Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook’s Study of Journalist Page Engagement Reveals Page Post Best Practices
- Inside Network Cocktail Party – Join Us Next Week in Seattle
- Facebook Asking Users to Reengage With Groups, Possibly to Box Out Google+
- New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Context Optional, W3i, Kabam, Glu Mobile and More
- Yahoo, Photos, Mobile, Quizzes, Yelp and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU
| Facebook’s Study of Journalist Page Engagement Reveals Page Post Best Practices Posted: 13 Jul 2011 03:57 PM PDT Facebook today released the results of a study it conducted on what types of posts by the Facebook Pages of journalists performed the best. Among the highlights: Incorporating personal analysis in posts increased referral clicks by 20%, and including a thumbnail image when posting a link boosted Likes by 65% and comments by 50%. While these findings are for Pages of journalists, the best practices they illuminate can be useful for the admins of any type of Page.
There is potential for bias in these findings results as Facebook did not describe the study’s methodology. Turn Off Your Auto-PublisherThe most important finding is that posts saw 20% more referral clicks when personal analysis was added to a post’s description, opposed to just publishing a headline, blurb, and thumbnail. The ability to include a longe description of what’s behind a link is one of the fundamental differences between Facebook and Twitter. While journalists and other content publishers may not prefer spending the extra time crafting Facebook posts, the benefits in traffic driven that this study shows should convince them the effort is worth it. Pages that automatically cross-post Twitter updates or that auto-post when an article is published to their website should consider switching to manual publishing. Having a human writing copy specifically to accompany a Facebook post makes the news feed story seem more organic and personal, and therefore more compelling and clickable. Photos Draw FeedbackWhen a link is pasted into Facebook’s publisher, it’s formatted into a rich feed story that includes a thumbnail image when possible. Facebook’s study shows that posts that display a thumbnail image receive 65% more Likes and 50% more.
It’s believed that by getting more feedback on its posts, Pages improve their EdgeRank — the algorithm that determines how prominent a post is in a user’s news feed. By courting feedback, Pages can increase the number of users that see their posts past the somewhat disheartening average of 7.49 news feed post impressions per day per 100 fans. Therefore, Page admins shouldn’t manually strip out the thumbnail unless absolutely necessary. If the publisher can’t find an image behind the link to thumbnail, admins should consider adding an image to the web page, or marking up their site with Facebook’s Open Graph tags such that a site logo is pulled in as the thumbnail. Post Length and TimingFor post by journalists, Facebook found that 4-line posts received 30% more feedback than average and 5-line posts received 60% more. This means that Pages looking to court feedback should generally publish long posts, though these may have lower click through rates because some users will skim past a dense block of text. Engagement with one-line posts, on the other hand, fluctuated greatly but displayed the highest maximum feedback of any length, with some receiving 15 times the average. Therefore, when appropriate for the content, one-line posts can be the most engaging, likely because they take so little work on the reader’s part to consume. In terms of timing, Facebook’s study showed that posts on Thursday through Sunday had higher engagement rates. Posts on Saturday received 85% more clicks than average, and those published on Wednesday had 37% more. However, these figures may be less generalizable because of the cultural norm of reading news on weekends. Buddy Media’s report on engagement by day showed significant fluctuation by industry, so Pages outside of journalism will need to track their analytics to determine the best days to post. Facebook’s reports of engagement spikes at 7am and 5pm match Buddy Media’s data.
Every Page’s audience is different, so the best way for any Page to determine how to post more effectively is to follow their Page Insights. Pages can thereby modify their strategy based on trends in performance for different content, tone, length, and timing. Still, the findings of Facebook’s study should help point admins in the right direction. For more strategies on how to get the most clicks, Likes, and comments out of your Page’s posts, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Inside Network Cocktail Party – Join Us Next Week in Seattle Posted: 13 Jul 2011 02:03 PM PDT
AJ Glasser, lead writer for Inside Social Games, will moderate a daytime panel conversation on top companies’ transition from casual to social. Later, join Inside Network and our friends and party sponsors at Rightscale, Amazon Web Services, and Couchbase for an evening of networking and drinks in downtown Seattle. All are welcome, and drinks are on us with your RSVP. Happy hour starts at 5:30 p.m. at the Living Room and Bar, W Seattle. We’ll be right by Benaroya Hall, so stop by after Casual Connect’s panels and talks and say hello!
If you will be at the conference, don’t miss AJ Glasser moderating “Casual Games Rule Cross-Platform,” July 20 at 10:30 am. See you there! Thanks to Our Sponsors:
Rightscale provides cloud computing management for social application and game developers.
Couchbase products, which are built on Apache CouchDB, Membase, and Memcached open source software, represent a comprehensive family of database solutions for building scalable web and mobile applications.
Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides businesses with a secure, reliable, easy-to scale, low-cost computing platform “in the cloud.” | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Asking Users to Reengage With Groups, Possibly to Box Out Google+ Posted: 13 Jul 2011 12:10 PM PDT Facebook is showing some users a module in the right sidebar that highlights one of the Groups they’re a member of and asks them to share something to it. The module, titled “Groups” displays the name of one of a user’s Groups, when it was last updated, and options to either post or leave the Group. Facebook’s attempt to spur reengagement with its micro-sharing product could be a response to competition from Google+, which is centered around sharing to specific groups of people called Circles rather than sharing with all of one’s contacts.
At the product announcement for ad hoc group chat and video calling last week, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said that over half of Facebook population use Groups. He noted that part of the reason for decoupling group chat from Groups was that many wanted to chat with multiple friends at once, but not all users were sharing to their Groups. The new Groups right sidebar module may be aimed at changing that. It appears to users as they’re browsing the site, similar to other modules Facebook employs to engage uses with products, such as “Discover New Games” and “Friends’ Photo Albums“.
Groups are usually accessed via small bookmarks in the dense left sidebar. By occasionally showing users larger, more prominent links to their Groups in the right sidebar, Facebook may be able to encourage users to post more often. Since posts to Groups generate notifications for all members, reengaging one member can kickstart participation by others. The screenshot we received of the Groups module showed it highlighting a Group that hadn’t been posted to in two weeks. The sidebar module could be an effective way to awaken Groups that have fallen dormant. The sidebar module could also remind users experimenting with Google+ that they have microsharing options within Facebook. Google+ requires that users choose a subset of friends to share each piece of content with. Facebook shares content with all of a user’s friends by default. It requires a long series of clicks to limited a status update to a specific friend list, but just one extra click to share with a Group. If Facebook can get users more engaged with Groups, through this new sidebar module or otherwise, they may have less reason to join and become active users of Google+ [Thanks to Brittany Darwell for the tip] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Context Optional, W3i, Kabam, Glu Mobile and More Posted: 13 Jul 2011 11:07 AM PDT The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week's highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Context Optional, W3i, Acquinity Interactive, Kabam, A Bit Lucky, Glu Mobile, Pontiflex and TinyCo.
Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Yahoo, Photos, Mobile, Quizzes, Yelp and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU Posted: 13 Jul 2011 08:35 AM PDT
Top Gainers This Week
Yahoo!'s homepage app on Facebook grew 1.2 million DAU, meanwhile the Windows Live Messenger app grew by 365,100 DAU. The Fortune Teller, a horoscope app, grew by more than 1 million DAU. 60photos, an app that publishes ratings of Facebook photos from a user's friends, grew by 587,400 DAU. Frases Diarias grew by 265,800 DAU; the app allows users to publish a quote to their Wall.
BandPage by RootMusic grew by 211,800 DAU mostly in the United States. Yelp grew by 197,100 DAU. A Turkish Page tab app, Sayfalar için Hoşgeldiniz Sekmesi – Davet ve Beğen butonlu!, grew by 146,000 DAU while a Turkish video app, Love Video, grew by 135,600 DAU. A pair of mobile apps were on our list, too. Samsung Mobile grew by 252,100 DAU in mostly India and Indonesia. Then Facebook for Every Phone grew by 202,200 DAU.
Social apps were popular on our list this week, too. 21 questions, which taps virality by asking users 25 questions about their friends, publishing a feed story to their Wall with each answer. The app grew by 197,400 DAU. Socialbox, a downloadable desktop app, grew by 180,600 DAU. WhoIsNear? is a combination check-in/social app that publishes feed stories when you check in on Facebook; it grew by 177,100 DAU. Then Status Shuffle grew by about 166,000 DAU; the app grew in the US and United Kingdom and allows users to Like, edit, share and publish status updates to the feed. All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday. |
Will you be at Casual Connect Seattle next week? We will! Inside Network invites you to join us for panel discussions with gaming industry leaders at Casual Connect and afterward, at our Happy Hour at The W Hotel.
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