I had the pleasure of presenting on the topic of Ramping Up Your Facebook Engagement to a group of NYC nonprofit organizations last week,  convened by my colleagues Michelle Perrault and Seth Giammanco at Minds On Design Lab. Seth and Michelle took the time to ask attendees what they wanted to get out of the session, which really helped to customize the presentation and make sure it was appropriate for all levels of expertise. The presentation covered understanding Facebook post engagement, matching goals to engagement, practices for designing Facebook Page engagement, practical ideas for creating engagement on the Page based on recent research, and measuring engagement and ROE.

What I love most is learning from the other attendees. I asked the attendees to share what they are doing to create Facebook engagement successfully, and heard about some great practices. Planned Parenthood has recently been able to move its Facebook fans to successful defend the organization against legislative attacks. MASA Israel has found that including a media image (photo or vidoe) with every wall post update increase wall post engagement. MASA Israel has also developed a successful Facebook application that streamlines the program enrollment decision-making process. The Partnership at Drugfree.org held a successful Facebook wall chat, most recently with the actress Melissa Gilbert.

The Importance of the Newsfeed

Most fans never visit a Page, but instead rely on the Page’s content to show up in their newsfeeds. A recent ComScore study reports that “Facebook users are 40-150 times more likely to consume branded content in the newsfeed than to visit the Fan Page itself.” However, the problem is that not all content will show up in the Top News section of the newsfeed, which is the default newsfeed setting. Facebook uses an algorithm called “EdgeRank” that dictates which content will be featured prominently in an individual’s newsfeed. EdgeRank takes into account three factors: how recent was the content published (on a site, on a Facebook Page), how much interaction did the piece of content create, and how regularly the individual interacts with the organization or brand. Thus, if an organization publishes a video to its Page, and no one Likes or comments on it, the video may never show up in the Top News newsfeed of someone’s wall. However, if an individual often Likes, shares, or comments on that organization’s content, there is a higher likelihood that the video will show up as part of the Top News.

Setting Goals is important

A recent Idealware study on the use of Facebook reveals that nonprofit organizations that set Facebook goals felt that goal-setting correlated with Facebook Success. In particular, organizations saw success correlated to the Facebook ofa goals of driving constituents to action and attracting particular kinds of constituents. A recent Hubspot report of Facebook brand pages reveals that businesses with 501-1,000 Facebook fans saw 3.5 times the amount of website traffic than Pages with less than 25 fans.

Designing Facebook Engagement

Creating Facebook Page engagement is challenging, which is why it is so important to help your fans engage through good Page design. There are four elements to good Facebook Page design: creating a welcoming portal with a custom welcome Page, identifying what the main conversation within the Page will be about, offering unique content to your Fans (found only on Facebook), and creating a content calendar. In addition, you can design your calls to action for a higher return on engagement, as shown by this study by the PR firm 22Squared.

Practicing Engagement

The slide deck offers some good practices for creating more engagement, taken from a variety of sources. Ideas include posting five days a week, what time of day to post and which days of the week garner the highest engagement.

Measuring Facebook Engagement  

The last section of the presentation covers thinking about how to measure Facebook engagement, including mapping goals to actions and deeper benchmarking goals. The slide (below) from the presentation demonstrates this approach to Facebook measurement and quantifying ROE.

How are you using Facebook to create engagement?

image courtesy of Yes!Online via Creative Commons

Whether you realize it or not, Facebook may be the next big online donation platform. And I think it’s not so far off. With the creation of Facebook Payments, and the new structuring of Facebook Deals, I can envision Facebook developing an online donation platform where donors and nonprofits collect and disperse Facebook Credits, resulting in real-world cash for nonprofit organizations. Here’s why:

Facebook currently owns and disburses a Facebook-only currency, Facebook Credits. If you play a game on Facebook that requires you to purchase virtual goods, you probably have to use Facebook Credits. (“Most transactions within games on Facebook now require that you first purchase Facebook Credits and then go to your favorite game to exchange your credits for the in-game currency,” according to Facebook’s Help Center.) Facebook also pays out the real currency players spend: “Facebook splits revenue from Facebook Credits with app developers, meaning it has to disburse funds as well as collect them.” What’s more, it’s no small market: virtual goods for sale on the site make up an estimated $835 million market.

Facebook Credits for Facebook Deals. Facebook launched Facebook Deals in five US cities yesterday. Soon, you will be able to buy Deals with Facebook Credits. (For the time being, you receive a voucher that you can redeem for the Deal.) However, it really is only a matter of time until kids “load up with Credits with the intention of giving it to Zynga for Cityville crap and end up spending it at The Gap instead,” as ReadWriteWeb noted yesterday.

Facebook is preparing to move into the payment space in a other ways as well. Facebook recently formed a subsidiary, Facebook Payments, which will handle payments to developers related to the Facebook Credits program. According to a Venture Beat article, Facebook insiders say that they want to move into e-commerce. It is rumoured to also want to create an ad network in competition with Google’s AdSense.

The bad, bad news: Facebook takes a 30% cut of of all Facebook Credits transactions. That is HUGE. More like UNreal. A whopping transaction fee (remember all the cries about Jumo’s 20% transaction fee?) would cripple its chances of success. Facebook may think it can create “one platform to rule them all,” but I won’t be using it if it harms the organization to the tune of 30% of the donations.

I may be wrong, of course, but it’s looking to me like Facebook may jump into the online donation space. If they do so, Facebook would be primed to be a nonprofit organization’s dream platform: it knows a LOT about the personal lifestyles of billions of users, and it has expertise handling real-world and virtual currencies.

Last week, I was honored to present a session on using social media to network members at the Youth Business International Global Forum 2010 in Mexico City, Mexico. Keren Shemesh (the Israeli YBI member organization) invited me to speak. YBI is a not-for-profit organization that leads a global network of 40 member organizations that help young people start their own business and create employment. YBI Network members (in 40 countries) receive assistance developing a specific models of supporting entrepreneurs through access to credit, volunteer business mentoring and business start-up support.

The theme of the conference was Harnessing the Power of Networks. The presentation included an overview of social media trends and platforms. It also included an assessment of how network members are using social media channels to recruit new entrepreneurs, solicit loan opportunities, support and recruit new mentors, and create general country awareness of their role in youth entrepreneurship.

Despite the increasing popularity of social media, only seven of the 40 member organizations are currently using social media. (Others are concerned about the time commitment, face the issue of the digital divide, or don’t feel comfortable enough to use it.) The presentation below highlights the best practices and innovations among network members that are using Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter.

A few highlights:

Keren Shemesh (Israel) is using the photos application in Facebook to attract fans and promote its businesses.

Keren Shemesh created two contests using the photo app, which have driven visitors to the website, increased inquiries to the business loan program, and promoted the businesses they support. These are two of the most interesting uses of Facebook photos I’ve seen!

Contest 1: In July, the NGO asked business owners to upload one representative photo to a Facebook photo album, and ask friends to Like their business photo. The photo with the most number of Likes won a prize. The contest resulted in:

• friends exposing friends to the Keren Shemesh Page (peer to peer networking), and increasing number of Page fans
  
• expanding the Keren Shemesh network
• involving stakeholders in a fun and interesting way on the Page, with a low participation threshold
  

Contest 2: In August, Keren Shemesh created a photo album as a gift catalog for the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah). During the month before the New Year, Keren Shemesh uploaded a new photo a day from a youth business, including a special offer/discount for shoppers underneath each photo. By keeping up with the album (or viewing it on the wall) fans could take advantage of special offers. Keren Shemesh used this contest to expose its youth businesses to Page fans and viewers, and the businesses could gain new customers.

Youth Business Trinidad and Tobago (YBTT) understands the poser of cross-promoting.

YBTT cross-promotes its activities with those of other youth-focused organizations. The YBTT Facebook Group will usually post anything that the Youth Council of Trinidad and Tobago has places on its Facebook Group, and the Youth Council will do the same for YBTT, thus doubling exposure for both organizations. I also want to mention that they have effectively used the Group feature to directly message and invite members to events, plus post events on their Group wall. This has resulted in at least 50% of the attendees at quarterly Business Club meetings coming from the Facebook Group.

The Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF) has positioned its Facebook Page to be the leading space on Facebook talking about youth entrepreneurship in Canada.

At least 50% of the CYBF‘s Facebook posts are now about the organization: helpful information for businesses in Canada, cross-promotes other conferences, and news about seminars and other entrepreneurship organizations. Their social media manager, Rachel Azagury, states that CYBF’s activities on Facebook generate a lot of private communication (“back yard” communication) and inquiries about the program. “Online – Facebook combined with our other social media spaces – is our first or second most popular loan referral source.” On every platform, CYBF positions itself as the organization talking about youth entrepreneurship, not just CYBF activities, becoming a trusted information source and online friend, and the place to go to for information about youth entrepreneurship.

The Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust (PSYBT) is using Linkedin to support mentors and promote knowledge-sharing…leading to cross-recommendations between mentors and businesses owners.

The PSYBT created a private Linkedin Group for mentors and businesses. In a YBI organization, each youth business is assigned a business mentor. Within this Linkedin Group, mentors are answering young business owners’ questions, mentors are supported by discussing mentor issues, and business owners are able to ask questions about business activities (a recent discussion ensued over the best way to make cold sales calls) in a safe and supportive environment. The bonus? Businesses and mentors are beginning to write Linkedin recommendations for each other! Margaret Gibson, of PSYBT, mentions that the participation was slow to develop and it is important to stick with it for at least six months before seeing results.

Are you doing any of these types of activities, or know of other “best practices” and examples of organizations using Linkedin and Twitter? Do you have any comments about the examples above?

Most Facebook Fan Pages bring the visitor to the Wall. This is the equivalent of landing in the middle of a conversation. Wouldn’t it be better to open the door first with a special Welcome tab? Or offer an overview of what actions your organization is promoting now? Consider developing a custom Welcome tab to introduce the organization to its visitors, and convert fans to stakeholders.

Facebook Page administrators can choose any tab to be the landing tab. Most choose the Wall tab.  However, why not add a custom landing tab highlighting the value of Liking the Page? A custom landing (or Welcome) tab is designed for visitors to your Page who have not yet Liked it; once they become a fan, fans land on the Wall. The value of a custom-designed landing tab is that you can create the first impression, ask visitors to become a fan directly, ask visitors to take an action, and show the “at a glance” unique value of your cause. 

Pages with  custom landing tabs have a higher conversion rate to fans than Pages without them.

According to a May 2010 BrandGlue study, visitors to Pages with a landing tab converted to “people who like” the Page at a rate of 47%, while those without a custom landing tab converted at a rate of 23%. That’s a pretty compelling statistic. You can check these statistics for your own Page by looking at the Page Views in your Page Insights. What percentage of Page visitors currently convert to fans?

Another approach is to develop a custom landing tab with a special offer. Organizations could learn from Danny Brown’s recent experiment of offering an exclusive e-book, only available through his Facebook Page, and only available to people who  liked his fan page. Danny Brown found that, within a week of the offer via Facebook, the number of people who Liked his Page grew by 245% (from 190 fans to 466). And, importantly, there had been only seven unsubscribes – the vast majority remained fans. (Hat tip to @AskAaronLee for pointing me to this experiment.)

How could a nonprofit organization take advantage of this?

• Create a similar goods promotion, such as the WeCanEndThis.com t-shirt (given away for free at SXSW 2010)
  
• Offer an exclusive Facebook application, such as the facebook application for My Social Actions
• Download a free e-book, such as World Shapers: Extraordinary Women Making a Difference
• Download an iPhone app, like the iPhone app for The Extraordinaries

Nonprofit landing tabs come in all flavors: some offer a call to action, others highlight the latest projects, reveal special offers, ask for your email, or offer incentives for Liking the page. It is up to your organization to decide what makes the most sense. In the slide show below, I’ve highlighted 15 nonprofit Pages with custom landing tabs.

I also created a wiki exclusively for Facebook landing tabs. In the wiki, you will find the links to Facebook landing tabs in the slide presentation. I invite you to join and add other links, as well as include information about metrics related to custom landing/welcome tabs.

A few resources:

How to create a landing tab that converts visitors to fans (All Facebook)

Welcome Tab Facebook Application (create your own)

Facebook Landing Pages Wiki (add your landing page to this, discussions on usage and metrics)

You are a new organization or brand, and you want to build a Facebook presence. Pages are designed to most easily promote existing brands and organizations.  Pages cannot invite individuals to Like the Page – only individuals can invite other individuals to Like a Page. Pages cannot participate in Groups; only individual profiles can. Businesses cannot create an individual profile; doing so violates the Terms of Agreement with Facebook and subjects your company to being deleted and banned from Facebook.

You need at least 500 people to Like your Page so that it can begin to gain traction; 1,000 is even better. If you don’t have many customers, clients, or individuals familiar with your organization or brand, it’s difficult to gain traction  or buzz online because of limited interactions with your organization. How can a new brand or organization use the power of Facebook to attract people to its Page and gain fans? The bottom line: get creative, collaborative, and aggressive.

Here are some ideas to attract fans to a new organization’s Page:

1. Get Creative: Design the Page to retain fans and email addresses

Create a custom Welcome Tab as the default landing tab for your Facebook Page. You can design your own or try a free welcome tab application.  A few things to be sure and include:

Email capture. These are your most likely nonprofit fans! ONE.org has a great example of email capture in its Welcome Tab.

Why they should Like your Page. What value will your Page offer? A good example of this is EndCyberBulling’s Welcome Tab.

Latest call to action. Is your organization trying to encourage a specific action? Offer a special discount on classes? Create a box on your Welcome Tab that emphasizes how people who Like your page can get involved or take advantage of a good deal. The Human Rights Campaign asks for both your email address and that you take action today within their Welcome Tab.

Create an incentive for people to Like your page by offering special content. John Haydon came up with a great idea to offer free content only to people that Like the page. A hidden tab with the content appears once you click the Like button.

2. Use Internal Resources: Ask key staff and board members to build up their own Facebook accounts and promote the Page

Since only individuals can invite other individuals to Like a page, and your organization doesn’t have a large mailing list, the fan base begins with friends and family. Ask the Executive Director, Board members, staff, to begin collecting friends on Facebook, if they haven’t done so already.

Keep in mind that only up to 25% of  friends will Like the Page, if asked, so you need to invite a lot of friends!

If you have any mailing list contacts, send out an email asking people to Like the Page. If you haven’t yet built up an email list, then this is the time to start doing so.

3. Get Collaborative: It’s time for strategic alliances.

Who else can help you collect fans? Is there another nonprofit that you collaborate with or with which there is synchronicity? What groups exist out there that are naturally sympathetic to your cause? Some suggested actions:

Reach out to Facebook Groups. There may be existing Groups concerned about your issue. Join those groups, participate in the conversation, and reach out to the administrators of those groups personally. You may be able to become a co-administrator of the Group, or the Group admin may decide to add a link to your Facebook Page and post information on your organization’s behalf.

Don’t overlook Causes. Some fans may have gone to the effort to create personal Causes to benefit your organization. Again, don’t be afraid to reach out – these are “superfans” that are already interested in your cause – and ask for their help promoting and sending friends to your new Page.

Other Pages: If there are other Pages that could become natural collaborators, or of interest to your fans, add them to your Page’s “Favorite Pages.” You could also an @message in the status update letting another Page know you’ve added their Page as a favorite. Consider contacting the Page administrator personally and asking if he/she would post an update welcoming your organization’s Page to Facebook.

4. Get Aggressive: Promote your page with an Ad

Facebook Ads are an inexpensive way to attract new fans. You can create an ad for your Page and set the exact amount of money that you want to spend on the ad. You can target ads by different demographic groups, interest, likes, geography, and more.

5. Get Creative: Create a Marketing Campaign within Facebook to Attract Fans

Create a Facebook Contest using the Wildfire Application. Wildfire offers a very inexpensive option to create a photo contest, sweepstakes, coupons, trivia contest, quizzes and more. Pricing options are $5, $$25, or $250 plus a per-day charge.

Create your own event or contest within Facebook . Hebrew University created the “Einstein Birthday Celebration: Ask Albert” Event in celebration of Einstein’s birthday. The University’s Einstein scholar invited fans and non-fans alike to ask personal and professional questions of Albert Einstein himself. The most interesting questions were answered in a follow-up video. In order to generate traffic to the Event, Hebrew University asked several Einstein societies on Facebook to co-promote the event with them. The Event garnered 300 questions and a lot of new fans!

What other suggestions do you have for a new organization or brand trying to build a fan base within Facebook?  Can you share what has worked or not for your organization?

As most Facebook users know, Facebook changed its entire ecosystem a little over a week ago. Facebook created social plugins, an open graph, changed the “fan” setting to the thumbs-up “like” button, changed personal privacy settings, created Community Pages, links personal interests to automatically-selected pages or search queries, and…I still can’t find where the groups I belong to are showing up on my profile. Whew.

Facebook has always used the power of influence marketing to show you what your friends are doing on Facebook. In a new study by McKinsey consulting, word of mouth marketing is shown to be the only factor that ranks in consumer influence at every step of the purchase decision process. And every step of the process of becoming engaged with an organization as well, I would suggest. When I used to be a community organizer, I really encouraged “friend to friend organizing.” The power of a personal recommendation by a trusted influencer is incredibly strong. Virtual friends may not be strong influencers, however, but they are stronger influencers than strangers.

The Like button weaves influencers together, and networks together, easily.

Here are two examples:

Categorizing Friends vs. People who Like Your Facebook Page

Did you notice that when you go to a page, you now see the people who like divided into two categories? Facebook has always embraced the concept of influencers, and now divides the “people who like”a page into two sections:”friends who like” (those you are personally connected to on Facebook) and “people who like” (with whom you are not connected).

Facebook is not-so-subtly influencing you to Like a page your friends like, or Like a page that people who influence you also like.

Your Friends Influence You All Over the Web

You’ll soon begin to see the Like button all over the web. At the top of news articles, blog posts, websites, videos, etc. Facebook makes it very simple to grab the code for the Like button and place it anywhere on your websites. The Like buttons automatically display the names of your personal Facebook friends who also Liked the same content.

When you press the button it will appear in your Facebook news feed, and also become part of “interests and likes” in your personal profile.

With the Like button, Facebook enables your organization to become a network weaver.

I also see great opportunity to use the Like button to spread nonprofit messages and attract new supporters through network weaving:

1. Lower barriers to participation. As Jordan Viator wrote very eloquently in her summary of how Facebook changes might affect nonprofits, “there are less boundaries than ever before in getting people “engaged” with your cause.” I agree with this. However, I also think that the quick Like and lower fan barrier also means lesser commitment. Think about how you can motivate the really committed core within your organization to Like your Facebook page, and also Like it all over the web. When we see the same core group of people Liking our organization’s content on the web, the Like button’s influence grows. In other words, it’s not a fluke that someone clicked that button once; fans demonstrate greater organizational commitment when they Like something by your organization in several places on the web.

2. More exposure within Facebook. As Ashley McFarland writes, “instead of dropping targeted links into your text, allow a user to click the familiar “Like” button and save yourself so much work!” Placing the Like button on your content means that you expose more people to it: all Likes are shared via the news feed on Facebook. All Likes are entered into someone’s interests in their profile.

3. New fans from outside of Facebook. The new Insights for your pages are at http://facebook.com/insights. Insights now display sources: if your page acquired new fans from within Facebook, or outside of Facebook. You should see the external source fan count begin to grow due to the new Like button.  Facebook is working hard to bring you more “people who like your page”and offering you more exposure.

Here is a screen shot of the new insights page:

4. Understanding your supporter’s interests helps your organization become network weaver. With the new Open Graph, website admins now have access to information about where a Page’s fans are visiting elsewhere on the web. If you put the button on your website,, Facebook promises all sorts of great information about what else these visitors do on the web. As Ashley McFarland wrote to me in an email, “the big thing for smart NPs is that they will be able to widen their nets and gather their own information on a similarly large scale. Like options embedded in the content of your website? For free and with only a simple snippet of code? Fantastic!”

I see in this opportunities for cross-promotion, strategic partnerships, alliances, and information sharing. Nonprofit (and corporate) organizations can take this information and create network maps of where fans visit, have a sense of fan’s other interests, and better understand their needs. Though I personally am a bit worried about privacy issues with the new Facebook, I can’t argue that this type of information would benefit organizations tremendously.

In Beth Kanter’s blog post about the new Facebook changes, she writes that Robert Scoble thinks that “a website that doesn’t have Facebook “likes” on it will seem weird sooner than we think.”

I tend to agree.

Image courtesy of Paurian

This is the Case of the 4,000 Twitter Followers Who Don’t Care - and why 4,000 followers means nothing without engagement.

I recently took on a new client that wants to leverage its existing social media assets (Facebook Page/Fans, Twitter followers) to drive more visits to the website. This company has been building a social media presence for over a year, and is unhappy with the lack of website visits resulting from social media.

I was told that the Facebook Group was active with almost 500 fans, and that the Twitter account had over 4,000 followers.  I was also briefed that, though there was not a lot of online fan feedback, the Twitter account included some committed followers. The highest priority for the client was to figure out why social media was not driving more people to the website – and come up with a better strategy.

I took on this challenge, and want to share a few observations about why social media isn’t working for this client:

Case Observation #1:

The most important number isn’t the number of followers, it’s the number of engaged followers.

4,000 Twitter followers seems like a lot. But how many really care about your organization? How many are willing to act on its behalf?

I evaluated “the 4,000 followers” on Twitter and “almost 500 fans” of the Facebook Page. I used Twerpscan, Twittalyzer, Twazzup, and Tweetmeme to analyze the Twitter asset, and discovered:

• almost 400 of their Twitter followers were pure spammers
• no one cared what the client was tweeting, and…
  
• most of the retweets were from twitter profiles related to the company
• the company did not engage in conversation online, and rarely thanked retweeters
• there was absolutely no Twitter strategy
  

What I discovered was that, of the 4,000+ followers, only three were truly interested enough in what the organization was tweeting. Three.

Twitter utilizes the concept of social media karma: give and give and then others will give back. This company didn’t offer help, advice, support or anything else personal.  Obviously, Twitter did not drive people to the website – no one cared enough about the company to go there.

Of the 400+ Facebook fans, most didn’t care enough to “like” a Wall post. The ones that did comment or “like” a post were often friends of the CEO or employees. All the posted was to its Facebook Page was company stories or related news. Of the 400+ fans, only one was an (unrelated to the company) engaged fan! Facebook drove little traffic to the website, which again is not surprising.

Case Observation #2:

Be wary when the CEO or Executive Director isn’t using social media on behalf of the organization.

This CEO was absolutely unwilling to be personally involved in using social media for the company. This is indicative of a CEO that does not understand the basic principles of social media. It’s critical that everyone in the organization have some direct contact with social media. An Executive Director that isn’t directly responsible for some piece of the social media is missing important information by not connecting with stakeholders directly. Not every CEO has to be responsible, but he/she should be intimately involved with the social media activities, and understand the basic principles of social media.

This CEO was using social media to “drive numbers to the website,” which completely misunderstands the basic fundamentals of social media. They are:

Engage with people first, create relationships, then move them to act.

Case Observation #3:

Their social media sites offer no real value to fans and followers

The company hadn’t taken the time to figure out what people were interested in reading on their social sites. Since the organization was not actually creating individual relationships with its fans, then it had to offer compelling and relevant news and data.  However, it wasn’t giving followers information that mattered to the followers. Not surprisingly, no one wanted to visit the website to find out more.

Case Observation #4:

You need a strategy for each and every social media platform.

Their overall social media strategy consisted of posting news and information. This is an appropriate strategy for social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg, but not at all for social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, the company usually posted the same information on both Twitter and Facebook. Fans of both sites were not even receiving unique value or reward for following the company in two places.

It’s important to realize that no two communities are the same online. Each has its own rules, expectations, and needs. You need an engagement strategy for each one of these communities. The strategy should consider the qualities of each social media platform, the needs of followers, how to best engage, and what your organization can offer its followers in terms of both engagement and value.

It’s Elementary, My Dear Watson

Social media is a tool to help your company meet its goals. But it’s more than that: if you aren’t using these tools properly, then it doesn’t matter how many fans, followers, or linkedin connections you have. They won’t care enough to do anything for your organization or company.

This case illustrates that it’s not about the number of fans and followers. It’s about the engagement. Create a strategy that brings your organization engaged followers and real relationships.

4,000 followers means nothing without engagement. And it never will.

Ever wondered how some businesses attract over 1,000 fans to their Facebook Pages, and others don’t? A new research report on Facebook Pages offers insights into how Pages grow and debunks the myth that a few people can create a “snowball effect” of Fans. Inside Facebook recently revealed the results of a study of Facebook Page popularity growth by researcher Cameron Marlow. The report (Gesundheit! Modeling Contagion through Facebook Newsfeed) paints a picture of exactly how Facebook Pages become popular. Marlow’s empirical investigation of 262,985 Facebook Pages reveals that Facebook Page growth is “not usually the result of a single chain-reaction event,” but rather the confluence of a large number of users. After looking at every Facebook Page with over 1,00 fans (as of August 2008), the report concludes:

Pages accrue fans as a result of many different clusters of connected people becoming fans.

The single most important action that creates these clusters is when a user becomes a Fan and broadcasts this action to their friends’ news feeds.

Here is how it works: individuals arrive independently at a Page,  become a Fan, and (ideally) publicize this action through the News Feed. Publicizing the action creates that person’s chain of “start nodes.” A start node is a mini-cluster of Fans. The mini-clusters eventually merge through interconnecting relationships to form a relatively large-sized cluster. According to Marlow’s research, the median large Page had 69.48% of its fans in one connected cluster.

Here are some interesting findings pulled from the report:

1. People within the “start nodes” tend to have more Facebook friends than those who do not start nodes.

2. More of the “start nodes” have active Facebook users than the non-start nodes. The study concludes that active users are more likely to understand how to find, use and pass along Facebook fan pages to their friends.

3. The large Facebook Pages consist of a majority of Fans who are connected in one large cluster consisting of many chains of start nodes. In other words, there are many, many small nodes/chains of people that converge rather than a few large chains that converge to create Fan Page with high numbers.

4. Facebook chains of Fans tend to involve more people and be longer-lasting than word-of mouth chains. In this study, 86.4% of paths that people took to become fans involved a chain of at least four people. In an earlier word of mouth study, only 38% of paths involved four individuals. What does this mean? Fan Pages can fully leverage the “six degrees of separation” inherent in a large social media platform, and especially Facebook.

5. The only way to assure that the chain of people is long is to “increase the likelihood that a Page fanning action occurs in other users’ News Feeds.”

Implications?

Creating a Facebook Page is much more than “opening the doors” and simply inviting people to “fan” the Page. The News Feed acts as the “ignition” to influence and entice new followers. The implications for Facebok Page owners are:

• Creating a Fan Page must take into account a strategy to encourage supporters to broadcast their decision to become a Fan in their News Feeds. Just inviting people to become fans will not be enough to create a large Fan page.
• Organizations and businesses with Fan Pages should think strategically about working with groups of interconnected people to become “evangelists” for the Page.

How will you incorporate the findings from this research into your Facebook Page strategy?

Image by luc legay

I’m live blogging the Affilicon Israel 2009 session entitled “Social Media Strategies.”

The first speaker is Sam Goldfarb of TradiMax. His company specializes in Facebook marketing.

Facebook Facts: users upload 850 mil. photos/mo, over 200 million users, and FB spends $25 mil yearly on server space, 50% of users are over 30 years of age, big companies are using FB. The number one brand? Barack Obama. An older brand, Coca Cola, is #6.

Mentions that there will soon be a payment system on Facebook – it’s social, and not yet public. When you buy something on FB, your friends will be notified. He tentatively is calling is “social PayPal.” (My note: Can you turn off the social sharing part?)

Second speaker: Miriam Schwab, Illuminea, speaking about Five Things Social Media is NOT.

1. It is not a ticket to millions of leads. Example: Twitter has 32.1 million users now (up from 1 million a year ago). If you are on Twitter you do NOT have a “direct line” to everyone. Ashton Kutcher, the most popular user, has only 1.9 million users. You have to compete for interest on Twitter and you have to connect, and compete for attention.

2. It is not for everyone. For example, if you are trying to market to other Middle Eastern countries besides Israel, Internet penetration is very low. You have to know where people are online, and if they are online at all.

3. It is not free. Not really. Time is money and it takes a lot of time to create, promote and respond to content.

4. It is not the “end of the road.” Geocities used to the hottest thing. (Lycos used to be the hottest search engines!) Facebook just surpassed MySpace. The web is fleeting and changing.

5. It is not enough on its own. Example – Skittles has a website that is only embedded social media sites. Skittles video goes to YouTube. Skittles chatter goes directly to twitter comments. Does it help them achieve their goal.

Third speaker: Oren Todoros, HYPick. Video blogger. Speaking about the Social Marketing Arsenal.

Can a brand be social? Yes. Example: WD40 brand has its own Ning community at we40uses.com where people upload lots of photos and discuss the brand.

You should do what you love – anyone can use social media well talking about what they love.  Gary Vaynerchuck (wine review blog) speaks about wine on video daily. iJustine a.k.a. Justine Ezarik is a freelance graphic/web designer and video editor, who became the AT&T spokesperson. Locals that leverage new media: Kfir Pravda (Pravdam.com), Hillel Fuld (technmarketing.com), Ayelet Noff (blonde2dot0.com) and Ezra Butler (1938 media.com) – they all do what they love and do it on social media.

New Media Methods:

1. Guy Kawasaki Approach: accumulate as many followers as possible while being nice enough not to be a spammer.

2. Targeted Approach: follow who you want, targeted approach, become an industry leader.

If on Twitter:

Use Ping.com to simultaneously post to many site, use wefollow.com to find followers, tweetlater.com to time tweets later, or tubemogul.com to upload a video once and it broadcasts to all video tube sites.

How to track the conversation?

1. Use Friendfeed.com to build a customized content feed based on your friends

2. Google Blog Search/Google Alerts – search Blogosphere

3. Boardtracker.com – what people are talking about on message boards.

Social media is SOCIAL and NOT Sales. Learn from others, socialize with your base, get involved in other blogs and sites with comments, and don’t forget You Tube is a very large search engine.

Predicted (by Oren Todoros) Up and Coming Social Networks:

1. Multiply.com: focus on sharing media

2. Blip.fm – music sharing

3. Qik.com – life casting/video streaming

4. Seesmic.com – video based discussion

5. HYPick.com (Oren’s network)

Own your Brand- search on namechk and take it on all the sites.

Other panelist: Arik Czerniak, Entrepreneur, former CEO of Metacafe, who added value to the panel discussion.

The Future of Social Media Predictions: next stage is aggregating activity into one place.Google Wave is also considered to be the next stage – it is an email updating/embedding and conversation tool for sending/receiving email in real time. Google Wave is still in demo.

The slides embedded above stem from a presentation that I made this morning to a group of professional businessmen and women in Efrat, Israel. They wanted to know: how can I extend my network through social media? After I left the meeting, I began to think – why isn’t the CEO and Executive Director of every corporation personally engaging actively on at least one social media platform or network? Isn’t this the obvious way to extend the reach of the company? Social media is all about the personal connection – and all stakeholders crave that personal connection and engagement (and direct access!) with company decision-makers.

If you are the Executive Director of a nonprofit organization, or the CEO of a business, you shoud extend the reach of your company just by participating in social networks.  Think about Microsoft and Bill Gates, Virgin and Richard Branson, or Donald Trump and Trump Enterprises. These men built their businesses strategically, and leveraged their personal brands as well. Richard Branson knows that he represents his many Virgin holdings (record company, airline, etc) whenever he blogs, and he wants to extend himself online in order to further promote his business interests.
Your organization is no different. Your CEO, your Executive Director, is the face of the organization publicly. He or she represents your company at public events, on memos and letters, and on the streets of your town. The question is – why limit  your CEO’s presence just to the streets of your town?

• Businesses and organizations are no longer local
• Opportunities are no longer local
• Customers, stakeholders, donors are no longer local

Neither should your CEO be local. He or she should be actively engaging on social networks:  meeting potential collaborators, stakeholders, enthusiasts, donors, customers and connectors.

If your company or organization has a standard company profile on social networks such as Facebook (page) or Linkedin (company profile) or Twitter (company identity that tweets) or any of the many other social networks, that’s great. But now – ask yourself – shouldn’t the CEO or the Executive Director also be on those sites personally connecting and extending the company’s brand?

The answer is YES.

YES figure out who the company wants to reach.

YES the CEO should be active on at least two social networks

YES the CEO should consider blogging to create depth for the company’s brand.

If your CEO or Executive Director doesn’t know how to get started, I’ve created a very basic Powerpoint presentation at the top of this post for beginners.

When the CEO begins to actively engage with his/her stakeholders online, exciting and magical things happen: your stakeholders find and connect with you, they tell others, and the organization’s brand awareness grows. Not the least of all – the CEO connects directly to the people that care the most about the company. That’s priceless for customer relations and information-gathering.

Beth Kanter, social media strategist and thinker, has also recently written a blog post about nonprofit CEOs who tweet on Twitter. The list is growing as people add their names in the comments section. It’s an informative post about the specific benefits a CEO will gain from actively using Twitter, and reiterates several points made here.

If you’re just getting started, or your CEO hasn’t yet decided to start “friending” “tweeting” and “linking” – the slide show offers a few very simple tips and introductions to social networking for business and branding.