Getting Insight into Facebook

I serve as Admin over several Facebook Fan Pages -- one for my business, one for my church, and a few for clients. Lately I've been getting emails from Facebook reporting on how much traffic and other activity each Page gets:

• Fans this week
• Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week
• Visits to your page this week

After each item, it gives you the comparable number from the previous week. Thank you Facebook! I love it.

Another tool that is often overlooked is Facebook Insights. For a Page Admin, you'll find it in the left column of your page. Under Insights, click on See All to get more detailed reports on your page's activity.

From the Facebook Help definition, "Facebook Insights measures user exposure, actions, and behavior relating to your Social Ads and Facebook Page. By understanding activity and performance, fans and ad respondents, and trends and comparisons, you are better equipped to improve your business on Facebook and elsewhere. Insights is a free service for all Facebook Pages and Social Ads."

I recently read that there are more than 1.4M Facebook Pages, including 700,000 small businesses. There are just too many users to ignore unless you're convinced that your audience isn't on Facebook for some reason. But even if you think your audience is too old for Facebook, I just checked the Insights for my church Facebook page and for a church that is trending younger (certainly under 50), 34% are over 45 and 16% are over 55.

The useful data that Facebook provides lets you know whether you or being effective in reaching your target audience with your Page and any ads that point to it. Don't ignore this information!

Annoying Ning

I administer a couple different Ning social networks (which is a create-your-own network service). Ning offers nice features for groups to have their own social networking, such as pictures, video, blogs, chat, etc.

BUT BEWARE!

Anyone who is a member of your Ning can submit blog posts. You can control which ones get published if you're the admin, but it doesn't stop spammers from auto-sending loads of crap. I had to create a rule in my Outlook inbox that if the subject line says I "have a Ning blog post to approve" the email automatically goes to my junk folder. That folder had received about 60 of those emails today!

When I checked my Ning, I had 150+ first name members with gmail addresses. I deleted them all and reported them for spam, then changed my settings so that I have to approve all new members.

Ning needs to give the admin the ability to limit who can post to the blogs. I looked and there's only an option to moderate posts or not.

SEOing Press Releases

I've been a customer of PRWeb for years -- back when I first met the founder in his tiny Dallas office and tried to talk him into letting me do his PR. Back then, he didn't have a budget and I didn't have a clue. I remember he had one small server on the floor of his office. Now David is no longer with the company -- it was purchased by Vocus a few years ago.

PRWeb does a really good job, I think, of helping you to create press releases that are search engine optimized. You build-in hyperlinks, categorize your news, insert keywords (or at least you did...recently I haven't spotted that field) and pictures, and can change the name of the URL to include 2 keywords that might help to attract more search engine attention.

Regardless of the wire service you use, if any, your press releases should be written with search engines in mind. Most of the time, your news will be read online.

Benefits of an SEOed press release include:

• Improved search engine ranking
• Publicity in online media
• Increased website traffic
• Leads and sales!

When using PRWeb, I should say that you can pay them extra to get help with making sure all of the features you qualify for (based on the package you acquire) are used. I'd be happy to help as well, having done hundreds of them over the years.

In fact, check out our MobilityNewswire website. This site pulls in our PRWeb RSS feeds from press releases we set up for our mobile software development clients.

Pay to Play Journalism

A CNET writer that I work with from time to time sent me a link to a Wired article on the topic of "pay to play" review sites. The sites mentioned in the article, AppCraver and TheIphoneAppReview, both have sent me replies when I've pitched apps to them for review that I could get my app reviewed or expedited for a fee. This practice of editorial for a fee is common in mainstream media in other countries, but in the US we like to think that there is a firm line between editorial and advertising coverage.

I don't pay for reviews or any other kind of coverage because the practice is damaging to the credibility of the editorial review process which makes PR so much more, well, credible, than display advertising. The benefits of PR is that the perceived value of the information is so much higher because of the implied 3rd party endorsement of the journalist who is not compensated by the subject of the article. Simply put, rewarding this kind of media with revenue to get them to write a review will encourage this kind of "advertorial" business to flourish and, as a result, water down the advantage my service offers over other types of marketing communications.

Especially egregious is when these reviews don't disclose that they've been compensated for the article so the reader can judge for themselves whether or not the writing was biased in favor of the subject.

The line between advertising and editorial is one that gets blurred now in every form of media. Until recently, I published my city's business magazine and of course those who spent money advertising in the magazine wanted to be our quoted experts in the feature articles.

So how is a website or other form of media supposed to generate revenue? I personally think having ads and editorial that happen to feature the same companies just isn't the same kind of crime as making them pay for editorial coverage. Sure, all things being equal, if someone I worked with as an advertiser in the magazine happened to be a great source for an article, I saw no harm in quoting them because I knew them and their expertise couldn't be questioned just because they also placed a display ad somewhere in the magazine.

But the "pay to play" practice where payment for editorial coverage is required is bad for my business and the journalism business because it reduces the credibility of both. Everyone knows that websites and other media are supported by advertising, so the media company should clearly state its policy on the line between journalism and advertising and let the consumer judge the veracity of their content.

The End of Publishing?

Check out this very clever video that demonstrates how much we may be misunderstanding the upcoming generation and how it speaks to the publishing industry in the era of the Nook, Kindle and iPad.

Getting noticed on the web

I've spent a bit of time over the past few days looking at church websites. Man, they're bad! Of course, that's why there's a website called Church Marketing Sucks! As the communication team leader at my church (charged with internal and external publicity), I want our church website to look good, offer usable content, and be easily found by people looking for a church home. Unfortunately, our website comes with a subscription-based church management system that offers a really grand "behind the curtain" online community for members -- and while better than most church websites, ours still sucks.

We're going to take matters into our own hands and develop our own website that looks much better, is written for the web, and is search engine optimized.

When you put together a great looking website, how do you get people to find it? If you're looking for local traffic, you can advertise it to your local market in the newspaper, on Facebook or Google, or on radio or TV (if that makes sense to your kind of business). Don't forget the obvious: put it on your business cards, stationery and brochures!

There are important steps you need to take that will pay off in much bigger results for building your web traffic. Include target keywords and phrases that your prospects would be using to find you online. If you don't overwhelm your pages with meaningless words, the prominent use of keywords will make the page more appealing to the search engines and more meaningful to potential customers.

Carefully evaluate the benefits of online advertising (banners and pay-per-click). The nice thing is you can tell pretty easily if your investment is paying off and then adjust your budget to those ads that get the best results.

And use a blog and social media (Twitter and Facebook are no-brainers for many kinds of businesses) to connect with and keep in touch with customers -- and remind them about you and your website.

Google, Kansas

Over at my Kevin in the Kan blog, I've been writing about my hometown's efforts to woo Google to select it as a test site for its high-speed fiber optic network (which would bring surfing speeds of 100x faster than what most people have now).

I thought I would mention it here too because of how viral this grassroots effort has become. It is really a grand lesson in the power of social media and word of mouth (and how a community can work together WITH its government toward a common goal).

The latest PR move is when the mayor proclaimed that during the month of March, Topeka shall hereby be known as Google, Kansas. A silly move to attract Google's attention? Perhaps. That's what some are saying, but it's getting noticed! Here is some of the press attention Topeka (err...Google) has picked up:

CNBC
Wall Street Journal
BusinessWeek 
CNN (I like this one a lot...good job Mayor Bunten)
Christian Science Monitor
San Jose Mercury
The Week
The Register (UK)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
San Francisco Business Times
Washington Post
Computerworld/Networkworld
Kansas City Star
CNET
National Post
Associated Press
Examiner.com
Barron's
Connected Planet
Newser
Los Angeles Times
Digital Trends
VentureBeat
TMCnet
NBC Bay Area
TechCrunch
PC World
 

The local effort has been pretty much exclusively through Facebook and other social media, plus local get-togethers. Check out the ThinkBigTopeka site for more info on the campaign.