Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, will be speaking on the third day of the conference along with 4 other presenters during the afternoon session. His spotlight presentation is entitled ‘Content Marketing Optimization’ and he was generous enough to take the time to answer some tough questions on everything from Google+ dominating Facebook to how to make your blog successful. Thanks for the great insight, Lee! I’m looking forward to seeing you in New York.

Your SES NY presentation is entitled: ‘Content Marketing Optimization’ and focuses on optimizing content for search engines. How has the growth of the social web and Google’s social search impacted Search Engine Optimization?

There’s an interesting infographic about what happens on the web in 60 seconds that cites 694,445 queries on Google and 695,000 status updates on Facebook which really begin to underscore the growing parity between search and social. The value of networks has always been important but the growth of social interactions online are too rich to ignore both for their first level effects in terms of awareness and engagement but also latent influences as search engine ranking signals. A simple example is the effect of having your Google+ account included in a substantial number of others’ circles. The more people who have you in their circles, the more likely the things you’ve shared and interacted with (including your own content) will appear in their search results while logged into Google.

The other impact of social growth on search concerns the shift in consumer behaviors towards content and how they discover information online. The linear experience of searching, finding and purchasing is no longer the norm for most searchers. The consumer journey in becoming aware of solutions often weaves through social references and referrals to search engines for validation and facts then back to social before arriving to purchase (or some variation). The acts of content discovery, consumption and sharing represent new ways to look at optimization opportunities. A more holistic view towards optimization will help companies capture and keep customer attention using a combination of standard SEO and social media optimization. This is essentially the premise behind Optimize http://optimizebook.com

How would you define ‘Optimized content’?

Content that attracts, engages and inspires consumers to act in a way that is beneficial for the brand, the consumer and the network that the consumer is connected to.

In your recent blog post, ‘Social Engagement ROI & the Value of Exchange’ you discuss the dilemma of trying to establish a direct rate of return on social media tactics. How can marketers and agencies change this ‘direct rate of return’ model with their clients?

Short term gain is the lens through which marketing investments and marketer performance are most often judged. The post on social engagement ROI draws attention to the value of also measuring the long term value of building brand equity and connections through social networking and content.

A company that makes a compelling and relevant offer through social media channels might motivate the consumer exposed to it towards an act of commercial intent like download, sign up, trial, demo or even purchase. That has value of course and social media marketers should be held accountable to those kinds of outcomes when they’re promised.

At the same time, the effect of creating information and experiences for networks of people to conclude that your brand is the “go to solution” for a particular category can have a multiplier effect on word of mouth referrals, positive brand sentiment and effects like shorter sales cycle, greater order quantity, frequency and volume. If the only measurement on social media marketing activities is on short term revenue and not also on the long term and bigger picture effects of how a company is perceived, it becomes a matter of “can’t see the forest for the trees”. What value is there in getting 10 sales short term vs. getting 100′s of sales over a longer period of time with a similar rate of investment? It’s a matter of working, hard, smart and seeing the long term value.

In the same blog post, you indicate there are other non-ROI specific efforts worth measuring. Can you outline a few metrics or KPI’s that socially empowered businesses should be taking into account?

Benchmarking is important with any measurement endeavor and revenue related metrics like shorter sales cycle, greater order quantity, frequency and volume are worth paying attention to. At the same time, KPIs that reflect social awareness, engagement and sharing can reveal the “social health” of an organization. Some of those metrics include: mentions + context and sentiment, social referrers, community / network size and growth rate, inbound links, rate of engagement in terms of comments, RTs and shares + topics relevant to your business, micro-conversions from social channels such as demos, sign-ups, registrations, downloads, coupon redemptions, contests and trials. The mix really depends on the unique characteristics of the community and how the brand wants to participate.

While brands may be successful at specifically targeting content to an interested audience on social channels, not everyone is a prospect. That means making sure for those who connect with brand social content that it’s not just easy to buy but also to share. Some people may never buy a company’s product/service but it’s entirely possible that they’d refer that same company to their network. Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful means of customer acquisition and sales. Measuring the KPIs that reflect community engagement with a brand’s key messages and content are as much a proxy towards social ROI as rankings, links and visitors are KPIs for SEO.

When thinking about the future of social, do you feel Facebook will be ousted as the largest, global social network? If so, how soon? Do you feel Google+ offers any threat to Facebook?

Let me pull out my crystal ball. Darn, it’s a bit cloudy today. I think it’s interesting that Google is much further along in creating a social network than Facebook is in creating a useful search engine. But I don’t think Google+ offers a substantial threat to Facebook at this point. It’s hard to imagine Facebook suffering the fate of Myspace but as we’ve seen over the past 5-6 years of the social web, anything is possible. Google’s integration of Google+ into search makes it a “must have” in the search marketing mix, but I think it’s too early to claim it a major threat to Facebook. Google+ might just be more of a search play than a true social network effort. In other words, the rich data available to Google because of Google+ puts it that much further ahead of other search engines. Even if Google+ doesn’t become a major social networking threat to Facebook, Google still wins by having a better search engine.

You edit the extremely popular blog, ‘TopRank Online Marketing Blog’ and offer blog services to your clients. What are your top tips for businesses and marketers trying to grow their OWN blog communities?

Find a niche related to the major problems your business solves for customers and dominate it. Document what has made your niche efforts successful and duplicate that process to other topics relevant to your business.

As for the mechanics of growing a blog community, here are a few simple tips that have served me and TopRank quite well:

1. Facts tell, but stories sell. Tell stories! Whatever it is that you’re trying to communicate – boring, exciting or neither – always think of what “the story” is. You can find good stories in anything.

2. It’s not about you, it’s about them. Empathize with whatever market or audience you’re after. Put yourself in their shoes when thinking of topics, pain points and goals. Write about the journey to solving those problems.

3. People will work for a living, but die for recognition. Find ways to ask your readers, subscribers, fans, friends and followers to interact and participate. Reward and recognize the kind of participation you’re after. Repeat. The simple satisfaction of contributing and being recognized is one of the most powerful when developing a strong blog community.

4. A quantity of quality is what wins with blog content. There’s a lot of competition in the blogging space so it’s important to produce high quality, relevant and sharable content on a regular basis. We help companies plan and implement this but it’s entirely possible for companies to figure it out. Provide something your readers can’t find elsewhere and do that consistently.

5. Optimize and Socialize. Blog content that is easy to find in search and that is shared by credible sources on the social web can grow your community in very meaningful ways. People that search are often looking for something specific and when your blog content “ranks” well for those phrases, it lends instant credibility that can manifest as a subscriber and even media coverage from other bloggers and journalists.

About Lee Odden, CEO TopRank Online Marketing

Lee Odden is the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in Internet marketing consulting, training, and implementation services. A veteran Internet marketer, Odden has consulted for clients such as HP, McKesson, Gorkana, Marketo and StrongMail. He is the author of Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing, and has been cited by The Economist, U.S. News & World Report, and Fortune Magazine. He writes a monthly column for ClickZ called Social Media Smarts and edits Online Marketing Blog, rated a top marketing blog by Advertising Age, Social Media Examiner and Junta42. He also conducts seminars for companies, and regularly presents at marketing, media, and public relations industry conferences world-wide.

Have you created a Google+ page for your business? In this article I’ll show you what three top pages are doing.

Still in its infancy, Google+ has become a very hot topic.

Amid concern that this “new kid on the block” couldn’t compete in a social media landscape owned by Facebook, some have opted to dismiss the platform entirely.

While Google+ and Google+ business pages are still in the early stages, there is growing evidence that they’re here to stay. Read More>>

But what do you know about your competitors on Facebook?

Perhaps you have scanned their page, taken notice of how many fans they have or even ‘liked’ their page so you could be updated on their status.

The information available on your competitors is astounding and the following tools can help make that information actionable.These platforms will save hours in producing competitive analysis reports.

Getting Started

These tools DO NOT require you to be the admin of the page but DO however assume you KNOW who your competitors are on Facebook.

If you want help discovering the top performing Facebook pages in your industry, scroll down to #8 for my ‘Honorable Mention’ where I discuss the Momentus Community Health Score. Their free tool will show how your page ranks among other competitors in your category or industry.

There’s a chance I’ve overlooked a tool or two, so please be sure to comment and let me know.

Facebook Page Competitive Analysis ‘Cheat Sheet’

Top Facebook Page Competitive Analysis Tools

1. Socialbakers.com

Cost: Starts at $50 per month
Historical Data: Last 30 days upon sign-up
Number of pages monitored: 100 or more
Strength: Head to head comparison of 2 Facebook pages

Historical Data

As soon as you sign-up you have access to the last 30 days of data for all Facebook pages. The platform allows you to view all charts based upon the last 7 days, the last month or a custom date range.

Leaderboard

The summary comparison stats for each page is displayed via the Engagement Analytics leaderboard. The platform allows you to customize this chart to include or exclude the following data for each Facebook page:

• Picture
• Fan Growth
• Country Reach
• Response Rate
• Page Posts
• Name
• Page Score
• Home Tab
• Avg. Response Time
• Most Favourite Type
• Fans
• Avg. ER
• Number of Tabs
• Wall Posts
• Interactions

Head to Head

Apart from getting an overview of all the pages you are monitoring, you can also compare 2 pages, side by side. Socialbakers has developed a unique Fan page score based upon the following stats: Fan growth rate, quality of content, engagement rate and quality of your posting strategy. They also list these Key Performance Indicators side by side, so at-a-glance you can determine how your page stacks up to your competitors.

The amount of data in this head to head comparison is astounding and most of the charts in this section or exportable to either a CSV file or an image. They include a graph that charts the ‘People Talking About’ metric for each day of the month, so you can determine if Facebook users are talking more about your brand or your competitor. This chart would help to determine the effectiveness of off-line campaigns in creating on-line buzz or mentions.

Benchmarking

Another extremely impressive feature of this tool is the comprehensive ‘Benchmarking’ chart that lets you see the KPI’s for all pages side by side on a bar graph.

Sadly, these charts don’t appear to be exportable. Particularly interesting is the ‘Trends’ tab where you can compare 2 sets of data for all brand pages and have the result displayed in a bar graph, line graph that spans your date range or interactive bubble graph.

So for example, you can chart the country reach (percent of total population engaged with the page) of each page against the fan growth rate and have an interactive chart that tells you which brand has a larger share of voice nationwide. The tool also can produce data on global reach.

2) All Facebook

Cost: Free for up to 3 pages, paid plans start at $69 per month
Historical Data: Up to one year upon sign-up
Number of pages monitored: Up to 75
Strength: Great price point for amazing amounts of exportable data

All Facebook houses an impressive amount of data for a very reasonable price point. the interface is user-friendly and offers up a ‘Help’ sidebar the defines the data parameters and offers helpful hints. Upon sign-up for the free account, I had access to a full-year’s worth of historical data.

The All Facebook dashboard is customizable and allows you to add a variety of different widgets, so you can quickly view the most valuable data sets. Widgets include charts reviewing the following data.

Fans:

• Fan Total
• Interaction Rate
• Fan Growth Rate
• Fan Distribution
• Fan Change – Chart with absolute change of the fancount of Facebook Pages for a specific time interval.

Interactions:

• Own Posts – Chart with the number of own posts of Facebook pages for a specific time interval.
• User Posts
• Total Posts
• Likes, Comments, Interactions Average per Post
• Interaction Rate – Chart with the average number of interactions per own post normalized per fan of Facebook Pages for a specific time interval.
• Response Times
• Interaction rate by Post Type
• People Talking About This Chart

Location:

• Checkins Total – Chart with the development of the checkins of Facebook Pages for a specific time interval.
• Checkins Change

Quick Analysis

The ‘Quick Analysis’ feature allows you to quickly compare a specific data-set for all of your competitors pages. For example, if you wanted to learn what types of content your competitors had been posting of the last year, you could do that with just a few clicks. The example below compares the types of content posted on three of the major social media brand Facebook pages over the course of 2011.

Reports

Most charts are exportable to several formats including a PNG, PDF, JPEG or even a SVG vector image. If you want to spring for the $399 per month Business package, the platform can export reports to a CSV file as well.

3) Zuum Social

Cost: Starts at $25 monthly for 5 pages, $50 for 10
Historical Data: Access to data dating back to Jan 2010 within 24hrs of sign-up
Number of pages monitored: Up to 10
Strength: Presenting actionable insights such as best day to post and engagement rate for post types.

Zuum Social creates reports comparing up to 10 Facebook pages. The dashboard lists some actionable stats for each page including the Engagement Rate, Best Engagement Day, Best Media Type and Best Engagement Hour. Data can be displayed daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. The platform also will provide the most engaging admin and fan posts for all compared pages.

Engaging Brand Conversations

A unique feature of this platform are the ‘Conversation Themes’ outlined in an exportable chart. The tool will aggregate keywords used on at least 2 pages and bucket posts that use the key term.

It then displays which ‘theme’ is being discussed on each page and how engaging that theme or conversation is based upon fan interactions. The example below calculates popular ‘themes’ for the 2012 presidential candidates during Thanksgiving week.

Industry Reports

All of the charts and graphs are exportable in various formats including JPG, PDF, PNG, vector and CSV file. Once you become a client you not only have access to your custom reports but any of the industry sample reports that Zuum social offers. Sample reports include information on the 2012 presidential candidates, airlines, fashion retailers, footwear, snack foods, hospitals, and automotive brands.

Zuum Tool Guides

Zuum has also put together an impressive guide to working with their tool and how to derive insights from the data collected. (http://www.zuumsocial.com/how/our-facebook-marketing-tool-tutorials) Topics include Report Settings, Media Type Analysis Charts, Quantity to Quality Ratio Chart, Conversation Topics Charts and more.

4) SimplyMeasured.com

Cost: Starts at $500 per month
Historical Data: Min of 3 months and up to 1 year at sign-up
Number of pages monitored: Up to 5 at no cost, paid plans based upon number of fans
Strength: Well-designed reports in both Excel and PowerPoint

Simply Measured offers comparison reports on Facebook and Twitter. They have a free Facebook competitive analysis report, comparing up to 5 Facebook pages.

They don’t charge a fee for this report but do require you to send out a tweet promoting their services. The free report offers up data for the last 2 weeks and includes charts comparing the following stats:

• Total engagement displayed via fan interactions and based upon the percentage of fans engaged
• Total Fans
• Fan Page Engagement Comparison Over Time – Fan interactions for each page plotted daily
• Fan Page Engagement Details Comparison – Bar graph depicting the number of fan posts, fan comments and fan likes for each brand
• Average Response Per Post – Outlines the average number of clicks, comments and likes per post for each brand pages. (This chart had some formatting issues with the online version, but was clearly outlined in the exported version.)

This free report is exportable to an Excel spreadsheet and a PowerPoint slide deck. You have the option to use an existing PowerPoint theme so you can quickly customize the report with your own logo.

Their professional or paid services are more comprehensive and allow you to run reports comparing up to 10 Facebook fan pages. The tool is report driven which means there aren’t any online dashboards comparing data but all the data is bundled into Excel or PowerPoint documents that can be viewed online.

The paid version of the report includes 2 additional charts, New Page Likes Comparison Over Time and Top Posts by Comments. Their paid plans start at $500 which allow you to monitor up to 250,000 fans/followers on an ongoing basis.

5) TwitSprout.com

Cost: $88 monthly for up to 50 Facebook pages
Historical Data: 1 week prior to the date of sign-up and then the data aggregates hourly
Number of pages monitored: Up to 50
Strength: Data on content type

Twitspout is launching a Facebook Page comparison tool early next year and they were nice enough to give me a sneak peak. The tool is currently available for clients who who register for their white label solution.

The platform will allow users to compare metrics for up to 50 competitors Facebook Pages, including Total Fans, Engagement per Post, Posts per Day, Likes per Post, Fans Fans recruited per Day, Comments per Post and Response Time.

The leaderboard shown below will sort your competitors pages based upon any of the available metrics you choose. Clicking on the Facebook Page name will take you to an exportable details page that includes page stats such as growth rate, engagement rate and average response time.

Engagement Levels by Post Type

This feature isn’t unique to TwitSprout but the way they have chosen to display the data does make it a snap to gain valuable insight. TwitSprout co-founder, Dan Holowack, explains the goal is to have the inner circle match the outer circle. As shown below, Social Media Examiner could boost engagement by posting more photos and less links.

Twitter Included

TwitSprout accounts include up to fifty competitive pages or accounts and 25 authorized accounts across both Twitter and Facebook with plans to extend to LinkedIn.

6) Blitzmetrics

Cost: Free
Historical Data: Up to 1 year
Number of pages monitored: Up to 3
Strength: Formulates an ‘Earned Media Value’ for any Facebook page you administer

Blitzmetrics.com offers Facebook dashboards and was developed by Dennis Yu from BlitzLocal. The tool is currently free with additional features available for premium clients. The free dashboard allows you to compare your Facebook page with up to 3 of your competitors.

Earned Media Value

This is the first tool I’ve reviewed that actually derives a dollar amount from the engagement resulting from the Facebook page. In order to get this value, you DO have to be the admin of the page and this data isn’t available for your competitors. According to Yu, the “earned media value is defaulted to a $5 CPM calculation, but can be configured for premium clients to have values for a fan, like, comment, share, and so forth.” This calculation should be very compelling to marketers tasked with proving the value of a Facebook page.

Competitors

The tool will monitor 3 competitors and provide either a graph or table view. Reported stats include:

• Fans
• Posts
• Likes
• Admin Posts
• Comments
• Interactions
• Engagement % – interactions divided by fan base
• Market Share – share of fans for each brand
• Share of Voice – share of interactions for each brand

7) Wildfire

Cost: Free
Historical Data: Up to one year
Number of pages monitored: Up to 10
Strength: Great customer service

Wildfire offers a free Facebook comparison tool that simply charts the # of page fans over time for up to four Facebook pages. The data includes the actual number of page likes as well as a growth rate percentage. They also report on a page ‘rank’ based upon the number of fans and unique visits to the page compared to ALL Facebook pages.

This tool really doesn’t present any actionable data and is weak sauce compared to the other platforms reviewed in this article. I was thankful that Wildfire had a ‘chat’ feature so I could get answers to my questions immediately. Kira was very helpful and answered all my questions promptly.

Momentus Community Health Score – Honorable Mention

Momentus offers a Facebook page grader that quickly ranks any Facebook page against competitors in the same category. The tool presents ‘vital statistics’ which include overall fans, admin posts per day, likes/comments, community posts per day, community responses and then calculates an overall health score. They also present a list of the Facebook Pages that rank HIGHER than your brand page, based upon your page category. This allows you to quickly scan the list for any potential direct competitors that might be outperforming you on Facebook.

Size Doesn’t Matter

Now you know the types of data you can collect on competitors, it’s time to think about which data sets are actionable for your own campaign.

What can these stats from your Facebook competition teach you about engaging your Facebook community? Remember we’ve all moved past simply measuring the size of the community or number of fans. It’s all about the ‘motion of the ocean’.

Don’t despair if your competitors have recruited more fans, these tools will help you take a closer look.

Read on to discover Michael’s prescription for growing and marketing your business without employing traditional marketing tactics. He walks the reader through the step-by-step process of growing a business through generosity and cultivation of great content.

The Elevation Principle and a Simple Equation

‘Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition’ is based on something Michael calls the Elevation Principle. Simply put, this principle is the process of meeting the core desires of prospects and customers by helping them solve their basic problems AT NO COST. The idea is that by gifting your prospects with free information, you will earn their trust and they will have a higher likelihood of considering you when they are ready to make a purchase.

This strategy requires business owners and marketers to rely less on marketing messages that only drive sales. Instead, they are asked to generously solve the problems of their potential customers without asking for anything in return by creating valuable content. This is great news for content creators, like myself, who thrive on producing articles that educate their reader base. However, it’s far too easy to get lost in all that content and forget WHO you’re writing for and WHY. Michael lays out a detailed plan to help leverage the value of great content in order to grow your business.

If you aren’t currently in the business of creating content and question the value of giving away something for free – READ THIS BOOK. Michael clearly and concisely lays out a solid argument for ditching marketing messages in favor of a strategy based upon his ‘elevation principle.’ He outlines case studies that prove his point and should put to rest worries about investing in great content.

In its simplest form, this theory looks like this:

Great content + other people – marketing message = growth

Your Flight Path to ‘Out of this World’ Results

Using the metaphor of a rocket ship maneuvering through space, Michael helps the reader navigate a solid flight path. Once you’ve decided to employ the elevation principle, it’s time to refine your ‘vision statement.’ A vision statement is ‘a sentence or 2 that helps keep you focused during moments of uncertainty.’ It should answer the question: Where do I ultimately want my business to be?’ Your vision statement is something that will help you make decisions and ensure you’re staying on course. It’s not recommended that you rush this part of the process, but work to truly uncover what it is you want out of your business.

After your vision statement has been completed, it’s time to set those SMART goals we’ve all heard so much about.

SMART Goals:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound (put them on the calendar)

Michael does an excellent job at walking the reader through some examples of setting goals based on a vision statement. He recommends setting up ‘markers’ or key accomplishments that will guide your business along its path to success.

Inspiration Comes in Many Forms and Can Be Fleeting

Michael advises finding inspirational role models that inspire you to take your business to new places. These can be individual competitors, brands or any entity that has engaged you with its content. Inspirational and engaging content gives you ideas for your own business and these ideas need to be captured. Enter the Idea Vault.

An idea vault creates a place where ideas live and can be easily fetched. Recommended tools to help you capture your ideas include:

• Bookmark sites, delicious, etc.
• Email folders
• Store on desktop – create folder of PDF’s
• Physical folders

Secret Sauce = Solving Your Readers’ Problems

Solving your prospects’ problems without asking for anything in return will establish trust and make them LOVE you. Solving their basic problems is an easy concept to understand, but I would argue VERY few businesses actually put this into practice. The first question to be answered is WHO are you trying to reach? The more targeted your answer, the easier it is to create valuable content relevant to that group.

Michael lays out detailed information on how to build a profile for your ideal ‘people’ base. He advises considering the following when determining your ideal base:

Industry focus – Does it make sense to target people in a specific industry?
Topical interests – Does it make sense to focus on a few specific topics? (Make sure they have longevity.)
Job title and function – Decide what is the most likely title for your target
Company size – How big is the company size of your target and how are you quantifying size? Employees, revenue, etc.
Geography – Should you focus on people in a particular location?

He then takes it a step further and asks you to answer the following questions:

• What problems are they facing? Make a list.
• What is the nature of who you’re trying to reach? (Busy? Seeking new ideas?Skeptical?)
• How familiar are they with my topic?
• What are the desires of my user base? What do they really want?

Once you have created a comprehensive persona or two, you can begin to actually visualize this person and truly uncover how to best meet their needs with your content.

Content! Content! Content!

It’s all about content. But not just any content, ENGAGING, COMPELLING, OUTSTANDING content. So how you do you define GREAT content? It should include these essential elements:

• Highly relevant
• Educational
• Easy to digest
• Visually appealing
• Conversation-igniting
• Lacks a sales angle

Michael suggests creating an editorial guide and an editorial calendar to help keep you publishing content regularly. An editorial guide should outline the following:

• For whom are you writing?
• Length of content
• Layout and formatting considerations

He tapped Social Media Examiner’s managing editor, Cindy King, for tips on creating a solid editorial calendar:

• Publish strongest content on days you have the most readers
• Look for variety in categories over the week/month
• Space out multiple authors
• Be flexible

Along with these solid tips, working examples are provided to the reader and make creating these important assets fairly painless.

Primary Fuel vs. Nuclear Fuel

Getting specific about the content you’ll want to publish, Michael categorizes your content into two types: Primary and Nuclear. Primary fuel is regularly published, free content that meets the needs of your reader base. The goal of your primary fuel is to help your readers solve their problems so they will become raving fans. Michael advises that the lifespan of primary fuel is about three days. The types of primary fuel include:

• How-to articles
• Expert interviews
• Reviews
• News stories
• Case studies
• Contrarian stories

Nuclear fuel is carefully designed content that has a lasting impact on significant numbers of your ideal reader base and possibly experts. This type of content has a lifespan easily exceeding that of primary fuel. It can sometimes be relevant for years. Nuclear fuel should always be free and includes:

• Reports based on surveys
• White papers
• Top 10 contests
• Micro events (webinars, videos, podcasts)

Cage Your Marketing Messages, Be Generous and Your Business Will Grow

The insights and advice I have outlined from Michael’s book are simply a launching pad for growing your business. If you’re looking to make the complete journey, invest in a copy and read it for yourself. It’s the type of book you’ll find yourself going back to throughout the process of growing a successful business.

Some may find it difficult to swallow the bitter pill that marketing messages no longer work and need to be scrapped. However, I have experienced how sales-driven content will bring community activity and growth to a screeching halt. Today’s landscape requires a different methodology and a paradigm shift away from TAKING to GIVING. I think we can all agree that we admire those who are generous. It’s time to apply that important principle to business.

This year the featured speaker is Dave Dahl, founder of Dave’s Killer Bread. He will share his own personal journey from incarceration to owning a successful local business. Reserve your seat at this truly inspiring event and help Living Yoga continue it’s great work. Living Yoga Executive Director, Amy Eaton, was kind enough to take the time to answer a few of our questions on what Living Yoga’s all about.

What is Living Yoga’s mission?

Our mission is to provide yoga as a tool for personal change in prisons, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, transitional facilities and to populations who would otherwise not have access to it.

How did Living Yoga get started?

Founded by Sarahjoy Marsh in 1998 and incorporated in 2002, Living Yoga (LY) began as an outreach program for the incarcerated. The program’s purpose at that time was to provide helpful tools through the practice of yoga for dealing with stress, tension, addiction, and anxiety for people who would otherwise not have access to yoga. Sarahjoy saw the program as two-fold. Inmates in prison had little access to resources to actually begin the long, slow process to transform themselves to select healthy lifestyle choices and ways of being. She also saw this same pattern after their release. The result was a revolving door of human misery, community unrest and squandered human potential.

How can yoga change someones life?

Whether our students—youth or adults— are incarcerated, in treatment, in shelter, or accessing other community services; they are working to restart their lives and build new resources for themselves. Frequently, the people we serve are faced with barriers that are often caused by systemic discrimination and social and economic injustice.

The benefits of yoga are many—not only physical but therapeutic as well. Offering a regular, and consistent class helps our students develop necessary life skills for dealing with stress and gives practical skills for breathing, managing anxiety, and relaxation.

Connecting students to the greater community through a healthy practice of yoga creates and develops healthy supports. By integrating students focused on personal change and growth into the community through yoga, we help to break down and dismantle stereotypes that keep members of our community separate.

Increasing community education and outreach fosters tolerance and empathy. Living Yoga sees a future where people from all walks of life can choose to change for the better and become a positive part of the community.

How can someone help on a local level? Donate? Volunteer? Teach yoga?

Make Donations. We are mostly supported by individual donations—donations make it possible to train, manage, and coordinate volunteers to teach yoga programs.

Make US Visible. Living Yoga needs as much publicity as possible. Write a statement of support on your website next to our link, www.living-yoga.org <http://www.living-yoga.org> . If you work in media, marketing, or public relations you can donate your skills to help us let people know about our work and the services we provide.

Become a Volunteer. People can donate your time by helping out in the office, with special events, or by going through our training and teaching at sites within our programs. We have over 70 active volunteers teaching throughout the Portland Metro Area and in Salem. We offer great trainings and continuing education, as well as a wonderful community to be involved in.

Teach a Class or Training in Honor of Living Yoga Students. Donate the proceeds of a weekend workshop, class, or seminar to Living Yoga in honor of the students Living Yoga reaches. Share with your students that the health of any community is dependent on the health of its individuals and their participation at your event helps to provide yoga for many.

Why should our readers attend the upcoming Gala this week and what can they expect?

Readers should attend the up-coming gala to experience a fun evening focused around the power of community, the power of hope, and the power of transformation. Our programs support people who are working very hard to change their lives—most people in prison will leave prison, youth in trouble today—will grow to become adults, and our students in recovery will leave rehab and be back out in the community needing healthy supports to stay sober. Living Yoga provides practical tools that people can use every day—and especially when going through stressful times. We all deserve a second chance or multiple chances at having happy and healthy lives.

Attending the gala not only shows support, but helps a program that works everyday to encourage human potential. Our event is titled, Invest in the Human Spirit. We raise funds to support our programs and to support training and managing volunteers committed to service. We need help and funding to do this. This year’s speaker is Dave Dahl of Dave’s Killer Bread—4 times incarcerated and now a success on the outside. Wonderful food—fun music—a lively auction, and most importantly—a great cause.

If it’s impossible for you to attend the gala on Friday, there are several other ways you can get involved. Take a look at the Volunteer page on their website or contact them for more information.

Facebook has made serious efforts to try and ensure they reach out to parents and the education community, addressing concerns regarding the use of the platform by children and teens. They have created a resource for teachers that answers some common questions such as what to do if you suspect abusive behavior on Facebook, how to hide your personal Facebook profile from your students and how to report underage users. Facebook requires all users be at least 13 years old.

All of this drama within the education field has made some industry leaders slow to adopt social media campaigns. The sad truth is that taking Facebook out of the equation ISN’T an option. Teachers, your students are on Facebook and you can either see that as an obstacle or embrace the platform as a new way to reach your students.

There ARE some big players making quite a splash on Facebook, so let’s take a look at what we can learn from the top Facebook pages in education. These pages aren’t directly dealing with the complex issues outlined above, but they are targeting and engaging parents and students quite successfully. I would ask any teachers out there that have good examples of how Facebook is being used to connect with students, PLEASE comment and share with readers below.

Top Facebook Pages in Education

In order to to discover the fastest growing Facebook pages in the education sector, I used a site called Famecount.com. They provide stats on almost all existing Facebook pages and put together this list of education pages with the most fans. So let’s take a look at how the big boys are recruiting and engaging their online community.

1) Harvard University
http://www.facebook.com/Harvard
Monthly Fan Growth: 19.96%

Harvard has one of the fastest growing Facebook pages and is listed by famecount.com as the number one Facebook page in the education sector. The page currently recruits over almost 30,000 fans per week, so I was eager to see what all the fuss was about.

At first glance the page looked pretty standard. No default landing tab asking me to ‘like’ them and only one custom tab. The custom ‘Welcome’ tab housed a listing of all the Harvard related Facebook pages and an invitation to ‘keep up with Harvard happening, on campus and around the world, right here on Facebook.’ The tab also offered up all of Harvard’s social media links along with some other quick facts about the school.

All non-likers currently land on the wall, which is updated daily. The official posts included wordy updates on special events, posts promoting videos and webcasts and even a shout-out to download the universities smartphone app. Notably missing were the short, punchy updates asking fans questions or other engaging content according to Facebook community management best practices. Despite this fact, the posts were getting a considerable amount of engagement, with an average of about 40-50 comments and 400-600 ‘likes’ on each post.

Harvard does allow it’s fans to post on the wall. These posts included questions about scholarships and positive mentions from students all over the world. The page’s photo section included a series of ‘As Seen at Harvard’ albums with the last one posted August 2011. The photos included professional looking shots from all over campus and solicited many comments from excited potential students looking forward to visiting the campus.

2) Rosetta Stone
http://www.facebook.com/RosettaStone
Monthly Fan Growth: 15.21%

So how does an education-related B2B and B2C company tackle their Facebook page? We’re about to find out. Rosetta stone boasts the second most popular education-related page on Facebook, with over 600,000 fans and recruiting just over 20,000 new fans weekly. Their monthly fan growth rate clocks in at 15.21% FAR above the average of 2.86%.

The default landing tab is a customized page that features an animated photo gallery that promotes the ‘Share your story’ contest which includes a $10,000 prize for the lucky winner. The main call-outs are to upload a video, submit an essay and a ‘Login’ button. The good news is that all of those actions are kept right there on the Facebook tab and not one of the links or calls-to-action take the user outside of the Facebook environment. Event the contest rules are displayed within the tab.

Other tabs included some valuable information including an interactive ‘locations’ tab that outlined WHERE to buy their product locally, A free demo tab and a ‘Support’ tab that included a live chat feature. The support tab also housed the top questions asked on Facebook along with the answer, great way to spare the support team from having to answer the most frequently asked questions.

So the page houses some great content but now the question is how many users are actually seeing it. Taking a look at their Facebook wall, it’s clear the engagement rate is considerably lower than Harvard’s Facebook page. The page posts about 2-3 updates per day with an average of about 10 comments per post. Not a great number considering the page has over 600,000 fans. Most of the posts are wordy call-outs to testimonials from those using the product with no question or interactive element. The most interactive post on the page was a very short question asking page fans to comment with their dream job using the language they are learning. It had over 200 comments and 166 ‘likes’. Employing more of these types of posts would be a great strategy to increase page engagement rate and overall impressions on Facebook.

3) University of the People
http://www.facebook.com/UoPeople
Monthly Fan Growth: 9.95%

Listed as a non-profit organization University of the People has the 3rd largest following on Facebook in the education field. They current have over 500,000 fans and are recruiting almost 1,000 new fans per day.

The page currently has new viewers default to the page wall, although they DO have a ‘Welcome’ tab set-up that includes fan-gating. This might be an oversight as I’m not sure how effective that tactic would be when not forcing new users to hit the page with concealed content first. Once you ‘like’ the page the full ‘Welcome’ tab graphic is displayed (shown above). The tab offers up several outbound links taking the user out of the Facebook environment and over to the company website and other social media properties.

The Facebook wall is very active and the official page posts are a good case study in engagement best practices. Most of the posts asked fans to take an action like post a comment, fill in the blank or answer an ‘either or’ question. They are also using Facebook Polls to to ask fans to vote on education related topics. The interaction rate is quite high on all posts ranging from about 500 to well over 1,000 interactions (comments and likes).

Lessons Learned – Recap of Education Page Best Practices

• Brand – If your brand is strong enough, keeping your messages ‘on-brand’ trumps punchy attempts at engagement.
• Links – Keep all content within Facebook, if possible
• Landing Tab – Give users a GREAT reason to fan your page and highlight that on a ‘Welcome’ tab
• Welcome – Make the ‘Welcome’ tab the default landing tab for non-fans
• Research – Know your audience and give them what they want frequently, for example Harvard uploading campus photos for prospective students monthly
• Engagement – Ask fans to take an action like post a comment, fill-in the blank or answer an ‘either or’ question
• Privacy – Educators should set-up Facebook pages to reach out to students and segment content by using ‘lists’

Other Notable Pages

http://www.facebook.com/ParentTeacherAssociation
Monthly Fan Growth: 4.72%

The PTA Facebook page has about 18,000 fans and an active wall. The page features a nicely designed landing tab that highlights the ‘like’ button. The page also includes a PTA Live tab featuring live Ustream content.

http://www.facebook.com/collegecolorsday
Monthly Fan Growth: 10.84%

Great example of a Facebook page that was used to create buzz around an event.

http://www.facebook.com/ScholasticBookClubs
Monthly Fan Growth: 5.6%

Scholastic Book Clubs is directly targeting teachers and parents. They do a great job segmenting this traffic and presenting valuable, relevant content to each specific group.

Getting Started

I was really excited to check-out this new tool and eagerly signed-up for my free trial. Unfortunately, I was denied immediate gratification as I was notified that they needed to create my dashboard and would get back to me. After waiting a few days, I contacted customer support and was notified that I had neglected to select the pages that I wanted to be active. After completing this step, I was up and running. You can find the ‘Manage Facebook Pages’ tab under ‘Settings’. Once contacted, their support staff was very responsive and gave me the help I needed.

Fan Growth On Steroids

The Pagelever interface is segmented into easy to maneuver categories including Growth, Visibility, Engagement, Posts and Reports. Let’s start with the one that has been the go-to social media metric since day one, fan growth.

Step one is selecting the dates that you want to examine. You can choose several pre-set options such as prior 20 days, 30 days or 60 days OR you can make a custom selection. My data appears to go back as far as April 2011. However, Pagelever does admit that Facebook only allows them to ‘retrieve post data on posts newer than 30 days in most cases.’ This information is archived within Pagelever, so older data will accumulate over time.

The Growth tab houses an impressive amount of data and displays the total new fans and removed fans for the specified time period. It also calculates a growth rate percentage and compares that to the pages past performance. This allows you to quickly access whether or not your page content is doing a good job at recruiting and retaining fans.

Pagelever also provides some insight into WHERE your new fans are coming from. Under ‘Growth Sources’ they outline the top sources for both new fans and removed fans. These buckets include items such as Facebook ads, Facebook stream, Fan page, Fan box, friend suggestions, Facebook search, etc.

Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Pagelever also houses a considerable amount of fan demographic info like age, gender, country and city. The tool lists the communities where you have seen the most growth, the lowest growth and overall fan demographics. This is very helpful in assessing the effectiveness of targeted Facebook ads and your content in general.For example, If you are running a Facebook ad campaign to recruit fans for Absolute Vodka and the majority of new users are males age 13-17 you may want to consider re-targeting your ads.

Page Views vs Newsfeed Impressions

Under the Visibility tab, you can gain some insight into exactly WHAT’s being seen and when. Page views are compared to newsfeed impressions and this data might be quite surprising. Generally, brands are getting the most visibility from the newsfeed NOT from users visiting their Facebook page. This might help make the argument that putting beaucoup dollars into developing Facebook tabs isn’t the best allocation of resources. Instead, hiring someone who can create engaging newsfeed posts will likely get you a better ROI in the long-run.

Also interesting are the graphs showing internal and external Facebook referral sources. You can determine how effect your newsfeed is at recruiting users already on Facebook to view your page.

Shall We Get Engaged?

This is where it really gets interesting. The overview starts by listing your most interactive posts for your selected time period. At-a-glance you can see how many people SAW the post and how many of them interacted with it. They sum it all up in a nifty little Engagement Rate metric for each post. I was a bit stunned at how low my ER% was across the board, having previously based my interaction rate NOT on impressions but on the number of fans. This then had me asking how accurate were the impression metrics. The only info I could find on that was a simple definition on their website:

Stream Views or Impressions: The number of times people (Fans and non-Fans) have viewed a News Feed story posted by your Page.

Having read on allfacebook.com that a 1% feedback or engagement rate was something to shoot for, this new calculation meant I had some work to do. Again, actionable insights!

Pagelever also delves into WHERE your engagement is coming from. They provide charts that show how many of your comments and likes are coming from mobile devices, the newsfeed, Facebook search, etc.

The Devil is in the Details

Under the ‘Posts’ section you can get granular post details including engagement rate, total impressions, total likes and comments and demographics on the users who engaged with the post.

Pagelever also boasts that you can see the life-cycle of a post by taking a look at the impressions timeline where they record the post impressions and interactions by the hour. They advise to wait until one post ‘dies’ in the newsfeed before making your next update. Citing that inundating page fans with too many active posts can drive up the unsubscribe rate. I love this in theory. Unfortunately I was unable to access this handy timeline for my posts. Pagelever includes this disclaimer below the impression timeline feature:

“Unfortunately, Facebook only updates their data with us every once in a while, so we can’t keep this graph real-time.
We’ll be working out different ways to get better quality data here, though.”

Pagelever founder, Jeff Widman, checked into this issue and explained that the timeline feature will only aggregate data on posts that were distributed after signing up for Pagelever. You can read more updates from Jeff in the comments section of this post.

Pagelever PDF Reports = Weak Tea

Pagelever offers one standard report currently that’s exportable in a PDF format. Unfortunately this report doesn’t provide information on one of the most important metrics that their tool offers, engagement rate. You have to log into the main dashboard to see that number. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of my clients would find this report very useful.

The report does offer insight into fan growth and the overall growth rate. It also compares the visibility of the newsfeed vs actual Facebook page views. In terms of engagement, the report outlines the most engaged demographic and the % of daily active fans.

The last segment on their standard report includes a look at the most popular unique posts, comparing impressions, likes and comments but no engagement rate. A great addition to Pagelever’s offerings would include the ability to export ALL of the graphs and data within the tool. That way, strategists could piece together reports with the most relevant data for their clients.

To Buy or Not to Buy…

To sum it up, I feel that Pagelever is an extremely useful tool that would allow brands to truly optimize their Facebook presence. For brands that have a large following and rely heavily on keeping the community engaged, this tool is invaluable. I would highly recommend it for full-time community managers that are tasked with ensuring they get max eyeballs on their content.

And for smaller businesses, the low price-point has me asking the question why NOT? A standard account is only $34 bucks per month and would allow Facebook page managers insight into who’s listening and responding. Again, invaluable. You can sign-up and find all pricing options on Pagelever’s website.

Stats Provided:

Engagement rate of each Facebook post:

Engagement rate = (likes + comments)/Impressions

Gender of Engaged users/Location of engaged users:

By researching your most interactive posts, you can target updates to the gender and location that comment most often, thereby increasing interactions and impressions.

Daily Engagement Rate:

Total number of daily engagements/total number of daily impressions

Average Engagement Rate per post:

Total number of engagements per a unique post/number of impressions for the post

Number of post per type:

Posts categorized by type (links, photos, flash) for a specific time period.

Average Engagement Rate by Type:

Total number of engagements per type/total number of impressions for that type of post.

Portland State University’s Market Square building was abuzz with excitement and hushed whispers during the final class. The Digital Marketing Strategies Certificate students were waiting for their “clients,” ZuluTime and LogicBox Software, to arrive for their final presentations.

Intel’s Bryan Rhoads was concluding the course, Integrating Digital Media – Best Practices, the final leg of PSU’s 5-course Digital Marketing Strategies Certificate offered through the Professional Development Center. Bryan’s challenging 3-week journey walks each student through a marketing project brief towards a final team presentation to the business owners outlining an integrated digital marketing strategy. Armed with the knowledge from the previous courses, the two teams of students were wearing their best duds to impress their new “clients.”

Since late February, these 30 students have been taking classes conducted by local digital marketing experts. Industry instructors Dennis Hahn, Carri Bugbee, Johnny Hartman, Kent Lewis, Hallie Janssen, Aaron Gray, and now Bryan Rhoads lead the digital marketing courses, covering everything pertaining to digital strategies, SEO/SEM, social media, and Web analytics.

“The Portland State Digital Marketing Strategies certificate has grown out of instructors from different agencies identifying critical skills that are needed in the industry,” said Jennifer Portis, PSU Program Director. “Understanding how these skills are used in businesses is critical. The courses are helping people integrate this into their working lives.”

Rhoads splits his class into two brand teams, and each team works on a local brand and business. The teams have been developing a 360-degree marketing plan for each business that includes Web, social, PR, mobile, experiential, and emerging media strategies rolled up into one comprehensive plan. Each team had one hour to present their best approaches and then took some tough questions from the company’s stakeholders.

“The reality is my MBA program did not teach me about the specifics of digital marketing,” said Mathew Weber, one of the students. “It also didn’t outline how digital strategy complements marketing objectives.”

ZuluTime

Up first was Team ZuluTime, presenting their plan to local startup ZuluTime Corp.

Larry Logan, Zulutime CEO, and CTO Geoff Rhoads arrived and were eager to hear the strategies put together by the team. ZuluTime offers next-generation Location-Awareness technology and patented techniques for precise and accurate positioning of mobile devices—a technology they feel surpasses GPS for location-based services, indoors and urban canyons where GPS is limited and imprecise. After brief introductions, the team leads hit the ground running outlining objectives, target markets, and a “persona” outlining their ideal prospect.

The students’ primary recommendation was to increase digital communications around ZuluTime’s product LiveFind™ technology. They reasoned that “LiveFind” is iconic, “ownable,” and represents the technology’s benefit quickly and easily—all important traits in a fast moving, attention-deficit, digital marketplace.

LogicBox

Next up, Team LogicBox, for Portland startup LogicBox Software.

Representing LogicBox Software was company co-founder and COO Craig Hubbard. LogicBox offers customized SAAS products aimed at small to mid-sized businesses that directly rival Salesforce.com and NetSuite.

The student presentation featured an integrated approach with the website being the hub of the entire strategy. They explored marketing channels, including social media, PR and events, emerging media, and SEO/SEM. The presentation also included a series of slides comparing LogicBox to their primary competitors, information that most executives find very compelling.

Each student on the team discussed objectives, strategies, and tactics, all core components that were taught in the first courses, “Intro to Digital Marketing Strategies,” presented by Dennis Hahn. Hahn does an excellent job of boiling down the key concepts to building out a comprehensive strategy that meets overall business objectives. His course lays the foundation for the entire certificate.

Social media recommendations included creation of a LinkedIn group, participating in LinkedIn Q&A, a YouTube channel, and creation of a Facebook business page. Social media team lead, Joanne Collins, claimed that social media wasn’t a fad but “a revolution.”

And the winner is…

According to Bryan Rhoads, every student is a winner and the local businesses receive some pro-bono digital advice. “I provide my class with a real-world scenario of business objects, needs, and the final litmus test of presenting their strategies to the business owners themselves. This adds excitement and pressure, and manifests their aggregate knowledge into something valuable and tangible.” Rhoads congratulated both teams, saying that these presentations were the best in the history of the program.

Now in its third year, the Digital Marketing Strategies Certificate resumes classes in September 2011.

For more information, visit PSU Digital Marketing Strategies Certificate.

(Image courtesy Hans van de Bruggen. Used under Creative Commons.)

Questions to Consider Before You Commit

There are some great reasons to try Gowalla for yourself and I have them outlined below. But before I dive into why Gowalla works for me, I’d like to review what to consider before committing to a check-in platform. The idea for this post actually originated from a discussion at a recent May 5th shindig. A digital marketing student asked me which check-in platform she should be using. She wanted to make sure to choose the “right one,” in order to prevent managing multiple check-in accounts. A lively discussion ensued with most participants falling into 2 camps: Gowalla and Foursquare.

My take-away from that encounter is that each platform meets different needs. Understanding what you want to get out of the tool and the reasons you want to engage are key to determining the right tool for you. Some questions to ask yourself before making the commitment:

• Are you only looking for discounts, deals and promotions?
• Which platform are your close friends using?
• Are you interested in discovering new locations?
• Do you want to be actively marketed to while using the application?

And if you don’t want to take my word for it, I managed to find an expert willing to back me up. Co-author of Location Based Marketing for Dummies, Mike Schneider, provided his insights on this LBS debate:

LBS apps manufacture serendipity in many ways and people choose LBS for many reasons among them: Social utility (keeping up with where people are), Deals, Loyalty programs, Discovery.

Gowalla promotes discovery through categorized highlights and pictures. Its beautifully designed to be your virtual passport and is a lot more open than foursquare giving you more potential to meet people and see who has been where. It also has an iPad app that takes advantage of the devices features.

Without further ado…My Top 10

Alright. So I’ve covered my ass by giving the ‘each tool meets different needs’ speech – now to the good stuff. Here are the reasons why Gowalla GOES BIG and Foursquare needs to GO home!

1) Josh Williams, Gowalla CEO – Gowalla has a young CEO from Austin that claims there’s more to our lives than ‘gamification.’ Check out this interview with the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss for a closer look at this Austin hipster.

2) Update Facebook Places, FOURSQUARE, Twitter and even Tumblr with one Gowalla check-in. This was the feature that converted me. I was spending WAY too much time checking in on multiple platforms. Using Gowalla allows me to keep my Foursquare mayorships, tweet my location and feed my Facebook friends all with one check-in. AWESOME!

3) View your friends’ activities on Foursquare and Facebook Places from within the Gowalla interface. Got friends spread out across multiple platforms? Gowalla allows you to view your friends check-ins on Foursquare and Facebook places without leaving the app.

4) You’re not a fan of direct marketing. Unlike Foursquare, Gowalla doesn’t pimp itself out to every business wanting to cash-in on your check-in. They don’t clutter up the interface with coupons, specials, etc. Instead, they opt to work with brands to offer rewards to loyal customers in new ways.

5) Newly created iPad app. Foursquare doesn’t have one yet. As Mike Schnieder outlines in his recent post, the app is beautifully designed and features fun trips from around the world. You can browse through user-generated lists of themed locations like the best coffee shops in Seattle or the ‘must-stop’ locals in North Beach.

6) Your Gowalla passport. Just like a real passport, your virtual passport documents all the cool places you’ve been and badges you have earned. It’s a one-stop shop for those trip highlights that you hope to never forget. Gowalla awards users ‘pins’ that reflect meeting a specific benchmark. For example, I was just awarded the ‘Sweat it out’ pin for checking-in at my gym 5 times. How’s that for extra motivation?

7) Beautiful interface. It’s no surprise that Gowalla CEO Josh Williams has a design background. The Gowalla team has created a mobile app interface that’s as delightful to look at as the places you are documenting.

Custom stamps. Part of what makes the interface so visually interesting are the custom stamps for locations. Offered in batches, Gowalla sells the right for a location owner to buy a custom designed stamp.

9) Discover new places with ‘Trips.’ Gowalla users can browse a collection of check-in locations recommended by the likes of National Geographic, USA Today, Disney and the entire Gowalla user base.

10) Souvenirs. Gowalla will randomly award users virtual items that can be stored in a virtual back-pack and dropped of at a check-in location. These souvenirs can be swapped, collected and left behind as a permanent marker for another Gowalla user to stumble upon. Some of these items are even redeemable for real-world rewards.

This post originally published on socialfresh.com.

This post started out as a tribute to May Day – searching for creative ways labor unions and anti-union supporters were using Facebook. I had recently read an article about how Facebook could potentially REPLACE labor unions and excitedly went to work looking for well-organized, active pages. What I found instead was a handful of pages that seemed to have little in the way of followers and even less interaction. So, I changed the topic of this post to covering politicians and political groups that DO have a following on Facebook. Below I have outlined the top US politicians on Facebook and what we can learn from their pages.

Union Woes Continue on Facebook

If there ARE active labor union themed pages out there, they are hidden deep within Facebook’s inept search function. I was able to find this page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Union-Labor-Works – one of the few union pages I could find with more than 10 fans. The page had only one wall post and 233 ‘likers.’ There were no custom tabs and I could find very little information about the organization. No photos, no videos, nada. There WERE active groups and events surrounding union topics and perhaps these Facebook tools work better to provide an on-line rallying cry.

Facebook pages ARE a great way to communicate a personalized message to thousands, if not millions, of voters. Politicians have been effectively using the platform for years and some attribute Obama’s win in 2008 to his effective social media efforts. I wanted to take a fresh look at how today’s politicians were leveraging the platform. Among Facebook’s top political pages are some key insights that business owners and marketers can apply to their own campaigns and Facebook communities. Below I have provided an ‘at-a-glance chart’ of some of Facebook’s top politicians with more comprehensive page details and screenshots below.

The Top 10 Chart

Ranking	Facebook Page	Likers
	Barack Obama	19,759,968
	Sarah Palin	2,930,473
	Jan Brewer	409,301
	Jerry Brown	118,129
	BoycottScottWalkerContributors	23,391
	Scott Walker for Governor	41,739
	Michele Bachmann	242,14
	Nancy Pelosi	39,981
	John McCain	795,944
	1,000,000 People that want Nancy Pelosi Out of office!	34,459

Facebook Page Details, Screenshots and Key Insights

1) Barack Obama – Great use of interactive Facebook application
Likers – 19,759,968
Allows fans to post on wall – NO
Call to action – YES
Frequency of updates – DAILY, about once per day

The first item catching my eye on the President’s page was a message from Barack himself offering condolences to those who lost family members due to the tornadoes that swept across the Southern US. The update was posted about 20 minutes prior to my visiting the page and it made me feel the closest I have ever felt to a US president.

There was no pomp and circumstance, no press corps, no teleprompter. To all appearances, it simply reflects the man running our country updating his Facebook page with a heartfelt message directly to me. Of course I knew the President had a Facebook page, but it took visiting the page to be truly struck by how accessible the world is becoming due to platforms like Facebook.

Other page features included an ‘Are You In?’ tab that housed a 2012 graphic and a button. I was worried the button would take me away from Facebook but instead it simply updated the graphic within the iFrame and asked that I spread the 2012 message to my friends. The clever application populated my friends that had already joined the movement and offered up an invite to those who hadn’t. It also tracked how many friends I had ‘inspired’ to join the movement. Brilliant.

There was also a store tab that took the user off Facebook in order to buy 2012 campaign gear. It appeared to be an outdated FBML tab. My only complaint: it would have been cool to find some fCommerce on the page.

2) Sarah Palin – Controversial updates work well to elicit user engagement
Likers – 2,930,473
Allows fans to post on wall – YES
Call to action – YES
Frequency of updates – WEEKLY, a few times per week

Upon first visit to the infamous Sarah Palin Facebook page, I’m directed to the wall. The top wall posts by fans include requests she run for president, anti-Trump rhetoric, demands to see Obama’s birth certificate, and one complaint that a donation to SarahPAC didn’t ‘go through.’

The custom tabs include a call-out to donate but I was disappointed that I had to link-out to take action. The tab appeared to be an FBML tab that housed a simple hot-spotted graphic. Argh. The ‘YouTube Box’ tab didn’t appear to work in the latest version of Firefox so I quickly jumped into IE and it wasn’t working there either. The Photos tab had a handful of images of Sarah looking her best 7 months ago. I’m guessing ‘likers’ aren’t permitted to upload photos.

Sarah’s updates on her wall are brief soundbites presumably written by her – in her unique voice. Most of them are inspirational snippets that appeal to her conservative base of supporters. Every official post elicits thousands of comments from her 2 million plus group of Facebook ‘likers.’ Nice job Sarah! This strategy works for a celebrity, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the owner of a local coffee shop. If you aren’t lucky enough to have celebrity status, then creating these types of rhetorical status updates may not be as successful at garnering community participation.

3) Jan Brewer – Great images get attention and incite user action
Likers – 409,301
Allows fans to post on wall – NO
Call to action – YES
Frequency of updates – WEEKLY, 3-5 times per week

JACKPOT!!! This is exactly what I was looking for when I started researching this post. Jan Brewer’s page has been touted as one of the fastest growing political pages on Facebook. So the question is WHY?

The landing tab has an ‘in your face’ request to click the LIKE button coupled with an AWESOME graphic of Brewer posing as ‘Rosie the Riveter’. I literally ‘LOLed when I first saw it, as it succeeds at capturing her likeness a little TOO well.

The wall contains almost daily updates by the Governor, giving ‘likers’ an insider’s view of her battle with the federal government. According to her page, ‘the Feds,’ as she calls them, are planning to sue Arizona and she has made them enemy number one.

Customized tabs include a Secure Our Border Petition – a simple call to action that displays how many signatures have been gathered so far. I’m surprised this is the first time I have seen a petition on a Facebook tab during my research for this article.

There’s also an FBML tab simply labeled ‘Jan Brewer’ that allows supporters to send birthday wishes to the Governor, although her birthday isn’t until September. Huh. One can only assume this is a holdover from last year. The application asks for the users name, email and a 140 character message. No info on what they plan on using the email address for or why it has to only be 140 characters. Are they posting the messages to Twitter? Once the form is completed, it display a card graphic with the customized message.

Jan has also used her page ‘likes’ column wisely, featuring other relevant pages – including Proud to be an American, National Rifle Association, Being Conservative and Nevada Against Illegal Immigration.

4) Jerry Brown – Make your page personable
Likers – 118,129
Allows fans to post on wall – YES
Call to action – YES
Frequency of updates – WEEKLY, 3-4 times per week

OK – quick disclaimer. I worked on Jerry Brown’s presidential primary campaign in college. Back then he was WAY ahead of the game in terms of using technology to help the cause. So I had high expectations for his Facebook page.

His page offered up a non-liker landing tab that had a strong call to action – “Click Like above to join Jerry Brown and get California working again!” The landing tab also featured a ‘feel-good’ video that did an excellent job of showing what the California Governor is all about. Old footage of him flying coach, discussing how he sold the $1.5 million dollar Governor’s mansion and driving a powder blue 74′ Plymouth.

The wall was one of the few that actually allowed updates from ‘likers,’ reinforcing that Jerry Brown is still a man of the people, allowing everyone a voice. Other tabs included an FBML tab entitled ‘Solutions’ – attempting to clearly outline his policies and actions to get the state back on track.

The Photos tab featured a shot of him as a boy and other personal shots of him throughout the years. It was great to see something OTHER than the standard PR shots. I would have liked to see creative use of the wall photostrip. Otherwise – GREAT JOB JERRY!

5) BoycottScottWalkerContributors - Clearly defined ‘Call to Action’
Likers – 23,391
Allows fans to post on wall – YES
Call to action – YES
Frequency of updates – DAILY 3-6 times per day

23,000 fans strong, this page is well-organized and features a very clear call to action. The Info link exposes Scott Walker’s campaign contributors and requests they be boycotted. The mission of the page is clearly stated:

To bring economic woe to companies that support Scott Walker, and therefore his anti-worker, anti-education and anti-progress politics.

The Photos tab included a graphic, once again spelling out the page’s main call to action and some photoshopped images of the Governor himself.

6) Scott Walker for governor – Be sure to list benefits of submitting forms on Facebook
Likers – 41,739
Allows fans to post on wall – YES
Call to action – YES
Frequency of updates – WEEKLY 3 -4 times per week

On the opposite side of this political fence, we have the Scott Walker for Governor of Wisconsin page. The landing tab asks visitors to join the ‘brown bag movement’ and includes a brief form. What the tab does NOT include are any REASONS why I should join and give them my information. There’s also a call-out to his website – scottwalker.org – which links out to another form OFF of Facebook. This form DOES list some benefits of membership in a font so small that it looks like ‘fine print.’ Benefits include:

Take action to build a better Wisconsin
Watch your impact spread across the state
Connect with other supporters
Find Walker events and receive the latest updates from the campaign

The wall appears to be very active with over 200 comments on the last official page post from about a week ago. Taking the time to click on ‘top posts’ reveals a more recent post from a page ‘liker.’ The post sparked quite a debate over funding education and it’s difficult to determine how serious it is – you can be the judge:

Maria Olson: people are so rude omg so like i think that scott walker is all like doing the right thing and stuff so get over it people are just acting all stupid and shiyt so dont call me a retard jeesh im 13 and im in honors !

Other tabs included Flickr with images from the ‘Brown Bag Bus Tour,’ YouTube tab featuring Scott Walker TV ads and Ustream; where you can sign up for live webcasts.

7) Michele Bachmann – Don’t overwhelm ‘likers’ with too many tabs
Likers – 242,114
Allows fans to post on wall – YES
Call to action – YES
Frequency of updates – DAILY, 1-2 times per day

No landing tab for Ms. Bachmann, but plenty of activity on her wall. The Congresswoman updates the page multiple times per day – as do her ‘likers’. The page houses several FBML tabs, including a request to sign her petition telling congress “Don’t Raise the Debt Ceiling.” She’s also asking for phone numbers so she can send text alerts to her supporters. Other tabs include ‘Donate,’ Email Updates and even a ‘Livestream’ tab, where you can presumably watch her live-streaming video channel.

There are a grand total of 15 tabs, none of which are particularly well-designed. I would prefer to have 3-5 well-designed tabs that demonstrate a clear call to action.

Nancy Pelosi – Clearly define potentially controversial page policies
Likers – 39,981
Allows fans to post on wall – YES
Call to action – NO
Frequency of updates – WEEKLY, 3-4 times per week

No landing tab, no nonsense. The Pelosi page offers updates by both Pelosi and her 40,000 fans. The only customized tab was a simple FBML tab, outlining her policy on page comments. I’m actually surprised I didn’t run into this sooner. The tab simply states:

All points of view are welcome on this page but ask that comments be civil. The administrators will delete comments that use profane or offensive language. Thank you for your help in keeping this page an environment for all to participate!

No creative use of the photostrip.
No personal photos.

The wall posts by Pelosi were more thoughtful than most and were quite substantial. She clearly outlines her struggles as the Democratic Leader of the House. She has also ‘liked’ a few other pages that speak to her supporters – ‘Stand Up For Women,’ MomsRising.org and Health Care Reform.

9) John McCain – Why bother with a BORING page? Use Facebook’s rich-media tools to engage users.
Likers – 795,944
Allows fans to post on wall – NO
Call to action – NO
Frequency of updates – DAILY, about once per day

Very simple page with NO video tab – go figure. The page simply offered up photos of McCain at various photo ops and brief wall updates from the Senator. The updates were so lackluster that I actually believe they could have been written by the McCain himself. I would have liked to see a bit more information on the page but there wasn’t even an info box below the profile pic.

10) 1,000,000 People that want Nancy Pelosi Out of office! – REMOVE spam from your page and update regularly
Likers – 34,459
Allows fans to post on wall – YES
Call to action – NO
Frequency of updates – MONTHLY, last update July 31st

When searching for Nancy’s page, I stumbled upon this anti-Pelosi page. Having almost as many ‘likers’ as her official page, it looked worth reviewing. Upon further inspection, the page was pretty bare bones. Unattractive photos of Pelosi, including an image of a T-shirt that proclaims: “Pelosi is Grossi!”

The last official update by the page admin was in July and supporter updates included quips about fraudulent birth certificates, SPAM for ‘nice and cheap clothes’ and, of course, anti-Pelosi rhetoric. No tabs to speak off – Wall, Info, Photos and a discussions tab that was last updated 10 months ago.

Key Facebook Page Insights

So what can we learn from these politicians who make it their job to connect with constituents? After reviewing the most active political pages, there are a handful of keen insights that can help refine any campaign. Union organizers attempting to promote the cause via Facebook, these tips are for you.

• Facebook page update frequency can’t be templated – Each online community is unique and responds differently to the amount of content you send their way. Do some testing around the number of updates each week and the timing of each update. Facebook Insights can help you determine what your ‘likers’ can tolerate and when they have had enough.
• Make sure Facebook applications serve a purpose and provide value to the community
• Use rich media and images wisely to illicit user engagement
• Don’t overwhelm ‘likers’ with too many options, including customized ‘tabs’
• Clearly outline any controversial or limiting page policies to ‘likers’
• Provide a clear ‘call to action’ on your Facebook page and outline the benefits to community members who take action