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Notes from Melanie Nelson’s “Making the Most of Your Facebook Page”

Nichole posted this on June 26th, 2012. It's filed under Social Media

Melanie Nelson is the founder of Blogging Basics 101, and she’s currently writing “Facebook All-In-One for Dummies.” I’ve heard wonderful things about her presentations at each Type-A Parent Conference I’ve attended, but this was the first time I’d actually gone to one of her sessions.

It was a good decision. Melanie is an excellent speaker and teacher, and she knows her topic inside and out. Following are my (mostly unedited) notes from her session, “Making the Most of Your Facebook Page.”

Setting up the right goals

  • “Goals are a ladder to success.” Thing about what you’re trying to achieve, your platform, your skills, etc.
  • Sometimes we set goals we’ve already achieved because they’re easy. Challenge yourself.
  • Make lots of small goals and have a timeline; don’t make them easy to put off til another day.

    EdgeRank

    Engagement = visibility

  • EdgeRank is Facebook’s algorithm for showing items in a newsfeed. It takes into considerations: affinity (the content creator’s relationship with the content user); weight (text-only is weighted below text with a photo); decay (how old it is; most “likes” occur during the first hour)
  • Sharing is the strongest interaction.
  • 96 percent of fans don’t return to a fan page after they “Like” it; they rely on the newsfeed. Of those 96 percent, updates in the newsfeed only get to about 16 percent. Only 2 percent of that 16 percent generally interact with the page.

    Likes

  • Number of “Likes” aren’t indicative of how well your page is doing.
  • More engagement leads to a higher EdgeRank.
    (“Talking about” rate / by # of fans) x 100 = engagement percentage.

    Writing sound updates

  • Solve + Educate + Entertain. Write the best content you can and promote it the best you can.
  • Be an expert at something, and share your expertise.
  • Make calls to action, and give a clear way to complete the action.
  • For images, orange & red draw the eye in the blue Facebook landscape.
  • Ask questions: The shorter and simpler the better. Give people the opportunity to talk about themselves.

    Tracking / Insights

  • Your “talking about” rate might be looking at a 7-day period rather than being real-time. Make sure you’re also looking at the Insights area.
  • “Virality” in the Insights area = how many people beyond your fans saw your post
  • “Total reach” is the same as “Unique Views” in Google Analytics.
  • “Engaged users” = all clicks content has gotten.
  • “Other clicks” could be people clicking on the date stamp or a commenter’s name.
  • “Talking about” = people who actively engaged the content.
  • Steps to take
    1. Test: Offer something different or try something new
    2. Measure: Find out what matters / how it’s working
    3. Ask: What can we learn from that experiment?

    Misc

  • Look at traffic spikes and make a list of popular content. Use that to make an editorial calendar.
  • Put a “here are your friends who like this website” Facebook widget on your blog.
  • Pages can schedule posts on Facebook.

    I generally judge a session’s worth by the amount of notes I took. If you’ve made it all the way down here, it should be clear that I thought this was a great, informative session. I definitely haven’t made the most of the Butterscotch Sundae page on Facebook, but I’m going to make a concentrated effort to do better at that.

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