About: Facebook’s New Metric.

Negative Feedback Metrics have been designed to measure negative feedback gleaned from page posts that have matriculated through the News Feed. This metric will be potentially huge as it is refined in the coming year, and content continues to be imperative to a page’s success on Facebook.

Credits Incentives
Credits became mandatory for all applications that request payment in exchange for premium content in 2011. The following devices were implemented for developers to facilitate more income:

• Get balance – shows individual users’ balances to developers
• Buy with friends – which encourages people to recommend purchases
• Frictionless payments – which enables gamers or shoppers to pay for goods without leaving the application

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-upgrades-2011-12

Post written by Tia Marie Kemp aka @TiaMarieKemp. To learn more from fbadz.com, become a fan!

What does product placement have to do with Facebook? Plenty! Don’t think of it as product placement, but rather product integration. The new timeline, scheduled to be rolled out by the end of the year, will dramatically change the look of brand pages on Facebook.  An example of what a brand page could look like can be seen on this mock-up sample page for the New York Yankees.

As you can see, pages will likely be much more visual. The role of storytelling and images as marketing tools will continue to increase as brand pages shift to the timeline. A few keys to adapting to the timeline include:

●      Tell a visual tale: Adding images that pop to your storytelling will help draw your audience in to your brand story.

●      Sparkling content: To graduate from the new ticker status, content needs to be something special. News Feed will still remain at the heart of Facebook success for brands.

●      Tabs: We suspect that custom tabs will remain for brand pages so continue to use fan-gated and custom welcome tabs to introduce your brand to new users.

In addition to this, fans of your brand will also be able to better share your brand’s story too. Facebook is amping up page’s social proof with a new feature. Now any content fans provide about your brand could show up when their friends visit your brand page making your brand more relevant to a smaller circle of friends. This is seen in the Friends activity tab. Have you noticed the box that pops up asking if you would like to recommend a page recently? These recommendations will be tied to the consumer’s connections and help endorse your brand too.

The bottom line is that this interaction between brand and consumer will help both parties know each other better. This means unlimited possibilities for the future of marketing and advertising. As consumer insights are delivered by the consumer, brands will be able to better meet their wants and needs. The nostalgia provided through the timeline will propel brands into the future.

More information related to this article can be found here:

http://mashable.com/2011/09/27/facebook-timeline-pages/#27451The-New-York-Yankees

http://mashable.com/2011/09/22/facebooks-changes-marketers/

Post written by Tia Marie Kemp aka @TiaMarieKemp. To learn more from fbadz.com, become a fan!

The one metric I most often hear about when discussing Facebook Pages is the number of Likes a Page has received. Why is this metric important? Because it is the starting number to determine how many people you could be reaching on Facebook with each piece of content you publish. Keep in mind that not all of your “likers” will be consuming your content and there will also be a percentage of your “likers” who share your content with their friends, which exponentially increases your reach.

Your “Like” count, however, is not the most important measure of success on Facebook. What you really need to pay attention to is the number of people who actively engage with your Page on Facebook and the content you put out.

1. Ask for their opinion and feedback.

Customers have a perspective on your product or service that no one within your company has and they often have very specific opinions on what you are doing right and wrong. Companies used to spend thousands of dollars putting together focus groups to get feedback from their target audience, but now you have them at your disposal for free right on Facebook. All you have to do is ask.

Be prepared to deal with criticism as well as praise. Also, don’t just ask for the sake of Facebook engagement, you should be prepared to respond to the toughest criticisms and make a concerted effort to make changes based on the feedback you receive.

2. Invite them to share.

It is a fact of human nature that people love talking about themselves. Simply giving your fans an opportunity to promote themselves will garner more responses than you can imagine. Prompt customers to share interesting ways that they have used your product or service whether leaving a comment or posting a photo or video on the Wall of the page.

3. Feature them.

Again this plays into human nature around people loving to be paid attention to and made to feel special. Showcasing one fan/liker each week will do a few things for the engagement on the page. First of all, you will have people vying for the chance to be featured by whatever mechanism you use whether that is sharing content on the page or commenting on a post. Then the featured fan/liker will want to share the great news with all of their Friends on Facebook, many of whom will want to join in on the conversation as well.

4. Play games!

This may sound silly, but no matter how old you get you never outgrow the joy of a game. Try out some different types of games with your audience: polls, riddles, trivia, guessing games, etc. and see what gets them to engage the most. Keep it relevant to the purpose of your Page, but also make it playful.

5. Share good content.

Sharing good content is like the holy grail of social media and it will take some time to figure out, but it’s not impossible. Good content is whatever is relevant to your business, interesting and informative to fans and gets them to comment and/or share the content. Try sharing video, photo and links to see what types of content your fans respond to most. Your fans are probably a lot like you so if there’s something that you found interesting, chances are they will too.

Have you found a trick for getting fans to engage more on your Facebook Page? Leave a comment and tell us how you did it.

Post written by Biana Bakman aka @bianalog. To learn more from fbadz.com, become a fan!

If you have a personal account on Facebook than you are familiar with the Facebook Notifications function. They are pop ups you receive each time someone writes on your Wall, likes or comments something you posted or also liked or commented on, posts in a group you’re a part of, invites you to an event, changes the details for an event… you get the idea. These notifications can also be received via email or sent to your mobile phone depending on your settings. You can even subscribe to your notifications via RSS. These notifications help you to keep track of activity on Facebook that is pertinent to you. Whether you spend all day on Facebook as some of us are prone to do (points at self) or if you only pop in on occasion, you could always track the important stuff.

Page admins didn’t have the same luxury up until a couple of days ago. There was no simple way of tracking activity on your page so the only way you could check for new updates was to check the page regularly. For pages with less activity checking it a couple times a day might be sufficient, but those with more active pages require keeping a constant eye on the Wall throughout the day.

So how does this affect your life as a page admin? In theory, you have the ability to subscribe to your page’s notifications via RSS. I say in theory because it wasn’t working when I tried it, but hopefully Facebook will fix this bug soon. Once you subscribe to the notifications the updates will come right to your RSS reader of choice. You have the option of having it sent to your inbox as well. If you have an particularly active Facebook page that may become overwhelming. For example, I manage one client’s page that has over 100k fans. So when I receive a notification  like “50 friends have posted on your Wall” it doesn’t quite help me track. This is definitely a feature that works best for small business pages rather than for large brands. Essentially, new posts/likes/comments on your page now come to you, you no longer have to go to your page to check for them.

So what do you plan on doing with all those hours you now won’t be spending refreshing your Facebook page?

Post written by Biana Bakman aka @bianalog. To learn more from fbadz.com, become a fan!

At the meetup Vadim Lavrusik, Community Manager at Mashable, went over the information available through Facebook insights and some things to consider when analyzing the data. In addition to sharing the presentation (above), I also wanted to review a few ways to record and export the data. It’s important to have your data stored somewhere besides Facebook so that you can easily share it with others without having to give them admin access to the page. Not to mention, if Facebook is having a particularly glitchy day you’ll always have the information on hand.

Here are a few different ways you can pull your data off Facebook:

1. Export

The export button is located in the top right-hand corner of the “Page Overview” section of the Insights. When you click on the “Export” button you’ll see a prompt box allowing you to choose to export an XLS or CSV file and set the time frame for the information you want to download. What you’ll get is a comprehensive spreadsheet with all the data points presented in the Insight graphs. The spreadsheet isn’t the easiest to interpret, but it is a great way to keep a backup of all the Insights data from your page.

2. Print

While this certainly isn’t the greenest way to keep your data, Facebook does give you the option of printing each graph individually. Remember that the default view gives you the past month’s data so if you’re looking for a broader range then make sure to adjust the dates before you go to print. Then simply hover over the top right-hand corner of the graph and three icons will appear. The middle one will allow you to print out the graph.

3. Save Image

Gone are the days of having to screen-cap and cropping the Insights. Facebook allows you to simply save each graph as an image (PNG file), which you can easily add to your reports. Again, just hover your mouse on the upper right-hand corner of the graph and click on the right most icon. Remember to adjust the dates accordingly. If you’re planning on resizing the image, be sure it remains large enough to see the numbers on left, otherwise you’re left with some squigley lines that have no context.

4. Manually Record

Facebook provides a lot of data points that are important to analyze so that you can grow your users and interactions. However, when providing reports to “the powers that be” there are probably only a couple of numbers that they really care about. Especially if you’re pulling data from several social networks, all that information can be overwhelming and it’s certainly not all relevant. If you’re providing weekly or monthly reports then you can simply plug these numbers into a spreadsheet that has the relevant data for you (or your client) with information from all the platforms that you use. Remember Facebook usually takes 48 hours to publish daily stats.

How do you prefer to backup your Insights data?

Post written by Biana Bakman aka @bianalog. To learn more from fbadz.com, become a fan!

Facebook Users Like Official Pages

The average user on Facebook “likes” 4-6 pages a month and has an average of 130 friends (Facebook). This statistic presents an enormous opportunity to companies who want to connect with their customers. Why? A customer is opting in to see, like and comment on a company’s wall posts in the user’s sacred News Feed, which more or less serves as their personal stream of communication based on what and who they want to hear from. Entering into this sacred stream of information is pretty powerful—at its essence, it’s the heart of Facebook and where people are connecting and engaging with their family and friends. As a business, you have an opportunity to enter this prime real estate and go to where your customers are spending an exuberant amount of time (remember the average Facebook user spends 45 minutes a day on Facebook).

When Facebook users like a page, it presents a chance for that brand to engage with its customers and build stronger relationships, in turn growing more loyal customers (click here for research that supports this statement). Considering your average user is only connecting with 4-6 pages a month, that’s less competition for your company when vying for that prime News Feed visibility. The action to “like” your brand is significant. Out of the millions of Facebook Pages that exist, you made it as one of four for the month. Congrats—that’s a feat. Don’t waste this opportunity to engage with your customers.

Concern for Facebook Like Saturation

But what happens when, over the course of a year, a user’s number of likes has grown from 4 to potentially 46? That’s a lot more competition in that user’s News Feed that you now have to take into consideration. Is it something to be worried about? Will Facebook marketing become less effective as “liking” a Page becomes more prevalent among Facebook users?

It’s a legitimate concern. As someone who is part of the Facebook economy and has built a business around Facebook Pages, it’s an important question for me as much as it is for the readers of this blog. From a personal standpoint, I’m also not your average Facebook user. I’ve connected with over 800 pages on Facebook (mostly for market research of course). Has page number 744 wasted its time in recruiting me? Is it just another link lost in my 800+ list of pages in my profile?

If page number 744 that I “liked” understands the benefits of Facebook, then the answer is “no.” No, page saturation isn’t something to worry about for the time being or near future; however, it does have implications and Facebook marketers should be aware of them. Here are some thoughts as to why you shouldn’t be worried:

10 Reasons How Brands Benefit from Pages (without needing to worry about like saturation)

1. Every user on Facebook experiences his or her News Feed differently, depending on whether he or she prefers the Top News or Most Recent News.

2. If a user prefers Most Recent News, then your Wall Posts are guaranteed to be visible here. As a person connects with more Pages and Friends who are active on Facebook, the Wall Posts on Most Recent won’t have as long of a shelf life, and they will be pushed farther down the page faster.

3. If a user prefers Top News, then your Wall Posts potentially have a chance to be visible here regardless of the amount of friends or Pages a user has connected with. The Top News relies on an algorithm to determine what Wall Posts show up in this stream. Many things factor into this algorithm, but the short of it is, a user is telling Facebook what is most relevant to them based on their activity on the site; therefore, their Top News is the most relevant news to that person. This means that if a Page can actively engage and sustain being relevant to a user who’s liked it, then the Page’s Wall Posts will have a higher likelihood of having Most Recent News visibility.

4. You can still target Facebook Ads to “fans” …even if they’ve hidden your page from either of their News Feeds!

5. You can still target Facebook Ads to friends of your currents “fans”.

6. You can still send “fans” Updates that show up in their message area (which has some value but pales in comparison to News Feed visibility).

7. When a user clicks “like,” that action is broadcasted to that user’s friends. A page is still benefitting from Facebook’s inherently viral platform and that user’s social graph.

8. Having a large number of “likes” on a page is still useful, even if not all of the fans see the wall posts from that page in their personal Top News. Social proof and the bandwagon effect is still used to the Page’s advantage (I may not see the Wall Street Journal’s posts anymore, but when a friend of mine visits their website and sees the Like Box, my picture will be there showing my endorsement of the Wall Steet Journal and indirectly affecting my friends’ decision-making process in evaluating the page and consuming content. Even if someone who didn’t have any friends connected to the Wall Street Journal, that person would see thousands of people endorsing the brand through the total number of Page likes).

9. Even if a user never even “likes” your page, a company can still benefit from having a Facebook presence. Refer to point number 7 to understand the bandwagon effect. There are other benefits too:

a. People can still gather information in the same way that 2% of Yelp users contribute content, yet the majority of the site’s traffic consumes it. I may not “like” a page titled “Tampons for Strong Women,” but that doesn’t mean I still won’t use it as a resource.

b. Aside from building a community around your brand, there are other benefits to a Facebook page: it helps send traffic to your website, captures information in forms (users don’t actually have to be connected to you for this), and improves SEO (and what will be more increasingly important: Facebook Search Optimization).

10. A company can also benefit from having a Facebook page as an easier and more manageable way than even a blog to publish fresh content on a regular basis. This content can be featured on the company’s website through the Like Box so the Facebook page still serves an important way to distribute fresh content.

Tune in to the follow-up blog post to determine how to evaluate the effectiveness of your wall posts…are they going out into a black hole, or are they helping your company build a relationship with its customers?

Is there anything you’d add to this list? Let us know!

Post written by Helen Todd aka @helenstravels. To learn more from fbadz.com, connect with us on Facebook!

Facebook Updates are a great way to share news and special offers for your connections’ eyes only.

Many Facebook page admins don’t take advantage of Facebook Updates. Facebook Updates are a Page’s way to send email-esque messages to their page connections. These messages are private and can be targeted based on fans’ location, gender and age. While pages don’t get direct access to Facebook users’ inboxes, the page updates do go to a special section titled ‘Updates’ in users’ Message area – it’s right in-between Messages and the Sent links on the left-hand navigation.

Facebook Updates are great to use for messages that you don’t want to get quickly lost in the Facebook News Feed. Page admins should consider publishing content once a week using Facebook Updates. If you think of the content for Updates like a hybrid between emails, newsletters, wall posts and special announcements then you can hone in on content to share using Updates.

You’ll find Facebook Updates in the backend of your Official Page, right above the ‘Admins’ box. There’s a link that says “Send an Update” right beside a little envelop icon.

We always recommend using Facebook Updates in a comprhensive communication plan for Facebook Pages. While they don’t get the same visibility as Wall Posts, they still play an important role in how brands on Facebook can connect with their fans/connections. Do you use Updates to send messages to your fans?

Post written by Helen Todd aka @helenstravels. To learn more from fbadz.com, connect with us on Facebook!

Setting up a Facebook page for your business is easy however it’s critical to set it up properly to take full advantage of Facebook’s inherently viral platform. Some steps, like choosing a category and page name, can’t be changed after you select them so it’s really important to do it right from the outset. Also, by following this guide, you’ll also get the most out of your Facebook page whether if you’re looking for the SEO benefits or to simply maximize positive word of mouth about your business on Facebook.

Top 10 Most Critical Steps for Creating a Facebook Page for your Business

1. Create an Official Page on Facebook for your business – NOT a community page, group or personal account. Get started by visiting http://www.facebook.com/pages.

2. Pick the correct category. For most local businesses, select ‘Local Business’ and then ‘Local Business’ or the most appropriate category from the dropdown box that will appear. This cannot be changed after you select ‘Create page’!

3. Select the most appropriate Page name. This cannot be changed after you select ‘Create page’!

4. Change the Wall setting for the ‘Default View for Wall’ to ‘All Posts’.

5. Upload a profile picture that’s optimized for the Wall thumbnail picture.

6. Fill out the information tab about your business’s location, phone number, hours, and website. The ‘Basic Info’ section will appear on the Wall tab.

7. Add any important additional details about your business in the Blurb area (the box right below the profile picture) such as your business’s website, slogan, or special services.

8. Create a custom landing tab for people who visit your Page and aren’t connected to it.        

9. Create a communication plan for the Wall, publish content regularly and respond to Wall Posts from your Page connections.

10. Upon reaching 25 connections, secure a custom URL for your page. A custom URL looks like ‘http://www.facebook.com/YOURBUSINESSNAMEHERE’. This cannot be changed after you select a custom URL username for you page!

Post written by Helen Todd aka @helenstravels. To learn more from fbadz.com, connect with us on Facebook!