Around this time, Facebook began revealing more information about its News Feed algorithm, EdgeRank, and began providing more analytical data to brands’ Community Managers (through Facebook Insights). Such newer data includes Reach, Engagement, Talking About This, Negative Feedback, etc.

Last week, I decided to begin digging deeper into the numbers to be able to provide insight into what will make us all better Social Media Managers.

Here’s what I did and what I discovered.

I looked at 10 random tbk Creative clients who all have a Corporate Facebook Page. When I say random, it is partially so. To be specific I took the first 10 that came to the top of my head. This happened to represent the following:

Fans – 31,854 fans across the 10 pages.
Posts – Exactly 100 posts reviewed (10 posts per page).
Date – The 100 posts were the last 10 posts by each brand pre May 17, 2012.
Location – 8 brands are based in Ontario; 1 brand in Alberta; 1 brand in Texas.
Type – 2 brands are not-for-profit; The balance is for-profit.
Industries – Wide range of industries from legal to financial to hospitality to charity to retail.
Size – Companies ranged relatively wide in revenue size from a few of less than $1,000,000 and several >$20,000,000.
Frequency – No brands posted more than 2 times per day during the date range reviewed.

Here’s the key data findings:

Avg. post reached 47.9% of Facebook users (Reach divided by Fans).

There are 4 main types of posts: Text post, Link post, Album/Picture post, Video post (either Facebook or YouTube link). Here are the rankings for Reach:

i) Text posts at 48.4%,

ii) Link posts at 51.9%,

iii) Album/Picture posts at 62.8%,

iv) Video posts at 44.9%.

Out of the 10 brands (and 100 posts), the Album/Picture post was the top post in terms of Reach on 7 of the 10 pages.

The highest Reached post noted was 226.1% (that brands average Reach was 95.9%).

The lowest Reached post noted was 8.2% (that brands average Reach was 13.4%).

There is a new option that lets Facebook users hide posts from their News Feed. Brands can now track the number of users who do this through a new Facebook Insight called “negative feedback” (found under Facebook Insights -> Overview -> Engaged Users). The average brand had 0.37% of users hide their posts (1 in about 270 users) with each post.

The metric, Engaged Users, is the number of users that click on a brand’s post. Of those users the brands reached, the average post had 8.2% engaged (the top brand achieved 22.8% Engaged Users).

The metric, Talking About This, is the number of users who comment, share, or like a brand’s post. Of those users the brands reached, the average post had 1.0% Talking About This (the top brand achieved 2.1% Talking About This).

Here’s what to make of the numbers:

1. On Feb. 29, 2012, at the fMC conference in New York City, Facebook announced that on average brand pages are reaching 16% of their fans. Based on the findings above, this doesn’t seem to be accurate or implemented yet. After reviewing 100 posts across 10 brand pages, representing 31,854 fans, the average Reach was 47.9%. I will point out the one minute flaw with the Reach metric that bears mentioning but has a very small chance of denouncing this point. According to Facebook Insights, Reach measures Facebook “users” and therefore, we must make the assumption this can include fans and non-fans (because when fans comment on a post, it can commonly reach their friends’ News Feed – which gets represented in the new Virality metric). So although, Facebook announced 16% fan Reach, and we’re observing 47.9% user Reach, I’m still going to assume Facebook pages are reaching dramatically higher fans than previously reported by the company at fMC on Feb. 29.

2. There is clearly an incentive Facebook.com is providing to posts that are Album/Picture based (62.9% Reach – which is 22% higher than the second most Reached post – Link posts). As Social Media Managers, if we want to reach more people with our posts, posting Pictures is undoubtedly the way to go.

3. The sample size was too low to add firm credence to this point (only 3 posts of the 100 applied), but it’s important to note the lowest observed type of post for Reach was Video posts at 44.9%. If this result is similar across a larger sample, I think we should acknowledge this fact but not be too fast to cancel our video marketing campaigns and look at the bigger picture of our efforts. Video can have other vertical benefits that photo or text can’t achieve. It’s just that if you’re striving for elevating your Facebook Reach, video may not be the best type of post to publish.

I invite you to use this data as a bar to measure your own results against. If you want to test your own numbers, here’s what you can do: Take one post (I’d let it be at least 4 days old to give it time to mature) and you can measure everything that I measured in this article by looking at the posts’ a) Reach, b) Engaged Users, c) Talking About This, d) Negative Feedback. Keep in mind that when I calculated the % for b, c & d, I divided the respective numbers into its Reach, not fans. I did this because if you are producing high quality content that is gaining high Engagement/Talking About This scores, your percentages will come back low if your Reach happens to be low.

If you go by Reach, you can compare apples to apples. With this algorithm you can answer questions like, “What % of my posts that reach Facebook users get interacted with, liked, clicked on, etc.? What types of posts attain highest Reach, Engagement, lowest negative feedback, etc.”

I hope you find this data and exercise useful. Feel free to ask any questions below. 

Andrew Schiestel is a Sr. Partner & Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, London Ontario based web design & social media marketing agency. The company instigates and accelerates consumer action around brands, digitally.

I wanted to bring Ashley on a call to knowledge share because Voices.com has had meteoric business and marketing success in the last two years and they don’t seem to be slowing down.

The main topics we covered were: 

i. How Voices.com has adapted to the new Timelines with some tips,

ii. How they went from 0 to 70,000 fans within 2 years,

iii. Tips for your website to make it more socially intuitive,

iv. Habits Ashley has developed to produce lots of high quality content,

v. What social channels the company uses and why (they’re even now on Google+ and Pinterest!),

vi. How Ashley manages negative conflict when it occurs,

vii. And more,

You missed a great interview with Ashley & I, but I want to hand you a few delicious points that you can run with:

1. Sponsored Stories – Ashley called Facebook’s Sponsored Stories advertising model The Secret Sauce to how they company have driven past the 70,000 fan mark.

Most advertisers are fluent in regular Facebook Display PPC but are shy of Sponsored Stories (it’s somewhat of a new concept to the marketing world).

Sponsored Stories is another form of Facebook advertising that you can setup in your Facebook advertising portal. The difference is you are delivering activity from what happens on your Facebook page to your fans’ friends.

There are two popular ways to do this:

a)    Likes,

b)    Posts,

Here’s how this works: You can setup your advertising so that when someone new becomes a fan, you can deliver advertising to their friends letting them know that their friend just became a fan of your page. The second popular way to do this is when you create a post on your Timeline, you can have your post shared with a greater % of your fans and also their friends.

This is incredibly advantageous for two reasons:

i) Recently at the fMC conference in New York City, Facebook stated that the avg. Facebook page will only reach 19% of fans (my research with clients is showing 30-55%). Regardless, Sponsored Stories lets you reach a greater audience than you would without.

ii) By using Sponsored Stories you get to reach the friends of your fans. This is powerful and Ashley emphasized this yesterday with this example:

She said, “Think of it this way, if we have fans, some of which are customers who are Voice Professionals, it is likely a Voice Professional would know other Voice Professionals. This is our way to reach those people through their friends.”

What Ashley is alluding to and you’ll know this – social association (referrals, social proof, etc.) is the most powerful form of marketing.

Sponsored Stories has played a monumental role in the growth of the company’s Facebook page, but also getting the right quality kind of growth.

2. Content Creation – Every Community Manager probably has their own ways of creating high quality content.

Ashley shared her habit. What she does is schedules herself once per week to sit down and create multiple blog posts, status updates, tweets etc. for the week. If she’s not feeling inspired or writing well at that time, then she will reconvene at a later time.

The key she has found is when she gets on a roll she’ll keep pumping out the content non stop for about two hours. This habit gives her loads of juicy content for the week to come.

3. Website Social Integration – A lot of websites suck in this area and Ashley & I dug right into this chat.

The biggest take away here was Ashley pointing out Voices.com’s use of the Facebook social plug-in where you can install a Facebook page box onto your website that lets people become a fan without leaving your website.

I’ve always been a big fan of this website tactic. Why have people who may be on your website looking to buy your product get distracted, leave your website, become a fan, and forget to buy your product?

To expand, there’s generally 4 forms of social integration on your website:

i)    Social Sharing Tools - Social Media hyperlinked icons that let users share your page in their own social networks.

ii)    Social Links - Social Media hyperlinked icons that let users access your social channels (whether it be Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, etc.),

iii)    Social Boxes - Just like Voices.com use of the Facebook social plug-in above,

iv)    Feeds - A news feed of social media content from various social channels (for example, tbk Creative has a Twitter feed setup on our main page here.)

I also liked how Voices.com has created its own subpage only for their community. This is a good practice of digital architecture because it lets the main index page still focus on new customer sign-ups (we all still have products to sell) and still gives the social media channels lots of play but in the right spot. See Voices.com’s Community Page here to know what I’m talking about.

4. Managing Conflict – Many business owners new to social media butcher this one up. Many like to delete community posts that are negative towards their brand.

Here’s what Ashley does to manage complaints on the company’s social channels (we see eye to eye here):

If it’s a customer service complaint, Ashley leaves the post up and responds to it with openness, empathy, and responsibility.

Her reasoning, as she put it: “If you delete, it’ll just upset them more. If you respond to it publicly, the entire community will see the company addressing the complaint and they will think more highly of your company.”

I’ve always said this: “No body expects brands to be perfect (sort of like humans). However, what people expect are brands to be responsible when they screw up.”

With this said, Ashley and I discussed that there is a fine line that community members can cross when their posts become inappropriate (vulgar, discriminatory, slanderous etc.). We both concluded: Don’t tolerate it and remove it. People still need to behave. If someone is clearly getting out of line on your social channels, your community will know it too and will have no problem with you doing whatever actions you need to, to get the Troll/Griper under control. I’ve even seen multiple instances where the community does step in to help.

There were about 4 or 5 other major points we discussed but my fingers are getting sore from typing now.

tbk Creative will continue to bring on rock star digital & social media performers to knowledge share and collaborate with to help with your digital and social media campaigns.

If you want to be added to the email list so you know when the next Webinar arrives, fire me an email to andrew at tbkCreative (dot) com.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, London Ontario based web design & social media marketing agency. The company exists to instigate and accelerate consumer action around brands, digitally.

To contact Andrew about speaking at your upcoming web marketing & communications event, click here. To join tbk Creative’s growing Facebook community dedicated to optimizing your digital marketing efforts, click here.

They have missions that are arguably more important than any corporate board room, but usually lack the economics to have their missions be realized.

The quality of marketing & branding are usually the two organizational items that are sacrificed due to a lack of resources.

This is counterintuitive for two reasons. Strong marketing & branding cause two things:

A) Awareness 

And with the right messaging/brand/story-telling:

B) Action

In February, tbk Creative set out to do our part in helping a few charities cause more awareness and action around their causes by overcoming this resource challenge.

We called the contest Canada’s $25,000 Website Charity Challenge and chose Facebook as our platform to execute it using one of our Facebook contest app, Contest King™.

The purpose of the contest was simple: Have charities who need a web and digital makeover submit their noble plea for support. The groups with the most votes would win accordingly.

The prizes were worthwhile:

1. Grand Prize - $25,000 in web design work ($15,000 website, $5,000 mobile website, and $5,000 in social media marketing),

2. Second prize – $5,000 in website work,

3. Third prize – $1,000 in web or social media marketing help.

After 55 honourable nominations and over 4,000 votes, here were the winners:

1) Students Offering Support (SOS) - A Toronto-based charity that has 26 chapters across North American universities that raises funds to build sustainable development projects in Latin America. They do this through student volunteers who teach their peers for donations in exam-prep review sessions on campus. Since 2004, the organization has mobilized over 2,000 students and raised over $700,000 dollars for important projects in Latin America.

2) London Community Resource Centre - A 30-year old London Ontario based organization that focuses on community based programs that address the important issues of food security for our local citizens.

3) Nellie’s Shelter - Started in 1973 and named after one of Canada’s pioneering feminists, Nellie McClung, Nellie’s Shelter is a Toronto based homeless shelter & violence support safe heaven for women and children in need.

The surprise in all of this is that the largest benefit may not have been the $31,000 in tbk Creative in-kind gifts.

In talking with a number of the charities that participated, here are some of the other benefits they shared with me:

“The challenge reinvigorated our supporters.”

“It encouraged us to create structure around a specific goal.”

“We got our head around social media and what we could do with it.”

“It helped us reach those that had not heard of us.”

“It had our supporters feel like they were part of something with us vs. just asking for donations.”

“We started doing news media outreach for the first time. We now know how to do this in the future.”

These intangible benefits that probably touched all 55 groups in some way, just may be the largest gift of all.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, London Ontario based web design & social media marketing agency. The company exists to instigate and accelerate consumer action around brands, digitally.

To contact Andrew about speaking at your upcoming web marketing & communications event, click here. To join tbk Creative’s growing Facebook community dedicated to optimizing your digital marketing efforts, click here.

One thing about tbk Creative is we don’t hire frivolously.

Something our management team has learned is the human resource DNA of an agency is more important than almost any business model.

The agency business is people run. Most business models are system run.

Our company figured that out a while back and decided we will always hire slow but hire right (or at least strive to do our best to).

Donnie Claudino brings 10 years marketing experience to the firm and will oversee all our production work amongst other important internal programs.

Some of his experience/education includes:

Undergraduate degree in Graphic Design with a concentration on Advertising (University of South Carolina)
Masters degree in Marketing (Leslie University)
Former Director of Communications at TechAlliance,
4 years not-for-profit marketing experience in Toronto,
6 years agency and freelance experience in Boston,
Former Board member with the American Marketing Association (Boston)

I got a chance to sit down with Donnie for breakfast on Saturday to chat about marketing & life (two of our favourite topics).

Here’s how the conversation went:

Andrew: Something you said to me in the past is you absolutely love the agency world and are anxious to return to it. Why is working for an agency so important to you?

Donnie: I love the non-profit sector and will miss TechAlliance, but my heart really lies in the agency world. About 6-8 years ago when I lived in Boston, I worked for this great ad agency who serviced the entertainment media sector. They had clients like the History Channel, A&E, Discovery Channel. It was the happiest time of my life. One thing that I remember most about that agency is it didn’t matter who you were – an Art Director, Jr. Accounts Exec, Secretary, no matter your position every creative idea anyone had was strongly honoured and strongly considered. It was a firm that believed in celebrating people.

Andrew: I asked you to pick a title, and you came up with Director of Maximization. Why this title?

One of the marks I want to make at tbk Creative is maximizing all our our agency’s touch points internally and externally. This includes our own team members, our clients, and the marketplace.

Andrew: I love the title and its fitting with our culture and brand.

Andrew: You and almost the entire business world now know we’re in the middle of a marketing communications revolution. The denial phase is over. Consumers have changed how they communicate and share information with each other. Brands have to learn how to fully leverage such things as mobile, social media, touch, website optimization, etc. for the first time. This won’t come without challenges. Are you hopeful for brands in the future?

Brands have to adjust to not knowing what’s next and do the best they can with what they can. Anyone who says they know what’s next with 100% certainty is blowing smoke signals, they are lying. No brand can be ahead of the curve. Brands can stay at the front of the curve however, by pushing the curve.

Andrew: If you were to offer any simple advice to a company reading this right now, what would it be?

Less is more. Be as specific and simple and transparent with your message as possible. Don’t overcomplicate it. If you have a billboard, and I will generalize for a moment – use one word. Have that one word be the essence of what you’re trying to communicate. Consumers only have time for one word now a days.

Andrew: Let’s change gears for a moment. Something that’s noteworthy is in the short, one year that you’ve been a resident in London Ontario, you’ve been responsible for helping start two important social initiatives for the arts community – Arts Voice London and LdnViews. What are these two initiatives and why are they important to you?

The arts community in London is important to me and I want to help our artists express themselves as much as they can. Arts Voice London Gallery is a series of art exhibition shows in partnership with Bishop Cronyn Memorial Church that will allow artists to create pieces of art through the lense of social justice. The first show we did was titled the Way of the Street and the theme was the Stations of the Cross.

LdnViews is a group exhibition where a diverse range of London photographers can publish their photography of our beautiful city. When I arrived in London a year ago, I had a difficult time finding a good selection of London photography. We’re working towards holding to two annual exhibitions for photographers and the public to submit photos to. The goal is to create a large archive of London photography for everyone in our city to enjoy.

Andrew: I acknowledge you and your partners who helped with this work Donnie.

Andrew: What are you professionally most excited about in the future?

tbk Creative is building a contagious brand and I want to be a part of it. I know it will leave a mark on marketing and marketing is one of my greatest passions. I also want to be challenged, I want to evolve into all I can be – all I was meant to be. I don’t think if you’re not pushed, you’ll never be all you are meant to be. 

[End Interview]

On behalf of tbk Creative, we’re excited to bring Donnie Claudino onto the team. I’m anxious for some of the projects he develops that will help our clients leverage digital media to the “max.”

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, London Ontario based web design & social media marketing agency. The company exists to instigate and accelerate consumer action around brands, digitally.

To contact Andrew about speaking at your upcoming web marketing & communications event, click here. To join tbk Creative’s growing Facebook community dedicated to optimizing your digital marketing efforts, click here.

The award was for best social media campaign in the legal field in 2011.

The background: 

In 2010, Siskinds LLP commenced a national class action lawsuit against a pharmaceutical manufacturer for two birth control contraceptives. We took a bold leap into the unknown and used Facebook as the vehicle to allow women across the country to speak out about their experiences and to keep them informed on the legal proceeding.

It paid off with national media exposure, a vibrant Facebook community who cares about resolution in this matter, and a substantial client list for the legal proceeding.

Executing a social media marketing campaign of this nature inside of a historically traditional type of industry is not easy.

I asked Laurie Hause, the Director of Technology & Marketing at Siskinds if she had any guidance for any brands looking to embark on this type of marketing campaign in the future. Here is what she emphasized:

“Buy in at the corporate level is just as important as everyone says. While only a small number of lawyers and staff were directly involved with this campaign, all stakeholders needed to be aware of the campaign, it’s goals and objectives which means planned internal communications to create shared value. After all, it’s your people that you’re asking to support you when faced with questions about the campaign – you want them to champion your efforts with your external audience.”

I further chatted with tbk Creative’s Melissa McInerney, who was the Creative Director on the campaign. I asked her if she had anything she could share for agencies or brands:

“Now a days, if you want to build an agency or brand that gets noticed you need to forge new territories. Andrew calls it being unborified. It can be scary to do because there’s added risk. These types of projects work best when you can take calculated risk and ensure all the parties are on board with the mission and are passionate about seeing its follow through.”

Both Siskinds and our entire team worked hard and were passionate about seeing this campaign be successful for everyone – especially the Take Your Body Back community.

Thank you IAC Awards for recognizing this effort.

Here is an infograph we created illustrating the campaign.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, London Ontario based web design & social media marketing agency. The company exists to instigate and accelerate consumer action around brands, digitally.

To contact Andrew about speaking at your upcoming web marketing & communications event, click here. To join tbk Creative’s growing Facebook community dedicated to optimizing your digital marketing efforts, click here.

Their concern: “My employment ability once I graduate has suffered.”

There is absolutely, uniquivably, no doubt that Fanshawe’s brand equity got hurt on Saturday and employers may question your responsibility level while you went through school.

And because of this, students just got handed the opportunity of a life time and they don’t even know it.

Let me explain: Tuesday night, I was on a panel on London’s Rogers TV Newsmakers Show and I heard of a story of a Fanshawe student who was at a job fair on Monday. He was wearing a Fanshawe College name tag. He walked around the auditorium and kept getting interrupted by potential employers. However, they weren’t asking about his employable credentials. They were asking him about the Fleming Drive incident. He was upset.

He should stop being upset and so should you.

You see, if you’re a Fanshawe student, it shouldn’t be about what happened on Fleming Drive.

It should be about what you did after Fleming Drive.

And what happens after, makes all the difference.

Here’s how this can look:

Situation: Fleming Drive Riot happens on March 17, 2012.

Your response:

“I called London Police Services (or City of London), learned about all the volunteer opportunities and signed up for 50 hours. I not only did this, but I recruited 9 of my friends too. In total, I became responsible for 500 hours of volunteer service time in London Ontario to give back.” Tip – London Clean & Green is just around the corner.

“I helped coordinate a 1,000 student rally at Victoria Park on a Saturday, March 31. We called the campaign, “Take Our College Back.” Each student brought 3 canned food items and made a 3,000 canned donation to the London Food Bank. We got tons of media – just good media this time.” (yes, local and national media would cover this).

Get the idea?

There once lived an incredible girl named Rachel Joy Scott. She was 15 years old. She was the first of 13 people to be killed in the Columbine High School shooting in 1999.

Her father, Darrell Scott, made a commitment to her daughter after her death. He vowed that Rachel’s death would not be in vain. He committed to himself, his daughter, and others, that he would cause her passing to impact millions of lives positively because of it. In his heart, he felt this is what Rachel would want.

Darrell went on to start the non-profit organization called Rachel’s Challenge, an organization that exists to wipe out students committing violence against each other. The number of people that their organization has impacted? As of today, over 17 million. The group has also recorded thousands of suicidal students that have averted taking that action because of being in one of their seminars.

I’ll repeat: It’s not about what happened on Fleming Drive.

It’s about what future you’re going to create because of it.

If you’re Fanshawe College’s Corporate Administration team or Student Council, you could take charge of this situation too and help create and provide community service opportunities for students. Not only is student’s biggest opportunity right now now, but so is yours. How often do you have almost every person in North America talking about your brand for a day? What a great way to have your career not defined by an event, but instead defining your career because of your response to an event.

And for all the young adults charged because of your behaviour that night and feeling like you’re life’s ruined because you’ve been permanently branded as a criminal responsible for ruining a City and College -Don’t stand for this. You can take this same sort of action. 

Heroes, typically, aren’t made because of situations – they’re made because of what they do about a situation.

Are you all going to miss this opportunity? Or will you take your college back and create a future that matters to you? A future that maybe wasn’t going to happen if it weren’t for Fleming Drive?

Employers are looking for those kinds of people.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, London Ontario based web design & social marketing agency. The company exists to instigate and accelerate consumer action around brands.

To contact Andrew about speaking at your upcoming web marketing & communications event, click here. To join tbk Creative’s growing Facebook community dedicated to optimizing your digital marketing efforts, click here.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, London Ontario based web design & social media marketing agency. The company exists to instigate and accelerate consumer action around brands, digitally.

To contact Andrew about speaking at your upcoming web marketing & communications event, click here. To join tbk Creative’s growing Facebook community dedicated to optimizing your digital marketing efforts, click here.

I’m trying to understand the value Static Welcome Pages will have after Facebook introduces the new Corporate Timelines at the end of the month. A brief background on Facebook apps.

Here are the three types of apps as our team distinguishes them:

1. Static Welcome Pages – They act as a default landing page and their sole purpose is to get a visitor to click “Like.” You’d do so through engaging design, a “like us” arrow pointing up to the Like button (gotta make it easy for people), and a short list of benefits to becoming a member.

2. Lead Acquisition Pages – They can also act as a default landing page but their purpose is to acquire lead information. You can facilitate this by doing sweepstakes or content giveaways (ie. e-reports).

3. Viral Reach Pages – Like the previous two types of pages, Viral Reach Pages too can act as a default landing page but their purpose is to empower the user to share the brand’s page in their social networks. This is where you get into contests that involve voting to win. See a Facebook Contest tbk Creative is running for Partners Promoting the Importance of Early Childhood Education over at Choosing Child Care in London & Middlesex Facebook Page as an example.

Here’s what’s to know about the March 30 changes in this regard:

1. All three types of apps above will exist post March 30 (as an aside, your designer/programmer is given more room in width to build – 810 pixels).

2. Brands will no longer be able to set an app as its default landing page (all three apps apply).

3. Your subpages (including your Static Welcome Page) will still have a custom URL that you could use to drive non fans to (this can be facilitated easily through email marketing or online advertising like Facebook’s PPC). However, again, if someone goes directly to your regular brand’s Facebook URL (ie. www.facebook.com/timhortons), they will always land on your Timeline page first.

4. Facebook’s layout around your subpages are different than before. It looks more bare and lacks the fan count number that your community has on this particular page (people can still like your page from this page though).

5. Fan gating will still apply. What that means is, programmers can setup the app so that someone must become a fan before using it (great for e-reports & contest apps). With these upcoming changes in mind, I believe there’s going to be a stronger and stronger need for you to use apps that have a greater utility than just a static Welcome Page.

Here’s my thinking why:

Scenario A (Pre March 30)

You have a static Welcome Page. 99% of all new visitors (not fans) land on it first. It’s simple and does its job of communicating why visitors should become a fan along with a strong call to action.

Scenario B (Post March 30)

You have a static Welcome Page. Now, only 50% of all new visitors (not fans) land on it first. The 50% is a broad but educated assumption I’m making. I’m assuming 50% give or take, but certainly much less than scenario A. A large portion will find your Timeline page through your print collateral, verbal communications etc. and a large portion may find it through your website plug-in, email marketing, digital advertising etc. (because in these instances you could use the custom URL representing this page). If my general assumption above holds true, when getting 50% of new visitors to your landing page (doesn’t matter which type of app), you’ll want to maximize this interaction. I believe in the future contests, sweepstakes, e-report giveaways etc. will provide the most value for your brand. In other words, instances where your brand receives either a qualified lead or additional reach (through them sharing the page) along with, of course, the Like. The one benefit of these types of apps as well, is when you list them on your main timeline, the icon will be more enticing for a new fan to click than the previous Wall (see tbk Creative’s Cover Photo below for Canada’s $25,000 Website Charity Challenge Campaign).

To put this topic to rest, what I’d like to do is facilitate some A/B testing after March 30 and determine what produces the highest fan conversion: fans landing on a Timeline vs. fans landing on a Static Welcome Page.

What I am sure of is the future of good use of apps will rest in using your apps for something more than a Like – acquiring leads or reaching more potential customers as a result of them.

Why focus on a Like when you could get a Like + a Lead + your page going viral?

I hope this article is helpful as you plan for your Timeline transitions.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a London Ontario based web design & social marketing agency that instigates and accelerates consumer action around brands.

To contact Andrew about speaking at your upcoming web marketing & communications event, click here. To join tbk Creative’s growing Facebook community dedicated to optimizing your digital marketing efforts, click here.

You’re more limited in that you essentially have 140 characters to ignite the effort.

Most of tbk Creative’s work has been focused on facilitating Facebook and website campaigns, but I thought I’d run a little experiment of my own in February and share the results with you.

This year, I was one of the speakers at Fanshawe College’s annual eMarketing Conference on Feb. 28.

I had an additional ticket worth $299. I decided I would use Twitter to cause more awareness for the event (in a very “social media” kind of way).

On Feb. 23rd, I sent out the following tweet:

To add to its reach, that evening I was coincidentally appearing as a co-host on the new RogersTV show, #LdnOnt, so I took the opportunity to do the draw live on TV. I thought this was a great way to promote the show’s content (since it’s about Twitter in London) and fulfill on the objective of the Twiter Campaign.

A big congratulations to @JasonFredin who won the ticket:

All in all, here’s what I learned from this campaign with my own commentary:

1) Value – Campaigns like this can work well if the cost of your product is manageable. If tbk Creative was spending the $299 in out of pocket money (which we hadn’t), I don’t know if it would have been worth the $299 giveaway. In a traditional Cost-Per-Impression Model (at $10 CPM), our reach was worth probably $70 dollars. With that said, I don’t think it’s equitable to compare social media reach to traditional advertising because your reach is through referrals. The take away lesson with this point is the less you spend on the prize while keeping it attractive, the better. A restaurant, for example, could much more easily give away a $100 meal for two (cost of goods sold being likely $20-35).

2) Audience – The number of followers you have will matter. I have 1,500+ which supported the 20+ retweets. It’s a high number for a hyper local campaign. If you have a lower follower base, I’d recommend you get other team members or friends help push the initiative off.

3) Relevancy - I speculate this type of campaign can be GREAT for retailers around certain holidays or topical stories. Can you imagine if a flower company would have done this campaign in the morning of Valentine’s Day? Their tweet could have been: “Retweet this tweet. At noon today, we will contact 1 + arrange flowers to be delivered to your loved one’s office.”

I hope this blog article is helpful and sparks some new ideas. Do you have any good twitter campaign success stories? If you end up trying your own campaign, please let me know the results!

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a London Ontario based web design & social marketing agency that instigates and accelerates consumer action around brands.

We can all breath a sigh of relief with the news and gear up for an exciting digital and social future.

If you have custom Facebook apps like Siskinds The Law Firm, Crabby Joe’s, or Barking Frog (to name a few), you’re looking good.

Facebook is not only keeping apps as part of their Corporate Pages strategy, but making the Corporate Facebook Pages an even better user experience.

Here’s the core notes of what you need to know at this point:

1. Corporate pages can optionally choose the new “Timelines” feature. On March 30, 2012, all corporate pages will be moved over to this new design by Facebook.

2. If you have a current Facebook app, it’ll move over to the new Timelines without the functionality affected - Great.

3. Apps that require someone to become a fan before using it (Fan Gating) will still work the same way – Great.

4. An app can no longer be a default welcome page – Not great.

5. To counter-act #4, brands will still have a custom URL to promote their apps and contests – Great.

6. You now get up to 810 pixels in width for your apps vs. 520 – Great great great.

7. A new feature called Pinned Posts is being introduced that allows you to keep a post at the top of your timeline for up to 7 days – Great (give your campaigns, contests, big news extra promotion).

8. Brands will now have a great big additional picture area called Cover Photo that they can upload a picture that best represents their brand (much like the personal Timeline pages) – Great.

9. You can now receive and respond to private messages from Fans through a new Administrative Panel – Great.

Some important additional notes you need to know:

1. Some Welcome pages that have a visual encouragement in their design to “Like Us Above” will need to be redesigned slightly as the Like Button on the app page has moved to the top right.

2. Static Welcome pages that exist solely for fan conversion won’t be as important anymore. The Cover Photo will replace this need.

3. As of right now, apps will still not appear on Facebook’s mobile application. Expect this to change in the future though.

4. Custom apps with thoughtful and engaging functionality (sweepstakes, voting contests, promotions, branded games, etc.), will continue to grow in popularity amongst fans. See Coffee Culture or Union Burger for a branded Facebook social gaming app tbk Creative built, for example.

5. Brands are given greater ability through the new Timelines setup to share compelling content. Here’s how you can do this in 4 easy ways:

i) You can Pin stories that you want to put the spotlight on;

ii) You can hide posts that didn’t get the engagement you were looking for,

iii) You can enlarge posts that you want to stand out;

iv) You can now create milestones at the bottom of your Corporate Page that shows historical achievements for your brand (ie. a new product launch, hiring your 70th employee, generating your 50,000th fan, etc.).

I foresee Facebook continuing to provide a platform that allows engaging and authentic brands to grow. There’s a distinction however: Facebook won’t make a brand engaging, but will instead allow an engaging brands to flourish.

tbk Creative will be answering questions daily on these new changes on our Facebook Page here.

If you want more of these web design and social media marketing thoughts delivered to your inbox for free, you can subscribe here.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a London Ontario based web design & social marketing agency that instigates and accelerates consumer action around brands. To contact Andrew about speaking at your upcoming web marketing & communications event, click here. Andrew can be followed on Twitter here.

If you’ve ever tried cold calling, you know it can be nerve racking. You must deal with unlimited supply of rejection.

Craig courageously and politely asked if I had a few minutes to hear why he provides tremendous mortgage product services. 

I couldn’t help but admire his vulnerability and fortitude to build his company in light of the amount of rejection he’ll receive along the way.

I explained to him that I wasn’t in the marketplace to buy a home, but the least I could offer is sending out a tweet to my 1,500+ Twitter followers recommending his professional services (it’s not 150,000 but in a local marketplace, every touch point helps).

Craig was surprised and ecstatic. We got talking more about Twitter and tbk Creative and through some online research he recognized we lived on the same street! We are neighbors – Our homes are only approximately eight apart!

We had a great coincidental chuckle and he’s going to come over and visit for a drink after work sometime.

Here’s the tweet I promised Craig:

If you want to visit Craig’s mortgage website, click here.

The moral of the story is three fold, I think: One, when it comes to your business/corporate goals, do what you’re scared to do but know is right. Good things are bound to happen to you. Two, you can’t always give what people request. But you can still give. Three, be kind to everyone you can. People are closer to you than you realize.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a London Ontario based web design & social media marketing agency that instigates and accelerates consumer action around brands. To contact Andrew about speaking at your upcoming web marketing & communications event, click here. Andrew can be followed on Twitter here.