image by katerha

So you know that Facebook Page you’ve got for your brand? Remember the hours you spent thinking about what sort of custom tabs you want to put there? Remember the design comps you poured over, and the slick little graphics you threw together? Guess what – they don’t matter. Because no one goes to your Facebook Page.

Read it again and make certain it sinks in: no one goes to your Facebook Page.

This is a bitter pill to swallow, so here’s some supporting evidence to help wash it down:

• Fact: 95% of Facebook users view only their “Top News” feed
• Fact: Over 20 million people interact with Facebook from an iOS device, which doesn’t display custom tabs (and that was back in 2010)
• Fact: Just 3% – 7.5% of fans see a brand page’s posts

Overwhelmingly & unequivocally, the lion’s share of interactions with your Facebook Page – upwards of 90% – are happening in the newsfeed, and most brands either don’t know, or don’t care. Interactions are not happening on your Page’s wall. Interactions are not happening on the custom tab you spent hours developing so that people can watch a talking, animated snake-oil salesman. Nope. Interactions are happening in the newsfeed, and they are happening with pieces of content that involve simple (but thoughtful) language, and rich media (e.g., pictures and video).

Now that you know this, what do you do? Post too often, and you risk the dreaded unsubscribe link being clicked. Don’t post often enough, and watch your active user base dwindle, and disappear. What you need is The Goldilocks Principle; you need a strategy that isn’t too hot or too cold – it’s just right.

Start by learning about your Page’s fan demographics. Track your impressions against your actual fan count. What percentage are you really getting your content in front of? Where are your fans – active and inactive – located? Figure out what days and what times are best to reach them. That is, don’t post once a day, at 9am, New York time, if most of your fans are in San Francisco, and won’t do their morning Facebook trolling until it’s ~1pm in New York. What time does your audience use Facebook? Is there another audience you want to reach, that operates under slightly different rules?

Sure, there’s more to it than that – but start there. You’ll be leagues ahead of most, and well on your way to a winning strategy on Facebook.

I am, at heart, and uncomplicated dude. Though I went through a rather protracted term of amassing large amounts of stuff, those times spent living dangerously are long behind me. These days, I remain keen on being able to fit everything I own (excluding furniture) into my car. If I can’t move it myself, I don’t want it around. Aiding this not-always innocuous strategy are several things:

• I drive an SUV
• I do virtually all my reading on a Kindle
• I wear mostly jeans and t-shirts, with the occasional custom-tailored, black two-button suit (even us noveau minimalists have to retain some semblance of style)

Understand, this is not some deep-rooted philosophy of engagement with life. This isn’t some quest to rid myself of “things”. What this is, is a preference to keep things uncomplicated. Clutter makes me crazy. The less stuff I have complicating my life, the more streamlined that life becomes (or, at the very least, feels). I am infinitely more effective, creative, and agile when things are kept uncomplicated. Note – I didn’t say simple. Remaining sensitive to the fact that life, inherently, is complex, it behooves one to move through it in an uncomplicated manner. Path of least resistance, ftw.

People that claim it’s impossible to calculate ROI in the social space are really just saying that they can’t calculate ROI in the social space, or probably in any space. The truth is, calculating ROI for social media is just like figuring it out for any other media – print, TV, radio. I’m not saying it’s easy. ROI is difficult to calculate across any medium, especially on the “return” side of the things. For example, you know how much that magazine ad cost, but how much business did you see as a direct result of it? It sounds difficult, but I assure you, it can be done! The tips below will help you get a handle on social ROI:

Image by williamcho

Video is one of the most powerful media available to the modern marketer. Never before has it been so cheap and easy to put video content in front of billions of consumers. YouTube just celebrated its sixth birthday and released some (quite frankly) ludicrous stats:

• More than 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• YouTube serves more than 3 billion views-per-day

In the face of easy video production and uncanny levels of video consumption, I find myself pondering one question: why do marketers still make shitty videos?

I’ll probably write a few posts on this topic, but for now I want to leave everyone with some food for thought when considering video as a medium for your marketing efforts.

Before you make the video, do this little thought exercise:

Imagine it’s a rainy, cold Saturday afternoon and there is a marathon of your favorite TV show (Lost, House, Battlestar Galactica, etc.) You are more than happy to curl up and watch. In the middle of one of the episodes, you hear about a video online. If you wouldn’t stop watching a rerun of a show you enjoy to check out the video, THEN DON’T BOTHER MAKING IT.

99.9% of all brand videos fail this test.

Save yourself time and money. Don’t make videos that suck.

The New Year is upon us. I, for one, felt like I had all sorts of time to plan and then all of the sudden it was January 3rd and I realized that execution must take the place of planning. It is very possible to plan too much and find yourself in Q2 having not yet actually done anything. Inaction is the death of any warrior on the battlefield of social media.

In honor of ushering in another year that is sure to be bursting with technological advancements, I want to humbly submit four tips that are important–nay crucial–to success in social media marketing. My mind is filled with that scene from Varsity Blues where Jon Voight repeatedly bangs his whistle against James Van Der Beek’s helmet, intoning, “Stick to the basics, stick to the basics, stick to the basics.”

And so, some basics. But do not for one second think that because these tips are “basic” that they are not important. That is a mistake too often made by the arrogant. Is breathing (certainly one of the most basic functions of our living bodies) not important? Are the basic impulses sent from your brain telling your heart to beat not, in some ways, among the most important functions of your body?

The tips commence.