I’ve been recommending PostPlanner to many of my clients (and friends) for months now.

If you don’t know what PostPlanner is, it’s a way to schedule, manage and measure updates on your Facebook Page (here’s a video tutorial).

They recently added a feature that allows you to quickly see what time of day is best for you to update your Page.

Now Facebook Insights does allow you to download a CSV file and figure this out manually, but it takes a while to prepare the data for analysis (date posted and time posted live in the same cell – yuk).

How to view the best posting time in PostPlanner

With PostPlanner, all you have to do is rank your updates by likes, comments and/or clicks to see what time of day seems to be most prevalent.

The following two screen shots shows what seems to work in terms of time of day:

Time of day is just one factor

I should mention here that there are many other factors that increase engagement. Here are the biggies:

• Is the content optimized for Facebook? Cross-posting the same content across multiple channels generally doesn’t work as well as understanding the culture and technology of each platform.
• Is it interesting? Your content has to be interesting to your fans (you don’t matter) for them to share it. Their homebase is the Newsfeed, which they scan.
• Is it relevant to your audience? Knowing your audience well is the number one rule for content marketing.

What do you think?

If you think you can successfully promote your nonprofit on Facebook and Twitter without using it personally, you’re missing the boat.

The best way to truly “get” Facebook and Twitter the way your fans do, is to go beyond reading a book. You must move to their country, immerse yourself in the customs, and talk with them as one of them.

People who are fluent in Japanese got that way because they spent considerable time in Japan.

In the same way, many nonprofits still overly focus on counting likes and followers as if these metrics are the end goal, and then feel frustrated when they’re not getting the results they expected.

Going beyond counting likes and followers means asking a number of quantitative and qualitative questions about:

Reach: 10,000 Facebook fans doesn’t mean you’re reaching 10,000 people. In fact, a Page with 10,000 fans reaches only about 1,700 of their fans with updates.

Surprise, surprise! Additionally, you want to be asking:

• Who are you reaching?
• How are you reaching them?
• How frequently do you reach them per week / month?

Reaction: 10,000 Facebook fans means nothing if they aren’t talking about your nonprofit. And that’s the whole point of social media, right?

People that are talking about you are usually a subset of people you’re reaching. Some questions you want to ask about people talking about you are:

• Who is reacting?
• Where are they reacting?
• What are they saying?
• What are we saying that get’s them talking?

Action: No amount of followers and fans have any value unless you’re converting people. New members, subscribers, donors, etc.

Some questions you want to ask about people you’re converting:

• Where did they come from?
• What actions did they take previously?
• Who is taking these actions?
• What actions are most important?
• Are they also talking about us?

Always put goals before metrics

Defining and measuring reach, reaction and actions becomes much easier if your goals are crystal clear. Interestingly, lack of clarity is a big reason why many organizations don’t go beyond measuring fans and followers.

Instead of focusing on metrics first, ask yourself what you ultimately want people to do. Then the metrics come into view.

What do you think?

Following is a guest post from my good friend Sarah Robinson based on a workshop on loyal communities she’ll be doing next week for the Alabama Association for Nonprofits.

——————–

The strategies and approaches for community building are changing. And gaining fierce loyalty from your community is becoming increasingly difficult.

There is just so much out there competing for the attention, and for the heart, of your members that doing things the same way you’ve always done them will no longer yield the results you are after.

To help you shift your lens on creating and maintaining a non-profit community, here are seven ways to create a fiercely loyal nonprofit community:

1) Decide why you want a community. If the only reasons you can come up with are “so we can ask them for money” and “so we can ask them to volunteer”, hit the pause button. Communities that are created for the sole purpose of being a one-way communication channel don’t last long and they never become Fiercely Loyal.

2) Understand the needs of your community. People who want to be part of a community usually have three primary needs: 1) Belonging, 2) Recognition and 3) Safety. Note: Not everyone who supports your organization wants to be a part of a community. Allow them to be individuals.

3) Stand for something bold. Taking a bold stand 1) allows you to rise above all the noise in today’s marketplace and 2) attract a very distinct group of people who want to be associated specifically with you and your non-profit.

4) Create multiple connection points. And by connection points, I mean opportunities for two-way communication. Gone are the days of non-profits pumping out one-way messages. Use blogs, social media, livestream videos and in-real-life gatherings to connect with your community members and give them the opportunity to connect with each other.

5) Create a culture of “We”. I often hear non-profits complaining about “those donors” or “those volunteers”, which tells me there is an Us/Them culture at play. What if you only used the word “we” as in “We are all supporters of this organization. Some of us just happen to work in the office.”

6) Keep evolving. Many non-profits already have a very solid, very predictable community so it’s tempting to move into a holding pattern. If you want a Fiercely Loyal community, resist this temptation. Channel your energies into creating opportunities for your community to develop Pride, Trust and Passion- not just for your non-profit, but also for the community they belong to.

7) Love your community. I mean really really love them. Not just because they can do things for you but because each member truly matters to you. Be interested in them; pay attention to them, get to know them. Treat them the same way you treat other people you value in your life.

These seven strategies are not expensive or fancy. And anyone at any point in their community building process can put them into play. Those who do will get the payoff of a rich, dynamic and fiercely loyal community.

What would you add to the list?

Download Sarah’s whitepaper (opt-in free) The ROI of a Fiercely Loyal Community

Facebook ads are an incredibly powerful tool to promote your Facebook Page or your Facebook Page updates.

But only if you use them as part of an overall strategy to:

• Grow your Facebook Page fanbase
• Increase engagement with your current fans
• Expand engagement to friends of your fans
• Promote a specific campaign like a fundraising or advocacy campaign

This video will show you how to:

• Get started with Facebook’s ad tool
• Decide whether to promote your Page or a Post
• Configure how your ad will appear
• Target fans and non-fans, and why
• Select a date range to run your ad
• Create a budget cap for your campaign

I know it’s a long video. You might want to favorite it on YouTube, or save it some other way.

Understanding your audience, refining your nonprofit’s message, and knowing how to use various different social media channels can often be a confusing process.

Even if you have crystal-clear goals, figuring out how to achieve them can be very unclear.

Fortunately, there’s the Social Media Road Map from SMO Books.

But it’s not a book.

A book is something you read and (maybe) learn something from.

The Social Media Road Map is an action guide to facilitate both results and learning.

For example, check out pages 8 and 9 from the Social Media Road Map:

You see, the guys who wrote this book (Noland Hoshino, Ash Shepherd and Zan McColloch-Lussier) believe that people learn best by doing. Get it?

Pre-order now

SMO Books is printing a limited amount of copies towards the end of May, so you need to order yours now.

Plus

Plus it’s only $8. Plus I personally guarantee you’ll be happy with it (if you’re not happy with it, mail it to me and I’ll mail you a free copy of Facebook Marketing for Dummies). But you’ll be happy with it.

For the past three years I have been using an auto-DM on Twitter despite the popular opinion that they are evil, and that if you use one, you are a self-centered marketing moron.

So why do I still use one?

Aside from the fact that popular opinion and wisdom are not always mutually inclusive, take a look at my auto-DM:

Note: I use SocialOomph to rotate the message to recommend 57 different Twitter friends I know, love and respect.

I’ve been using this approach for over three years and on very rare occasions I’ll get a complaint. However, most of the responses I get are some variation of “thanks for the recommendations!”, which is often followed by a more meaningful exchange either via replies or DMs.

No more I me mine

There are three reasons why this auto-DM works:

1. It’s useful to new followers- My first contact with with a new follower is about them – not my eBook or website.
2. The recommendations are solid – The people I list in my auto-DM are people that I trust and respect. Some have great advice about blogging. Some tweet good tunes or humor. And others are downright amazing people.
3. It’s useful to my peers – This auto-DM also promotes my friends on Twitter and send them new followers (if they aren’t already connected).

Technology isn’t good or evil – people are

What really bugs people about auto-DMs is the self-serving, self-promoting approach that we all love to hate. In other words, the issue is with the people that use auto-DMs, and NOT the technology.

Technology isn’t careless – people are

To be clear, I do make time to check out most of my new followers – and read their blogs – and ask them questions. In fact, my auto-DM is one way I use to spark these initial connections (in addition to time-tested people skills).

Tell me how much I suck in the comments below

If your nonprofit has a YouTube channel, and you have the ability to edit video, you’ll find this tutorial very useful (assuming you want to increase the number of people subscribing to your channel).

Getting subscribers attention while they’re watching

You already know how powerful timely call to actions can be in our emailing marketing, on Facebook newsfeeds and on your website. The same is true with your YouTube videos.

Yes,  people can subscribe at the top of your channel. But prompting them to subscribe in the video gets their attention while they’re watching the video!

Creating CTAs with YouTube annotations

YouTube has a feature that allows publishers to annotate videos with text, notes and various different links. And if you have access to video editing tools like iMovie or ScreenFlow, you can kick things up a notch by adding a button to your annotation  (check out the end of this 55 second video for an example).

This video shows you how to link a button in your video to an annotation on YouTube:

Network for Good hosted a webinar yesterday where I presented 27 Ways to Increase Engagement on Your Facebook Page.

Check out the Slideshare below (which you can also download as a PDF here) and the recording here.

The reason why Facebook paid a billion dollars for Instagram is the same reason why Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media sites in history.

It’s also the reason why Facebook redesigned Pages to the new Timeline layout:

People Love Pictures

Over 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every single day!

Facebook users love liking, commenting on, and sharing photos more than any other type of content on Facebook. So posting photos automatically gives you an advantage in the Edgerank game.

Here are six ideas to help you get more from the photos you post on your Facebook Page:

1. Post Big Photos

Make sure your photos are at least 851 x 403 pixels to accommodate highlighting or possible use as Cover imagea.

That said, you should also consider posting sizes even larger so that when users view photos in fullscreen, they’ll see the image at the highest resolution. This varies depending on screen size, but as an example, a 17-inch Macbook Pro is 1920×1200 (iPhone photos are 1936 x 2592).

2. Use Reddit

Reddit, like Craigslist, is probably one of the ugliest but most useful websites on the internet.

You can easily search for photos related to your cause and sort them by recency or popularity. And if it’s received a lot of attention on Reddit, chances are it will do well with your Facebook Page.

3. Inject Virality

One common factor that helps content go viral is the ability for users to make it their own. Americans Against The Tea Party created an image (shown above) that allowed users to point an arrow at their profile pic once they shared the photo (make sure you mention your organization in small print at the bottom of the image).

You can see how that works by sharing on of these more politically neutral images.

4. Create Covers For Fans

You’ve been busy focusing on your Facebook Page over the past month (which is understandable given the switch to timelines). But don’t forget that your fans are looking for ways to make their profiles look great too! One way to help them, and promote your cause in the process, is to create cover images.

Check out the batch Best Friends Animal Society created to promote their Spring Pet Super Adoption campaign.

5. Post Photos As Links

Because photos have a huge Edgerank advantage over other types of content, why not post photos as links on your Facebook Page.

The way to do this as follows:

1. Select an awesome photo within a recent blog post (hopefully you have a blog).
2. Post this photo on your Facebook Page
3. In the “Say something about this” field, post a short description about the article along with a link (as shown above).

Users will be more likely to share, comment on and like an amazing photo than they would a link to an article containing that same amazing photo.

A better means to the same end.

6. Use Pinterest

If you use Pinterest, you’ll love this approach to amping up engagement on your Facebook Page:

When you post photos to Pinterest, you have an option of including a URL users can click on in the image. Try re-posting a few photos from your Facebook Page onto Pinterest and link back to the photo on Facebook.

Eventually, you can use Insights to find out how much traffic Pinterest is sending to your Facebook Page.

Share your genius idea below

That’s all I’ve got for you. I’m sure you’ve got more. Please share your ideas in the comments below!