Content marketing is part art with a touch of science.

Creating great content requires a word smith or a creative video producer. The better this foundation is, the more attractive the content is to the viewer and increasing its chances for sharing on the web.

That’s the art part.
So we all know that high quality content and social media sharing and engagement are the driving force behind traffic and conversions. Yet most people don’t have a clear strategy for tracking and analysing performance.
This is the simple science.

Most of us periodically check our Google Analytics to find the number of visitors, or referrals from Google or Facebook, but few know how to use other data available in analytics to maximize their social media and content marketing strategies.

Do you know how to use Google Analytics data to come up with ideas for new articles? Or how Pinterest analytics can help you learn more about your buyer personas, thus helping you shape your message?

In this article I will discuss 6 simple ways to use analytics data to assist with your content marketing strategy.

1. Using long-tail keywords for keyword research

Keyword research is an easy way to brainstorm content. While you might optimize your site architecture with your primary keywords, you also probably know that these should be used sparingly in order to avoid picking up red flags by Penguin.

However, the long-tail keywords you find during your keyword research can still be incorporated into your content. Keyword buckets and competitive research should yield hundreds of potential keywords that can be used as inspiration for content.

If the content is going onto your site, use keywords as the base for article titles and organize them to create a flow for an editorial calendar. High-value keywords can be interspersed with diverse and low-competition keywords, all of which will benefit your site, while allowing you generate large amounts of content and keep to a regular posting schedule.

Start by going to Google Analytics, and pulling a Search report by keyword (Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Overview). Change the number of keywords displayed to 100. Then take those keywords and use them to run a ranking report. Identify keywords that have brought you traffic but you are not ranking in the top 5. Then use those keywords as part of your content marketing efforts.

2. Creating personas 

When publishing content you should always have a target audience in mind, but within that audience you can develop buyer personas that will help you understand who you are writing for and what their interests will be. You want to consider which stage of the purchase funnel they belong to as well as what questions they may want answered.

As you move along your publishing schedule, you will begin to see which personas respond to your content. Perhaps those in your top-of-the-funnel persona comment most on general advice articles, while those toward the bottom of the funnel are more likely to share your latest company updates on social media. You want to be aware of what they are responding to and react accordingly.

You can track social shares with a tool like TrackUr, or of course, Google Analytics.

3. Studying pinterest

When it comes to content marketing, Pinterest is a valuable social media platform. Pinterest is based solely on unique, shareable content, which makes it the perfect pool for brainstorming and testing out ideas.

Determine what category your content falls under and at a quick glance you can see what types of content are trending and getting the most repins. Look at sites like Repinly which tracks the most popular pins and boards on Pinterest to get ideas of what content will perform well on Pinterest, and what you should be pinning to gain your own Pinterest following.

Once you’ve begun pinning you can delve into analytics data with tools like PinLeague, which I use to look at the statistics of images that Iíve pinned as well as what images have been pinned from my website. You can see what images and pins are getting shared and by whom, which can give you insight into your audience demographics and help further develop your buyer personas.

4. Benchmarking real-time data

Benchmarking is also extremely important to keeping on top of your content marketing efforts. These tools can help you grasp the popularity of your content and what direction it should take by providing a range of metrics.

Cyfe is the benchmarking dashboard Iíve found most useful as it allows me to track a variety of metrics on multiple social platforms, and displays that information all in one place for quick, real-time analysis of social followers, visitors, leads and customers.

Comparing this data to a site-specific tool like Pinleague will allow you to better understand what content your audience is responding to, and the better you understand your audience, the sooner you will be able to produce content that is valuable and relevant to that audience.

Cyfe is a tool that i refer to on a daily basis. It allows me to, at a glance, see how all of my sites and clients are performing. I can see traffic trends, social shares, and much more. From this view, I can then investigate if I see a major spike or decrease of traffic. For example, if there ís a spike in traffic and social shares, I will then go to Google Analytics and find the landing page that generated this traffic and social shares. Then, based on the content, I wíll write more content specific to this topic.

5. Sharing site-specific content

Now that you have an understand of exactly what content your audience wants, you can begin to create strategies specific to each site you intend to share it on.

Pinleague will give you an idea of what content is most shareable on Pinterest. If, for example, a company that sells study guides posts an infographic on the college acceptance rates, and gets 10 unique pins and 500 repins, then any future content they develop on college statistics should be accompanied by strong graphics so that it can be easily integrated into Pinterest.

At the same time, fans of their Facebook page might prefer study guide updates or the latest discounts, which reveals that Facebook might be the best site for attracting traffic and conversions. By paying attention to analytics data you can convert them from followers to potential clients to sales.

6. Repurpose content 

Now that you are tracking and investigating the success of your content, you have access to a wealth of data about the performance of your content. Let’s say that one of your infographics gets tons of repins. Why not convert this infographic into a video? Or write an article based on the content for the infographic, or vice versa?

Repurposing content, especially content that you already know is successful and your audience really likes, is an excellent way to increase your reach without taking much of a gamble. Youíd be maximizing your resources to create more opportunities for conversions.

How to get started

So I have given you the theory, now let’s get to practicalities:

1. Set a weekly task for yourself to visit your Google Analytics account and check the performance of your content based on Landing Pages and Keywords. Check out bounce rate, engagement, conversion rate, etc for these so you can determine how your content is performing.
2. Set up a ranking tool. If you donít already have keyword tracking in place, go to AuthorityLabs and create an account. Enter your most popular keywords, as well as keywords that are bringing you the most traffic from Google. Plan on creating more content around keywords that are bringing in traffic but not ranking in the top 5.
3. Set up social media analytics software†to track your social shares and in-depth statistics for Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest. Cyfe is also a great dashboard to set up as an overview.
4. Use the data from all the sources mentioned above to modify your editorial calendar and content marketing strategy.

How do you use Analytics for content marketing? What has helped you maximize the efforts of your content marketing strategy? Don’t be shy….share!

If you have a business and an audience on Facebook, you probably understand the importance of
engaging your fan base.

An effective social media strategy should include different ways to interact with your customers and prospects.

But here’s a question for you – are you utilizing your social media presence to its fullest potential?
Well, chances are you’re missing the mark by underutilizing at least one tool at your disposal – Facebook polls.

But you may be wondering why should you bother spending time doing all the work that comes along with polling your audience?

Why you should use polls in your social media strategy

Well, consider this:

• Successful Facebook pages incorporate polls and contest into their overall social strategy. According to Econsultancy, the social teams behind Coca-Cola and Starbucks frequency pose questions to their audiences. According to newBrandAnalytics, “some companies have already ditched surveys” and are now turning to social feedback to in an effort to understand customer experience. 
• Reaching your business goals hinges on a deep understanding of your customers and prospects. And through Facebook, you have access to a large massive audience of individuals who might not usually complete “traditional” surveys that pop up on websites or that are sent through email. 
• There’s no use in worrying about “bothering” your fans – they’ve already demonstrated their interest by “liking” your page. So why not give them an opportunity to get involved and give you feedback on existing products or planned product feature releases, the types of content and service they’d like to see on your page as well as monitor customer satisfaction and gather information on other topics relevant for your business?

Now that you understand the arguments in favor of polling your audience, let’s get into the HOW-TO and explore the tools available for the task, from the most basic to those with a wider range of features.

Before we dive into the list, I want to point out that you can always choose to “poll” your audience by posting a question as a status update as depicted below.



But if you plan to perform more thorough research it’s recommended that you use one of the tools specifically developed for the job.

Here’s the first tool in the list:

Tool #1. Poll

Poll claims to be “most widely used” polling app and, overall, it has a nice feature set, which includes the ability to create an ad-supported poll for free, feature a poll as a tab on your profile and access data about your respondents. Some of the premium features include the option of removing ads on the app’s page and allowing respondents to add comments while answering your questions.



This app also saves your polls and lets you view them at a later time and, if you wish, to poll your audience once again. Two other interesting premium features are advertising the poll through its own system and requiring poll participants to “like” your page before voting. Premium features can be unlocked for $19 per poll or for an annual payment of $99.

Tool #2. Polls for Facebook

Polls for Facebook is another simple poll app that also claims to be the “the most popular.”



Among other things, the poll creator can choose the question format (multiple-choice, text, only one correct answer, multiple correct, add drop-down answers etc.), modify their appearance (e.g. by adding images), and send  personalized thank-you notes to the poll’s participants (available only in the premium version).

Unlike the first app in the list, one minor drawback is a lack of extensive a documentation and instructions, so to get a real feel for the app, it’s best to just give it a trial.

Tool #3. Polldaddy

The creators of Polldaddy are the same folks who are behind WordPress, so you can rest assured of its technical quality and data security. The app has rich functionality and lets its users create polls, surveys and quizzes which can then be shared on websites and through email, Facebook, and Twitter.




Polldaddy allows its users to customize the look and feel of their polls (e.g. by adding an image or video, customizing CS), modify question format (choosing from 14 question types, specifying a set of possible answers), set privacy options, and analyze response data with the help of its powerful filter and reporting capabilities (e.g. exporting raw data into Excel, PDF, CSV, Google Docs, and XML format).

Tool #4. Cup.li

The Cup.li app is both comprehensive in its design and user-friendly at the same time.



Engineered for “deep marketing analysis”, it matches the functionality of others apps, but also lets you create a private interview, select question format (one answer, some answers, matrix), target respondents by age, gender, marital status, and education, and sort respondents into groups, and enable sharing.

Tips and resources

If you’ve been on the fence about running polls on your Facebook page, hopefully this overview has shown you that there are several available tools to choose from, one of which is certainly guaranteed to simplify the process of gathering valuable insights from your audience.

If you’re unsure about what to ask your fans or how best to structure your questions, here are a few resources you mind find of value:

• Case studies of social media marketing (with the use of polls) from KIA (well-known car company), o2 (UK provider of mobile services), and Hapa (a former Nestle Brand). 
• Article titled “How to Supercharge Your Social Media Presence With Online Surveys” on the Social Media Examiner Blog.

Finally, although social media websites have created new ways to “listen”, understanding what consumers are thinking about and why they are behaving in a certain way is challenging. Seemingly minor details like question wording can have a significant impact on the results of a particular poll.

So keep in mind that individuals and businesses alike should have several tools in their sales and marketing arsenal and utilize a combination of channels and techniques, understanding the pro’s and con’s of each.

Image by Shutterstock

So you’ve been told to create a Facebook business page right? Apparently having a page will put your business on the map, you’ll drive loads of leads to your website, blog, offers and make a ton of sales!
Along the way you’ll also build your credibility, reach and influence and perhaps become a celebrity CEO or a well known public figure (if that floats your boat!)

Well, all this is actually true! It can all happen and more, there is a “but” though and it’s a BIG one!

It will come down to the amount of time and effort you put into your page. Unfortunately we can no longer just slap a page up and people come flocking.

Oh no, times have changed on Facebook.

So what are the fundamental things you MUST do to get your first 1,000 fans on Facebook and consequently your leads & profile?

Here’s 10 Steps which, if carried out with gusto and invested in regularly will bring you untold rewards of great engagement and exposure! Ready? Let’s begin.

Step 1. Make your page interesting

I know this sounds obvious, but actually you wouldn’t believe how many boring pages there are on Facebook. This of course is great news for you as it means the market is wide open for fabulously designed interesting Facebook pages!

Here’s what I mean by interesting;


Step 2. Create epic content

This is a toughie. You would have to be some kind of Super Hero if you could create EPIC content with every post you make. But you must strive to deliver the most interesting, relevant and results based content you can for your target market.

One of the ways to do this is to ask yourself – Will this content I am about to publish create CHANGE! How can I invoke action? How can I add the most value?

All great questions to ask as you make a post and I mean any post, from a small status update to a full on promotional campaign. Need some inspiration for content ideas?

In the meantime by content I mean, status updates, videos, images, comments, blog posts, webinars, contest. Pretty much anything you publish publicly!

Step 3. Invite and tell all your friends

Facebook gives us the opportunity to invite our friends in the admin panel above our page.



So make good use of it and go and ask your pals if they’ll come and like your page.

You could also send a message out to some of your nearest and dearest and ask them to share with their community. Please note this will only work if their community is in the same niche as you. So if your target market is arts & crafts, it’s no good sending it your pal who specialises in personal finance!
Also please don’t SPAM! It’s super uncool. So don’t just send this out to a random group of people in your FB address book, hoping someone will do the right thing. You will end up with lots of people leaving your conversation, probably some spam reports and many unlikes!

Something you can do though, that is super powerful is to post about your new page on your personal wall, (include a photo), asking your friends to like it. I’ve done this very regularly and it always gets great results!

You can also set up a Facebook event announcing your new page and invite all your friends to the event and of course you can offer an ethical bribe in the form of a free gift, but people need to head over to your page to retrieve it. Very effective!

Step 4. Get networking

Absolutely necessary and absolutely time consuming! This is probably the most time consuming role you will have on Facebook but without this your business will grow very slowly!

The more you can get out into the Facebook community and comment on others posts, get involved in the conversation, like pages and generally be a social butterfly, the more you will reap the rewards!

One great tool to help you do this is “Interest Lists”. You can create interest lists for all your favorite pages and people, and then save it as your main news feed. This means you’ll only see posts from the pages and people you most want to see content from / network with and filter out all the noise!

Very effective and time saving!


Step 5.  Run contests

Who doesn’t love a good contest eh?? That’s what makes these little gems go viral! People love to win free stuff! Done correctly contests can rocket your fan base and your customer database in a very short space of time.

The key is to create a page tab for a contest and add a like-gate to the tab. That’s basically an image that overlays on top of the contest information and tells visitors they need to ‘like’ the page before they can enter the contest. You need to be creative with this as it can turn some people off, but on the whole, you’ll get a lot more likes and lots of contest entries also! (Remember on the thank you page of your contest you can encourage people to visit your website and all sorts, but I’ll save the benefits of funnel building for another post!)

Here’s my Top Tips to running a successful contest;

• Make your prize great & relevant! Not just an mini iPad. Remember you want to attract a targeted audience.
• Know the objective of your contest. If you’re simply looking to get a lot of likes and optins over a short period of time, make the contest super easy. A simple sweepstake will do, where the visitor enters their email address to enter. If you want to increase engagement, encourage reviews or create some user generated content for your site, then perhaps a picture contest or a video contest. Remember the higher the barrier to entry the less entrants, but possibly a higher quality more targeted audience.
• Make your contest easy to share! You want it to get out to as many people as possible, so add share links and encourage the entrant to share the contest for an increased chance of winning.
• Keep it short. To create excitement, add a bit of scarcity. Make the contest 1 – 2 weeks max and let everyone know as time is running out to enter. You’ll have lots of frantic activity in the last few days and a nice viral effect!
• Use a 3rd party app and ensure you comply with the Facebook promotional guidelines – https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.phpHave fun with it!!!

Here’s 15 more Steps for Creating Successful Social Media Giveaway Contests

Step 6. Host webinars

I LOVE webinars! When I first started my Facebook career way back when, I would say that webinars were the biggest draw of fans to my page and customers to my business! The same is true today. With every webinar I market, present and replay I gather a huge new raft of fans and potential customers.

PLUS and here’s the biggie… A webinar means you create INSTANT RAPPORT with your audience. If you invite people to attend a webinar with you and you spend an hour or so giving epic content and chatting with your audience you will find there is really nothing more powerful, except perhaps to be in a room one to one with them.

Again you can create a page tab for your webinar registration form and market the page. As people come to register for the webinar, because you have an interesting page, epic content and loads going on they will of course like your page and engage with your posts. Thereby building your fan base, your engagement rates and your subscriber database.

Step 7. Facebook ads

I couldn’t write an entire post about increasing your fan base without Facebook ads. Well I can’t nowadays anyway. I remember the days when our posts were seen by the majority of our fans!
Unfortunately this is no longer the case. Our posts are only seen by approximately 10 – 15% of our fans so to get our message out into the news feeds of all of our likers, we have to pay! Whilst I would rather get it for free, as someone who has been in marketing for over 20 years I can also see why FB are doing it this way and I have to say, Facebook ads are cheaper and more targeted than any offline marketing techniques I have used over the years.

So as business owners and marketers we really shouldn’t moan too much!


I have to tell you, the ads that get us the BEST results are page post ads. In other words, you post a normal status update, with a very interesting 90 character first line, a fantastic image and a compelling description and then use the Facebook ads platform to target it specifically. These ads show up on the right hand side of the newsfeed like normal ads, but are more descriptive and have the wonderful social element of people liking, commenting, sharing etc.

You can also get these ads into the newsfeed and hence pockets (via mobile) of your target audience by using the power editor. I’m afraid I will have to leave explanation of using the power editor to another post as it really is a subject all on it’s own. It is there and it is very effective.

Step 8. Interesting threads

OK, we’re heading towards the home stretch here! I have seen some great threads over my time surfing the Facebook landscape. But I have to tell you, they’re few and far between. Most of the stuff you’ll see coming down your newsfeed is absolute drivel! Sorry posters, but it’s true.

Much like Point 1, this leaves it wide open for you to get in there and be original and interesting!

An example of an interesting thread is when it’s more focused on the customer than your business. I saw a speed coaching thread recently that made me go and instantly like the page.

The host had posted – in the next 30 minutes I am going to answer all of your questions, post NOW. He had absolutely loads of comments and questions being fired at him and he went through and answered every single one. It was an amazing thread of info. Another idea is having a guest ‘poster’, So getting someone well respected in your niche and having them come to your wall for a couple of hours to answer fan questions.

Something we used to do was at a specific time on a specific day have a themed event, ie., one very successful one we ran was 60 book suggestions in 60 minutes. We had hundreds of comments, book suggestions and discussions that everyone could get a lot out of. Plus of course a whole load of new likes!

Please note to run these type of ‘wall’ events, you need to be consistent. Just doing one won’t cut it. So only start this if you have the resource to keep it going.

Step 9. Add a Facebook “like” box to your blog/website

Super important and super easy! Add a like box to your blog.

Here’s how.

1. Go to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
2. Click on “Like Box”
3. Enter the URL of your fan page
4. Copy the code and paste into the sidebar of your blog or wherever you want it to show on your website.

People can now “like” your facebook page from your website.

Step 10. The engagement circle

This is a little diagram I created maybe a year or so ago and I affectionately called it “The Engagement Circle”.


As you grow your Facebook page and your business, you will build a customer database or a ‘list’ as it’s known in the online marketing world. As you create more content and more posts and hold more events etc, you should be emailing your database and inviting them to come over and like and engage with your page. Not everyone who signs up will have liked your page, so you need to ask them to!

Why do I need them to like my page if they’re already in my email database Jo, I hear you cry? The answer is you want to be able to communicate with your prospective audience on a multitude of platforms. Email, Social Media, Skype, Instant Messaging, Evernote, Drive – there are so many more options these days.

The more channels you can disseminate information across, the more chance you have of getting in front of the eyes of your target market. Remember there is a lot of noise out there, it’s your job as a marketer to cut through that noise and directly impact your potential customers with your Epic Content!

I’m sure you’ve heard this before many times, but please remember it’s about quality not quantity. There’s no point in having a page with 100,000 fans if no-one engages, gets involved or turns into a customer! This is a business remember!

But know this, getting to your first 1000 fans is just the first step. Next you need to turn your fans into customers, but that’s another story coming to a blog post near you soon…..

Now don’t just read – go out and take action on one of these steps today! Right NOW!

Have you ran any super successful fan getting campaigns? If so I’d love to hear about them! Let’s chat! Comment or leave feedback below, I will respond to every single post!

Thanks so much for reading! I hope this post has been useful!

Facebook keeps changing the rules.



Some of us will love them, others will tear their hair out and wring their hands. There will be those who complain and scream at the moon.

So what are the new rules, guidelines and policies that Facebook wants you to embrace? In essence you are now allowed to include a “call to action” for promoting that event, book or competition. The old rule of not having anymore than 20% text still applies.

The previous policies that prohibited effective marketing text in the image for brands was always a nonsense. So it’s good to see some commonsense emerge after 12 months!

How are some brands taking advantage of these new rules and breaking what were the old Facebook cover photo guidelines? How can you take advantage and apply them to Facebook’s cover photo and images to increase sales and conversions?

Here are 5 examples that you can use as inspiration to get people to book, buy or subscribe.

1. Mari Smith

Mari hasn’t messed about and has leapt in and is promoting her free webinar. You just gotta love that great smile!



2. Skype

The new rules from Facebook allow you to promote a contest. Here is one of Skype’s efforts with its “presenters” contest.



3. Hubspot

Hubspot has aalways been big on offering free ebooks that offer great value. Here is an example of their Facebook cover image which takes advantage of allowing that call to action in three simple steps.

 

4. Inbound Zombie

John Haydon’s “CTA” couldn’t be much simpler for his Inbound Zombie brand. The “Call to Action” is very clear… text and arrow!



5. ShortStack

It seems that simplicity is a consistent theme with ShortStack making asking for a “like” ….simple, fun and colorful.













































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If you’ve been keeping an eye on your Facebook page’s reach metrics, you may have noticed some changes in what you’re seeing and who’s seeing you.



In February, Facebook announced they had killed a bug which had been affecting the way reach had been reported within insights since last September.  Actual reach was never affected, but the way it was reported within “Insights” was, causing massive confusion.   After the bug was killed, and “Insights” was returned to “normal”, Facebook issued a statement which made several vague promises: your reach may not change, but it may improve, but it depends…

Whatever.

Their statement didn’t make much sense. Here’s what we’ve discovered since the bug was killed, and how it may affect you.

What we discovered

Based on data collected from over 4,000 pages of all sizes, as of May 27th, the average page post reaches about 21.4% of the total fans for the page, according to the Agorapulse Barometer. But this fan reach varies tremendously depending on the size of your page, going from 28% of the fans for pages with less than 1,000 fans to 9% for pages with more than 100k fans.

Between February 25th and April 22nd, organic reach remained pretty steady, but viral reach has increased by 200% on average.  Monthly viral reach stats have gone from the equivalent of 100% of fan bases to almost 400%.

 
This doesn’t necessarily mean your viral reach will have tripled since February.  These averages span a broad spectrum of over 4,000 pages of all sizes, and the bug was only affecting certain types of impressions (for example, paid impressions in the newsfeed or impressions of shared content).

Your reach will vary greatly depending on your content strategy, posting frequency and the type of engagement you were getting.

Case studies

Below are the results immediately following the bug fix from three pages with normal posting activity from the sample above:

1. One very (very!) active political page with good engagement (600,000 fans)
2. Charity page with very (very!) high engagement (230,000 fans)
3. e-commerce page with low engagement (1 Million fans)

Example #1.

In three weeks, our active political page experienced an increase in organic reach of about 15%, while viral reach increased by more than 739%.



Example #2.

Our charity page remained steady in their organic reach, but their viral reach increased by 1,000%.

Example #3.

Our e-commerce brand page also had no increase in organic reach, but their viral reach increased by 135%.

The Facebook “Bug” is fixed

Based on the data we’ve collected, most pages won’t see an increase in organic reach since the bug was killed. Nearly all pages have experienced an increase in viral reach since February, but the magnitude of the increase will depend highly upon the level of engagement each page was receiving on its posts.

If you spent six months worrying about the crazy fluctuation of your page’s reach, you can lay your concerns to rest. Actual reach was never down.  The way it was being reported in your insights was.  And, if your content strategy is still the same, you should find your reach metrics have gone back to their pre-september level.

If you’d like to see how your reach statistics have been affected by this bug fix, you can check it out on the free Facebook Page Performance Barometer we used to extract this data.








































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After spending a day with Facebook Home, I can report that its main function is actually pretty simple. It essentially turns your lock screen into a slideshow of updates from your News Feed.

The News Feed, you'll recall, is that stream of updates that goes down the middle of the page when you open up a Facebook app or go to Facebook.com


So, is Facebook Home cool? Almost. Mostly. It's really close.

After less than 24 hours with this phone, I can already tell that it would be nice to own a phone which allows you to press one button, and then swipe through live, high-quality status updates, photos, and news stories during any spare moment of the day.

But that's not what Facebook Home does. The status updates, photos, and news stories Facebook Home shows you aren't high-quality at all. That's because they are status updates, photos, and news stories from your Facebook friends.

If you are anything like me, the group of people who are your Facebook Friends is a motley collection of family, family friends, old classmates, casual business acquaintances, and maybe a dozen or so actual, real-life "friends." Who wants to see photos and news stories from those people? They aren't very good photographers. Who wants to tap a button and see news stories from them, either? They don't usually share my taste in news.

The problem with Facebook Home is your Facebook friends. They fill it up with useless (and sometimes embarrassing) junk.

Annoyingly, right now there's no way for a user to tell Facebook that they'd like to see less of one kind of update in Home and more of another. The good news is, Facebook knows this is a problem. We're told by Facebook that it plans to improve its update-selecting algorithms and give users manual filtering options in the future. Facebook is updating Home once a month right now, so we'll probably see improvements in this area soon.

In the meantime, I've attempted to make Facebook Home more pleasant and interesting by going through my list of Facebook friends and removing people. I'm curating.

Ironically, this process has made me realize how much I would prefer Facebook Home if, instead of pulling content from Facebook, it pulled content from the people I follow on Twitter or Instagram.

On both those services, I don't follow people because I know them or I met them one time or whatever. I follow them because they take photos of or tweet about interesting things.

I'm constantly curating those lists -- adding and subtracting people based on the quality and usefulness of the content they share.

Facebook Home is a cool innovation for smartphones. Swipe-able news belongs in a smartphone's lock screen.

But I hope Facebook's innovation is one that Twitter and Instagram (a Facebook subsidiary) copy as soon as possible.





























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Do you often update your Facebook business Page with new photos?



Do you have a particular posting strategy or just publish random pictures from time to time?

The fact is that with the latest Facebook policy changes, photo updates are now getting less organic reach than ever before. Nevertheless, the popularity of photo posts remains unshakeable: the majority of content posted on Facebook is pictures.

How can you use photo updates on Facebook to drive more engagement including likes, comments and shares?

Here are seven practices picked from popular Facebook Pages to help your photo posts get higher viral results and make more people learn about your business.

#1. Appeal to Personal Experience

On the whole, Facebook fans are ordinary people with similar tastes and habits. So photos appealing to fans’ personal experience have a good potential to reach large audience on Facebook. Fans more willingly respond to familiar things and situations, when they can say “Look, it’s about me!”.



Caption: AXE makes their fans recollect best school moments. Result: 34.5K likes, 2.1K shares.

There are some general themes everyone can use in this kind of photo update: memories from childhood, hard Mondays and long-awaited Fridays, Internet addiction, well-known movies and games, handheld gadgets, etc.

Perhaps, such a picture won’t tell much about your company or product (unless you try to tie it in). But this helps you to increase engagement around your photo update which will give you better exposure in news feeds and attract others to your page.

#2. Use Humor

Most likely, the products or services your company offers have little to do with humor.

However, is there a way for you to use funny pictures around your product features?



Caption: Firefox shows their page display options in such a funny way. Result: 9K likes, 1.7K shares

There are lots of cool images on the Web to make your fans laugh (or at least draw attention to your post in the news feed).

Put yourself in your fans’ place. Pick a funny picture your fans will understand and try to connect it with your brand or product.



Caption: Intel jokes on the “conception” of computers. Result: 105K likes, 36K shares.

Don’t go too far with black humor or vulgarity; otherwise the message of your update will be lost.
Images that are too provocative may encourage your fans to unsubscribe from your Facebook Page.

#3. Ask for Likes and Shares

Nobody welcomes long complicated comments that accompany photo posts; they’re simply ignored by fans in the news feed. So when you write text to go with an image, keep it short and ask your fans to like or share the update if they agree or feel the same.



Caption: Skype asks fans to like the post if they occurred in the similar situation. Result: 1.7K likes.

You may even invite fans to vote for one thing or another by using Like and Share buttons.



Caption: Walmart launches Facebook voting for the best Monopoly token: “Like” for cat, “Share” for iron. Result: 48K likes, 2.8K shares.

You won’t get valid stats using such a polling method, but inviting social sharing can increase the virality of such posts.

#4. Capitalize on Current Events

Use news or sensational topics as a way to remind fans about your brand. This could include political happenings, business or tech news, sporting events, upcoming holidays, etc. Just be sure you pick a tie-in that isn’t obscure; you want to find one that the masses will understand.


Caption: Lay’s plays around the election topic. Result: 6.3K likes, 3.3K comments.

Or you could just post a funny picture to provoke a discussion.



Caption: Freemake asks fans to share their opinion about Apple Maps. Result: 1.1K likes, 492 shares.

#5. Post Coupons and Giveaways

Though Facebook has a paid app called “Offers”, most businesses continue to post discount coupons and giveaways in the form of photo updates. Quite simply, photos are widely seen in the news feed and you don’t have to pay money to reach your customers globally or locally.

Such posts also have potential to attract new customers when seen by your fans’ friends.



Caption: Community Coffee grants 20% discount to all fans who manage to see the promo code.
Result: 2.2K likes, 347 shares.

#6. Provide an Inside Look at Your Company

People are curious by nature. That’s why to learn more about a person, we’d rather look through their photos than their bio. That said, try to put faces to your business.

Facebook fans will definitely love to see photos of your employees, especially if the pictures are done in an original way.

Show your employees as they assemble products, meet customers, or even ask a celeb to participate.



Caption: Dropbox employees meet Bono and The Edge (who actually invested into project). Result: 2.4 likes, 297 shares.

Photos that show what happens behind the scenes are a good way to enhance brand credibility.

#7. Push Fans to Comment

Comments are an important component of photo virality, so put thought into what you post. People comment when they have something to say in response. So why not publish content that will urge your fans to comment?

A simple question posted as a status update may easily be ignored in the news feed, while a question presented as a photo update will attract more attention and push fans to answer it.

Try to ask your fans something general about your product or their everyday life, so that everyone could answer your question.



Caption: A simple yes/no question got 3.6K comments from Microsoft fans.

You don’t have to stick to questions, though. You may post a quiz or a funny experiment; anything that pushes fans to share their opinions in comments.



Caption: A funny Freemake’s experiment with cell phone name brought 2.2K comments (vs. 269 likes and 289 shares).

What do you think? What other image posting tips have you had success with on Facebook? Share your thoughts in the comments below.











































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Most Americans now know the feeling of typing something into a social media input box, thinking again, and deciding against posting whatever it was. But while it certainly seemed like a widespread phenomenon, no one had actually quantified the extent of this "self-censorship."

But now, new research based on a sample of 3.9 million Facebook reveals precisely how widespread this activity is. Carnegie Mellon PhD student Sauvik Das and Facebook's Adam Kramer measured how many people typed more than five characters into Facebook content-input boxes, but then did not post them.

They term this "last-minute self-censorship." The research was posted to Das' website and will presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's conference on Weblogs and Social Media in July.

The numbers are impressively large. Fully one-third of all Facebook posts were self-censored, according to the method Das and Kramer devised, though they warn they probably captured a substantial number of false positives. Seventy one percent of all the users surveyed engaged in some self-censorship either on new posts or in comments, and the median self-censorer did so multiple times.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the study was the demographic correlations with self-censorship. Men self-censored more often, particularly if they had large numbers of male friends. Interestingly, people with more diverse friend groups — measured by age, political affiliation, and gender — were less likely to self-censor.

While the researchers declined to speculate in this study about why people may or may not have self-censored, earlier research with a small group of users found five reasons people chose not share what they'd written: aversion to sparking an argument or other discussion, concern their post would offend or hurt someone, felt their post was boring or repetitive, decided the content undermined their desired self-presentation or were just unable to post due to a technological or other constraint.

For Facebook users, the main takeaway here is probably: Feel free not to share. Facebook, on the other hand, has to have a more complex relationship to this research. Their interaction and business models depend on sharing, but it's not hard to imagine some circumstances in which it would be better not to share: racist content, say.

Das and Kramer say future research should address when the non-sharing is "adaptive," (which I think means good, in this context) and when, in the words of Das and Kramer, "users and their audience could fail to achieve potential social value from not sharing certain content, and the [social-network service] loses value from the lack of content generation."
Image via Manjunath Kiran/AFP/GettyImages










































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When those friends, family and old college acquaintances came up on your screen and you were invited to connect with them after years and maybe decades of no contact.

For me many looked the same, others a bit older and some I couldn’t recognize. It was a bit of a “Wow” moment. Global connection in an instant in full living color.

The network touched us, connected us and provided glimpses into lives forgotten but still lived. It allowed us to share photos, videos and stories of our adventures. Some glimpses into others lives are exciting, others intriguing and some just border on the mundane.

Engaging with your friends online from your news feed can be done in a variety of ways from placing a comment, sharing the update  or just hitting “like” if we don’t have much time.

But we are still working out the ways to play.

Does the “Like” button need an alternative?

The ever present “like” button seems to have been with us forever. In fact it has only been with us for just over four years on personal pages and replaced the “become a fan” button on brand pages in June, 2010.

We have all seen those updates from friends where we silently say “I didn’t want to know that!” Other reactions are sometimes “too much information” and sometimes you feel like saying “I don’t care“.

Maybe we need buttons like “funny” when you see an update like this.

“I am proud of myself. I finished the puzzle in just 6 months while the box said 2 to 4 years“.

9 Updates Deserving the “I Don’t Care” Button

Here is a fun look at 9 types of  updates that don’t need a like button.



Infographic source: By www.themaplekind.com  - where you can waste a lot of time and also have a chuckle.



















































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Facebook has acquired Storylane, a relatively young social network focused around telling stories, for an undisclosed sum.

Storylane announced the acquisition in a blog post Friday, noting that the service will wind down and the team will join Facebook. "After a lot of discussions with Facebook about how our teams might work together to have even greater impact, we are announcing today that the Storylane team will be joining Facebook," Storylane's founder and CEO Jonathan Gheller wrote in the post.

Facebook confirmed the acquisition in a statement provided to Mashable: "The team from Storylane will be an incredible addition to Facebook. Their previous work showcasing real identity through sincere and meaningful content will make them a perfect fit at Facebook."

We've heard from a source that the five-person staff at Storylane will join Facebook's Timeline team, reporting to Sam Lessin, who heads up the "Identity" product group at the company.

Storylane launched in October with the goal of prompting users to share meaningful stories from their lives. The service is perhaps most similar to Medium, the publishing platform launched last year by two of Twitter's co-founders. Gheller was ambitious in his goals for the service, telling Mashable at the time that the service was trying to "build a library of human experiences by crafting a community where people can share things that really matter."

For those who did share stories on the service, Storylane plans to roll out tools to help migrate those posts to other sites. Gheller also says Facebook will not be getting any of the company's data or operations as part of the acquisition.

Here's the full announcement Gheller made to the Storylane community:

Two years ago the team behind Storylane began working to help people connect in more fruitful and meaningful ways. We took on a mission – trying to help people better communicate who they are and what they care about, improve the way we do business with each other, find love and make new friendships. And at the heart of this work has always been our drive to build a more genuine online identity.

After a lot of discussions with Facebook about how our teams might work together to have even greater impact, we are announcing today that the Storylane team will be joining Facebook.

This is an exciting opportunity. Facebook’s mission of connecting the world has always been at the center of our work, and like our friends at Facebook, meaningful connections are what our team is most passionate about.

The beautiful stories you have decided to share with us are yours to keep and share in however way you want. We are building tools that will help you migrate the content to other services if you so desire. I will be in touch with you about those specific tools later, but I can confirm that Facebook is not acquiring any of your data; and we’re working to make sure you can migrate your content in a manageable way.

We want to give special thanks to our investors who supported us and encouraged us to dream big. It has been an absolute honor to work alongside such an outstanding group of people. Our journey as a young company was made possible by their commitment and patience. Without their guidance we would not be in a position to further our mission through Facebook.

Most of all, I want to thank our users. Your passion, sincerity and willingness to share, has made Storylane the incredible experience that exists today. We have learned so much from you. Your ideas and creativity will stay with us and inspire us on the next stage of our journey.
Image courtesy of Storylane.








































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Facebook unveiled today a radical new look for the news feed, but it wasn't the only social network getting major buzz following the design announcement.

Minutes after Facebook debuted the overhaul, boasting multiple feeds, mobile consistency and a bigger focus on pictures, people took to Twitter to discuss the similarities between the update and the existing look of competitor Google+, which was trending on Twitter in the U.S. for a good portion of Mark Zuckerberg's presentation.

Facebook's announcement comes just one day after Google+ launched new features of its own, including a "Local" reviews tab and larger cover photos.

As a part of an effort to de-clutter news feeds, Facebook introduced on Thursday more white space to make reading easier on the eyes. This shift is indeed reflective of Google+'s signature look. Both platforms now have a lot more space in the center of the page.



Looking at the designs side by side, the similarities are obvious. For example, Facebook's new look takes updates from friends — also called Stories — from small thumbnails to beautiful, blown-up displays, just like Google+'s approach to highlighting updates. Previews of articles shared from friends will also take up more real estate in the redesigned news feed. (Google+ does this too.)

In addition, Facebook will be removing its cluttered left side bar and replacing it with a cleaner, sleeker black bar with visual icons for bookmarks, such as messages and chat. This resembles Google+'s existing grey-scale side bar, also with stacked icons. If you take a look at Facebook's sidebar now, which features smaller icons and more text, this is a huge change toward saving space and streamlining the design. It's also similar to Facebook's iPhone app.



But Facebook has taken its design to another level by adding multiple news feeds that allow you to go beyond just scratching the surface of what's happening on the site. Thanks to feeds that highlight photos, music news (what friends are listening to and what concerts they're attending) and a section just for celebrities and organizations you subscribe to, the move gives you more control over the stories you.

Although a Google+ spokesperson declined to comment to Mashable's Chris Taylor on the comparisons, he didn't deny social networks in general are seeing the same kinds of needs for cleanliness from users.

Do you think the redesign looks like Google+? Take the poll below and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Does the new Facebook news feed look like Google+?

Images are Mashable Composites

Facebook News Feed Event

Mark Zuckerberg



Old news feed



Sharing stats



New news feed



New way to view shares




New profile photos



New Pinterest display



Music stream



News stream



New mobile and desktop view
































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