Facebook Page Insights - Use Them!

   When trying to measure just how well your Facebook campaign or daily posting efforts are doing, it can get really confusing listening to all the different acronyms and conflicting advice about what days and times to post are best, and what not to do or do. Who should you listen to? The answer is simple: Your online customer or page’s fan base.

   Yes, there are some great tips about Facebook and what works for businesses. Photo posts are king, while plain-jane html links, or long videos are usually shunned. But where’s the best place to get information as to what works? All you need to look at are your page’s own Insights. Everything you need to see about what’s really working on your page is available within your Admin tools. All the advice in the world is useless without actively checking to see your page’s “health.”

   On the basic screen shown below, you have a lot of information available to you. You’ll be able to see how everything is going on your page, with the only drawback being a two-day backlog with some of the data.

Facebook Insights Graph

 
   Here you can see just how many likes your page has, your potential reach of content, how many people are sharing or talking about your content, and even how many people actually saw content from your page. There are two ways you can get this information. Either use the basic view with the charts available (shown above), or you can download even more detailed information into an Excel spreadsheet so you can really drill into your page’s worth.

   There are a few things I like to look at. One of them is the information on each individual post, which is shown below the graph that is depicted in the screen above. This will show you the virality measurement along with the amount of people who talked about the post. This is really what is connecting your fanbase on a day to day basis. You may notice that photo posts work better than video posts or vice-versa. Did that funny quote you posted to your status really hit it off with your fans? Now you can actually see if it fell on deaf ears or not, and make adjustments to your plans for future posts.

Facebook Page Demographics

    Another good pair of insights to work with are your Demographics and your Reach pages. These insights will show you the age ranges and sex of your fans, as well as the geographical locations, browser types used, and a whole host of other information to use. That, my dear reader, is the whole point to all this information: USE IT! If you find that your page is mostly being viewed by males ages 18-25, it makes no sense to post something about tips for expectant mothers, unless that’s what your page is about. If it is, then you’ll be able to see that whatever you have been posting is attracting the wrong audience.

   The bottom line is, blindly posting random statuses and links, or constant spam about your business won’t win you a huge fan base. Facebook is about building a community for your page. You can’t do that if you aren’t speaking its language. What works for your page that goes against conventional wisdom? Please comment below if you’ve found some other information that has helped you hone in on your fanbase, and visit our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/VSBrooksAdvertising

 By: Stephen Kish - Social Media Coordinator/ VSBrooks Advertising

Social media experts talk healthcare at VSBrooks.

   Social media has become an important part of our everyday lives, giving each and every person a voice online. With that in mind, we decided to organize a symposium on the implications of social media for the healthcare industry, in collaboration with the South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association.

  

 Our renovated offices became a classroom for the afternoon, as healthcare executives gathered for a primer on topics from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, to blogger outreach and online reputation management, given by a panel of some of the top local experts. There were many questions and animated discussion, as this is a topic that's very much on every marketer's, communicators and institution's radar screens.

Special thanks to our collaborator and social media maven Maria de los Angeles, who put together the panel, and the panelists Alex de Carvalho, Hilda Mitrani, Blanca Stella Mejia, Craig Agranoff and Jeff Zelaya. (Click on their names to find out more about them or as they said, just Google them!)

You have a website, now what?

  If somebody spent only one minute per page, it would take 31 thousand years to visit all of them. To actually read their content, you better clear your schedule for the next six hundred thousand decades. This is by far the largest amount of information ever collected in human history. So how do you make sure your website stands out in this digital haystack?

You've heard about terms like page ranking, web presence and SEO (search engine optimization) and you know that if it doesn't show up in Google's first results page, it may as well not exist. You may even know you can pay for better position - which can be a costly proposition. (There's even a sub-industry with the sinister name of Black Hat SEO that promises fast results, but eventually will get your site banned from most search engines.)

   Our client, Floridalobby.com, faced this problem and they solved it beautifully. Their website was launched in March 2011, just before the FL legislative session started. A month later, a Google Search for "Florida lobby" returns 16.5 million results - and shows them in second place. That's ahead of the websites for the Florida Association of Professional Lobbyists and the website of their main competitor. The only result above them is the website for the Florida Legislature itself. How where they able to attain this impressive result in such a short time? Turns out is not that much different that attracting attention in the real world. It takes old-fashioned elbow-grease in the form of relevant quality content, dedication and consistency.

   FloridaLobby.com is, among other purposes, a valuable repository of information about Florida legislative issues, indexed by issue. We designed the website to be easy to read and navigate for the readers, and easy as well for their staff to update with a robust Content management system (CMS), an online tool that allows them to make real time changes to the content without the need of knowing website programming. We also used a clean layout on purpose, avoiding the use of techniques such as Flash which creates sites that are not easily indexed by search engines.

   Armed with this tool, they went to work and populated every section of the website with relevant content culled from news organizations and specialized sources such as the Legislature reporting service. The result is content that is organically rife with relevant keywords. All the content is linked back to the original source, creating a web of links that reverberates across websites. And they have been diligently consistent about finding and posting this content, not letting a day pass without updating the front page on most sections. At this point, you can probably find more in their website about what's happening in the state government than in any of the state's main newspapers.

   This collection of quality and relevant content is what Floridalobby.com's clients are looking for the site to provide, and the gateway for the premium issue-tracking service they offer. It's a huge time saver for the industry leaders who are interested in finding only the content that relates to their industry - and it's also what has given Floridalobby.com its robust web presence in a mere month.

   So the lesson is: there are no shortcuts or magic tricks in the web age. Be relevant and consistent, offer quality, always link, and be disciplined about adding and updating content. Then sit back and watch your page ranking shot to the top of the results.

Hey clients! If you think your customers aren’t paying attention…. Think again my friends.

By: Diana Brooks

It seems that Gap, the retail chain, who in my opinion, is a branding champion, recently launched a new logo on their website. They've spent the last two years working hard "evolving" the brand, convincing themselves within the confines of their four walls, that they needed a new contemporary and hip logo, that still honored the heritage of the brand.

Not a big deal to your common, cattle-herded customer, right?

   So here’s the funny part... they changed it, very quietly, as part of an overall rebranding strategy. And their customers went nuts! They flocked to their social media outlets, enraged and betrayed by the brand they had been so loyal to. As an agency owner, I have to admit I feel vindicated.
   After years upon years droning on to clients about how important a logo is, and a brand is, and blah blah blah ad nauseum… I feel great to be able to read this article and say :

“SEE!!!!????

I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!!!!!”

   Even the greats have to learn the hard way how important your customer is, how you have to keep them in mind every step of your strategic way, how RESEARCH will SAVE you money and more importantly, how people EMOTIONALLY connect to your brand.

Read on and learn more….http://adage.com/article?article_id=146353

Hispanics And Social Media: A Match Made In Cyber Space

By: Cristina Alvarez

   Holaaaaa! (equivalent of Helloooo!) Being social is part of the Hispanic DNA (ADN en espanol). Hispanics are friendly and fun; even when they get mad, they entertain. Creative expletives involving mothers and sisters, convoluted curses, and facial and body gestures, offer a tremendously dramatic moment that carries an underlying twist of humor.

   So here we have a fun and friendly Hispanic, and we have someone that loves technology and cell phones, and on top of that consumes media by the ton, and aquí está! (Spanish for voilá!), we come up with a tremendously social media Hispanic!

   Did you know that Latinos are more connected to broadband than the general market? That they have more wireless connections to the Internet? And that they way over index on texting? Definitivamente.

   We’ve come up with someone that doesn’t live in the silo and barrio of his own culture anymore. We have someone that reaches out globally, to his blood relatives, to his cultural family, to his pale neighbors, and to el mundo at large. Someone spreading the culture. And who doesn’t love Latino music, food, humor and passion? Hispanics love to share food, advise, political opinions. And social networks give them a huge platform from where to impart their views. It also gives brands a friendly forum through which to converse with this chatty audience. Here’s where the brand ambassador comes in.

   La embajadora invites the cyber Hispanic to come into the brand’s world, an embracing environment, where he will feel a sense of belonging, where he will connect with the company and with other consumers, Hispanic or not. Connection feels good. Hispanics hate aloneness. Message, to-the-point information and brand must bundle up intelligently, so that Hispanics entering this world feel they are where they want to and need to be. Of course, this creates a sense of appreciation. They’ve arrived. They find useful content. They belong. They feel comfortable.

   Now that they are cozily situated inside, they can communicate themselves among friends. Other amigos will join in. Collectively, they will express their thoughts, needs, solutions. Ah, it feels good to hear and be heard. To influence and receive advise. While Hispanics are busily expressing their views and opinions, they are providing a service to the community, the family at large. At the same time, all answers they receive will come from that same community. The bonds of friendship and feelings of belonging grow stronger.

   Getting feedback from community members of other cultures opens up the door to different scenarios. It’s no longer the Latino street or Hispanic barrio, or cultura de mi gente. Now they are exposed and getting the best of two worlds. Connecting, exchanging, teaching, learning. As a treasured consumer of a brand, one that seeks them out, courts them, and invites them to their inner circle, Latinos thrive with the attention and provide insight right back to the brand, within the perspective of their rich cultural heritage. Brands should consider this a bonus.

   The relationship becomes intense, intimate, and visceral. Hispanics are ready to advocate and defend their brand with all they’ve got. The ambassador has opened the door, the social network has provided the platform, Hispanics are now the evangelists.

   Which brings us back to what Hispanics of all ethnicities and social upbringing where searching for when they moved to the U.S.: success for themselves and their families. In retrospect, the journey travelled fills them with joy: they have arrived. And now they belong. And now they extol. Oh sí, Hispanics are social media beings. They are good chatters, texters, and bloggers. Come recruit them to your network. Pronto!