It’s a bit late, but I’ll run through the changes and why I think facebook made them anyways. If you haven’t already, you can access your new profile via this link.

In a nutshell the new profile layout has done 4 things

1)

Neatly bundles together basic info about the user at the top of the profile.  This can include job, education, location, relationship status and birth date.

WHY? It gives users viewing the profile a simple, fast snapshot of who that person is, where they are located, how old they are and what type of relationship they are in, if any.  It works to give extremely quick personal context around that individual.

2)

Gives users faster access to the most engaging content about their friends, images. Five images now appear at the top of the profile.  These are the latest images the user was tagged in.

WHY? Again, it is an extremely fast way to understand what the individual currently looks like, who they’ve been hanging out with and essentially what they’ve been doing recently.

3)

Organizes profile information in a smarter way.  New information controls can be found on the left hand side of the profile underneath the profile pic.

WHY? It was tough for users to find personal info about a person through the old profile setup, you had to click the ‘info’ tab at the top of the page then scroll down.  The new design places this info section tab right under the most highly viewed piece of content on the profile page, the profile pic.  I think facebook did some user testing and realized more users would click on the info tab when it was placed here, rather than on the top of the page.

The information displayed on the info page is much more uniform, using images as placeholders as appose to just text.  I would expect this approach to gain more interaction than the previous design.

4)

Provide more social context between the viewer and the user who’s profile the viewer is looking at.  This is by far the coolest thing about the redesign for me.  Social context is key and facebook is just starting to expand out the possibilities that it can provide in this space.  On the right hand side of the page you’ll find info specific to you and the user you are viewing.  Information provided here includes images that both of you are tagged in, interests you both share and the amount of friends you have in common.  Some of you may remember facebook bringing out ‘friendship’ pages about a month or so ago, I believe that was a soft launch for the type of functionality around social context we are now seeing through the new profile layout.

WHY? This info is facebooks greatest strength, it’s secret sauce, it knows more about you and your real-life social network than you probably know yourself and now it’s just starting to surface that information for you to start viewing and using.  It’s THE most potent and engaging information it has about you.  It’s the reason facebook will become the next Google, it’s the reason facebook will run the web for the next 10-15 years.

Hope this gives you get a better understanding about the changes.

FYI – it’s a Richard Branson autobiography

Whoop.

There are basically 4 different ways you can update a facebook page. If you want to be successful in generating engagement on facebook, its incredibly important you understand how each of these updates vary from one another and what they should be used to do.

Text Update

How to : Write the text directly into your pages update publisher (the box at the top of the page) and hit Share.

Effect : This is the only update that will appear and remain at the top of the page, to the right of your page name after you have posted it.

Tip : Everyone who visits your page will see the wall.  Therefore they will also see your last text update (see ‘Effect’ above).  So it’s a smart strategy to have a call to action here, something short, sharp and relevant that won’t take users long to engage with – a question with 2-3 provided answers always works well.

Image Update

How to : Hit the image icon in the bottom left hand corner of the update publisher on your wall.  Now choose from one of the three options provided.

Effect : Image can be clicked in newsfeed and will bring fans into the photos section of your page.  Image updates DO NOT appear and/or remain at the top of the page.

Tip : Image updates are by far the most effective update to generate interaction with your fans, so make sure the image is as unique and eye-catching as possible.  You MUST accompany image updates with text.  Include a short call to action that encourages the user analyze or acknowledge the image then provide feedback on it.  Image updates will a smart call to action are consistently the highest engagement earners in our experience.

Link Update

How to : Hit the link icon in the bottom left hand corner of the update publisher on your wall.  Now paste the destination link into the link box provided.

Effect : Link can be clicked in the newsfeed and will take fans to the destination of the link.  Link updates DO NOT appear and/or remain at the top of the page.

Tip : Used correctly, link updates are the most powerful weapon in facebook marketing.  They basically act as an instant conduit from your fans to anywhere on the web YOU want them to go in just one click, so if you’re a business it makes sense to send them to your business website.  But be warned, the content on your website must be relevant to the fundamental reason your fans are on your page or else click through will be low and credibility will be lost. Rip out the body text of the link and only leave the title and URL as you see above, no one likes information overload and you’re update will be clicked less if its there.

Video Update (includes youtube)

How to : Hit the video icon in the bottom left hand corner of the update publisher on your wall. Now upload the video and hit Share.

How to (youtube) : Read How to on the link update article, it’s exactly the same.  NOTE, youtube videos are kept as links in your page archive, not videos.

Effect : Allows fans to view videos through the newsfeed. Video updates DO NOT appear and/or remain at the top of the page.

Tip : Remember that the majority of fans will view your video through their newsfeed, so keep it short, preferably no longer than 30 secs.  We’ve also always found that including a call to action at the end of the video increases engagement.

Hopefully this is helpful.

I’ve read up on several hints and tips on getting the most out of facebook advertising over the past few months, so I thought I would share three simple strategies that work for mudo in this space.

#1 Use faces.

You’re obviously on the internet right now, chances are you’re on facebook right now too – so head to your newsfeed screen, start at the top of the screen then scroll down to the bottom of the page.  Take note of all the images you see as you’re scrolling down.  What type of image did you see the most? Chances are the majority of images were those of faces, thats because 95% of profile pics on fb are human faces and since roughly 70% of the images on your newsfeed are profile pics, it makes sense that these are the types of images users are most familiar and comfortable with.  Play on this familiarity, use face’s in your facebook ad images.  Users are more likely to notice your ad and are therefore more likely to engage with it, provided your copy is right.  We’ve seen increases in engagement for face images in ad’s versus product shot images with exactly the same title and copy, pretty much every time we run a campaign.

#2 Back the right horse and let it run.

When launching a new campaign, set up 3 different seperate campaign lanes (fruitclient 1, fruitclient 2, fruitclient 3) and run three slightly varied ad’s in each lane.  So in total you have 9 ad’s running through 3 different advertising lanes.  Once the ad’s are approved, let all three lanes run live for about 8 hours.   Now revisit each lane.  My bet is that only one of the 3 ad’s in each lane is bolting, the other two will only have received a fraction of impressions compared to the bolter.  Now pause the other two ad’s and let the bolter suck up all the available daily budget for that lane.  Repeat for the other 2 lanes that you have created.  What’s happening is after 2-3 hours of the campaign being live facebook analyses which ad out of the lane is performing the best, it will then favour that ad in impressions for the duration of the campaign.  If you follow this process over 3-5-7 or 10 lanes and split the entire campaign’s daily budget between these lanes you will generate a far better result in terms of CTR than only running one lane containing 7-10 ad’s.  Backing the right horse from the start will therefore improve your ROI and save you or your client money.

#3 Set a target Click Through Rate

After you have run your ad’s for the first 8 hours and backed your best performing ad’s, choose a Click Through Rate (CTR) target that you don’t want your ad’s to fall under.  This can best be calculated by looking at the current click through rate of your ad’s, they won’t get much better than what they’re sitting at about a day after launching – traditionally the CTR will decrease incrementally each day from launch.   So set a target CTR based on the launch CTR, then when your ad or ad’s fall below this CTR, swap a new advert in.  Theres a small strategy to swapping new ad’s in during a campaign.  Firstly, about 48 hours after your first ad’s are launched, analyse which is the best performing, then replicate this ad as best you can in a new lane, but be sure to include new imagery and slightly different copy.  Have the ad approved, then pause it.  When it comes time to swap the ad’s, make the new (paused) ad go live and pause the older ad – this way there is no gap in ad spend and your ad’s will constantly be exposed to your market at all times.

I implement these strategies every time I run a facebook campaign and every time they come through, hopefully they’ll work for you too.

Over the past 18 months as an agency we estimate we have sent out roughly 1200 individual facebook page updates for various clients and brands across Australia and the world.  During this time we’ve noticed that small, seemingly subtle differences in how updates are written and presented can make a massive difference in terms of engagement.  So, in the first post of many, we want to share with you what we’ve come to adopt as the first 3 rules of facebook page update creation.

Rule #1 – Keep it short.

The human brain only has so much available processing power at any given time therefore it is imperitive that your message be quickly and easily digested by the brain in order for the user to engage.  If it appears too long, the brain will pass it off as too much work and quickly move onto the next update in the feed, leaving your update with no engagement.

Rule #2 – Keep it clean

When adding a link into your update do not include the actual URL in the update itself, it appears unprofessional and does a great job of confusing users.  Once the link is loaded into the update, clean up the text and copy that appears to the right, often there is too much information here, making the update too big.  Once the update is too big — see Rule #1.

Rule #3 – Take the thought process away

This is probably the most fundamental insight we have learned so far.   In taking the thought process away from users, we guarantee your updates will produce more engagement.  Instead of writing updates with open-ended questions which requires the user to muster significant brainpower in order to engage, write the update with 2 answers already supplied.  This way the user doesn’t have to think in order to engage, they quickly choose which answer suits them then submits the one word answer to the update and boom, they’ve successfully engaged.

Example

Update requiring high thought process to engage

“Our new shoes are so awesome, what do you like about them?”

Update requiring minimal thought process to engage

“Our new shoes are so awesome, what do you like about them – the colour or the design?”

Ask yourself, which one would you seem more likely to engage with?

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As mentioned above, this will become the first of many such posts in a series with an aim to share insights that we’ve learned over the past 2 years working on facebook that will hopefully help you in your facebook marketing efforts.

Rules #4, #5 and #6 will be posted shortly.

A major hurdle has just been overcome in the ‘how do you measure social media’ debate.

About 3-4 hours ago facebook page admins will have noticed that one new line of data appears under their branded page updates, impressions and % feedback.

This is significant to the advertising industry for three reasons – marketers now have justification to create a pricing model around facebook updates through CPM, smart marketers will be able to determine the best time of day to send updates for the most exposure/engagement and lastly marketers will know the effectiveness of each individual update in realtime, as engagement is occuring.

Below are just a few thoughts about how this development could really change things.

Creation of a ‘per update’ pricing model

Marketers now have a concrete and tradititional measurement unit with which to charge out facebook page management and update creation. The days of facebook pages being ambiguous and hard to sell to the boardroom in terms of reach and cost are effectively over.

Updates can now justifiably be sold to 3rd parties

Now that page admins have access to the amount of impressions each of their updates receives, its conceivable that owners (brands) that have a large fanbase will now be able to sell updates to outside advertisers through a traditional CPM pricing model.

Realtime engagement monitoring

Being able to track feedback in realtime is incredibly insighful for fb marketers as it allows them to keep brands informed on consumer sentiment as it happens, effectively allowing them (the brand) to react instantly.

Lastly, I think the biggest question is….how much is a fb update CPM worth compared to a traditional CPM?

Traditional CPM

• Usually targeted at a cluster of ’similar’ websites that have a ’similar’ audience.
• Your message can often be associated with content that doesn’t suit your brand.
• It can be relatively unclear who is actually seeing and engaging with your message.
• There is no flow on (viral) brand effect when a consumer engages with your message.
  

Facebook CPM

• You know exactly what type of consumer your message will be getting exposed to, as the consumer connected themselves to the page, the relationship is voluntary, they want to receive the message from the page (basically the inverse to traditional CPM banner ad’s offerings).
• You can monitor and communicate with consumers who engage with your message in realtime.
• You can see the exposure/reach the message is getting and how effective it is as it happens.
• There is significant flow on effect through facebooks social graph when your message is engaged by each consumer, increasing brand exposure throughout the platform.

I think a facebook CPM should inherently be more expensive than traditional CPM’s because

1. the market they reach is more qualified
2. consumer sentiment data and reach are both offered in realtime
3. consumers can actually engage and share opinion about the message
4. brands can respond to consumers engaging with the message instantly
5. their is significant flow on effect for brand exposure, ensuring your message will reach more consumers.

Will facebook update CPM’s become an integral part of the advertising landscape?

Will they will be more or less expensive than traditional CPM’s?

What do you think?