Get on the Bandwagon!
On March 30, 2012, all Facebook Pages will get a new design.
-A message from Facebook on the top of all the Facebook Pages I manage.
No sooner had I just finished three Facebook business pages when Facebook comes out with a game changer: Facebook Timeline for Business Pages. Continue reading
You can be proud that you have a couple of hundred fans on your Facebook page, but are they quality fans? What’s the difference really? Well, the difference is something called Edge rank. Edge rank is an algorithm that Facebook uses that determines what shows up on the newsfeed, and that includes the posts and other information from your pages.
We can all understand why everything that everyone posts on Facebook can’t possibly make it to our newsfeed, but how does Facebook go about determining what actually does show up on your feed?
EdgeRank formula
Looks complicated? Well, let’s go through it:
μe – the affinity score. How often you interact with a particular Facebook friend raises your affinity with that friend.
we – the edge weight. What interaction is going on? more weight is given to a comment than a like, for example.
de – the time delay. How long has the information been up. The longer, the less it’s worth.
So what does this all mean? Well, when all these factors are multiplied together, a high number means your object (picture, comment, tag, etc.) is more likely to show up on your Facebook friends’ newsfeed.
Taking this all into consideration, and making it simple; the people that interact with you, and you with them, are more likely to get your fresh objects in their newsfeed.
One of the most common mistakes that businesses make when starting out in Social Media is creating a Facebook Profile instead of a Facebook Page to represent their business.
Using a Facebook Profile for your business is against Facebook’s Terms of Use http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=12814 Facebook has the right to erase the profile and all your connections with it. Granted, it’s rare but it does happen. Are you willing to take that chance?
Because Pages are for businesses and Profiles are for people it may reflect badly on your business for using a Profile. Your business may seem incompetent or uninformed.
Not all is lost!! Facebook allows you to convert your Profile to a Page. All your Friends will change to Page Likes and all your pictures will be transferred but that’s it! you will lose all other content so it’s a good idea to save that content somewhere else so you can add it to your Page after conversion. Also note that this does not work vice versa, Pages cannot be converted to Profiles.
There is no doubt that social media has become a necessary part of any political campaign. Campaign budgets are always tight and social media is probably going to give you the most connections per money spent than any other medium; that is, if you do it right.
There have been numerous examples of how the use of social media and the Internet made a long shot challenger into the campaign victor. So how does a candidate employ the channels available to them to become the overall winner?
1. Start early. Even if you’re just thinking about getting into politics, start a Twitter account and an open Facebook Profile. Work at making relevant connections. Not having connections in your social media channels is a lot like announcing your intention to run for prime minister of Canada to a huge empty stadium.
Connect and engage with people in the geographic region you’re thinking about politicking in. Show up to special events and demonstrate how active you are in your community. Take pictures and post them online. Basically, use the channels at your disposal to demonstrate yourself as an active and interested member of society.
2. Join groups and online chat boards in your area and be an active member. Tweet about issues that are important to the community and elicit reaction. Be active in the conversation which demonstrates that you have a genuine interest in the community in which you want to serve; getting your name around is crucial.
3. Optimize your social media channels. Make them all interconnect and tweak them for the best keywords. It’s so terribly time consuming having to post the same content multiple times in multiple networks and in multiple channels, so make it all automatic. Take the time to optimize your postings for keywords so your content will be more easily found when someone is looking for the keywords in search engines.
4. Authenticity If you’re not authentic, you can stop here and choose another line of work. The key to social media is authenticity. Your personality has to shine through in your communications. People want to connect with you, the person running for office, not a talking head on the television or YouTube video that looks and sounds an awful lot like a politician. Online is a place where reputation is everything and it takes time to build an online reputation so make it solidly your own.
5. One word: Transparency. I have rekindled my interest in politics recently and I’m following a story about a member of our federal government who made a small edit in a federal document. At first she said she didn’t, and then she said she did. That was over a month ago and the political storm is still raging within the House of Commons. Now, imagine if a politician with a large online following was caught trying to obfuscate the facts, not in front of other politicians, but in front the people who have elected them and are paying them to be there. Again, reputation is everything online and if you’re not transparent about your actions, you can be certain of a non-elected position after the next election.
6. Tweet on Twitter. The new mayor of our city is a social media master. He is authentic and genuine, and he does his best to involve people in his everyday life as mayor of our city. If you’re an interested citizen, you can follow him on twitter and find out that he is actually doing something for the tax dollars we are paying him. Now he’s in council chambers, later he’s at a steering committee meeting, and this evening he’ll be practicing with his punk band for the upcoming Earth Day concert. Never before in history can the average citizen have an insight into the daily life of our political figures on a daily basis. This could be a double edged sword, but if used correctly, you won’t get a reputation of being lazy or getting paid to be a politician and moonlight at your law practice as well; that is, if you’re not.
7. After you win the election, stay connected. Those people who voted you in want to know that you’re doing what they elected you to do, so let them know. Send them pictures of the buffet table at a charity fund raiser, tweet about the difficult negotiations at the budget meeting, post some articles of interest in Facebook. What you’re really doing is securing your victory at the next election.
The end of FBML: Tomorrow marks the end of an era for Facebook:
Starting Friday, March 18th, you will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app. While all existing apps on Pages using FBML or the Static FBML app will continue to work, we strongly recommend that these apps transition to iframes as soon as possible. Lastly, we want to be clear that our deprecation of FBML does not impact XFBML, such as the tags that support social plugins.
Platform Updates: Operation Developer Love By Nikolay Valtchanov – Friday at 9:40pm http://developers.facebook.com/blog/
So what does this mean? Basically, from tomorrow on, you have to make any Facebook pages and apps in iframes. So if you’re not handy in iframes, you’ll have to learn them–or hire us to do them for you 
.
When it comes to Facebook pages, an iframe works like a window within a Facebook page that shows content from outside Facebook. So If I have an HTML page stored on my server, I can point to it in Facebook and show it on my page. Basically, it’s that simple. If you check out ADC Online’s Facebook page you’ll see that we’ve taken it one step further and actually pointed our Facebook page to a specially modified WordPress website. Handy for clients versed in WordPress, so they can keep their own Facebook page fresh with new content.
As for FBML? Well, no one is saying exactly when Facebook is going to stop supporting pages and apps currently running FBML, they’re just saying on March 18th no new apps or pages will be made with it. The complete depreciation of FBML may not take place for years, but as far as I can tell, no one is saying for sure.
