Facebook Insights from Social Media Club Hawaii

We had an open forum on Facebook at the March meeting of Social Media Club Hawaii, held free of charge courtesy of ING Direct Cafe in Waikīkī. People were invited to submit questions and tips in advance. We shared these at the meeting, while my colleague Rob Bertholf and I moderated the meeting and added several tips, along with Joel Tomyl, Tara Coomans, Vernon Brown, Angie Blaisdell, Jon Lewis, and Bruce Fisher while Tess Staadecker managed the live video stream and chat. Looks like we forgot to hit the record button on the love video streaming, so we don’t have that this month. Look at the Flickr photos here.

Privacy Issues on Facebook

• Use Lists to organize your friends in to groups.
• Use your Privacy Settings to adjust who can see what.
• Additional privacy settings are available under many of your Tabs.
• Check monthly as Facebook changes their TOS (terms of Service) frequently.
• Test what others can see by going to My Account > Privacy and typing someone’s name in.
• Some say forget worrying about privacy – if you are a business, you want to get as much exposure as you can.
• When posting content, use the “except” feature to post only to selected people.

Advertising on Facebook

• Go to the Create an Ad link from your page or account and walk through the steps to test all of the available options.
• You can add one photo, one link, and a small amount of text. You can see how the ad will look as you are creating it
• You will be able to target your ad very specifically: by age, gender, location, education, keywords, etc. You can also have it display friends who are also fans.
• You can use pay per click or pay per view; most people felt pay per click is more reliable.
• You can set the amount you want to pay per day and per click. Individuals can go into Account Settings and choose to block all ads.
• Facebook has advertising standards: no X-rated, etc. Read common mistakes here; the full Ad Guidelines are here.
• Run several different, short term, targeted ads first to test response. Watch your ad stats
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Increasing Fans & Best Practices for Fan Pages

• Post frequently with useful, interesting tips and links (not just selling.)
• Look at stats to see what types of links are most popular.
• Provide Facebook-only coupons to create interest and motivate action.
• Add a Facebook Page widget to your blog so you can add fans from outside FB.
• Send Facebook links to your regular email list
• Offer discount codes your fans can retweet/repost.
• Poll your fans on topics of interest.
• Use the FBML application to customize your page.
• Target non-fans with a unique URL when they land on your page and provide custom messaging.
• Fan pages are more for customer retention than customer gain; talk to them accordingly.

Saving Time by Cross-Posting Content to more than One Social Network

• WordPress Plugin for Facebook: Wordbook
• On other sites, use the FB login, such as Trip Advisor.
• On your blog/website, provide links to your other networks on every page.
• Here are some applications you can use to post simultaneously in one place:
HootSuite Chi.mp Ping.fm Twitterfeed to auto post your blog entries to Twitter Blog RSS Reader Facebook App

Credibility of social messages and people connections

• Facebook is now subject to phishing emails; don’t follow links from email! If it is a legitimate request, you will see them when you log in to your FB account directly or “by hand” in the browser. (Same goes for other social networks, gmail, PayPal, your bank, etc.)
• Some people do create multiple accounts on the same network; in some cases it is legitimate as people want a personal and a professional profile. In other cases it can be as a poseur.
• Look at the quality of a person’s feed or entries: are they just adding links or are they engaging in legitimate conversation? Do you know any of their friends?
• Check out their main website: are there many pages of authentic content? Or are there “coming soon” pages? Do they provide verifiable testimonials and clients?
• When choosing friends, many recommended to be more selective on your personal account and to be very “open tent” on business fan pages. In other words, practice non-discrimination on your business page
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Pro Tips from Mari Smith

• To help build “social equity,” generously share relevant content…with no agenda.
• To increase fan page “stickiness” (fans keep coming back for more) and fan engagement, thank and acknowledge fans. Often.
• Use their first names. With a string of comments, reply using ”@name” (a person’s first name is the sweetest sounding word in their vocabulary!).
• If you know (or can find out) a fan’s Twitter ID, also send out acknowledging tweets from time to time!

Aloha,

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Tagged as: events, facebook, Honolulu, INGdirect, smchi, Social Media