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A CMO’s Guide To Facebook Engagement

Jackie CohenDirector of Social Media and Communications Consulting at

About The Speaker

Social media consultant with two decades of experience in content creation, including serving as editor of AllFacebook.com – grew the publication’s Facebook fan page count 50%.

Previously worked as an assignment editor at Bloomberg News, a senior editor at The Industry Standard and a personal finance reporter at CBS MarketWatch, among other gigs.

There’s No Standard For Measuring Engagement – Only Conventions

New formula suggested by Wise Metrics requires Facebook Insights API: (Users engaged/ # of Posts/Users reached) x 100 = Engagement rate

Counting Likes, Comments And Shares Might Not Be Enough

¼ of the pages in this week’s top 20 were also in the top 20 a year ago – an accurate ranking ought to show more changes than this.

Religious pages are more prevalent than sports, music, movies, politics, and retail.

Every vendor comes up with different numbers for this.

20 Most Engaging Pages On Facebook

This Week One Year Ago Jesus Daily Jesus Daily Dios Es Bueno! Mario Teguh Joyce Meyer Ministries The Bible Shut-Up-I'm-Talking Harry Potter Mario Teguh Lady Gaga FC Barcelona Justin Bieber Iker Casillas Werevertumorro JE T'AIME MAMAN Manchester United 9GAG “MTV Roadies” Esporte Interativo Necip Fazil Kisakurek Jesus Loves You We are Khaled Said Joel Osteen Ministries Jesus Christ Manchester United Educate yourself ILoveAllaah.com ILoveAllaah.com 2pac Quedate Otro Ratito "I'm Proud To Be Christian" by Aaron Chavez I'm a Muslim & I’m Proud Pitbull Kevin Hart The Twilight Saga Terima Kasih Ibu Los que le dan gracias a Dios por vivir otro dia mas Dios Es Bueno! Fernando Torres Joyce Meyer Ministries

Source: AllFacebookStats.com, which pulls data directly from Facebook

•Talking about this – separate from shares?•Number of times a video is played. •When people maximize the photo viewer.•Number of times people tag content.•Different weights for comments and likes. •Engagement by non-fans and fans alike.•Adjustment for percent of fans reached.•Negative threads can get huge numbers.

What’s Missing From The Formulas

“The statement about the cat is completely false. Someone hacked into our employee’s account and posted that update without her knowledge. We at Chipotle respect all animals and would not joke about something like that. We are working with local authorities and hope for a quick resolution. We also ask that you be respectful as this is a difficult situation for our employee. We appreciate your patience.”

-- Chipotle Mexican Grill Even the apology post garnered

100s of comments continuing to riff on “cat burritos.” No one believed the account was really “hacked.”

A Negative Thread Can Rack Up Huge Engagement Numbers

Engagement Is Only A Part Of Facebook’s EdgeRank

What Else Is Missing From Engagement Numbers

• We don’t know exactly how Facebook computes the individual components in EdgeRank, making it tough to give different weights to comments versus likes and so on.

• Negative feedback is still a nascent metric that’s evolving.

• Sarcasm doesn’t even register in negative feedback metrics, but this is the prevailing way people complain in social media.

• No application attempting to show who has unliked you survives, due to conflict with the site’s rules.

We Still Need Those Numbers

At the very least you need engagement metrics so you can sell your boss, coworkers and business partners about the efficacy of social media.

Social media has inherited the burden that previous generations of advertising and marketing execs have had: Cost justifying the investment to nay-sayers who insist there’s no such thing as ROI on this.

But when it comes to engagement, the numbers will tell you which posts to look at and what types of content to do more of. But they will never be a substitute for reading the words that your fans post.

Can You Automate Engagement?

Finding the right apps means facing a bigger choice than ever: Over 232 preferred marketing developers listed in Facebook’s official database, up from 90 about year ago. There are 3 subcategories for page management and ten subcategories for insights.

The more top-ranked pages use an app, the better – but the quality of an app’s user base is more telling than quantity.

The most widely used application on pages is free, and has nothing to do with engagement unless you put that in with your own effort.

What Jesus Daily Does Every single post on Jesus Daily contains

at least one call to action or prompt to engage – even the about section.

Jesus Daily’s Most Engaging Post Ever

Photos of cute things and a call to action

Click If You Love Jesus

Actually, that phrase originally came from the most engaging post on Dios Es Bueno’s page – this is translated from Spanish.

Among consumer-facing

brands, Walmart has the most fans who are “talking about” it.

Walmart Regularly Updates Its Cover Photo

Walmart is asking fans to submit summer photos, promising to feature the best on the cover spot. Takes a cue from what Facebook Marketing Solutions did recently to promote timeline.

Walmart regularly asks fans what they like most, always tying it into something that the company happens to sell.

Walmart posts about its efforts to help improve the communities it does business in.

Notice the use of an infographic.

Walmart taps into celebrities’ strong numbers

on social media. A promotion asks fans to vote for which individual store will get a visit from the rapper Pitbull, who ranks #17 in engagement right now.

Get Charitable

• Walmart’s holiday promotion: Nominate nonprofits and vote on which ones to allocate $1.5 million in donations. A new winner was announced every day from December 12 through 23.

• Tie in a contest for more engagement – like Lady Gaga’s tickets sweepstakes for people who vote on charities.

• Charitiable contests are the most engaging for brands. They make your brand look good and you can get a tax writeoff. So, get your company’s philanthropy department involved in social media. Just don’t overdo it so fans don’t think you’re being insincere.

Poll your fans about what they’re most interested in – mine their profiles for leads too.

Post more of whatever interests them, and stop posting things they’re not interested in.

Read their comments on your wall to fine tune your content.

Regularly monitor your page insights and analytics to see which posts generate the most positive responses. Post more of the stuff that performs best.

Optimize For Engagement

It can. But what works for other pages might not work for yours. I suggest 1 to 5 new topics per weekday.

Ask questions that appeal to users’ emotions: What do they love or hate, etc.?

Watch the responses on your wall to determine what frequency and timing fans say they want – then test to see what they really want.

Don’t expect your fans to just talk amongst themselves – moderate the discussion, respond to people directly.

Does Timing Affect Engagement?

Promotions

Use promoted posts to get more engagement on individual postings – only existing fans can see these promotions.

Run sponsored story ads to promote the page who aren’t your fans yet.

Offer coupons and sweepstakes that appeal to your fans interests and emotions.

Facebook’s made it a lot easier to do this. Use offers as often as possible.

Ask your fans to share them with their friends.

Use Controvery Sparingly These threads can get really busy, but they can backfire if you

don’t temper them with diplomacy.

Deleting posts after they’re already visible on your wall may result in not-so-friendly comments by fans who notice the deletions. Sometimes these people manage take screenshots of the original before the deletion.

Write up a disaster plan for managing emergencies, so you

empower everyone to respond quickly. Check out Buddy Media’s suggestions on how to do this: http://ow.ly/c90iG

Create Guidelines Write up a set of guidelines on how you

moderate your wall discussion.

You may use the one I created for AllFacebook as a template on your Facebook page if you give credit by tagging @AllFacebook, which has the guideslines here: http://ow.ly/c8Zgk

When you first introduce the policy, pin it to the top of the page. Render it as an iFrames app that you can put in the row of thumbnails under your cover image, so you can label it.

Also put a copy on your website so you can expand the material to include your policies for all of your social media profiles.

Look Beyond The Numbers

Most likely, the best measurement of social media performance has yet to be invented.

In the mean time, focus on fostering good conversations with fans.

Please Stay In Touch!

I have profiles on every single social network you can think of, and perhaps some you might not have heard of yet. Follow me:

LinkedIn.com/in/JackieCohen Facebook.com/jackieofletters Twitter.com/Jackie_Cohen

Follow my company: Facebook.com/ticular Twitter.com/ticular_consult Pinterest.com/ticular