Sq1 War Room

Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Insights

September 3rd, 2010 by Judge

According to Mashable; A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Insights

Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for company-wide social media enablement and corporate social networking strategy.

You have created a Facebook Fan Page. Now what? I bet these questions come to mind: “Is my page a success?” “Who is engaging with us?” “Is our engagement effective?” “Does our content strategy work?”

The Facebook Insights dashboard will help you answer some of these questions. As defined by Facebook, “Insights provides Facebook Page owners … with metrics around their content. By understanding and analyzing trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content, Page owners … are better equipped to improve their business with Facebook.”

So what’s the best way to use this relatively new tool? We’ve outlined some steps below that should have you measuring Facebook engagement in no time.

Note that only page administrators can view Insights data for the properties they own or administer.

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Examine a Wide Range of Data

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There are two types of Facebook insights:

• User Insights: Total page Likes, or a number of fans, daily active users, new Likes/Unlikes, Like sources, demographics, page views and unique page views, tab views, external referrers, media consumption.
• Interactions Insights: Daily story feedback (post Likes, post comments, per post impressions), daily page activity (mentions, discussions, reviews, wall posts, video posts).

The question then becomes: “What do you want to track and measure?” There is a lot of data offered, but you want to sort through it and identify what information is meaningful and will help you make decisions about your engagement and content strategy. If that data is not readily available, you might want to do some manual calculations to derive the numbers you’re looking for.

Below are the insights I recommend you pay attention to and track.

• Monthly fan size growth: Record the number of fans (or “Likers”) you have on the first of every month to see what your growth looks like. I’d say if you are growing organically and you have 10 to 13% monthly growth, you are doing extremely well. That is probably the highest organic growth number anyone can achieve. You can even go more granular and calculate weekly growth. Whatever you decide to do, make sure to watch for the spikes in fan growth and try to identify what contributes to those spikes.



• The average number of Likes or comments: These are your engagement measures. If you know the average number of times fans interacted with you for every single post, you will be able to identify which discussions are of more interest to your fans. Watch for unusual spikes or drops in this number. I love this metric because it is extremely helpful in making immediate decisions in your content strategy and changes to your editorial calendar. Increase the number of posts around the topic your fans are more engaged with and decrease the number of posts around topics they are not interested in.
• Unlikes and attrition rate: The fact is that you will always have some unsubscribes, no mater how great your engagement is, but hopefully it is just a small number. I usually just watch for spikes in the unlike numbers. You want to try and correlate them with the activity on your page and understand why people are leaving your page. It is rather hard to nail down the exact reason, but if there is an unusual spike, you will usually have a pretty good idea.

  The simple attrition rate formula is:

  (Removed Fans + Unlikes – Re-Likes) / Daily Fan Count

  This metric will tell you how many of your fans are leaving your site. It is normal to have small constant attrition over time.

• Demographics: No matter what your objectives are, you can always find the demographics data useful: the gender of your fans, their ages and where they are from.



• Page views: I like this metric because it helps you identify the number of returned fans. If you take the number of page views and subtract the number of unique page views, you will see how many of your fans are actually coming back to your page. You can also look at the Daily Active Users metric.



• Mentions: This is the number of times someone tagged you in their post. The reason why this metric is important is because it is the easiest way for your fans’ friends to click through to your page. Every time someone tags you, the name of your Page appears as a link. It is much easier for someone to click on that link and learn more than to search for your Page manually. One of your goals should be to increase the number of mentions by your fans.



• Tab views: This is the new metric Facebook implemented a couple of months ago. If you have multiple tabs on your page, it will tell you which tab gets what percentage of traffic. This metric will help you decide on whether you would want to keep or maybe get rid of some of your tabs. This is especially helpful as you can only have six tabs visible on your page at one time, and this data will help you prioritize accordingly.
• Referrers: Another new metric that tells you where the traffic to your page comes from. You want to increase exposure to your page on the sites that bring you the most traffic.
• Impressions: If your page is over 10,000 fans, you will see the number of times your post was viewed –- impressions. This metric is not exact since every time someone’s page refreshes, it counts as an impression. This number is usually a little overblown, but can show you how many times your post has been seen.

Some of these metrics require constant manual tracking and analysis, which is a big downside. However, the above metrics will help you make decisions about your engagement and content strategy that would allow more effective interactions with your customers.

Square One a Dallas Digital Agency are experts in Social Media Strategy and Marketing

 facebook, social media 

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Social Media – Target to Sell Facebook Credits as Gift Cards in Stores

September 1st, 2010 by Ernie

According to Mashable; Target to Sell Facebook Credits as Gift Cards in Stores

Target will be the first retailer to sell Facebook Credits in its stores come Sunday. The Facebook Credits gift cards will be available in $15, $25 and $50 denominations at all 1,750 Target locations and at Target.com.

The cards will soon make their way to two or three additional national retailers, according to USA Today.

Facebook Credits is a virtual currency redeemable for primarily in-game Facebook purchases. In Farmville, for instance, gamers can use Facebook Credits as a currency, in lieu of credit cards, to purchase additional items for their farms. 7-11 also sells gift cards specifically for FarmVille.

Facebook Credits gift cards package the virtual currency in consumer-friendly entities, which Facebook hopes will appeal to holiday shoppers. The gift cards are visually no different than the variety sold in stores today, and were produced by GMG Entertainment, the same company that makes Apple’s iTunes cards.

Social gaming is a relatively new industry with huge potential. More than 56 million Americans are now playing social games. By 2013, annual sales from virtual goods are expected to reach $6 billion. Facebook’s foray into brick-and-mortar retail stores is a significant move that will help the company capitalize on social gaming.

Facebook () also has a deal in place with MOL, an online micropayment company, to sell Facebook Credits at retail stores in Asia and Australia ().

 facebook, social media 

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Facebook Alternative Diaspora Launches September 15

August 27th, 2010 by Heather

According to Mashable; Facebook Alternative Diaspora Launches September 15

Diaspora, the much-hyped open source alternative to Facebook, will release its code to the world on September 15, but promises that its creators are just getting started.

Earlier this year, Facebook () was embroiled in controversy after it made significant privacy changes. Users didn’t like having more of their information public, so they revolted.

During the height of the crisis, four NYU students decided to create an open source alternative to Facebook. Their goal was to raise $10,000 for their summer project, but dramatic interest helped them raise over $100,000 through donations. Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated to the project.

Since then, the Diaspora team has been mostly silent, coding away on their project. However, in a blog post earlier today, they revealed that the project is on track for release on September 15.

“We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open sourced on September 15th,” the Diaspora team said in its announcement.

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Only the Beginning

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Diaspora was originally intended to be just a summer project, but the high interest in the project has changed the team’s plans. Diaspora’s development schedule has been extended.

“We aren’t going to stop working after we release,” Diaspora stated in its blog post. “Ilya and Raphael are taking leave from NYU, and we will continue to develop and maintain Diaspora as a long term project.”

What will Diaspora look like? According to the team, it’s focusing on “on building clear, contextual sharing.” One of the open source social network’s features will be making it easy and intuitive for users to decide what content gets added and shared to their social circles.

We’re looking forward to seeing the final product and trying it ourselves. What do you think of the Diaspora project?

Square One a Dallas Digital Agency are experts in Social Media Strategy and Marketing

 Diaspora, facebook 

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More Fuel Added to Google Me Rumors

August 26th, 2010 by Judge

According to Mashable; More Fuel Added to Google Me Rumors

The big rumor that’s recently been making the rounds is Google Me, Google’s upcoming social network and a full-fledged competitor to Facebook.

While there’s virtually nothing official on the record for this project, Kevin Rose recently said it exists, and now more and more people close to either Google () or Facebook have been confirming that Google indeed has something along these lines in the works.

Answering a question on Q&A service Quora, former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo claims Google Me is real. Here’s what he had to say about it:

“This is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.

They realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off of Facebook.

Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google.

They had assumed that Facebook’s growth would slow as it grew, and that Facebook wouldn’t be able to have too much leverage over them, but then it just didn’t stop, and now they are really scared.”

It all makes sense, but, unlike in most other endeavors, Google has been quite unsuccessful when it comes to social networking – Buzz started out as a privacy nightmare, and Orkut (), while successful in South America, never really took on globally. If Google really is building a Facebook competitor, will it just be what Buzz was to Twitter – a solid copy – or something entirely new?

Adam D’Angelo thinks it’s the former. “They’re modelling it off of Facebook,” he says. If true, Google might have a steep hill to climb to come anywhere near Facebook, which managed to dominate the market in a couple of years and elevate the concept of social networking into something previously unseen. What makes the project really interesting is that Google cannot afford to fail on this one; if it does, it will only strengthen Facebook as the number one social network out there.

 facebook, Google Me 

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Social Media – Facebook Privacy: 6 Years of Controversy

August 26th, 2010 by Ernie

According to Mashable; Facebook Privacy: 6 Years of Controversy

The release of Facebook Places raised serious privacy concerns for users of the social network. Places allows users to alert their friends to where they are by checking-in to a nearby location, often via mobile phone. Users can also view the location of nearby friends and the information they’ve posted about locations.

Critics of the feature point out that under Places’ default setting, a user can tag a friend’s location even if that friend is not physically in that location. What’s more, all checkins will appear in the News Feed and activity stream for that place, unless otherwise specified. If this sounds like over-sharing to you and you’d like to opt out, you can change your privacy settings.

This isn’t the first time Facebook () has received criticism for its privacy practices. In fact, Facebook’s problems stretch back to before its founding when then Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the school’s network to steal pictures of students for a site that ranked their attractiveness. Below is an infographic tracing the history of privacy snafus that have dogged the platform since its creation.

The graphic below was created for Mashable () by Lisa Waananen.

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 facebook, social media 

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How to Customize Your Facebook Profile

August 23rd, 2010 by Judge

According to Squidoo; How to Customize Your Facebook Profile

Hate the New Facebook Layout?

 facebook 

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Google’s Success in Facebook Game: Handicapping the Odds

August 22nd, 2010 by Judge

Google’s Success in Facebook Game: Handicapping the Odds

BY Kit EatonFri Aug 20, 2010

Google’s on the defensive over Facebook’s new Places location-based feature, and is preparing the ground for its rumored social network, Me. But will it falter, because the components Google’s already built haven’t thrilled customers?

Former head of Google’s mobile unit, Vic Gundotra, posted a spicy blog message yesterday to note that over 100 million Google users check places on Google maps, lots use Google’s MyLocation feature (that lets you track your position even in the absence of GPS), many people love Latitude on Android–the Google “checkin” and friend-tracker app, as well as Place Pages which adds extra local info to locations in Latitude, such as photos or reviews. In the immediate aftermath of the roll-out of Facebook’s Places application, it’s obvious what Gundotra was trying to do: He was engaging in a little feisty PR along the lines of “But Google lets you do all that stuff already, and millions of folk have been using it for years!”

There are a number of problems with this stance, and they shed a dim and unfriendly light on the future of the rumored Google social network dubbed “Me.” First up, Gundotra’s post smacks of playground politics–the kind of false-logic arguments that you’ll hear kids using at lunch hour. Gundotra’s highlighting the wrong things. If you need to defend your existing products in this way, it implies you’ve got nothing new and innovative to bring to the table to compete with the upstart newcomer–Facebook. Secondly, many industry commenters said exactly this sort of thing when the original iPod came out–noting that Apple had come up with nothing new, nothing that wasn’t already done by someone else, often in some ways better. This argument entirely misses the point: The new thing about the iPod was the neat synthesis of package, performance, and ecosystem, wrapping a commodity item–the MP3 player–in a neat, brand-heavy wrapper that made it an identifiable item that was pretty and, above all, easy to use. Apple’s just done exactly the same thing for tablet PCs too, and Facebook is trying to do something similar for location-based gaming.

But the biggest problem Gundotra inadvertently highlighted is that (with the admitted exception of Android, which is a strong offering that stands alone) Google’s users tend to think of its services as a commodity. Sure, you may use Google Maps to work out where you’re going or where you are … but if there were a different system pre-installed on your iPhone, perhaps from a more identifiable “navigation” brand like TomTom or Navigon, then you’d probably use that instead–especially if it looked sweet, and was fun to use (accusations you can rarely level at a Google product). Google’s Buzz social network failed because it wasn’t easy to use, looked confusing, and was wrapped up in the usual Google UI so it never stood out–not in the way Twitter does when you use a third party app to access it, or Facebook does when you surf to its website. Even the way Google’s new products are introduced to the public is pretty low-fi, with little fanfare, polished PR effort, or strong individual product branding.

Google’s already got the major pieces in place to make a Facebook-rivaling social network, including location-based services. But if it doesn’t make Me stand out from its other Google-esque offerings, then it’s future doesn’t seem all that bright.

 facebook, Google 

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How Foursquare Feels About Facebook Places

August 20th, 2010 by Ernie

According to mashable; How Foursquare Feels About Facebook Places

Conventional wisdom dictates that when an industry Goliath repackages and rolls out your core product, your business is in a bit of trouble.

For many location-based startups, including Foursquare (), users and tech industry analysts are concerned about their chances of survival in a post-Facebook Places market. They and their investors have put a lot of time and money into chasing the hottest trend of 2010, and it’s anyone’s guess as to what Facebook’s () entry into this field will bring.

With 500 million users, a truly global reach and access to almost every major advertiser, Facebook has for some time been the ultimate social platform on which to launch new features. We’ve wondered whether a Facebook location feature launch would slowly strangle the startups now operating in the same space, simply by virtue of its almost bottomless resources, from engineering to capital to beta testers.

Yesterday, at Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters, we had a very frank chat with Foursquare Vice President of Mobile and Partnerships, Holger Luedorf, in which we asked the tough questions: Has Foursquare considered pivoting? Will they lose advertising and marketing dollars from their partners? What will happen if, in six months, Facebook Places has drained away their userbase?

Luedorf was optimistic on camera; it’s the most appropriate attitude for a company in Foursquare’s position to take. Foursquare offers a lot to its users that Facebook doesn’t (yet), such as badges and a more game-like aspect to the UX. And the company has strong relationships with the brands that are providing its revenue.

Still, we wonder if the company’s internal discussions are as staunchly positive. After all, we’ve always known the relationship between Foursquare and a geo-enabled Facebook was going to be complicated, to say the least.

Have a look at this interview, and let us know what you think in the comments.

 facebook, foursquare, Location Based Services 

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Social Media – A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places

August 19th, 2010 by Judge

According to Mashable; A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places

Facebook has just announced Places, the long-awaited feature that brings location-based functionality to the most popular social network in the world.

Whether you’re a developer with a great app idea, a business with an interesting location marketing plan or just a regular Facebook user who wants to get involved with Places, there are a few details to note before you start using Places. The feature is fascinating, but it still has its limitations. And our guide isn’t without caveats, especially for users.

If you’re ready to start playing, here’s what you’ll need to know about Places.

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How to Use Places

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First of all, you or a Facebook friend in your group will need a smartphone. If you don’t have an iPhone, you’ll have to use the Facebook touch mobile site on a browser that supports both HTML 5 and geolocation.

The company does plan to roll out Android and BlackBerry versions of Places, but they haven’t released any specific dates for those releases yet.

To use Places, go to the Places tab on the iPhone application or touch.facebook.com. You’ll first be asked if Facebook is allowed to know your location. Once you click “allow,” you’ll enter the Places interface. From there, you can share your location with friends, find out where your friends are (if they’re using Places), and discover new places near you.

You can add places, check in to places that already exist, and tag people who are with you. If you’re checking in for a group, make sure you tag your friends before you checkin, yourself. For example, I added my house and checked in there. I then opened the Places page for a nearby sushi restaurant, tagged my boyfriend, and checked us both in there.

We’ve noted that it is possible to checkin from other non-smartphone devices in a regular, non-mobile browser, but you will have to use Facebook’s touch site.

You’ll also need to live in the U.S. Facebook’s goal is to launch all over the United States within a few days. International launch dates haven’t been released yet.

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Other Services That Will Use Places

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Tomorrow, Facebook is opening up certain data that will allow any and all developers to access parts of Places. That means that a lot of applications will start pulling information from Places, scraping it for data about people, locations, groups and more.

For right now, though, only a few apps have been selected to push information back into Places. Initially, Gowalla, Foursquare, Booyah (creators of MyTown and Nightclub City) and Yelp will integrate with Facebook Places.

If you use a Yelp mobile app for checkins, you’ll be able to push those checkins to Facebook Places, as well. Gowalla and Foursquare checkins can also be pushed to Facebook Places.

Booyah plans to launch a location-based social game called InCrowd; it will be built on Facebook Places. The company says it will be “a playful social app based on interacting with people and sharing real-time posts at real-world locations” and will allow players to “socialize, meet new friends and track popularity” in the app. It will be available in the iTunes App Store soon.

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What About Privacy?

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this feature isn’t about sharing your location with the world; it’s about finding places and sharing them with your friends.

That being said, your checkins will appear by default on your profile, in the news feed and in the activity stream for that place. We’ve also noted that your friends can, by default, check you in without your explicit approval or permission.

If you want to change who can see your checkins, go to your account’s privacy settings. You’ll see that “Places I check in” is by default shared with “Friends Only.” You can change who views your checkins from this area.

If you want to change whether or not others can check you in without your knowledge or permission, you’ll have to click “Customize settings” on your privacy page, then scroll down to the “Things others share” section. You will note that by default, you enable others to check you in. You can disable this setting; there’s no option to allow checkins-by-proxy on individual approval.

Also, another default setting on the “Customize settings” page is “Include me in ‘People Here Now’ after I check in.” When you check in, your location is visible to your friends and also to anyone else nearby. If you’d rather be more private, you’ll have to opt out of this setting.

We’ve written a bit about preliminary concerns voiced by the ACLU over Facebook Places and privacy. With much of the Places-related information being shared by default, it’s clear that most users will want to revisit their privacy settings before jumping wholeheartedly into this new feature.

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Places for Businesses and Developers

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If you’re a business, you can use Places to give Facebook your business’ location. Once your location has been added to Places, either by you or by another local Facebook user, just go to the Place page from Facebook.com and click the link that says “Is this Place Page your business?”

If you claim the location as your business, it will become a Facebook Page. You can then post updates to people who like the Page, update your business information and more.

Places can only be claimed by official representatives. Verifying a Place claim requires uploading some kind of official document, such as a local business license or Better Business Bureau accreditation.

If you’re a developer and are interested in using one of the Places APIs to use this feature’s technology in your application, you’re in luck. Facebook is launching a Read API tomorrow. This API will scrape checkins from identified users and their friends and will gather public data about Places, as well.

Facebook has also developed a Write and Search API that allows third-party apps to publish checkins and run queries on Places data. That’s currently in private beta; partners include Gowalla and Yelp, among others. We don’t yet have a date for when that API will be opened generally, but we’ll keep you posted.

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When Places Go Wrong

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In addition to changing your personal privacy settings, you can also report Places that aren’t correct or that infringe on your own rights somehow. Facebook allows users to report Places for incorrect data, abusive behavior, the permanent closure of a business or duplication of other content.

Reported Places are flagged; removal may not occur immediately.

You can immediately remove checkins from your own profile, and you can also untag yourself if someone else has checked you in without your approval. Just click the “remove” button next to the story on your profile or news feed.

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Other Tips

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If you’ve got other early-use tips to share with our readers, please let us know about them in the comments. We’re eager to learn how people are using Places, especially when it comes to personal privacy, business uses and building new applications.

Checkout this video:

 facebook, Facebook Places 

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Social Media – 5 Useful Facebook Trend and Search Services

August 19th, 2010 by Judge

According to Mashable; 5 Useful Facebook Trend and Search Services

As the world’s largest social network, Facebook is a fascinating place to find out what’s hot, what’s news, and discover the latest meme.

Despite recent improvements, Facebook’s () in-site search doesn’t necessarily offer the best way to see such data. However, there are various services that provide a dedicated way to either search Facebook’s 500 million-strong data stream (at least what’s made public), or see what’s “trending” on the site in a way that’s similar to Twitter ().

While we can’t overlook the fact that search engines like Google () and Bing () have begun offering “social search,” we think the five services listed below offer a more useful way to find out what people are saying about a particular topic, or even find out what’s being “Liked” in your social circle.

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1. Kurrently

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Kurrently is a dedicated search engine for both Twitter and Facebook, but you can narrow down the options to see results from one service or the other.

Kurrently’s great selling point is that the search results continue to refresh after you’ve looked up a word or phrase, so you can experience the kind of auto-updating hashtag search we’re already familiar with on Twitter.

Kurrently’s programmer Gilbert Leung said he started the site because he wanted to get a sense of the global sentiment on a certain issue.

“Twitter Search was the obvious tool at the time,” says Leung, “but my immediate question was, ‘What about Facebook?’ Why am I searching through a community of around 60 million when a network of around 500 million exists?’”

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2. It’s Trending

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Right now It’s Trending offers a non-searchable, real-time feed of the most shared content across Facebook, which is useful for anyone who wants a snapshot glimpse of the social web’s current zeitgeist in an incredibly simple and uncomplicated way.

Giving you a new way to see hot topics across categories (video, news, sports, tech, gaming, comedy, etc) and across popular sites (Cracked, YouTube, Vimeo (), DailyMotion, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, NY Times, CNN and yes, Mashable ()) it’s a good-looking service that has big plans for the future — so definitely one to watch.

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3. Openbook

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While many of you may already be familiar with Openbook, it’s worthy of a place on this list for how simple it is to search, or see what others are searching for.

Also worth mentioning for marketeers or researchers is Openbook’s unique ability to see search results from just male or female Facebookers — something that’s an incredibly useful tool if you need to narrow down data on a gender basis.

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4. Booshaka

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Recent startup Booshaka offers a real-time look at what’s trending on Facebook based on open search keywords, as well as via topic if you’re interested in more a general browse.

Main channel topics include news, music, sports, politics, gossip, TV, fashion, movies, deals, travel, brands and games (with each broken down into further sub-topics). Clicking on one of these will give you a stream of updates from relevant accounts.

Once you’ve carried out a topic search, you can see how many “Likes” and comments a Facebook post has received, and narrow down the results by what’s trending now, what’s most popular, what’s most recent, and what has the biggest “buzz.”

These further options could potentially help identify up-and-coming trends, as well as find out what folks are saying about established ones.

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5. Facepinch

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Facepinch promises to let you know popular “Likes” (as well as create your own “Like”), view hot trending topics, and see what’s being sought after on Facebook with its top 100 most popular searches list. There is also the option to see recent searches if you’re more interested in what’s happening right now.

While there’s no data to be gleaned from it, you can also browse recently updated profile pics with a gallery of random Facebook users’ names and thumbnails. The site’s default is the U.S., but you can select specific countries if you’ve an interest in a particular geographical area.

The service’s creator, London-based Andrew Webb, states that besides the more obvious voyeuristic uses, he sees value in the site for brands:

“[C]ompanies and marketing professionals [can] see an unfiltered glimpse of how their products are being really perceived by the public.”

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BONUS: Like Button

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More aimed at finding out what’s hot in your own social circle, Like Button shows you “what people you know like on the Internet () right now.”

If you’re signed in via Facebook, you can see what your buddies have “Liked” on popular pre-loaded sites such as YouTube (), CNN, The Huffington Post, etc, and via categories including news, social media, tech, Apple, etc. But there is the infinitely useful option to add sites of your choosing too, making the Like Button site a personalized social window on the web.

You can also click to view a brief overview of what’s hot on Facebook with the nine top trends displayed and refreshed every 15 minutes.

In addition, and on the fun side of things, Like Button lets you create your very own “Like” and “Dislike” buttons, the former of which looks like this when posted to your Facebook wall:

 facebook 

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