Facebook – Cate Owen

March 16, 2014March 25, 2014

3 ways Facebook is failing us

I oversee a lot of Facebook pages. I’ve also been using the platform personally for around seven years, and have been suspended, suspended myself, grown pages organically, watched viral content go mad, built apps, placed a fair few ads, and met with Facebook employees to try and understand the platform as best I can. I want Facebook to have long-term success so our company’s efforts to build the environment are not a big fat waste of everyone’s time.

But as someone who relies on it as both a user and a customer, I’m hugely frustrated.

Don’t advertise my brand’s competitors on my page
I can’t believe this is has to be a point.

Facebook has announced it’s rolling out new-look brand pages so naturally I was keen to try them. I converted one of my pages, only to find THREE of our competitors page’s sitting in a new box of “similar pages” on the left hand side. I don’t want to advertise my competitors! What are you thinking?! Nope, nope, nope. [update: I have recently tried the new page layout again and the similar pages box has gone!]

You can also place ads targeting your competitor’s fans, or have your fans targeted. All that time and/or money you spent building up your likes has essentially created a custom audience for your competitors to use. Ouch.

Give us a truly chronological newsfeed
There have been rumblings for a long time over the painful algorithm that controls news feeds; with many brands gaming their status updates for likes and engagement. Sure, you can change the feed to “most recent”, but even then it’s mixed up and not showing everything.

This is one area Twitter has Facebook in a headlock. I follow a brand because I want to see it, even if I don’t want to engage with it. Social media is, in part, about quickly scanning a feed to gather information, and so you want all the information, not just the stuff you will click like on. Eli Pariser’s Filter Bubble theory does this much more justice than I ever could, but in a nutshell, Facebook relies on us interacting with a status to prove we’re interested in it, and that’s a dangerous fallacy.

The other problem is that if you’re managing a page that has had an engagement problem in the past and you’re trying to rescue it, without dropping a lot of money on the page, you’re stuck. When you have a page with 50,000 fans, and only 1,000 of them see a status update, it seriously makes you wonder if it’s worth just deleting the page and starting again. That, or you start putting off-brand memes everywhere and spam the shit out of everyone to fake the engagement until your reach is decent again. Rock, meet hard place.

We need reliable, consistent insights
How can I build a reporting system around metrics that might change out from underneath me? I think Facebook’s page insights are amazing. They’re super valuable and helpful, but it feels like all that could be gone in a heartbeat. Insights changed about 18 months ago, and everything prior to that was wiped. Please stop tinkering, or at least don’t grandfather the insights you were offering.

Not to mention that Page Insights seem to have been “unavailable” or plain unreliable a fair bit, especially lately.

Anyway, all this complaining is going to get me nowhere because, as the joke goes, we could always use Google+ Echo Chamber and see how far that gets us.

Like I said, I want Facebook to be a success. It’s New Zealand’s largest social network with 2.6 million active NZ accounts, and it doesn’t seem to be dying at any great rate of knots. But is it good for community managers any more?

August 7, 2013August 8, 2013

Facebook adjust their EdgeRank algorithm

Today Facebook announced changes to their news feed, in the name of transparency and ease. Arguably the most important part of Facebook, the news feed as it appears on your homepage is determined by a number of key indicators including popularity of the update, the amount you’ve interacted with that person or page historically, how many people have created a negative action against the update, and the spend attached to promoting the update.

Facebook say that on average there are 1500 potential stories that can be displayed to you every time you visit your news feed, and that means you’re going to miss a large number of them. You’ll miss more because of those filtered results, you’ll only scroll through 57% of them. The update to the algorithm means you’ll see more of those missed updates.

The early data indicates a 5% increases in engagement to posts from friends and family, and an 8% increase to engagement on organic posts from pages. The changes do not impact reach of paid spend.

As always, content is king. Creating great, timely Facebook status updates that users want to share with each other will have more impact than trying to game a feed.

“For page owners, this means their most popular organic Page posts have a higher chance of being shown to more people, even if they’re more than a few hours old,” Facebook’s Lars Backstrom said in a blog post today.

So, good news for page mangers who rely on organic reach, and hopefully a better UX for Facebook users.

February 13, 2013February 13, 2013

Is bigger better when it comes to Facebook pages?

Are you a social media/community manager who struggles to determine what a “good” Facebook page metric is?

It seems that the only number people are really looking at is “likes” – as if that means something really important in this day and age of Facebook algorithms, reach and “people talking about this”. It’s essentially like looking at Twitter follower numbers, but not how many replies or RTs an account gets… And we all know likes can be bought.

I’d noticed a trend for a while – that despite Facebook page growing like numbers, the “talking about this” number didn’t really climb, and the percentage of fans talking about the brand dropped!

So I decided to investigate. Here’s my very unscientific method:

I picked a range of pages, mostly from NZ and Australia and a few from the US that:

had between 1,000 and 500,000 fans
had posted in the last week
were ‘official’ pages, not fan pages

and I cross-examined ‘likes’ with ‘people talking about this’. Here’s what I found:

Even as the number of fans grew, it was rare to see the “talking about this” figure go over 15,000. Here’s what the same data looks like when you change the scale:

It’s not that you’d expect a page of 500,000 fans to have 500,000 people talking about them – but why is it so low? Maybe if I had a bigger sample of pages sized 300-500k, I would have had more outliers.

Lets look at ‘talking about this’ as a percentage of fan numbers. I’d expect this to stay reasonably constant, but…

I know it’s difficult to infer from a small sample size, but maybe this is a trend – that when a page gets bigger than about 140,000 fans, engagement slips below 10%. I thought it might have something to do with people not wanting to have their say when a certain number of others are – the old “what’s the point of me saying something when 1,000 other people are”.

Is there are critical mass for Facebook conversations?

Some caveats:

n=200
Pages may have been running promotions and ad campaigns which skew the data
Also note, I looked at many more pages that had <200,000 fans – simply because there is more of them.
I am not a statistician and have not run any of this via a researcher. That doesn’t mean my data is bad: Just that I’m putting this out there as a thought starter.

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January 23, 2013January 23, 2013

Facebook’s Open Graph Search: A user’s first time

Today I got my Facebook account upgraded to include the new Open Graph Search – a function that allows you to use information which you and your friends have uploaded to Facebook, as well as info supplied by Bing, to find what you’re looking for.

This is what the start screen looks like:

The search starts refining as soon as you start typing.

And when you’re already on a page, it defaults to this view, basically allowing you to search the page, and dig a little deeper.

You can also put qualifiers directly into search – I asked Facebook to tell me TV shows my friends like, and this is the results display.

Clicking on that “other TV shows” link starts you down the rabbit warren.

Open Graph Search also groups activities such as location checkins, as demonstrated below.

This shows me where my friend Jesse has been lately. I can filter it down from here.

You can search groups of friends, too. Below is an example Facebook provided during its guided tour – here are some of my friends who went to the same university as me. I can then drill these down with filters.

Another nice function is the display of photos you’ve liked. Previously these would disappear into the ether, but Facebook now displays them for you. Not sure why I liked that Justin Timberlake photo. Don’t judge me.

Much ado has been made of the potential dating aspect to the new search. I started by looking for single friends of friends. Here are the options Facebook gave me:

And those can be drilled down to:

So if you wanted to see friends of friends, who worked where you do, in the same city, and single… you can.

In a nutshell, if you want to keep using search in the simple way you always have, you can. And if you want to get into some serious stalking, you can. I don’t doubt it’ll be confusing for some people, and we’re yet to work out any of the algorithm (How much do likes, or does Bing come into it, I wonder), but I think this could be very, very interesting.

It’s easy to use, and fast, too. I did notice, however, that a few pages that previously appeared first for me were appearing last, or not at all.

I think a lot of people will be shocked by the sheer volume of information Facebook has on it – but remember, it’s all stuff you’ve given it. I’m yet to work out whether Facebook uses implicit data to draw conclusions about things like hometown and marital status, but either way… Where to adjust your privacy settings.

December 5, 2012December 5, 2012

The worst Facebook updates of 2012

So many people and brands are now gaming for Facebook “engagement” that it’s ruining the platform for a lot of people.

Luckily, not too many of my friends fall for this stuff, but plenty of people have friends who do, so here’s a selection of the more desperate attempts to raise page awareness.

Lets start with this one.

No, I’m going to let my mum die. She knows it, too.

Because spamming your mates with crap always makes you lots of money, right? And cos magic.

Well played.

I liked this four times. It was heaps of fun. Changed my life.

The old “vote with a like or a comment” spam. Also if you don’t vote you obviously hate your country and won’t get any pavlova, which totally puts a dampener on my plans to finish an entire one by myself on Christmas day.

Not pictured: The “one like=one dollar donated” spam, and the “leave your password in the comments to see what happens!” spam.

DON’T FALL FOR THIS CRAP.

November 16, 2012November 16, 2012

Facebook blocked me for something a co-admin did

Last night I was using Facebook when the platform automatically logged me out. When I logged back in, I got a message that this was my second warning for posting material that violated Facebook’s policies – namely that I or someone who co-admins a page I manage had left a comment that was against community standards. I had a 24 hour ban.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I had been banned from Facebook for something someone else had posted.

So what did the co-admin post that saw every single page admin booted out, and me banned? A racist idiot had taken to the page, posting vitriol. It had upset the community, and a page admin, in a manner befitting the brand, called the person a “racist nut sack”. Someone must have complained, and we all got booted.

I’ve seen people say much worse. I’ve seen entire pages set up to harass and hate, have complained to Facebook and been told it doesn’t warrant removal. This makes no sense.

As you can imagine, working today has been problematic. I can log in, but not do much.

You know what else is bad about this situation? Trying to get help from Facebook. I go to the “learn more” section, am advised to lodge an appeal.

“If you did not posted…” #engrish

Meanwhile, if you click on the appeal link, it takes you here:

That’s right: It tells you to go back to the help centre. Where you will advised to lodge an appeal. Where you are told to go back to the help centre.

So page admins be warned: You can and will be punished for comments made by co-admins, even if that admin is telling someone off for offensive content.

April 16, 2012April 16, 2012

How to get your Facebook page deleted without even trying

Recently popular burger company Velvet Burger had their Facebook page deleted without warning.

Facebook have quietly updated their page terms, and if you have a brand page, you’re bound by them. Here’s some of the more unexpected ones, or ones we know people have had pages, posts or images removed for:

Your page name can’t be in capitals – except for acronyms.
Your page name can’t include “superfluous descriptions”.
Your cover can’t have price or purchase information, can’t have contact information like a website, can’t have calls to action like “tell your friends”
You can’t encourage your fans to use your cover image on their personal timelines.
Competitions can’t be done by commenting, sharing or uploading to your wall. (see Velvet Burger…), but MUST be done via an application tab.
Pages must not contain content that is hateful, threatening, defamatory, pornographic, incites violence or contains nudity.

The best thing you can do is read the rules. Check to see if they’ve been updated at least once a month, and don’t try to be sneaky and cheat your way around them – all it takes is one complaint and your page could be goneburger.

March 27, 2012March 27, 2012

How to create page tabs in Facebook Timeline

Facebook have changed the way you load apps into your Facebook pages, and I spent a long time trying to figure out how to get tabs to display in Timeline.

Thanks to Nick McCabe, now I know. And it’s only fair you know, too.

Create the webpage to be iframed the same way you always would – except now you can go as wide as 810px. Don’t forget you need https!
Create the app the same as you normally would, except selecting the most appropriate tab width (narrow, 520px and wide, 810px).

Now for the bit no one tells you about:

Go to https://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id=APPID&next=URL where APPID is your app id and URL is the url you’re framing in. Then add it to your page.

So simple. But so annoying.

An “add to my page” button would be so much better.

March 25, 2012November 21, 2012

5 major mistakes brands make on Facebook

Facebook pages. So easy, anyone could do it, right?

Yes. But here’s the rub: There’s actually best practise for pages, and it seems like a lot of people don’t think about them. It’s as if the humans behind the business stop thinking like a Facebook user, and start thinking like a broadcaster.

Here’s five common mistakes people make on brand’s Facebook (and Twitter) pages.

They don’t write like a human

It’s okay for a brand to call someone “mate” online. It’s fine to start a post by saying “hey guys”. It builds rapport, reminds users that they’re talking to a human, not just a brand. It gives people the warm fuzzies, and does not look out of place in a social forum.

There’s a special place in my heart for brands who insist their name must be in capitals, all the time. On the internettywebs, that’s shouting. I get the branding thing – you know I do – but I once lost a disagreement with a client whose name was long, in capitals, and had a trademark on the end. They insisted the post contain their brand. Twice. And wouldn’t listen to reason. So I posted the status, and users called the brand out.

Because the WRITTEN FOR HUMANS®™ post didn’t look WRITTEN FOR HUMANS®™ at all.

Which ties into my next point:

They think in broadcast, not conversation

On behalf of the People of the Internet: Please stop telling us what to think. Help us experience your product or service for ourselves.

Page managers sometimes don’t seem to be aware that the internet is an amazing place where you can experience things not available to traditional broadcast. Ignoring the interactive part of social media just leaves you with media.

Which is fine, except then you’re missing 80% of the point of being on social media.

I know it can be difficult to get your head around, and thinking up interactive posts can be hard. It also feels a bit risky to step outside the “broadcast” box – it means things can (and will) go wrong.

It’s still worth it.

They repeat posts that didn’t work the first time

Again… Broadcast mentality. Repetition is fine in traditional outlets, but it’s a different story on social. If your audience didn’t engage with the post first time around, why would you keep hitting them over the head with it?

Adjust. Learn. Grow. And remember, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always have what you’ve always had.

They delete negative feedback

I know why this happens. It freaks brand people out to see something slamming the brand on the official page, so they get delete-happy. We can all think of examples of this…

Yes, a few unhappy punters can ruin the experience for others. Yes, you have to take feedback in context. But there are other ways of dealing with unhappy users, rather than deleting their message. You wouldn’t hang the phone up on them, right? So why delete their post?

How is this for a suggestion: Actually listen to the feedback.

Yeah, I went there. Stop being shit. And if you can’t stop it, minimise it. Adapt. Adjust. Revise. It’s like someone saying “I don’t like chocolate ice cream” and the brand saying “LAHLAHLAH, I can’t hear you!” and then doing a post about how great chocolate ice cream is.

Your fans offer you a gift when they give you honest feedback. Don’t slam the door in their face.

They measure themselves with the wrong yardstick

What’s actually important to your social media strategy? What’s your end goal? Do you want hits to your site? Brand awareness? Sell lots of product? Get your message out?

Long story short: It’s not all about follower or fan numbers.

What do you think are some of the main mistakes brands make on Facebook and other social media outlets?

March 13, 2012March 13, 2012

Facebook’s tips for a strong social media strategy

Facebook have recently released revised best practice documents.

It gives us a glimpse into how they see the social space, as well as some good tips for both Facebook and general social media strategy.

Ranging from tips to organisational structure to audience participation, Facebook have offered what they believe is the best way to manage social.

Ownership

Assign clear ownership. Have one person oversee all social activity. This person is a social media champion for the wider organisation, and works across many teams including marketing and digital .

A single team should own social. They operate with a “daily editorial calendar”, are responsible for engaging content and gleaning insights. They co-ordinate requests from other teams (PR, Legal, ecommerce etc) for space on the page.

Collaboration

This is about working with an agency to get the most out of your wider media strategy. Facebook see the agency as running the campaign and alerting the social team as to spend. The agency must be focused on “reinforcing Facebook content with marketing messages in other channels, both online and offline”. (This is a mark against solely social agencies – interesting move, Facebook)

Creative

A creative team can be used for participatory campaigns (apps) and must be across insights and ad manager to see what content is working. They must be fuelled by “what is inherently social about the brand” and focus on virality.

Facebook then go on to offer advice about making successful posts:

Be succinct. Posts less than three lines of text see about 60% more engagement.
Post at least five times a week.
Post at the optimal time for your page.
Know your audience. Use insider language.
Be seasonal. Fans are more likely to engage with content that is already top of their mind such as current events and holidays.
Post photos and videos. Albums generate 180% more engagement, photos 120% and videos 100% more engagement than regular posts.
Use simple, bold visuals.
Speak using your brand’s voice.
Position your brand as a hero or problem solver.
Give fans exclusive content, offers, competitions, events.
Create a question or a fill-in-the-blank post.
Include your call to action early – in the first 90 characters.
Share posts from fans.

So that’s Facebook’s best practice – some of it only applicable to larger brands and those engaged with media agencies, but still some good nuggets in there.