Posts filed under 'Facebook'
By Ben Haber
All businesses, large and small, want to see evidence that their activity on social media is worthwhile. Even though Facebook provides some data on user engagement, a new monitoring and measurement company called ContentAide recently launched, which provides business with information on content that attracts and retains loyal Facebook fans. The founder of ContentAide, Cody Barbierri (also a former colleague) answered a few questions about what makes ContentAide so valuable for businesses and PR folks.
If you want to find out more, you can register for a free trial of ContentAide here: http://app.contentaide.com/signup.
RaceTalk: Why did you decide to create ContentAide?
Cody Barbierri: As a social media strategist, I was constantly helping companies get started and implement various campaigns on Facebook. The major issue wasn’t setting up the page or running a promotional campaign, but rather the day to day posting of content through status updates. The companies literally didn’t know what to post and I often times had to have phone conversations or emails about the issue. We also created editorial calendars to map our updates, but those tend to be difficult as companies, consumers and trends change often.
With ContentAide, a business, whether small or large, can on a daily basis see the content that got the most engagement from the prior day. With this information, they can determine what style, format, topic and content type should be posted to get engagement from their communities.
It’s also a great way to keep track of specific brands. If you’re an agency, you can create daily reports for each client, which will include a section to keep track of competitors and their top posts. If something is working for a competitor, then it will probably work for your client.
RaceTalk: It seems like there is a lack of tools to help businesses with Facebook, while there is a surplus of platforms for Twitter. Did this factor into your decision to found the company?
CB: Exactly, there are very few tools. The most prominent at this time seem to be ones that help run contents or promotions. However, those are only good for a short time period and often times the consumer will “unlike” the page. So creating good content is important to keep those consumers, turn them into customers and get a ROI on social media efforts.
While there are tools for Twitter, we will be in the near future including the platform. However, it is a different type of social network, which means a different type of content. We need to make sure our algorithm works properly for Twitter.
RaceTalk: Is there a limit to how many companies you can track under one license?
CB: With one daily report, you can pick your company, it’s competitors and a category (each page has to select what category they fall under).
RaceTalk: Do you think ContentAide is most useful for tracking your own Facebook page or your competitor’s pages?
CB: ContentAide is best for getting a sense of what “works” on Facebook. In addition, it can be useful to see which updates of your own are doing well. As for competitors, it’s always nice to keep them close and being able to see a top update can help a company compete. As an agency, it’s valuable info to convey to a client on a daily basis, especially if they are asking for daily updates.
RaceTalk: How will ContentAide change the ways businesses approach and develop their Facebook page?
CB: For small businesses, it’s a confidence booster to get involved with Facebook. Often times, it’s the idea of not knowing what to post that deters them from gaining value from the social networks.
For social media media professionals, marketers or agencies, it’s a way to not only stay up to date on what consumers want to hear and see on Facebook through status updates, but it’s a way to track your brand or clients activity and help them create better content to be successful.
In the end, it’s the content you create that is going to get customers to be loyal fans. As much as they want promotions and coupons, they also want a connection and that is done through good engagement-based content.
RaceTalk: It seems like the algorithm you use to determine the success of each page is the key to your success. Can you explain what information is considered and why this feature is so important for businesses to understand?
CB: The secret sauce to ContentAide is the algorithm and it’s going to stay just that – a secret. However, what I can tell you is that we take multiple factors into consideration on each page and each status update, including community size and number of likes and comments.
Pages with millions of fans don’t have a hard time generating likes or comments, but that also doesn’t mean the content they are are creating is good or engaging. Rather it’s just noticeable by a larger group. Pages with a much smaller number of fans are going to need to create better content to get engagement, so if they are landing a solid number, then they should be ranked. However, that solid number might not be as much as the Page with millions of people. Our algorithm takes these types of factors into consideration when ranking which content is actually engaging.
RaceTalk: How should PR/marketing/communications agencies use this service?
CB: Agencies responsible for creating and running a clients Facebook account should create a daily report for each. That way the account managers for each client can help to manage and implement good content for their clients, which in turn makes the agency look good.
Even for agencies who might not be in charge of a particular page, being able to talk about what’s engaging on Facebook is a valuable tool. If you’re pitching a new company for their business and Facebook is a topic of interest, ContentAide could give you the means to bring valuable data and insights, including what the competition is doing.
Also, don’t forget about your own internal social media efforts. Agencies compete with each other as well. So having a report for your own agency could be very valuable.
RaceTalk: Are you concerned about Facebook developing their own platform to provide companies with this type of data, or do you not see them sharing this type of information with anyone besides each page’s administrators?
CB: I don’t think it’s in the best interests of Facebook to build out their insights features to include other pages. That could be a deterrent for people and companies to get involved with Facebook. Facebook also doesn’t have our algorithm.
RaceTalk: Do you have plans to expand ContentAide to other social networks and platforms beyond Facebook?
CB: Yes, our next step is Twitter. As I mentioned before, since it’s a different type of social network than Facebook, we need to make sure we are monitoring, qualifying and delivering the right content to our users.
RaceTalk: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
CB: ContentAide is not trying to replace any professional or agency in the social space, but rather is working to be a valuable aide. We want to help companies, professionals and agencies to make more engaging content to help increase customer interaction and loyalty on Facebook.
Also, we have a 15-day free trial for all new users to test the service. After, subscription options are super reasonable ranging from just $20 a month for one daily report to $200 a month for unlimited access.
April 23rd, 2011
By Ben Haber
Even if you aren't subscribed to the NYT, you'll be able to access their content for free through Facebook posts (like this one)
Last week the New York Times announced a new subscription model that would effectively put up a paywall for many users. Under this new system, people that aren’t subscribed to NYTimes.com are able to view 20 articles a month (that are subscriber-only) for free, before being blocked from reading certain stories. However, there’s a rather big loophole.
The New York Times has confirmed that people accessing their content through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. will be able to view subscriber-only content even if they’ve already reached their 20 article monthly limit (similar to how you can access articles in The Wall Street Journal for free through Google). With this option in place, with the Times’ subscription model work?
The New York Times has already tried subscription-based access before (New York Times Select) which brought in $10 million in revenue, but wasn’t fully adopted by readers (it had 227,000 subscribers). It has also been reported that executives at the company were split on if a subscription model was their best option, especially since the value of their digital advertisements has been growing steadily.
It’s also been thought that this new subscription was meant to motivate people to sign up for weekend print subscriptions, which would give them unlimited online access. This would boost print circulation, and in return, ad rates.
So what do you think of all this? Do you plan on subscribing to the New York Times?
March 21st, 2011
By Brittany Falconer
Earlier this week, we heard from Bloomberg Businessweek that Facebook would be offering a Groupon-inspired discount deal service. Given its potential customer base of over 500 million users, the social networking site definitely has a good starting foundation as it hopes to take advantage of the bourgeoning online-deal market.
Anyone else not surprised? Don’t get me wrong: Facebook is awesome and all, but once again, it’s taking a pre-existing idea from another social networking platform and incorporating it into its own one-stop social metropolis. Facebook has been a copycat from Day 1. Even prior to its conception, we had MySpace, FriendFeed, and several other social networking platforms that eventually floundered and or just never took off.
So what made Facebook succeed where others had failed? In short, exclusivity. Whereas MySpace was a very public platform where any creep could try to add you as a friend (Remember that creeper who was at least twice your age, lived across the country and was always commenting on your pictures for no good reason? Of course you do.), Facebook was initially a private club for college students. Only later, when it had established itself above the common man’s social networking sites, did it eventually open its doors to everyone.
Throughout Facebook’s young life, it has continued to adopt popular online tools in an effort to provide its user base with the be-all, end-all source for online interaction: in May 2007, the Marketplace launched, a lá Craigslist. In April 2009, the Facebook news feed underwent a drastic makeover that resulted in a suspicious resemblance to Twitter. In August 2010, Places kicked off, but while FourSquare doesn’t have nearly as many users as Facebook, it still seems to enjoy a higher volume of check-ins – for now, anyway. Later that year, we talked about the Facebook Deals introduction (and Foursquare still seems to be doing just fine).
Over the last six years, this social networking monolith has tried function as our online interactive Swiss army knife. Sometimes its efforts are impressive, and other times less remarkable – I actually had to see if Facebook Marketplace was still active when writing this post. While it is an enormous platform, I personally think that even the likes of Facebook won’t be able to do it all while holding everyone’s interest.
At the very least, imitation is the best form of flattery though, right? What do you think of Facebook holding the crosshairs over Groupon, or any of its other social adoptions?
March 18th, 2011
By Ben Haber
Facebook has decided to add two additional relationship statuses for users to chose from, both of which support LGBT rights. Facebook added “In a domestic partnership” and “In a civil union” to its already existing list of relationship descriptions, which currently include:
- Single
- In a relationship
- Engaged
- Married
- It’s complicated
- In an open relationship
- Widowed
- Separated
- Divorced
(Facebook did away with it’s “looking for random play” status a while ago, after allowing anyone to join, rather then just college students.)
Could Facebook’s change in relationship status options make way for larger legislative change? Facebook certainly has had a role in other political events and movements, and has most recently been noticed for its use in Egypt. While this change isn’t exactly a call to action, it certainly is a step forward for equal rights and opportunities.
February 18th, 2011
By Ben Haber
If you’ve had a chance to read my bio or follow me on Twitter, you’re well aware that I’m a running nerd. Therefore, it would be no surprise that I “like” a bunch of marathons on Facebook – some of which I’ve run, and some of which I want to run.
Many of these marathons use Facebook really well, engaging with their fans and providing them with valuable information. Others do not. I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a long time and have decided that it’s time to share my feelings:
While I absolutely love the Boston Marathon, they do a pathetic job with social media. Here is my case:
Runners plan marathons many months – and often years – in advance. They become connected to the marathons they run, due to months of training and dedication, and a memorable race day experience. Runners want to interact with their marathons on Facebook – it’s why these pages have so many fans. They also have many questions, which will continue to pop up through the morning of the race. Finally, they want to feel connected to the experience, it helps make training exciting and motivational – and in today’s world there is no better place for connection then Facebook.
This morning I went to the Facebook pages of the four largest Marathons in the United States, and the London Marathon. On the ING New York City Marathon page, the community manager was interacting with runners and answering their questions:
On the Chicago Marathon page, the community manager is asking runners questions, getting them excited about the race and learning a little bit about their field:
On the Marine Corps Marathon page, the community manager is interacting with fans by posting images of holiday decorations in the office and asking for fans to vote on their favorite:
And on the Virgin London Marathon page, the community manager is regularly featuring people that are blogging about their marathon training experiences – it doesn’t get much more interactive then that!
In fact, even the Mount Desert Island Marathon, a small marathon in Maine is asking their fans questions:
And then we have the Boston Marathon Facebook page, where they don’t engage with their users at all: they have never asked or answered a question. Most of their posts are announcements, and others are in the form of a reminder. It’s all very factual, and the community manager never engages with other users – it could easily be information from a website or newsletter.
Since the Boston Marathon has so many fans, they continue to receive hundreds of comments on each post, but without any engagement, the page will never be as popular as it could be.
February 17th, 2011
By Ben Haber
We discovered two great infographics this week, one that looks at the history of social media, and another that compares Facebook and Twitter. Enjoy!
(click on the graphic for a larger view)
January 25th, 2011
By Guest Author
*This is a guest post by Nidhi Mathson, Account Executive at Racepoint Group. Follow her on Twitter @NidhiMathson.
If you watched the Golden Globe awards this past weekend, you know that the film “The Social Network” snagged a number of the big awards including “Best Film,” “Best Director,” “Best Actor” and “Best Adapted Screenplay.” Watching the awards show reminded me of my initial reaction when I first watched the film. I thought to myself, “Wow, I already knew Mark Zuckerberg was smart, but now I think he’s a genius!” At the time, I posted this re-tweet:
Telling it like it is! @toadmeister: After seeing The Social Network, I’m now a huge fan of Mark Zuckerberg: http://bit.ly/9SKLDC
Later I spoke with a few friends who’d also watched the movie, and I soon realized that not everyone had the same reaction. In fact a majority of the viewers of the movie began to despise Mark, calling him “conniving” and a “back-stabber”. But I don’t know if any of these people realize that Facebook would probably never have reached the global success it enjoys today if it wasn’t for MZ. Do you think the Winklevoss twins had the drive and fierce ambition that Zuckerberg had to make Facebook what it is today? I doubt it.
Without Mark Zuckerberg, I doubt that Facebook would have achieved any of the following:
- 500 million regular users
- 48% of 18-34 year olds checking Facebook right when they wake up
- 71.2% of the US web audience as members
- A record breaking 750 Million photos uploaded over the new year’s weekend
More Facebook success stats can be found in an infographic recently posted by RaceTalk.
You can hate Mark Zuckerberg all you want, but if you’re addicted to Facebook then you have to give the guy credit. Facebook has almost single-handedly ushered in a new era for social media, encouraged real-time global communications and changed how people connect with each other —and that’s an end that most certainly justifies the means.
January 20th, 2011
By Ben Haber
OnlineSchools published a great infographic on how much time we actually spend on Facebook. Even though it’s quite obvious many people are addicted to Facebook, this look inside the numbers is pretty astonishing.
January 13th, 2011
By Ben Haber
After shoveling approximately two feet of snow throughout the day, I decided to watch the film “Catfish”, which I had wanted to see for quite a while, but never got around to watching (note: Molly wrote a review of the film in September following a sneak preview that RaceTalk attended).
While I had seen the previews for “Catfish” online, I still didn’t really know what to expect, and was on the edge of my seat for much of the movie. The film turned out to be shocking, sad and eye-opening, all at the same time. It also provided an important message to all of us that are so active online.
Spoil alert! If you read this post further, some of the ending will be given away…
Controlling 15 different Facebook profiles isn’t easy. In fact, it’s difficult to keep up with just your own social networks (i.e.: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, etc.). Yet, Angela Wesselman managed to do just that, which takes a lot of time, attention to detail and imagination.
What I think is most interesting about this story, is that it happened on Facebook. Often, Facebook is the social network where your friendships are based on real-life relationships. Facebook friends are people you work with, went to school with, have known for a long time, or met in passing. Many people won’t even accept friend requests from people they don’t know really well, because they want to keep Facebook as a safe place for close friends and family. But regardless of your Facebook friending conditions, you’ve most likely met your Facebook friends in person.
Other social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn are usually the opposite. Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections are usually filled with people you’ve never actually met, and probably will never will meet in person. It would be so much easier for someone to create a fictional world within one of those networks, rather then Facebook.
That’s what makes Catfish so amazing – and creepy. If one women could spend all that time fooling an intelligent young man on Facebook, imagine what someone could do on Twitter or LinkedIn.
January 12th, 2011
By Ben Haber
We’ve all heard it before: teenagers don’t use Twitter. Is it because they don’t find it useful? Or do they just not have time for it? To help us understand how teens feel about Twitter and other social networks, Michael Moore-Jones, a sixteen-year-old technology and business enthusiast that’s involved in involved in numerous startups was kind enough to answer a few questions for us. Michael lives in New Zealand and blogs regularly at
mmoorejones.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at
@mmoorejones.
.
RaceTalk: As you noted in your
article on ReadWriteWeb, teenagers aren’t big Twitter adopters. You wrote about some of the major reasons for this (i.e.: they use social media to extend real-life relationships online), but how much of a factor do you think time is? Do teens have the time for another social networks, especially since all of their friends are already on Facebook
?
.
Michael Moore-Jones: I think if teens had a use for Twitter, they would use it regardless of time. With the amount of time that we spend on Facebook, it wouldn’t be hard to siphon off a bit of that time into using Twitter (I do it myself). So no, time isn’t one of the main factors that means teens don’t tweet. If Twitter offered teens something, they’d find the time.
.
RaceTalk: Teens are a very unique group in that they’ve grown up with social media, rather than being introduced to it (like today’s working generations). As teens get older and begin to enter the real-world do you think their attitude towards Twitter will change?
.
MMJ: Good question – I think that’s exactly the point my post on RWW was leading to. While it may seem as though once teens enter the working world and realize the value that Twitter offers they may start using it, I believe there is a weird mentality amongst teens about Twitter that means they will never adopt it. In researching the reasons why teens don’t tweet, I asked numerous teens at my school “Do you use Twitter? What do you think of it?”. The response I got was usually a laugh, followed by something along the lines of “Are you kidding me? Twitter is so lame”. A couple of people even said “Isn’t Twitter for little kids?” I think that when the vast majority of a generation shares that view of a web product or service, they won’t adopt it even if they move into a position where it does solve a problem for them. It could even be to do with the branding of Twitter – fluffy blue logo and little birds. Teens don’t like using something that seems immature and young, even if it is useful (part of wanting to be older and grow up). So no, I believe that my generation will never adopt Twitter en-masse, even when we move into the real-world.
.
RaceTalk: Location-based check in applications like Foursquare and Gowalla have caught a lot momentum during the past year. Are teens interested in these types of networks or are they more likely to use Facebook Places?
.
MMJ: With location-based services, teenagers are currently using them less than older generations for the reason that they are still mainly for early adopters (Facebook Places is changing this, but not yet). Here in New Zealand Facebook Places hasn’t been rolled out yet so I can’t comment on its usage amongst teenagers, but I do know that Foursquare and Gowalla have not been adopted in a hurry (and the vast majority of teenagers not involved in the tech industry in some way would not have heard of them yet). At the same time (at least in New Zealand and Spain, where I’ve lived in the past couple of years) smartphones are still not ubiquitous amongst teenagers, so many teenagers wouldn’t have the ability to use these services even if they wanted to. Once all teens have smartphones, I believe they will start using a location based service other than Facebook Places (because they want to share their location, but not have it pop up in everyone’s news feed everywhere they go). Heck, the full reasons for that is another entire post so I’ll leave it at that and explain in the comments if people want to know a bit more.
.
RaceTalk: Of all methods of communication (Facebook messages, IM, email, text, etc.) what do teens generally prefer, and how will this affect communication 10 years from now?
.
MMJ: Teens will use a medium of communication that suits the content of the conversation (I touched on this in the RWW post, too). So, if teens aren’t at home but want to check up on a plan for later, they’ll send a text. If they are organizing going to the movies with a big group of people, they’ll send out a Facebook message to everyone invited. If they’re at home on a computer and want to be talking to a few people, they’ll use Facebook chat because it’s easier to type than it is to text. There are reasons for using each medium of communication, and which one teens choose to use actually says a lot about what the content of the conversation will be. I believe that the new Facebook Messages is the future, but it could go one of two ways – either all teens will adopt it and it will become the norm, or they won’t like it because it doesn’t allow to the same extent the understanding of the medium of communication being used. It’ll be interesting to watch, but I think at the least Facebook Messages is a great step in the right direction. On another note, once smartphones become the norm amongst teenagers, I believe texting will die and teens will start using instant messaging applications more (such as Blackberry Messenger, or Whatsapp Messenger). It’s instantaneous, and allows a conversation to happen more than with text messaging. Anyway, we’ll see how these predictions play out!
.
RaceTalk: Moving forward do you think teens would prefer to communicate visually rather than through text (i.e.: receiving picture notifications from a business running a sale rather than text notifications)? How will this affect the way businesses (especially consumer-facing companies) operate?
.
MMJ: Another fantastic question. I believe communication through text will always have a place because it serves so many different purposes, but I definitely do think that a lot of communication will move to be done visually. Something that is already occurring is that we’ll see people video calling rather than just calling, and this could work as an analogy for what is to happen with other mediums of communication. I definitely think that with the rise of the smartphone for the masses people will begin to use images a lot more regularly and freely – so we will see people just sending a photo of where they are rather than describing it in text. But again, it all depends on what teenagers are trying to communicate. Relating to your question about how businesses will need to change the way they operate, I don’t think they’ll need to change a great deal in the next few years. Most advertising done online (plus traditional media advertising) includes a visual aspect. Text message advertising in its current state doesn’t work because its been shown that teenagers don’t respond to marketing messages sent via text message, so we could see a rise of mobile advertising of images being sent rather than just text. This will also be very interesting to watch, and we’ll just see what happens.
December 10th, 2010
Next Posts
Previous Posts
