Facebook’s new Insights have many people scratching their heads, trying to understand how these social media metrics can help their marketing and branding efforts, how best to use the information available and exact what it all means. This is the first in a series of articles on Facebook Insights. Here we’ll talk about the “Talking About This” metric.

Want to make sure everyone is Talking About This?

Talking About This: What does that mean?

Talking About This is a consumer facing number. It appears on your Facebook fan page directly below your number of fans and is visible to everyone who visits your page. This number is most likely a very small percentage of your overall fan base. In fact, recent studies show this number is likely to be 4-6% of your fan base. This number represents the unique users who have created stories about your page in their stream or the ticker by liking, commenting, sharing or tagging your page, post or photo during the 7 preceding days. This number changes daily because it is measuring a different set of days each day.

Talking About This: How can this number help me?

The rise and fall of your “Talking About This” number indicates the level of engagement your current fans have with you page and posts. If this engagement is falling, look at the content of your posts and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is the content of my posts valuable to my ideal customer?
2. Does the post clearly present a call to action asking my readers to comment, like, share or tag?
3. Am I asking questions at the end of the posts that require a reader response?
4. Could I offer the reader a “bonus” for responding; i.e. “Go ahead and post your website link here and I’ll be happy to look at your landing page and give you feedback.”
5. Have I tried asking my readership how I can best serve them?

You will always have readers who simply read and move on, enriched by what you write but not motivated to leave a comment.  But, increasing your Talking About This number means increased visibility for you in the streams and tickers of your fans.  This ambient and real awareness can be considered as valuable as an endorsement or referral, so it’s worth your time and a little extra effort in the crafting of your posts to solicit a response.  Remember, 90% of your fans never return to your page after liking it.  They only see and interact with your content in their news stream or ticker.  They are only served your content in their stream IF you’ve enticed them to interact with your page recently.  Creating content that demands, elicits or excites a response is the Facebook marketing holy grail of visibility.

If you’ve noticed that your fan engagement has fallen, doesn’t respond to any of your new posting strategies and seems stagnant, you might consider a quick, creative and inexpensive Page Post Like Story Ad Campaign targeted to current fans.  We’ll talk about that in an upcoming post.

Now, here’s where we put these strategies to work.  Are you noticing a change in your Talking About This number?  If you try one of the strategies above and have success, I’d love to hear from you and perhaps highlight you in a future post.

We’ll curate the important moments in our lives through Timeline, aggregate our yearly news in Reports, watch movies and listen to music together through Canvas apps and we’ll discover these apps through the Graph Rank that depends on how our own social circles use Facebook apps.

Apps from Netflix, Spotify, Nike, USAToday, Ticketmaster, GiftRocket, Foodspotting and many others have launched apps using open graph to help us “tell the story of our lives,” according to Zuckerberg.

The sweeping new redesign features a very large piece of real estate at the top of our page where we’ll share an iconic photo that gives friends a sense of who we are. We’ll still have our avatar photo but this visual dominates the new profile page.

Facebook assured f8 attendees today that users will have complete control over their timeline but mentioned that the real-time ticker on the upper right hand side of our news stream will contain all the “lightweight social activity” we participate in, such as “liking” something or playing games.

Another new feature will be the ability to change the “Like” button. We’ll be given the opportunity to be “reading, watching, listening,” to things instead of just “liking” them. Facebook developers found that younger users didn’t want to give their endorsement by “liking” something but would be willing to share their activity with different wording.

What this means for entrepreneurs and business people using Facebook socially and for business will reveal itself as the beta test of Timeline rolls out over the next couple of weeks. As always, conduct yourselves as though you are living your life in public…because you are.

Among the new features being rolled out this week from Facebook are the enhanced friends lists options which many feel was a response to Google Plus Circles, and the introduction of a Subscribe button with multiple implications and applications.

The subscribe button is, by far, the most radical of the changes and for the first time, allows people who are not your friends to see your personal profile updates if you enable the subscribe button.  So, Guy Kawasaki or Pete Cashmore haven’t accepted your friend request.  Bill Gates is ignoring your pokes and messages.  You can now subscribe to their personal profile posts if they decide to enable Facebook’s new Subscribe button.  Why should you or your brand care?  You should care because Facebook has just opened up an interesting option for celebrities, authors, entrepreneurs, speakers and other high profile public figures to create great reach for their posts, beyond their friendship circle.  However, this comes with some challenges, privacy concerns and the need for those users to understand exactly how this works and what they’ll be sharing.

What does this mean for brands, small businesses and entrepreneurs?

For business people who use their Facebook profile as yet another entry point to their brand, albeit a more casual one, you can now place a subscribe button on your profile.  This allows people who aren’t your friends access to those posts you mark as public. This will be useful to celebrities, speakers, authors or other very public Facebook users who have reached their 5,000 friend cut-off, but still want to allow new friends to see their posts.  If you use your profile strictly for personal communications with family and friends, you’ll want to skip implementing the subscribe button and continue to decline or ignore requests for friend connections with business contacts.

What does this mean for you, the user?

As a user, you can subscribe to the posts of industry leaders, celebrities or political figures who set their personal profiles to allow subscriptions and you can decide what types of posts you want to see.  For example, you can hide all posts related to games so that you’ll never know when Lady Gaga hits a new high score on Bejeweled, but you’ll always be notified when she posts a new photo.

Facebook provides more details and the link to add the Subscribe button to your Facebook profile here. The profile owner can choose to be notified when someone subscribes, too. This is one to watch as it evolves in use.

Will you enable the Subscribe button?  Why or why not?

Using digital marketing tools can help authors and publishers by-pass the network television gatekeeper and take book messages directly to the reader.  Digital tools help authors connect with potential readers wherever they spend time online, be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs or search engines. And, it is essential to remember that nearly half of all web users are accessing the web throughout the day via their mobile devices so creating digital content that plays nicely in mobile formats is key.

I recently spoke on the topic of digital tool kits at BookExpo America 2011 on the Digital Marketing Panel with Sally Dedecker, Fauzia Burke and Kathleen Schmidt. The panel consensus was that authors and publishers need to consider utilizing a wide variety of digital strategies to reach new readers. You can view my powerpoint presentation here. But many digital tools are expensive to create and not every author or publisher has the budget to develop and implement the more complicated and costly digital strategies used by major brands.

Here’s a list of my favorite low-cost digital tools authors and publishers can their book campaigns.

Blogsite or Website with a blog

This is the author’s home base.  Readers should be able to read more about the author, find  links to the current and previous works of the author, view a personal appearance schedule and read the author’s blog.  Readers should also be able to sign up for a continued relationship with the author, perhaps through a newsletter or to receive a sample chapter of a new book.  Whatever the offer, the author needs to capture the e-mail addresses of people who express an interest in hearing from them. Authors can create a free blog using WordPress or Blogger and an e-mail management system like MailChimp is free until the author has attracted 2,000 fans.  MailChimp automatically generates the HTML code needed for an Opt-in box, which the author can place on his or her blog.  By working with the publisher to offer a sample chapter as a digital download, authors can offer a sneak peek for new books for fans who sign up for the mailing list.

Social Media

Social media amplifies the authors website and blog messages and creates a connection to help readers feel as though they’re involved in the author’s world.  Authors can share tour information, preview books, give fans special content such as original stories on their website or blog and spread the word via social media. It’s easier and faster to amass a large following on Twitter and Facebook than to acquire a large subscription base on a website because millions of people are already gathered on social media sites.  Go to where the readers are already gathered.  Bring the author’s message to those readers instead of waiting for them to stumble upon that message on a website.  It’s free to sign up for accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.  There is no cost to use them.  However, investing a few hundred dollars in design and custom tabs will allow authors to sell books directly from their Facebook Fan page, offer that sneak peek free chapter through an opt in box right from Facebook, create the look and feel of their own television channel on YouTube and give readers a sense of their personality on Twitter.  For under $500, each of the author’s social media sites can be design to promote the others and ultimately to drive fans back to the author’s blog or home base.

Opt in

The theme for an author’s digital tool kit is “make it easy for the reader to find, follow, friend and like you.”  By developing an e-mail database of readers who have expressed an interest in what an author writes, authors and publishers will be able to easily and efficiently push updates and marketing messages to potential book buyers who have already identified themselves as being interested.  This permission based digital marketing is cost effective and can have a higher ROI than nearly any other book marketing.  Adding an Opt in box and an enticing sign up offer on both the author website and their Facebook Fan page is an easy, inexpensive digital marketing strategy.

Video

We’re living in a social world where Facebook is the Wal-Mart of digital platforms.  With nearly 700 million users now conditioned to expect to see a face attached to every brand, authors who use video effectively will have a competitive advantage in reaching readers.  Readers like seeing and hearing from the artists they admire.  In the past, meeting a favorite author or even a new author, was relegated to book signings and perhaps major events.  Now authors can create short home videos and talk directly to their potential readers, sharing their tour experiences, their creative process and even concepts from their books.  Readers enjoy authors who share a bit of their personality and their time by creating short video messages.  This, too, is an easy and inexpensive digital marketing concept.

Digital Assets

Authors can now  create digital badges, original digital content like blogs or articles, downloadable author photos and bios, digital press releases, quizzes, games and contests.  All of these digital assets can be used to create visibility for the author and his or her books online.  The more interesting and compelling the digital assets are, the more likely they will be referenced, shared and valued by potential readers.  Creating 5-10 original essays or blog posts that can be used as guest blogs on sites visited by an author’s ideal reader is a free way to use these digital assets to promote an author’s books.  The topic of the posts could be related to the topic of the new book and the author by-line can reference his or her latest work.  By providing desirable content to other websites, the author extends his or her own visibility and attracts new readers.  Sharing charts, graphs, photos, videos, quizzes or other interesting and relevant content on these high traffic websites is another strategic use of an author’s digital assets. Think about what digital assets you can create to support the launch of your books and prepare those assets so they’re ready and available at launch time.

Online Advertising

Facebook advertising campaigns can fit any budget.  Authors and publishers can set a daily or a lifetime cap to the dollar amount of the campaign. If an author already has several thousand fans, Facebook’s sponsored stories ads display an image of the author’s fan page to friends of that author’s fans with a subtle visual that implies “Your friends like this page.  You should too.”  Authors and publishers can try different types of ads, different images and different creative messages until they find one that drives new fans to press “like.”  Facebook ads can also be created to redirect Facebook users to the author’s blog or website.  Again, even a budget of $100 to $200 can have an impact, not just in new fans or readers, but in author and book visibility.  Hundreds of thousands of impressions can be achieved for a very modest budget.  This is a digital marketing strategy that is often overlooked because publishers and authors think advertising is expensive or that it’s difficult to measure the ROI.  With Facebook advertising, daily metrics will tell the tale of these ad campaign affects.

These are just a few of the digital marketing strategies authors and publishers can implement for little or no monetary outlay.  Are you using digital marketing strategies effectively?  We’d love to hear your ideas and success stories.

Brands can now post to Facebook as brands. This is huge.

1. Posting as a Brand: The most important change is that administrators can now post throughout Facebook, on both other pages and on profiles, as the brand. This means that if a brand could potentially comment on the Facebook page of a popular television show with millions of fans and gain visibility with those fans. Conversely, a magazine or television show could comment on the pages of their advertisers to thank them for their support and again, gain additional visibility. We’ll be watching for best practices in this area.  To use this feature, administrators can toggle between posting as themselves and as the brand simply by using a drop down menu at the top of the page under “account.”
2. Visuals: Just as on the new profile designs, business pages will now feature the panel of five most recent photos across the top of your page.  This means that brands must exercise particular care when uploading images.  When another brand or individual tags a company in a photo, that photo will now appear above their newstream, giving less control of the images a business wants to show and making it more essential to have someone monitor the page regularly.
3. Changing Categories: Many companies set up their fan pages using either the wrong category or one that no longer is a good fit for their growing brand.  For example, a business might have been local but has grown to be regional or national. Or, a speaker with national reach might have set himself up as a company but now wants to represent himself as a “person” and a consultant.  For the first time, business pages can now change their category.  This changes the fields under the info link.  If a person wants to be a local business, changing categories will allow him to enter store hours and location along with details on parking.  If a local business wants to become a consultant, the new fields will provide spaces to share product offerings and packages.
4. Featured Likes: A fan page can now, for the first time, “like” another fan page.  Companies can use this feature to associate themselves with sister companies, clients, like-minded organizations and industry leaders.  The pages a business page “likes” will show up on the left hand side of the brand’s page.  By clicking “Edit Info” to the right of a business page name, administrators can now select a feature called “Featured Likes” and choose the top pages they want to have shown on the left hand column of their page.  Again this will be useful for companies that include multiple brands and divisions.
5. Featured Page Owner: Under the “Edit Info” link, business pages may now designate one or more “Featured Page Owners” to be displayed in the left hand column. This can be useful for pages with multiple voices or owners posting.  This definitely gives a public and individual face to a business page, however, and for small business owners or others not wanting to share their personal profile link with the world, this is a feature to understand clearly before utilizing.
6. Filtered News: This is the feature that has people concerned today and hopefully Facebook will listen to the discontent and reverse this.  As of this morning, Facebook and Facebook alone controls the newsfeed of a business page, serving up posts they deem “most interesting.” This seems to create a feed where the posts with the most interactions show up first, leaving the brand without the ability to feature their newest updates first.  This one new feature is counter intuitive to encouraging brands to use Facebook to promote their businesses.  Without control over the order in which their messages appear to fans, a huge opportunity has opened up for outside developers to create something that better serves brands. (*UPDATE: March 5, 2011: Facebook has reverted back to allowing fan pages to post in reverse chronological order, after an uproar from users.)

Over the next week, there will be additional updates on the nuances of using Facebook fan pages to promote businesses.  We’d welcome the sharing of best practices here and feel free to include links to those pages as examples.  If you found this post useful, please let us know by leaving a comment.

Facebook makes micro-targeting custom tabs easy.

This is particularly exciting for businesses using a custom landing tab with a video welcoming message or a sweepstakes application or even an e-commerce application.  You have total control over exactly where your ad will lead people, without having to change your landing tab options for anyone finding your page for the first time through other means.

Additionally, you can now directly target friends of people who already like your page.  With repetition, this should reinforce your brand name with people who’s friends are already interacting with your page, a very important metric because people like to interact with pre-qualified or pre-approved pages. In other words, everyone wants to be friends with the popular kids.  The more often people see your ads and their friends interacting with your brand, the more likely they are to “like” the page themselves.

A successful ad campaign needs to be supported with content designed to make fans “stick.” When they give your brand a chance by clicking on your ad, they need to discover a fascinating, fun, engaging or information packed page that makes them whisper, “I like this.”  Running ads during periods in which you are very actively engaged on your page and be sure to offer your best stuff.  Think about this moment as a first date.  Be on your best behavior and show the potential new fan what a catch you are.  You won’t get a second chance.

Another new feature is called “Sponsored Stories.”  Sponsored stories have been around for a while and you’ve probably noticed them on the right hand side of your page when you see something promoted and underneath it says, “John Brown and three other friends like this page.”  But including Sponsored Stories on the ad creation page seems to indicate that you can now dictate which Facebook actions you’d like to promote to friends and followers.  This may have implications for affiliate marketers trying to lend their influence to a particular program.  I don’t have enough information yet on this aspect but will dig deeper and report back.

So, quickly, Facebook is adding some micro-targeting options to the ad platform that could lead to better, more cost efficient use of ad campaigns.  If you liked this story, please leave a comment.  If you have questions about Facebook ads, I’ll be happy to answer them.

Here’s a list of the top 8 thought leaders I’ve book marked in my A-list.

Every morning I log onto Facebook, first thing. There I’ve set up a Facebook list called A-listers. This list captures those thought leaders that share great links, create important content and whose interpretations of my business arena are important to me. I click on this list which filters my news stream on Facebook to bring in just the posts by the people on my list. Then I can quickly scan this list and see if there is anything I’d like to share with my fans. I make it a point to give a nod to the originator of the content and to the person who brought it to my attention. Why? First, because it’s the right thing to do. Secondly, because by doing so, I demonstrate to these thought leaders that I value their contribution, appreciate their content and continue to look to them for leadership. I claim a place in their community as an evangelizer of their brand. Thirdly, my name appears in news streams loosely associated with their name. This is something called ambient awareness. I didn’t originate the content, but I passed it on and named them. My name and their name are read together by more people as the content is reshared. In other words, I endorse their work and introduce them to others, thereby sharing valuable content with my fans.

Who do I read and why?  Here’s a list of the top 8 thought leaders I’ve booked marked in my A-list.

1. Mashable:  Mashable is my number one read because he and his highly credible team of uber tech and social media obsessed reporters are 100% on top of all things related to technology, people in technology, applications, social media, and virus attacks. They give me the how, the why, the who and the what and keep me in the loop. If you follow only one blog on social media, make it Mashable.

2. Mari Smith: Mari Smith is the Facebook guru. She continues to invest her time and talents in knowing every nook and cranny about Facebook and she is a serial sharer. She’ll tell you everything she knows and more. She’s funny, generous, gifted and worth your time. By calling Mari a Facebook guru, I actually do her a disservice because she’s more than that. She’s an expert in relationship marketing, whatever the platform. Trust me. Add her to your everyday reading list.

3. Dan Schawbel: Dan is the Personal Branding Guru and author of Me 2.0, and his insights into the brand that is you are simply brilliant.

4. Darren Rowse, ProBlogger: Darren’s tag line is “Build a better blog.” He’s not kidding. Daily posts with actionable ideas for creating a more vibrant blog that people will read and want to follow. I bow to his brilliance and read him every single day without fail. He’s an evangelizer for the blog as your core content base and other social media sites as your syndicators and I think he’s a rock star in both information and delivery.

5. Adam Urbanski: Adam is the king of marketing strategies and is someone who truly understands how to connect the social aspects of social media to the deliverables of selling. He’s a consultant, teacher and businessman who delivers real content that can be implemented by businesses, solopreneurs and brands alike.

6. Read Write Web: This is a blog that does reviews of new technology products, comparisons and analysis. It’s ranked by Technorati as one of the Top 20 blogs in the world for a reason—simply stellar information delivered in easy to understand and digest bits. Go there now.

7. Miles Austin: Miles writes a blog called Fill the Funnel and his pithy, eclectic mix of commentary, review and hot news are all about web tools for sales.

8. Natalie MacNeil: Natalie’s blog She Takes On the World by Natalie MacNeil which gives great career advice to women. I like her style, content and message very much.

There are many, many more that I read during the course of my week but these are my never miss blogs. They keep up current, energized, engaged and motivated.  What are your favorites?

Your brand is what your customers think it is, not what you think it is. So listen, engage, and if the message you want is not the message they’re repeating, alter your strategy.

If a company stays away from social media so as to avoid negative online feedback they will accomplish two things:

1. They will be unaware of problems that might have been easily resolved but when left alone may become much bigger problems.
2. They will be miss a valuable opportunity to fix minor problems and turn cranky customers into happy evangelizers.

Mashable wrote an excellent post recently sharing three terrific examples of how major brands monitored, managed and resolved (or not) some important brand missteps and criticism.

Bottom line: The conversation about you is going on with or without you. You can only influence it if you are aware of it.  Every company should be active on Facebook and Twitter, at the very least, to monitor and influence their brand reputation.  Every company should have a google alert set for their key words and get that digest daily.  Every company should search their brand name or the name of their current campaign on Twitter daily.

I’m hearing a lot of talk from big advertising and PR agencies about social media technology. That sounds so much more impressive than the overused phrase social media marketing, doesn’t it. But in reality, they go hand in hand and one does not displace the other. Social media technology is the architecture and social media marketing is the message. It’s that simple.

Although the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan said, the message still needs to be crafted.

Your brand can have the most sophisticate social media technology available, yet not attain your goals if your social media marketing message is not clear.  Creating conversations with your clients about their wants, needs and how you can fulfill them is what social media marketing facilitates best.

So, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, ask yourselves the important questions:

1. What is my unique value to the consumer?
2. How will I communicate that both verbally and visually?

Then bring social media marketing and social media technology to the same table for a good long talk.