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Overcoming Facebook’s Limits on Your Content

June 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Facebook is hoping page administrators will begin to pay a few bucks to get their posts displayed more prominently in user news feeds. Beneath each post, Facebook now displays the number of people reached, along with the option to pay $5, $10, or $20 to reach even more people.  

I don’t have a problem with Facebook’s strategy, but we need to know what our true reach is before we decide whether paying for additional exposure is a good idea.

It turns out we can overcome Facebook’s arbitrary limits on our status views, if we put some effort into creating interesting stuff for readers.

Badmath

Check out the screen capture from two posts on the same page. One post reached 356 people, and one reached 230 people. But they both appear to have reached 10% of fans. So what’s going on?

Turns out the two numbers aren’t measuring the same thing. The percentage displayed does NOT include non-fans who have seen the post through sharing.  These are what Facebook calls “viral” views.

Screen Shot 2012 06 20 at 1 36 37 PM

You can see what’s happening by checking out the second screen capture, taken a few minutes later. The more viral post has now reached 404 people. But only 237 of them are fans of my page. So even though Facebook may limit the percentage of fans who see my content, it’s possible to blow past that limit by offering especially sharable content.

In addition, offering sharable (“viral”) content may boost the number of fans who see your post, because every time anyone likes or comments on a post, that activity appears in the news feed of other users (fans and non-fans alike) who are currently logged in.

Filed Under: Advertising, Branded Content, Content Marketing, Facebook, Featured

WordPress and Facebook – The Overlooked Killer Feature

June 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A new plugin for WordPress allows easy, deep integration with Facebook. It’s potentially a great way to make your site more social, and reach people on Facebook who otherwise might not see your content. And it includes a killer feature that’s been overlooked in most descriptions of the plugin, but that I believe will be a game-changer for “socializing” your WordPress site.
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Filed Under: Hyperlocal, JournaMarketing, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

More signs you should be using Facebook to promote your hyperlocal site

April 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

eMarketer has released a report estimating 132 million people in the US will log into Facebook regularly this year.

And though a lot of old-school journalists still pooh-pooh Facebook as a playground for young people, the evidence continues to dispute that.  Growth will be driven primarily by increased Facebook use “among older boomers and seniors,” according to the report.

If you don’t have a Facebook presence for your local site, you’re missing fantastic opportunities to put your stories (and your sponsors) in front of the people in your hometown. A Facebook page is easy to set up, and caring for the page is not a lot of extra work, compared to the work you’re doing on your website already.

My own experience with Facebook has been fantastic.  If you’re using Facebook to promote your site, what’s your experience?

Filed Under: Facebook, Hyperlocal

EveryBlock Goes Social

March 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

MSNBC.com has relaunched the hyperlocal site EveryBlock as a much more social experience. Paid Content reports that the new site features a prominent place for visitors to share their own information with neighbors.  That sharing feature has been available for a while now, but it’s much more front-and-center in the re-design.

The changes seem designed to rebuild the site as a social network for a user’s neighborhood (there’s even now way way to “follow” specific locations in order to see updates related to a specific neighborhood) and, indeed, EveryBlock repeatedly draws parallels in its blog post on the announcement between its new features and those that exist on Twitter and Facebook.

Paid Content also runs the numbers and finds that EveryBlock’s traffic is pretty anemic. An average of 450 unique users per day in each of its cities.  (And that’s only in big cities.) Break it down by neighborhood, and you’re only talking about a handful of visitors, per neighborhood, per day.

 

Filed Under: Hyperlocal

Another Hyperlocal Success in Britain

March 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Digital Journal points to another success story in hyperlocal news, called My Welshpool. The site covers local businesses, sports, and everything in-between. And it’s getting nearly 6,000 visitors a week, according to co-owner Graham Breeze:

“The success is because we are giving people just what they want and instantly and in exactly the form they want it. There’s no in-depth articles or opinion. We are getting the facts to the people wherever they are by using technology.

“The dilemma for weekly newspapers is that they are just what it says on the tin – weekly. The area is covered by excellent weekly and daily newspapers but we are able to send breaking news to people via their Facebook accounts as it happens – and they love it.”

This is very similar to what I’ve seen on my own site — and I’m curious what other hyperlocal sites are finding, too. Facebook is a fantastic way to deliver breaking news, mainly because people are on Facebook all the time. As the Technorati have learned to turn to Twitter when news breaks, most people are finding breaking news on their Facebook walls.

And what about money for the site? Breeze says the revenue is growing as the public responds.

Filed Under: Hyperlocal, Marketing, Success Stories
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