5 common Facebook news feed issues and how to fix them

April 13, 2016Azure Collier Leave a comment

Ah Facebook. We love it, but there’s a few things that baffle us when we’re posting to and scrolling through its news feed.

Luckily, there are a few fixes to these common issues and I’m happy to share what I’ve learned to make your Facebook activity a more pleasant experience.

1. Facebook doesn’t show me posts from my favorite businesses.

You might not be aware that Facebook doesn’t show you every single post from every friend and business page you like. Which is a good thing! The average Facebook user has 338 friends and likes 70 Facebook business pages. Can you imagine scrolling through every little thought that is posted by your community all the time?

Facebook tries to give you an experience that’s more tailored to who you’re actually interacting with by using an algorithm to curate content that you might like. So, if you haven’t been interacting with your favorite businesses because their posts aren’t popular enough or because maybe they haven’t been actively posting, you may be missing out on posts that you actually want to see. How many restaurant specials, retail sales, or local events have you heard about after they’ve already happened? Chances are these pages have been sharing this information on Facebook, but the news feed algorithm doesn’t show them to your feed.

There are two ways to solve this:

First, go to the Facebook page of a business, and hover over the Like button that appears over the cover photo. You’ll see a few choices: See First, Default and Unfollow. See First shares the page’s post first at the top of the feed. Default means that the posts will be sorted and posted according to Facebook’s algorithm. Click See First to see this page’s posts at the top of the feed.

The second option is to create an Interests list for pages you don’t want to miss. Start by clicking The Interests category on the left side of your Facebook news feed menu. Then, create an Interests lists by clicking the +Add Interests button. Next, click the +Create List button, and Facebook will bring up a window with a list of all of the pages you follow. Select the ones you want in your list, name your list, chose its visibility (public, your friends, or only you), and click Done to save.

I created a list for local restaurants in my area, and now I can check for recent posts from those restaurants so I never miss a special deal or new menu item.

Issue 2: Facebook shows me ads that don’t fit my preferences.

Sometimes you’ll see a sponsored post in your feed and wonder why it’s there because it’s about something you’re not interested in at all.

Clean up the ads in your feed by clicking the dropdown menu in the right corner of the ad and click the Hide ad option. You can make Facebook show ads that are more tailored to your interests by clicking the Why am I seeing this? option.

Facebook will share why you’re seeing the ad based on the interests that were selected by the page that placed the ad. Facebook assigns these preferences to you based on not only what types of pages you like, but what ads you’ve clicked on in the past, and content you’ve clicked on on and off Facebook.

If Facebook has chosen ad preferences that don’t match what you like, click the Manage Your Ad Preferences, and then hit the X button to delete preferences you don’t want.

Issue 3: Facebook includes the wrong photo when I’m sharing a link.

Sometimes if you’re sharing a link to a webpage that has several images, Facebook will upload one with your post that’s not relevant. This happens a lot when sharing links to news sites, which means a photo of a car crash could appear next to a link you’re posting about a viral cat video. You do not want to illustrate a happy story with a tragic image!

If you see a set of arrows in the top left corner of the image that appears above your link, that means Facebook has found multiple images on the page you’re linking to. Simply tab through until you find the one that fits your post.

Issue 4: The link I’m sharing on Facebook doesn’t display an image in the post.

I don’t know enough about code to know why Facebook sometimes doesn’t pull in an image from a link you’re sharing in a post, but you do need a photo to draw peoples’ eyes to your post. There is something you can do to fix this, but you need to start over with your Facebook post.

Instead of placing the link first in your status updates, start your post by uploading a photo first. You can right click on an image from the webpage you’re trying to share and save it to your desktop or take a screenshot and save it to your desktop. Then upload that photo to your status update and add the link in the text box.

The post won’t automatically populate with the headline and description of the page, so you’ll have to remember to include that relevant information in your post.

Issue 5: Facebook is showing me On This Day reminders for people I’d rather not see.

Unfortunate things happen to the people in our lives – deaths, breakups, or friendships that end badly. Facebook’s On This Day app doesn’t know this, so these people or moments who remind us of heartbreak will sometimes appear in the posts from the past that it suggests each day. And if you start your day by scrolling through Facebook, you don’t want it to begin with these reminders.

You can, however, tell the On This Day app to stop showing you posts that involve the people you don’t want to be reminded of. Start by going to the Apps section in the left side of your Facebook menu, and choose the On This Day app. Then click the Preferences button. From there, you can tell the app to avoid reminding you of certain people and dates. One note about the people filter: it can only block people who you are friends with or who allow you to see that they have a Facebook profile. If someone has blocked you from seeing they exist on Facebook, you can’t select them for the filter.

Did I miss anything?

These are 5 common issues I’ve been experiencing when posting to Facebook, and if any of these are yours, I hope I’ve helped you make your Facebook news feed a happier place.

If you have more annoying things Facebook does, let me know in the comments. If you don’t know how to fix them, let me know and I’ll find a solution for you!

6 tricks to get more clicks

July 31, 2014Azure Collier Leave a comment

Anyone who uses social media marketing to promote themselves or their business wants people to see and interact with all the content they’re sharing. Sometimes that just doesn’t happen. You have an off day, a post that gets less engagement than you had hoped, or nothing but crickets.

But there are a few things you can do with your social posts to increase the odds of engagement. Here are 6 tricks to get you more clicks.

1. Use hashtags

Hashtags help to highlight the topics you’re talking about in a social post and make your content more searchable. And they’re used on all the social networks. When you use a hashtag, the network will turn it into a link, and when you click on it, you’ll see all the posts on that network that also use that hashtag. When people click on those hashtags, your post will be shown as part of that conversation. Take a look at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ and Instagram and see what topics are trending. Use relevant hashtags for those topics in your post, and your content will be more likely to be seen by a larger audience.

When Spike TV’s Frankenfood truck stopped by my office to give out free samples and publicize the show, I took an Instagram photo, and shared it on Twitter, using their #frankenfood hashtag in both places. Frankenfood saw the tweet and retweeted it, resulting in a 52 engagement actions, including 14 link clicks, 11 clicks on the tweet to expand it, 9 clicks on the photo, and 7 favorites.

2. Use the hashtag #mostpopular
Everyone is interested in the latest trends – we want to know what everyone is talking about, what’s popular. Why can’t it be your content?

If you’ve been using a link shortener like bit.ly or Hootsuite’s ow.ly when you’re sharing links to your content or curated content, check your stats at the end of the week. Which of your posts got the most engagement? Retweet yourself or repost on Facebook using the same link and tell your followers it was your best content of the week by adding the hashtag #mostpopular. Anyone who read it or missed it will see that it was trending and they’ll be curious – why was this so popular?

A few weeks ago, I tweeted a link to a blog post about the Seinfeld emoji app, and also shared the link to the blog post on Facebook.

It got the most clicks out of my tweets that week, so I retweeted it that Friday as my #mostpopular tweet, and got a few more clicks.

3. Use an interesting fact, stat or tip

People love trivia and learning little nuggets of information that help them connect the dots about what’s happening in the world around them. Think about the content you personally or your friends share on Facebook. I bet there’s at least one thing that shows up in your news feed that makes you think “Hey! I didn’t know that. Pretty cool.” Do the same thing for your followers. Share something that makes you say that, but make sure it’s relevant to your business and your social voice, and link to the news story or blog post that talks about the stat, fact or tip.

Make it stand out visually – create some graphics with free tools like PicMonkey or Canva to Illustrate your stat, fact or tip. Share the image in your social post and link back to the blog post or article.

Here’s a tweet I posted that includes a link to tips on finding the best time to post on social media. People are always looking for tips like this!

4. Share multimedia
By now, it’s no secret that photos, video and graphics get more engagement than a text post. It’s why all of the top networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, and Instagram have either improved the quality of the display of visual posts in their newsfeed, or added it or are all visual. If you haven’t started sharing multimedia, what are you waiting for?

Post photos to visualize your blog posts. Post photos on their own. Show off what you do, what you sell, or what happens behind the scenes (to show off your personality). You don’t need a professional camera for this. Use that gadget you keep in your pocket all day and on your bedside table at night – your smartphone. Smartphone cameras have improved a lot. That’s one of the reasons your iPhone is so expensive. It’s a fancy camera! Just make sure your photos are sized appropriately for the social network you’re posting to. Not sure what size you need? Check out this handy social media size guide for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram.

This is a simple photo collage I shared on Twitter when our office started offering manicures at work from Manicube. You can see it got some nice engagement when you view the stats via Twitter’s analytics tools – 13 clicks to view the photo, 10 clicks on the link (which linked to the original Instagram photo), a few favorites, retweets and clicks on my profile. Pretty sweet!

Please promise me that you won’t use your iPad or whatever tablet you own to take pictures. That’s embarrassing. It looks like you’re holding up a book and smashing your face in it. Just don’t. Cameras are tiny. Use your smartphone.

Your phone also records video, so share that too. Record a greeting to your fans – tell them what’s new. Or try a how to video that includes instructions on how to use one of your products. Just make sure the video is short. Attention spans have changed – more than half of viewers will stop watching a video within the first 90 seconds.

5. Tag people
If you want people to see your posts, sometimes you have to do something that personally asks them “Hey would you please click on this?”.Try tagging people in your posts. When you tag someone, they get a notification and they’ll be more likely to click on your post and share with their networks, which gets you more clicks.

But don’t be obnoxious about it, like this person. It’s like they’re on a public sidewalk shoving a flyer in my face: “HEY I DON’T KNOW YOU, BUT READ THIS THING!” First of all, I don’t know who you are and if you’re credible. Secondly, you clearly aren’t a social media expert because you didn’t shrink your link in your Twitter post and you maxed out your 140 characters with a long link. So no, I might not like your post. Also, I might just block you and report you for spam.

How do you do it the right way? Relevance. Tag them if you or someone else mentions them in the thing you’re linking to (like a blog post). Tag them if you have a relationship with a person and you know them well enough that they would be interested in the thing you’re linking to. I tag my alma mater, Purdue University, when I see a blog post or news article that mentions them or their community (which is also my hometown). Sometimes they are very generous and retweet me, which gives my tweet more exposure to their 44,000 followers. Here’s a recent tweet I shared about a Forbes article that listed my hometown as one of the top places for small businesses and careers. It’s relevant to Purdue so they retweeted it. According to Twitter’s analytics, the link got 66 clicks!

6. Post on multiple networks

Another great way to get clicks is to post the same content on multiple social networks so that more people will see it. You don’t have to be on every network – just the ones that are relevant to you and your audience.

It’s OK to post on multiple places because your followers aren’t exactly the same people following you every place. If you were to print out a list of your Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Instagram followers, etc., you might have some overlap, but there could be some people who follow you on one or a few places, but not all. Don’t isolate your content to one network – people might not catch it there if they follow you on a different network. Or if they are following you on multiple places, well, clearly they like you. They won’t mind seeing the same thing a few times – in fact, they might scroll by and make a mental note to read your content later when they see it on Facebook, and make the move to click when they pass by it on Twitter.

Just make sure that you are not auto-posting and blasting out the same exact thing to multiple places. Keep in mind the nuances and etiquette of posting on each channel. If you’re auto-posting your Facebook posts to Twitter, those Facebook posts won’t work as tweets. If you exceed the 140 character limit in your Facebook post, it will get cut off on Twitter, which means a long link you post on Facebook might end prematurely in your tweet. Also, if you’re not changing up the content a little bit for each channel, you’re not really giving people a reason to follow you in multiple places.

Also, make sure you are shrinking your link so you can tell where the traffic came from. I shortened the link to an infographic I created and shared it on my personal Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Notice how each of the posts are a little bit different:

According to HootSuite, it got 22 clicks in the first 24 hours. On the day I posted it, it was the only one of the links from my tweets that I shared on multiple networks. You can see referrals came in from LinkedIn and Facebook.

How do you get clicks?

These are just 6 examples of how to get engagement with your content. How do you do it? Leave your tips in the comments or link to tips that you’ve seen on other blogs. I’d love to learn a few new tips!

4 common mistakes people make on social media posts (and how to fix them)

June 29, 2014Azure Collier Leave a comment

Admit it: You’ve looked through your Facebook or Twitter feed and cringed when someone uses the wrong your/you’re, its/it’s or they’re/there/their. I know I’ve done it.

Here are 4 more mistakes to add to the list. If you’re doing this, don’t worry. You can fix it. I won’t tell anyone:

1. He he vs. hee hee

A lot of people are laughing the wrong way on the Internet. Laughter is not the pronoun he. If you’re saying “He he he!”, what you’re really saying is “A male person a male person a male person!”

There’s actually another e. It’s hee hee.

2. Whoa or woah?

People are also expressing shock or surprise the wrong way. Crazy, right? It’s actually spelled whoa. You know, like what cowboys yelled to stop a horse. “Whoa, Nelly!” If you don’t remember which spelling to use, just write wow. That one’s hard to screw up.

3. Decades and the apostrophe

The poor little apostrophe. It’s misunderstood and abused! One of the uses of an apostrophe is a contraction. If you’re using a contraction, the apostrophe is taking the place of something that’s missing. When you list decades and leave off the first 2 numbers of the century, the apostrophe should take their place. So 1990s becomes ‘90s. If you’re using the apostrophe between the numbers and the s, you’re making the decade possessive. And that’s just weird.

4. Using symbols in a hashtag

I don’t think this person was deliberately trying to use an exclamation point in her hashtag. But you can see that it’s right next to the words in the hashtag and isn’t part of the highlighted text.

A hashtag on Twitter – or really on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram because you can also use hashtags on those networks – is the pound sign in front of a word or a phrase that uses letters and numbers. Twitter will take whatever you put after the pound sign and turn it into a clickable link that you can use to find other tweets with that hashtag. But it doesn’t use numbers or symbols. So don’t even try to use them in your hashtags. They won’t work.

What mistakes do you see most often?

These are a few of my pet peeves. What drives you nuts in a social media post? Let me know in the comments!

Why I’m not participating in restaurant week: Your Facebook posts don’t link to your menu

February 28, 2014Azure Collier Leave a comment

On paper, restaurant week is a great idea. If you haven’t heard of restaurant week, it’s a week out of the year where the restaurants of a community offer special prices and menus to drive people to local dining establishments.

Pretty cool, right? Eat local! Spend local! I’m for it.

Until the restaurants and organizers of restaurant week try to execute the event online. What happens is the organizers cobble together a horrible looking website using every font available in their publishing platform, hastily throw up a Facebook page and attempt – but fail – to provide prospective diners with the necessary information.

I’m not talking about the dates and the list of restaurants themselves. What I’m talking about is what every diner who searches for a restaurant online is looking for: the special restaurant week-only menu.

Aside from reviews on Facebook and Yelp, the menu is a key factor in the decision making process for which establishment gets our money. What are you serving? Do I like it? Will my friends/kids/family/co-workers who have gluten-free/picky eating/vegetarian issues be able to enjoy anything on your menu?

For some reason, restaurant week event organizers don’t get this, and they link to everything else besides the menu in their Facebook posts. They link to the Facebook pages of participating restaurants, the restaurants’ homepages, and their aforementioned terrible event website. All the links on the event’s website are also typically to the participating restaurants’ homepages. Although they did a good job reminding fans and posting delicious food photos, after post after post on one local restaurant week’s Facebook page linked to everything but the menus.

Linking to the homepage of a restaurant does not bring me to the restaurant week menu because restaurants typically build a special page for it. The restaurant owners and workers and their marketing folks know where to find it – they spend every day on their website. But the prospective customers who may use restaurant week to try you out have no idea where that special menu is or how to get to it. They don’t use your site every day, and they are not going to spend more than 2 clicks trying to find your menu.

So you’re going to get a scenario like the one I experienced with my friends this week. We picked a day, and then chatted on Facebook messenger to find a restaurant we could all agree on. The local restaurant week’s webpage listed the homepage of 18 participating restaurants. After a few tries of searching and failing to find the restaurant week menus, we decided to try the restaurant week of another nearby town. We found the same situation with the next town’s website, and they had 42 restaurants listed. Who has the time or energy to look all over the interwebs to find the restaurant week menus of 42 restaurants?

Restaurant week fail. We gave up.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. Here’s one Facebook fan’s response to the Restaurant Week Menu Quest:

Do not make customers work to complete a call to action. They will give up.
So my point is this: If you want people to do something, link to the thing you want them to do. This is not just for restaurant week. This is for any marketing anyone does anywhere, no matter if you’re doing it for an event or your business. Do not make people work to follow through on the call to action. It’s that simple. You want people to come to your business. Make it easy for them to come to your business. You spend a lot of time and money on your websites and social media marketing. You want prospective customers to view all the pages of all the fabulous things you have to offer. I get it. Just get them there first. If they want to come back, and want to learn more by perusing your Facebook posts and website, they will.

3 easy tips to make your social media content look professional

January 30, 2014Azure Collier 2 Comments

There’s a lot of noise in the newsfeeds of social media networks. A lot of clutter and sloppiness.

But your content doesn’t have to look like that. Your posts can stand out from everyone else’s. Before you share, take a moment and use these 3 easy tips to look professional

1. Shorten your links

When you include a link in a post or a tweet, avoid long URLs. They just look bad. And if you’re writing a tweet, a long link can get cut off if you go past 140 characters.

The solution is a link shortener. I’ve used HootSuite’s link shortener and bit.ly, an there are a number of others out there. I used HootSuite to shorten the link for this tweet:

The benefit of using a link shortener is that many of them include tracking tools so you can see how many clicks your link got and – if you share that same link on multiple platforms (bonus points for this!) – you can see which platform gave you the most engagement. Here’s a look at HootSuite’s reporting tools:

2. Change how your link is displayed

When you share a link on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, the URL is in your status update, and a preview of the webpage you’re sharing shows up below by pulling an image from the site, as well as a title and subtitle.

Once that link preview shows up, delete the URL in your post. You don’t need it because it’s still active in the preview.

Then use editing tools to clean up your link preview. These editing options are all pretty similar for Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Make sure you’re pulling in the image you want. If there’s more than one image on the website you’re linking to, you can choose to display the most relevant image. Click on the arrow below the image to flip through the options.

You can also edit the title, subtitle (if shown), and the first sentence or two that are pulled from the website. Sometimes the link preview will cut off sentences once they’ve reached a character limit. Click in the editor in the link preview and clean up the text.

Here’s a cleaned up Facebook link post for one of the nonprofits I volunteer with:

3. Crop your photos

Did you know that each social network displays images a little differently and resizes them based on the network’s design? Make this work to your advantage. If you’re sharing a photo, crop it for the best possible display for whatever network your posting to.

This cheat sheet lists all of the photo sizes for each kind of image – from profile to cover photo to photo posts – for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube. Don’t have photo editing software to crop your images? Try a free service like PicMonkey.

I created this image in PicMonkey and cropped it for optimal display in the newsfeed. This post is for the Facebook page of the nonprofit I mentioned earlier. You’ll notice that I have a link in the text for this post because you can’t go to it by clicking the image:

Look great!

These tweaks take a few minutes, but they’ll make your posts look like the pros. Once you get in the habit of shortening your links, editing your link preview and cropping your photos, you’ll be able to optimize your social media content, look professional and attract the attention and engagement of your fans.

Got more tips? I’d love to hear them in the comments!

Living in a Facebook utopia: How to remove annoying posts from your News Feed

November 26, 2013Azure Collier 2 Comments

We all have the best of intentions when we’re posting to Facebook. But let’s face it – sometimes we (me included – I’m guilty) are annoying and our friends and family are annoying. Facebook can be one big News Feed of annoying.

But I have gotten pretty good at building what I call a Facebook News Feed Annoyance Deflector by using a combination of settings and a Google Chrome extension. Here’s a list of things that I use that you can apply to your own Facebook News Feed browsing to make it so excellent that you will live in a Facebook News Feed utopia filled with only the things you like.

Facebook Settings

1. Unchecking a friend’s follow setting

For: When you love your friends, but you don’t love their Facebook posts and you don’t want to see them in your News Feed.

How to:

Go to your friend’s Facebook profile.
You’ll see a button on their cover photo that says Following and has a check mark next to it.
To remove their posts from your News Feed, click the Following button to uncheck it. It will now say Follow.
Your friend’s post will no longer appear in your News Feed, allowing you to avoid the drama of unfriending someone but also keep annoying things out of your Facebook experience.

2. Blocking event invitations

For: That friend who lives 1,000 miles away and keeps inviting you to minor events that will require you to make travel arrangements. Or that friend who has bought in to one of those work-from-home sales schemes and invites you to every virtual or in-person event.

How to:

Go to Facebook.
Click on the gear icon on the top right of your page.
Select Privacy Settings.
Once you’re on the Privacy Settings page, click Blocking from the left hand menu.
Scroll down to Block event invites and then type the person’s name into the Block invites from box, and hit Enter.

3. Blocking apps and app invites

For: Anyone who plays FarmVille, Candy Crush … you know what? Just anyone who plays any annoying Facebook games and invites you to all of them.

How to:

Go to Facebook.
Click on the gear icon on the top right of your page.
Select Privacy Settings.
Once you’re on the Privacy Settings page, click Blocking from the left hand menu.
To block individual users, scroll down to Block app invites and then type the person’s name into the Block invites from box, and hit Enter.
To block apps, scroll down to Block app invites and then type the apps name into the Block apps box, and hit Enter.

4. Block yourself from being tagged in photos

For: That person who wants to get your attention about something like a photo of a piece of toast. And tags you in the photo. So then you get a notification and it shows up in your profile under pictures of you. Hey, I do NOT look like a piece of toast!

Go to Facebook.
Click on the gear icon on the top right of your page.
Select Privacy Settings.
Once you’re on the Privacy Settings page, click Timeline and Tagging from the left hand menu.
Go to the Who can add things to my timeline? setting and click Edit.
This setting asks: Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline? Select Enabled from the button below.
Now, every time someone tags you in photos or posts, you are notified, and can choose to add them to your timeline or not.

Google Chrome Extension – Just Block Everything with Rather

The Rather extension for Google Chrome is probably the greatest thing to ever happen to the Facebook News Feed. It blocks all the things you hate by replacing them with Instagram photos of things you like.

To install Rather, open your Google Chrome browser and go to the Rather extension site. You’ll see a blue Free button on the top right. Click to add and the button will change to a green Added to Chrome button so you’ll know it’s installed.

Click the Rather icon – located on the top right of your Chrome browser window – to open the editor. Fill in the keywords for things you want to block, and the hashtags for Instagram photos you want to appear in their place. Rather scans your News Feed, and posts that include keywords for the things on the block list will be replaced by Instagram photos with the hashtags of the things you like. Brilliant.

What are your tips?

Do you have any tips or tools to add to this list? Let me know in the comments. Your tips will help us all build our own versions of the Facebook News Feed utopia. And that’s something to be thankful for.

3 steps to testing content for your Facebook page

October 28, 2013Azure Collier Leave a comment

A common question I hear from people using Facebook for marketing is “What kind of content gets the most engagement?” There’s no easy answer I can give you. But what you can do is test to find out what topics and types your audience is interested in. And you can also take advantage of marketing research that shows what kind of content gets a typical Facebook user’s attention.

That’s what I did recently in September when I started volunteering with the Leominster Office of Emergency Management (LOEM) and helping with their Facebook page. Before I became involved with the page, the organization had been posting text updates about severe weather warnings and links to news or information about public health, safety and emergencies. This was important information that the page’s fans needed to know, but it wasn’t getting them much engagement, spreading the word about what the organization and its volunteers does, or helping to grow their fan numbers.

What was missing from the page was original content, posts that show what happens behind the scenes at LOEM, and photos. If you want to increase your engagement, photos are a great start. Photos get 2 times the engagement of text posts. Photos are also the No. 1 content type shared by Facebook users.

So, for the month of September, I tried posting more of that type of content, and the results showed that this is what the fans want. Here’s how I tested the content:

1. Testing Post Types

We posted 4 text updates during the month and tried 5 photo posts. The text updates included the weather warnings and information about a community event. The photos showed LOEM volunteers in action at a fire and at a booth during an annual festival, as well as a post known as a word image that combined a stock photo of a first aid kit and 4 emergency preparedness tips and a link to more information online. It’s clear from the stats shown above in Facebook Insights that photo posts get the most reach and engagement.

2. Measuring Likes, Comments and Shares

Though photos received more clicks than likes, comments and shares, fans are showed through digital body language by just clicking that they’re interested. Of course I’d love more likes, comments and shares on the page, but the clicks are a good start and indicate strong interest. The activity shows Facebook that these fans want to see our page’s updates in the news feed. And the actions of likes, comments and shares can be seen by our fans’ friends in their news feeds, which gives us greater reach, more exposure and potential page likes. The behind-the-scenes and LOEM in action photos are starting to help spread the word about what the organization does. Since the September tests, there have been a few fan comments thanking volunteers for their work.

3. Posting When Fans are Online

In recent months, as Facebook has updated its Insights, page admins now have access to some great data about when fans are online. The stat – found when you click on the Posts tab in the new Insights – shows an average of how many of your fans are online during each day of the week, as well as during each hour of the day.

So I decided to post 3 out of the 5 photo posts specifically using the When Your Fans Are Online data. The majority of our fans who are online using Facebook are viewing the site from early afternoon to late evening on any given day of the week, from 4 pm to 9 pm. This is pure speculation on my part, but based on the time of day and the gender of our engaged fans (65% women, 40% of them are ages 25-44), many of them may hold day jobs and may be parents. They are using Facebook after work or after their kids are in bed, so they have time to browse Facebook. By posting during those hours, our content has a better chance of being seen in their news feed.

It’s important to note that you shouldn’t solely rely on the When Your Fans Are Online stats. Make sure you’re testing other days and times as well. But the stats are a great start to helping you find a frequency sweet spot.

Results and Moving Forward

There’s a lot more that you can test when posting Facebook content, but just looking at these 3 factors helped us determine that trying visual content that showed what the LOEM was about is a great start to improving the page. As more people interacted with and commented on our content, that engagement was seen by their fans, and that helped to influence fan growth. The LOEM page gained 10 fans in September. To some people, that may not be a lot, but to a small organization, those small gains are a fantastic step forward. We’re continuing to post photos and testing to see what other types or topics our fans will engage with.

Need more Facebook help?

Check out my other posts on Facebook marketing or ask your questions in this post’s comments.

How to get volunteers involved in social media during your nonprofit event

September 30, 2013Azure Collier Leave a comment

I recently volunteered with the social media marketing for my local United Way’s Day of Caring for the third year in a row. If you haven’t heard of this event, it’s a day-long volunteering event where United Way chapters pair employees of local businesses with service projects at local nonprofits. I’ve written about volunteering for them before, and focused on how nonprofits can use social media to promote their events.

This year I noticed more social media participation from volunteers, which is key for nonprofits. Their volunteers are their biggest supporters, and social media provides an easy way for them to create social visibility for nonprofit causes. What did we do this year to encourage conversation? Check out these tips to get volunteers to share your event on social media.

My Instagram college from the Day of Caring kickoff.

Start at the kickoff

Over the last 3 years, we’ve become more vocal to volunteers about sharing their day on social media. Don’t just assume that people will take photos and post them or tweet using your event hashtag. Tell them to do it. Encourage them. The event kickoff is a great place to plant the seed. We add it to the “housekeeping” portion of the event kickoff speeches. Everyone is listening to instructions at that time, so we will list Facebook and Twitter URLs and the event hashtag on the screen, and our speaker will hold up their smartphone and reassure volunteers that they can and should use them during the day.

Send staff to the sites

The Day of Caring involves more than 600 volunteers at 62 project sites. Throughout the day, the sites are visited by project leaders, United Way staff and volunteer photographers. The organizers and photographers remind the volunteers – many of whom are already capturing their day with their smartphones – to share their experience on social media. And the volunteer photographers remind them that their photos can be found later on the United Way Facebook page.

Encourage people to tag themselves

When I posted the event’s photo album on Facebook, I tagged businesses, nonprofit agencies who have Facebook pages, and any people that I was personally connected to as friends. They’ll all get a notification that they’ve been tagged. The tagging and any activity they create when they check out the photo album will be seen by their friends in the newsfeed, and that creates social visibility among their networks.

Post when your fans are online

One of the best updates to Facebook Insights has been the When Your Fans Are Online stats. This tool looks at your fans over the most recent week, and determines the average number of your fans who are using Facebook on each day of the week and each hour of the day.

If you haven’t found this tool yet, the steps are below:

The Day of Caring took place on a Thursday, and Facebook Insights showed me that the highest number of fans were online at 9 pm on a Thursday. That’s when I shared the photo album and got great results – our content got 52 likes, 18 comments and 8 shares.

Share your volunteers’ posts

One great way to capture the conversation online during your event is to create a Storify story, which is a collection of social media content from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and more. You can do a search for your event hashtag and save all the public content that’s been posted. When you publish your story, you can also notify the people you quoted that they are mentioned in your content. Here’s a partial screenshot of the Storify story I created for this year’s Day of Caring.

Want more nonprofit tips?

Check out my previous posts on social media and nonprofits:

Why aren’t people attending your events? 3 event marketing don’ts

July 23, 2013Azure Collier Leave a comment

If you’ve ever planned events, you know how frustrating it can be if they don’t turn out the way you thought. Fortunately for me, I’ve planned smaller meetup-type social events that aren’t the fundraising kind. Even if only a few people show up and have a few drinks and a few laughs, you and your guests can consider it a successful evening.

You would think that social media marketing would give event planners a huge leg up to get tickets sold and butts in seats. It’s summertime right now – a busy time for events – and my friends and I are checking out festivals and meetups on a regular basis.

But I’ve seen so many huge, basic event marketing mistakes that make me wonder if anyone is forking over their dollars to pay an admission fee. Here are 3 event marketing don’ts. Names and identifying features are blacked out to protect the guilty. Hey, I’m annoyed, but I’m not a jerk.

Don’t forget vital information – like the time. And LISTEN to your Facebook fans.

I recently paid $112 for 2 tickets to a brand-new music festival. Happy to do so – my husband and I love one of the bands that’s playing, the festival is 5 miles from our house, and neither of us had plans for the day.

The problem? We’ve heard about the festival for a month, and – even after buying the tickets – could not find the time that it starts and ends. Anywhere. Not on the festival’s official web page, not on their Facebook page, and not on the Ticketmaster site. Despite that, we bought tickets anyway (again – we do not have plans that day and we are really excited to see one of our favorite bands), but none of our friends purchased tickets because they wanted to know the start and end time before committing.

So I decided to ask the festival organizers to give us basic information that should be part of any event’s public-facing digital and social presence. And this happened:

I asked organizers about the time, and – instead of answering me – they liked my comment. What?! Did they even read my comment? I just paid $112 for tickets. Tell me when I need to show up. Why is it so hard to find this out? By the way, their answer was wrong. They officially released the schedule on their website since that post, and the entertainment begins an hour later.

If you are having an event, please make sure the time and date are EVERYWHERE. And make sure the information is CONSISTENT. I’ve never had this experience anywhere else, and it is ridiculous. Attending an event should not involve attendees begging organizers to tell them where to show up.

Don’t put the burden on your attendees. And be professional.

I love 5K races. There’s a few local 5Ks that I’ve participated in since moving to New England. I know – 5Ks are mostly an all-volunteer effort, and sometimes that means you’re not going to get top-notch, professional marketing. But you should make an effort because it could make a difference.

This email is from a 5K I’ve participated in for the last 5 years. The first year, organizers sent an email and did not use blind carbon copy. Everyone on their list was in the To: line. So unprofessional. This year’s email takes the cake:

They sent a reminder through the registration service – my Gmail flagged it as possible Spam. And the organizer tells his potential attendees in a poorly-written email to register ASAP so he doesn’t have to deal with last-minute registrations like he did last year.

Excuse me?

Last-minute registrations are NOT my problem as an attendee for a 5K race. There are a lot of people who do wait until the last minute because of weather. Your communications to attendees should be professional (check your spelling and grammar!), provide the facts, and thank people for even considering your event. That’s it.

Be mobile-friendly

Here’s a reality: A large portion of your audience is finding your event information via mobile. And that’s because a smartphone is an important part of our daily life – 79% of adults age 18-44 have their smartphone with them 22 hours a day. We’re using mobile when we’re meeting up with and talking to our events and making plans. We’re using mobile while we’re watching TV at night. We’re on our smartphones when we’re waiting in line. We are using our smartphones as a way to plan how to spend our money and our free time.

Please make it easy for us to find information about your event, and don’t make us look at things like this:

Can you read this calendar? I can’t. Unless I squint and scroll, and use an un-pinching motion to zoom in. And I’m probably going to click the wrong link because sometimes links are too close together. No matter how much I zoom, I can’t aim that well with my giant finger.

Your website and your event information need to be easy for me to find, read, and scroll on a mobile phone. If it’s not, I’m going to give up and check my email. Or check out my Facebook and Instagram apps. Make sure your font is not tiny. Don’t overload your page with lots of paragraphs and photos. I don’t want to spend 5 minutes scrolling. Give me the basics on one page. Not sure if your event info is mobile friendly? Try it out on your phone, or ask a friend or colleague to check it out. Can they find what they need right away?

What should you do?

I’ve covered the don’ts today, but what should you be doing? Check out my posts on marketing best practices. Or add your suggestions in the comments. If you’ve found examples of event marketing gone wrong or event marketing done right, I’d love to hear about it!

How one small business creates great Facebook content

May 31, 2013Azure Collier 4 Comments

Anyone who uses Facebook for social media marketing is looking for that magic bullet of content: What can I post that will get my fans talking, make them loyal, and spread the word about my business?

One of my favorite local small businesses has figured it out. Modern Edge Art Bar is a studio in my area that offers BYOB painting classes, jewelry classes, birthday parties, and kids classes. I have taken 3 of the BYOB classes, and was thrilled as a non-artist that I could have so much fun with my friends and walk out with a painting I am proud to hang up at home.

When I first heard of Modern Edge last summer, and liked their page, they had a few hundred fans. Since then, they’ve grown to 1,200 fans and have expanded their business – last month they moved to a larger space, increased their staff, and added more classes.

I think that word of mouth had a lot to do with Modern Edge’s growth, and they’re getting great word of mouth through Facebook because of the engaging content they share. Here are 5 ways Modern Edge creates great Facebook content

1. They strike the right tone

Modern Edge doesn’t post bland text updates about products or services. They share information about their business in a friendly, helpful way. This post is about a possible painting for a future BYOB class – it got 33 comments and 133 likes.

2. Photos, photos, photos

There is no mystery about what happens in a Modern Edge art class. They post photos of what project the class will work on. They post during a class. They post photos of happy artists with finished projects. This is the cover photo they posted after a class I attended with my friends.

3. Call to action/get people to share

Want to drive traffic to your products or services? Modern Edge has this down: tell people how many seats are left. Or ask your fans to share on Facebook for a chance to win a free class. This post got 47 comments:

4. They ask for their customers’ opinions

Modern Edge instructors are trained and skilled art teachers. But you can’t fill your classes if no one wants to learn what you’re teaching. They keep their classes fresh by asking their fans what they want.

5. They’re not all business

This Bob Ross meme is spot-on. It’s about art and it’s entertaining to fans, which is why it got 53 shares.

Need more help with Facebook marketing? Check out my other posts about Facebook!

Azure Collier

My take on social media marketing and its impact on how we work, live and consume

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Why aren’t people attending your events? 3 event marketing don’ts

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