Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

Dec

2010

17

Category:

Tips

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6 Comments

Don’t Merge Your Nonprofit Facebook Page With Places Page

Update: Facebook added the ability to “unmerge” your page with places.

Note from Beth: It has been less than a month since we launched the Zoetica Salon on my Facebook Page, a free peer learning space where we are discussing a monthly theme (this month is measurement) related to nonprofits and social media, sharing resources, as well as answering questions and sparking conversation.    The Salon has been a terrific listening post and generated some good ideas for how-to posts like this one from Kami Huyse about how to use google analytics to track social media campaigns

Last week, we heard from Ivan Boothe about a concern with merging Facebook pages with Facebook Places.     He agreed to write a guest post.

Guest Post: Don’t Merge Your Nonprofit Facebook Page With Places Page by Ivan Boothe

If you’re a nonprofit with a mailing address, you may have already received the card in the mail from Facebook: An invitation to claim your organization’s Facebook Places page. Don’t do it: You will lose more than you will gain.

Facebook Places allows people to “check in” when they’re at your organization, publicizing you to their friends. Places also allows companies to offer “deals” to people who check in (like 10% off), although how that applies to a nonprofit is less clear. If you already had a Facebook Page, when you go to claim your Facebook Place, Facebook Profiles

And that’s where the trouble starts: On your new merged Facebook Place-Page, as the screenshot indicates, you will no longer be able to
specify a default landing tab.

What we’re losing:

Default landing tabs are a powerful way to convert visitors to fans. Instead of new visitors simply being dumped on your Wall, nonprofits (and other companies) could create custom tabs, welcoming new visitors, introducing them to the organization, and encouraging them to “Like” the nonprofit.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced they were dropping support for new custom tabs that used custom-page-creating applications

Indeed, a custom landing tab was recommended as a Facebook best practice for nonprofits.

Now, however, it appears all visitors to a nonprofit’s Facebook Page will be directed to the Wall. What’s more, with tabs being de-emphasized by their move to smaller links under your profile, it’s less obvious how new visitors can find out more about your organization.

Will default landing tabs disappear from all pages?

Since at the moment this only appears to affect Places pages, and any existing Pages merged with a Place, it’s unclear whether this is simply a roll-out bug or something more long-term. Thursday afternoon, Facebook rolled out the ability for Page administrators to “toggle” between posting as their personal profile and as a Page identity. Then it turned out the roll-out was accidental , and Facebook rolled it back.

But given that Facebook first removed the default landing tab a few months ago , reinstating it after an uproar but only temporarily my guess is that this is the direction of things on Facebook. To date, Facebook officials have declined to specifically address this issue, directing those who inquire to their generic online help center.

The missing default tab functionality has been reported for company merged Place-Pages as well, so it’s not nonprofit-specific. It seems a default landing tab has never been available on things categorized as Community Pages initially auto-generated from interests listed on profiles.

So at the moment, it appears that default landing tabs are not available on Places pages or any traditional Pages “merged” with Places. My prediction is that it won’t stick around for the rest of the Pages on Facebook.

What’s in it for Facebook?

It’s not clear to me what the advantage of this is to Facebook, other than a general “standardness of experience” for users. Facebook has been vocal about how its first priority is the average user’s experience (for the benefit of advertisers) rather than how organizations are using it.

Yet without any way to (substantially) customize the Wall, this seems like a net loss for both organizations and regular users. New visitors will no longer have an easy way to be introduced to an organization, and organizations will have to carefully cultivate their Wall to at any moment appeal to both current fans and new visitors.

I’d also be surprised if some of the companies that have discovered this aren’t voicing their displeasure to Facebook.

On Thursday, there were reports that all/ nonprofit pages were now defaulting to the “Info” tab regardless of what default tab was set. It’s unclear if this was widespread, was simply a bug, or was part of the accidental roll-out of other features.

Solutions and workarounds

The solution for now seems to be to avoid merging Pages and Places. In the long-term, making sure your Page’s logo quickly communicates your mission is probably a useful move.

What are your thoughts on these changes to Facebook? What are you experiencing on your Facebook pages and does it vary for you across traditional Pages, Places, and merged Place-Pages?

Ivan Boothe, Rootwork.org, is a Drupal developer and consultant to nonprofits around online organizing and social media. A co-founder of the Genocide Intervention Network, he now works primarily with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Casino-Free Philadelphia. He co-organizes the Philadelphia NetSquared meetup, and is a board member of the Peace and Justice Studies Association.


Sep

2010

24

Category:

Case Studies, Engagement

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20 Comments

The Ladder of Love: Growing Facebook Fans

Ladder of Love on Facebook

I was lucky enough to spend my last afternoon in Alaska  driving to Talkeetna with Aliza Sherman who lives in Alaska who I’ve known since 1995 and with Cassandra Stalzer my host!    I love the framework she created for identifying and cultivating Super Fans on Facebook.   I like to call it the ladder of love!

The very first step is getting attention and getting people to “like” or join your Facebook page.    There are many creative ways to promote your Facebook page to promote your page to your target audience and get them join or like.    Here’s an example from the Food Bank of Monterey County, a Lucile and David Packard Grantee that I’m coaching this year.

They launched their page slowly and had about 100 fans.    Earlier this week,  TysonFood Hunger Relief blog offered to donate 100 pounds of food product for every “like” on their page.    They’ve increased their fan base by 4 times or over 400 now – and the odds are good that there will be a truckload of food delivered to the Food Bank on October 4th.    What’s nice about this approach is that it isn’t a contest and the only “winners” are the people who are served by the Food Bank.

Don’t forget about the importance of the Facebook feed.   Fans  won’t visit your page,but they may see your news in their news feed. Getting people to like or comment on your Facebook content improves the chances that more people will see it in their feed, an algorithm referred to as “EdgeRank.” TechCrunch goes into more detail about Facebook’s EdgeRank here.

The big mistake that many organizations make is that they stop at the “attention” phase of the ladder of love.   Getting people to click the “like” button and join your Facebook is only the first step in a deep engagement strategy.    You have to provide good content so people it will catch your fans attention and they will like your posts.   And, of course, you need content that inspires good conversation.   (Using spreadsheet aerobics will help you hone your content and engagement strategies on Facebook)

But to bring your fans higher up on the ladder of love – to loyality, leadership, and evangelism – takes consistent engagement and relationship building.

When I was in Alaska, I asked Mary D Barber what nonprofit did the best job of engaging its audience on Facebook consistently?  She pointed to the  Anchorage Concert Association. When I examined their page, I noticed they engage with audience before, during, and after shows.

What I found later after interviewing their Executive Director, Jason Hodges, is that before each show begins they make an announcement from the stage.  They ask patrons to pull out their smart phones, take a photo of the person sitting next to them, and post on their Facebook page.  Then they ask them to shut the smart phones off.

Once you have this level of consistent engagement, you will begin to see leadership and loyality and be ready to reach out to those emerging super fans who will become your evangelists and spread their love for your mission all over the social web.

How have you used the “ladder of love” to plot your Facebook or social media strategy?

Sep

2010

07

Category:

Engagement, Experimentation, Listening, Measurement, Networked Nonprofit

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8 Comments

How Networked Nonprofits Use Facebook

How Networked Nonprofits Use Facebook
View more presentations from Beth Kanter.
Introduction

One of the very first bloggers I started reading and having conversations with about social media was Alan Levine (aka CogDog Blog).     Over the years, we have supported each other’s professional work and personal fundraisers before ever meeting in person.   Last year, Alan invited me to keynote the New Media Consortium‘s virtual conference to talk about the future of social and nonprofits.  It was my most memorable virtual presentation as my avatar was June Jetson and I made a flying entrance into the auditorium to the tune of  the Jetson’s theme song.

This year, Alan invited me to present a webinar for participants in the Marcus Institute Digital Education for the Arts on how Networked Nonprofits use Facebook.  This was a fun opportunity to pull together some of my Facebook action learning curriculum and summarize much of the wisdom being shared over on at my Facebook Page.  And, of course, to revisit my Cute Dog Theory and see how it applies to Networked Nonprofits.

This post reflections on the training design as well as my content notes.

Social Learning In Webinars

I’ve been exploring how to integrate social media into instruction at face-to-face workshops and as well as webinars.  The concept of before, during, and after is an important way to plot out your instruction,  getting a good understanding of the audience, and modeling.

Before the session,   I spent some time reviewing Museum Facebook Pages – luckily the MIDEA project has them organized into this handy list.  My goal was to find examples of some if the concepts I was going to share from the group itself.    This helps spark peer conversations and indeed a quick check of the chat transcript shows it to be case.

I had hoped to find a good example of a museum or an arts organization with a custom landing tab.  I struck out.   So, I posted a request on my Facebook Page and participants offered up some great examples.    If you want to encourage social learning through social media, you have to model the model.  So, I shared with participants how I discovered relevant examples.

Having the traces of the discussion unfold via social media channels is important both during the event as well as after the event for learning capture.   I set up a wiki page that includes my slides, a link to a rowfeeder spreadsheet for the hashtag (#midea), and the archived recording of the session.

The MIDEA Institute has a nice model of networked learning that allows for a larger network of people with “looser ties”  to join while the smaller group of Institute members can continue the peer learning conversations.     The content presented in Webinars by “experts” will help leverage these conversations through “Round Ups.”   The conversations between institute participants are happening across social media channels – I imagine the role of a network weaver here will be vital to the learning.   I’ll look forward to read any reflections from Alan on how this worked.

Content

I gave a quick overview of the  Networked Nonprofit and how the concepts in the book relate to museums.     I covered the following points with lots of examples from museums as well as pointers to some of the best thinking on Facebook best practices.

  • Networked Nonprofits that use Facebook effectively have a social culture that allows them to scale to have everyone using Facebook.

Networked Nonprofits or museum have leaders that aren’t afraid to deconstruct their fear of letting go or being transparent.  That make having everyone on Facebook a culture norm through professional development and learning for everyone on staff.    They have codified a social culture and make it easy for other departments to have a presence and to empower all  stakeholders to spread the organization’s mission on social networks.   They also understand how to leverage and work with free agents or groups that may create “unofficial pages.”

  • Networked Nonprofits know how to listen, engage, and build relationships on Facebook that allow them to reach their goals.

Aliza Sherman's "Birth of A Superfan" as it applies to Facebook and Museums

They  scan for conversations about their museums on Facebook, but more importantly use tools like NutshellMail to monitor and join in conversations happening on their wall.  Their status updates are not all about them or always asking their stakeholders to do something.    And, they take the time to get to know their fans and transform them into brand ambassadors.

Based on Aliza Sherman's "How To Know A Good Fan"

  • Networked Nonprofits know how to use simplicity to do more with less.

They have made the mindshift from scarcity to the abundance that networks offer and know how leverage their networks.    They make use of Facebook tagging feature in wall posts and have encouraged other users and fan pages with similar audiences to do the same – they don’t see it as a competition.

  • Networked Nonprofits have articulated SMART objectives and a target audience for their Facebook page.

Networked Nonprofits know exactly what they want to accomplish on Facebook and who they want to target.   This helps them easily understand whether they need one Facebook page or several or how to rebrand a single page for different campaigns.  They also know how to make use of a customized landing tab – articulating value at a glance and a call to action that ladders up to the objective.  Take for example the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland or Yerba Buena Center.

Right now it is fairly easy to create a custom landing tab using FBML and tools like Pagemodo,  Facebook recently announced that it will no longer support new installations for FBML for custom landing tabs (although existing installations will be supported).

  • Networked Nonprofits have a solid and aligned content strategy for Facebook and other channels where they link, distribute and co-create.

Networked Nonprofits know how to creatively give themselves some link love on Facebook.  They have a carefully crafted content plan to cross distribute content via Facebook, email channels, and on the web that takes into account frequency, style, and format.    The Metropolitan Museum of Art “Art of the Day” on Facebook and Web site is an excellent example.   Their content creation strategy also includes opportunities for their fans to co-create content with them.

  • Networked Nonprofits practice deep engagement techniques on Facebook.

They ask their fans their opinions, test their knowledge, pair promotions w/content, and say thank you. Here’s some examples and tips.  They use fun conversation starters.  Engagement conversations revolve around getting people to look and discuss the art or may encourage them to participate in a gallery activity inside the museum.  They run contests, but they are sure to follow Facebook Guidelines. ( See these two posts for more explanation.)

  • Networked Nonprofits promote their Facebook presence through all channels.

Whether it is texting or promoting offline,  they experiment with many ways to increase their fan base.

  • Network Nonprofits use measurement to learn and improve their Facebook strategy and presence.

They use an approach called Spreadsheet Aerobics.

How else do Networked Nonprofits use Facebook?

Additional resources

Jul

2010

23

Category:

Experimentation, Tips, Tools and Tactics, Training Design

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10 Comments

How To Make Social Media Experiments Fun!

Arts Council of Silicon Valley Staff

This year my work as Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation includes training, coaching, and facilitating peer learning sessions for grantees on using social media effectively, becoming a Networked Nonprofit.    It has been incredible laboratory to put the big ideas in the book in practice.

I’ve had the pleasure working with one of grantees in the Local Program, the Arts Council of Silicon Valley, to coach them in making the transition to being a Networked Nonprofit.     There is a wide range of comfort levels and experience using social media on staff, including the social media gurus who manage the Artsopolis which is focused on marketing the arts in SV.

This is an interesting process of spreading the expertise and way of working to all parts of the organization.   This is a fairly small staff, with limited resources.   As we discussed the challenges of culture shifts, many of the concerns were around lack of time.    The Arts Council’s leader, executive director Bruce Davis, came up a great idea.  “Let’s make the process of experimenting fun – let’s start with a Facebook Friday.”    Their experiment is going to be focused on deepening and improving their Facebook presence for the Arts Council and getting  everyone on staff to participate.   Stay tuned for more …

Sharing Some Facebook Friday Insights

I like to have fun experimenting and that’s just what I’m doing on my Facebook Page, a place for learning, and sharing insights about best practices in social media for networked nonprofits.     I learn so much from the conversation threads and people sharing what they do.  I’ve been remiss in summarizing some of the nuggets out here on the blog, so here goes.

Facebook Strategic Objectives

I asked folks on Facebook:  “What is your organization trying to accomplish on Facebook with its Fan Page?“   Here’s a few answers:

  • To disseminate short stories that are unique to the fan page, as well as to link to articles on our websites. We are much more successful when the stories come with a blurb than when they are simply automated RSS-feeds.
  • To keep up with our friends, to empower them to tell their stories to the world, to find out what they need from us, to introduce them to each other, to offer mission-related action items, and to have fun.

Techniques for More Engagement

Someone said to me during a workshop a few weeks back – it really sucks to log into Facebook and see a two-star post quality ranking.    This prompted me to post a question on my wall:  How many of you Facebook Page admins notice your post quality ranking every time you visit? What I learned is that “drive by” analysis of metrics is really a waste of time.  You need to grab the month’s worth of measures and look at them against your content.

Some folks have been puzzled by the Post Quality score which  is determined by the percentage of your fans that engage when you post content to your Page. (It is calculated on a rolling seven-day basis… See More. The number of stars depends on how your Post Quality compares to similar Pages (for example, Pages that have a similar number of fans.)

Holly Ross simply ignores it and track the number of comments and likes on individual posts.   Jon Dunn does something similar:  “I prefer to really try to key in to what days were successful in terms of content. Understand why we had more new fans on a certain day. What about a certain post created that big conversation. Rinse and repeat.”

That particular wall post had 31 comments and 15 likes, way higher than other types of posts.  Even better than the numbers was the knowledge nuggets shared.  And, ah, I found the secret sauce:   Simply Asking Questions That Allow People To Share Their Knowledge and Ideas sparks engagement!

Is there an App for that?

I have been wanting to test a poll app to see if having close-ended questions or running a poll might encourage engagement.   So I installed this app and set up a poll “Do you think polls increase engagement?  Yes or No?”   Of the 43 people who took the poll, 89% said yes.   Those who didn’t participate in the poll at all, but did on my wall asking for their feedback on polling apps said they didn’t like that the app asked for their personal information.

So, sometimes, the simple approaches work better.

A Couple of Useful Tools To Streamline Workflow

I asked an open-ended question “What are your Facebook administrator best practices?“  This produced a rich conversation on techniques.    This was the first time I noticed people posting on the wall taking to one another, not me.    The thread also includes some great nuggets about streamlining the content strategy as well as streamlining interactions with fans.

  • NutShell Mail is an software that aggregates comments and likes on your fan page and delivers it in one email.   Manny Hernandez shared this link to a post about it.
  • Spredfast is a listening/content distribution tool.  One feature that I like is that it will give you a list of the names of fans and how much a like/comment.
  • There is a way to link google analytics to FB insights.

A Couple of Good Facebook Links

I share about 2-3 really juicy how to links about Facebook a week.  Here’s a couple that got the most likes or comments over the past month or so:

How To Contact Facebook for Help: Directory of Help Forms

Ten Cool Status Update Tricks

Be Careful Not To Violate Facebook Promotional Guidelines With Contests

Four Proven Steps to Facebook Page Success

Top Six Social Media Mistakes and How To Fix Them

Creating a Custom Landing Tab

Facebook Book For Your Desk

Finally, Mari Smith has co-authored a book, “Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day” – if you want one book about Facebook best practices that combines tactical and strategic – this is it!

May

2010

18

Category:

Case Studies

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1 Comment

Conversational Case Study: How Does Your Organization Vet Online Contest Opportunities?

Allison Fine and I have been working on an evaluation of the second America’s Giving Challenge. As part of the process, we are facilitating “Conversational Case Studies” that explore some of the themes that have surfaced from surveys.

This case study explores how a small nonprofit, Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), a contest winner in the first and second America’s Giving Challenges, is using social media effectively. SFT carefully vets contest participation to ensure it will be worth their time and energy as well as ensuring that the contest strategically aligns with their goals. They also understand how to avoid donor fatigue, the potential downside to online contests.

The case study brings up some great questions that we’d love to discuss with you:

How does your organization vet online contest opportunities?

If an online contest has brought you new members and supporters, how do you continue to build your connection to them once the contest is over?

Come join the discussion!

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