Facebook has once again – ugh – significant changes to its pages, now called “Brand Timelines.” By March 31st all pages will be converted to the new format, and it will require that all of us figure out the implications. According to epolitics, the key change is that the new format is much more photo-centric. Here’s an edited list of the most significant changes and implications:

Good-bye Landing Page, Hello Cover Photo

Sophisticated facebook pages often use a custom “landing page.” When you go to their page, instead of seeing the list of posts on the page’s wall, you see a custom designed page. There are normally three calls to action: 1) To “like” the page 2) To donate and 3) to volunteer. Landing pages have been shown to be extremely effective in increasing the amount of user engagement on the page (liking, commenting, sharing, going to other pages, etc.) Oh well — under the new layout, landing pages will be no more.

Instead, as on personal profile pages, Facebook will let you chose your own “cover photo.” These are large photos that stretch across the page and are 850 pixels by 315 pixels. Facebook is pretty blunt that these photos should not be promotional in nature and recommend there be little to no text on them. President Obama has made the switch and is taking full advantage of his cover photo as you can see here. As the old saying goes, a picture tells a thousand words, and with cover photos, this could never be more true. Cover photos will be the first thing a user will be drawn to, so they really need to make a splash. Tip: you should change it on a regular basis to communicate more about your work, especially when new issues come up.

Timeline — Tell Your Story, All of It!

The format of actual posts has changed much like the format of the personal pages: they are now split into two columns in a timeline format. Crucially, they allow you to go back (all the way to 1800) and post milestones. The idea is that Facebook wants its users to be able to easily tell their story. In the Timeline, photos are now much bigger, giving you an opportunity to tell a more powerful and visual story than with the old pages. Before switching over to the Timeline format, you should update the timeline with all major events. You can always go in and add more photos or information later, but when it launches you want to give your supporters a complete story about your organization.

Reduced Tab Visibility – Major Format Changes

The “tabs” or “apps” that run down the side of the page in the current format are now moved to a row under the cover photo as rectangular panels or images. Before, you could have dozen of tabs visible on all pages. With Timeline there is only space for three custom tabs. For the rest of your tabs, the user will have to click a drop-down menu to see them all. You will then have to identify the top three apps you want to make visible — chances are users are NOT going to see the other tabs, so this VERY important. Depending on events, you may want to cycle some of your apps into the top spot to address current issues or events.
“Pinning” Content to the Top of the Page

Perhaps in exchange for taking away the landing page, Facebook will now let you “pin” posts to the top of the page. Once pinned, the content will stay at the top of the Timeline for seven days or until you pin something else. You can only have one item pinned at a time. The post will also remain in its place in chronological order in the Timeline. This is a great way to showcase new and interesting content or highlight an older post that has become relevant to a current issue. This is also a great place to put a call to action such as to donate or volunteer.

Private Messaging

While a simple change, allowing private messaging between the page owner and the user is very powerful. Now we can engage in much more detailed conversations with the user. Conversations that might not interest all users (say, a precinct-wide issue) can now be addressed without filling up the content of the Timeline. This will reduce the amount of noise and make it easier for users to navigate the content.

Facebook has a new set of metrics allowing users to monitor “shares” and “clicks”. The definition of a “click” is obvious, but a “share” is less so. To measure shares, Facebook take posts from one user’s feed and posts it into the “Sharer’s” feed for all of their friends to see.

According to the web gurus over at EdgeRank “Shares are very important in driving more exposure to your content. Sometimes asking your users to share a post can be enough to help the content spread further. More elaborate techniques will include creating “Sharable” content. Current popular objects that are being Shared are funny and/or entertaining images or videos. The trick is to get the fan to “share” this photo/video/etc with their friends. Make the photo/video/etc something their friends would actually want to see.”

After trolling though the data, EdgeRank also found that Wednesdays had the best Shares ratios along with the highest Clicks ratios. They conclude that the “trend seems to suggest that more users are on Facebook midweek than on the weekend. Interestingly Friday did poorly in Clicks, perhaps suggesting not many users interact with content as actively than other days of the week.”

In a comparison of clicks per Like vs clicks per Comment (a user commenting on you post) EdgeRank found that a comment results in roughly 4 times the amount of clicks.

Conclusion: Post on Wednesdays and encourage your supporters to comment!

Nonprofit PR has pulled together a simple list of mistakes groups often make as they wade into the social networking world.  Here are the highlights:

Setting up your nonprofit’s Facebook account as a person instead of a page: This is of the most common mistakes made by nonprofits when they first begin using Facebook. Some do it on purpose for a variety of well-meaning reasons, while others simply don’t know any better. A nonprofit should always create a page and categorize it properly as a nonprofit organization. Ideally, nonprofits want to have thousands of supporters on Facebook, and personal accounts allow a maximum of 5,000 friends.

Not fully thinking through the name for your Facebook page: At a basic level, there are two primary branding components on a Facebook page: Your organization’s name and your profile image. While this seems simple, remember that once the Facebook page you created for your nonprofit has 100 fans, you can no longer change the page name (your image, on the other hand, can be changed as many times as you desire). There are currently two options to get around this rule if necessary: Either create a new page and ask your supports to “like” you there instead; or stay with the original name Regardless, when you initially create your page, be sure to take the name into close consideration.

Creating a Facebook page, but not monitoring it properly: There is a debate over whether or not nonprofits should delete Facebook posts or comments (which some equate to censorship). At the very least, nonprofits should monitor their pages for posts and comments that are inappropriate or that are spam. Don’t let anyone use your organization’s wall to promote their own products or agendas, and always monitor all comments for inappropriateness.

Signing up for Twitter when you really don’t have the time for Twitter: Twitter can be a great marketing communications tool for a nonprofit, but only if it is able to invest time on a regular basis. If your organization wants to get to know Twitter, first simply join as an individual and use it as an information consumer. It is a great time-saving tool for getting information from the organizations and causes that you care about. Start there and determine if it makes sense for your organization to make it a priority. If you don’t have time to do something on Twitter on a regular basis, you are better off not creating a profile for your nonprofit.

Using a logo, rather than a graphic icon, as a profile photo: Graphic icons in logos are making a very strong comeback as a response to the need for a strong social-media brand icon. The best branded nonprofit Facebook and Twitter users typically don’t use their organizations’ entire logos as their profile photo. Instead, they use the graphic icon (think red ribbon for AIDS awareness) as the profile photo. It is important to understand that most people will see your icon as a very small image, so make sure what you choose works. Take the time to think about what will work best to meet your organization’s brand guidelines and strategic goals.

Dan Zarrella has posted an infographic — all the rage these days — on how to get more clicks on twitter. While it’s unclear whether his findings are statistically sound, he’s gathered some interesting tidbits useful for those of us trying to get more out of our twitter accounts.

• Tweet later in the day: Tweets posted in the afternoon hours had higher click through rates (CTRs) than tweets posted in the morning

• Tweet on weekends: Tweets posted on Friday, Saturday and Sunday had higher CTRs than those posted during the rest of the week.

• Write Tweets between 120 and 130 characters: He analyzed the length of 200,000 tweets containing links and found the highest CTR on those that were between 120 and 130 characters long

• Tweet your links at a slower pace: The speed of link tweeting increased, the CTR decreased.

• Place links about 25% of the way through your tweet: He analyzed the length of 200,000 and found that the the highest click through rates were for links that were placed roughly 1/4 of the way through the tweet.

• Use action words: Tweets that contained more adverbs and verbs had higher CTRs than noun and adjective heavy tweets.

• Choose the right words and phrases: Tweets containing “via,” “@,” “RT,” “please,” and “check” had higher CTRs than tweets without those words.

• Experiment using the paper.li system: Of all the words and phrases he analyzed, the phrase that had the greatest positive effect on CTR was from us of the paper.li tweet: “daily is out.”

Many Crib Notes readers are also users of Powerbase — PTP’s online database specifically designed for groups engaged in community organizing. For the uninitiated, we developed Powerbase in response to the litany of problems organizing groups were having with existing databases, many of which were designed for businesses, not grassroots organizing.

To help our community get the most out of Powerbase, our Powerbase Community Engagement Director Josué Guillén has put together a really helpful set of screencasts for organizers wanting to do everything from simply adding a new contact to running fundraising drives.

Below are a couple of examples, but go to PTP’s YouTube page to check out all 16 videos.

 

 

 

The folks over at the New Organizing Institute have a great “tip of the day” for new twitter users. If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably seen a few tweets that look something like this: “.@neworganizing, what time does tonight’s event start?” So what’s the dot (.) at the beginning of a tweet?  According to NOI, “It all comes down to how Twitter determines what to show people. When your tweet starts with the handle of a person or organization, Twitter assumes it’s a reply. So why does that matter?”

• Replies are filtered. Twitter assumes replies are semi-private, so tweets that start with a handle (@neworganizing what time…) get filtered. Only people who follow BOTH you AND the account you’re tweeting at will see a reply. This keeps your stream from getting filled with questions and replies between other people.
• Why is this good? It’s helpful if you follow people who answer a lot of questions on Twitter. For example, I follow lots of fantasy football analysts who answer hundreds of questions per day. If I saw all those responses, it would clog my stream.
• Why is it bad? Maybe you want everyone to see the tweet you sent to @WhiteHouse and RT you. Or maybe you want everyone to see your response to a question. When people tweet questions at @neworganizing, I usually want everyone who follows us to see the response, because I know others may have the same question.
• How to solve it. If you’re tweeting at someone and you want all your followers to see it, put any character in front of the handle. It could be a dot (.), a >, a blank space, a word (Hey @WhiteHouse), or anything you want. As long as @ isn’t the first character in your tweet, Twitter gets tricked into thinking it’s just an ordinary tweet, and shows it to everyone who follows you or searches for the other party’s handle.

For better or worse, Facebook continues to “evolve.” In the last few weeks alone they have introduced three new features: improved Photos, the Ticker, and Top News. Copyblogger has offered up three easy ways that folks can take advantage of these latest Facebook features:

1. Upload those big, beautiful photos

The new photos are much larger.

When you upload an album you can create a mini-story that is eye-catching and provocative. Post more pictures on your Facebook Page and think about what story you can tell with the photos.

The other great thing about the new photo size is that they take up more space in the News Feed. You are claiming more real estate than a typical post. Remember to add comments onto the main picture in the Album so you can also get your message across, along with your great images.

2. Keep track of The Ticker

The Ticker has probably been the most controversial of the changes Facebook introduced. Some people like it, others can’t stand it, and some have hidden it.

The way to get the most out of the Ticker is to encourage interaction. When you are getting more interaction throughout the day on your posts, other people can easily click on their friend’s Ticker update to see what their friend is commenting on or Liking

Your post can have a longer life if there is a continuing conversation. Any time someone comments, their friends have the potential to see the post and the thread of comments, then jump in and add to the conversation.

Post often (once or twice a day if possible) so you can pop into that Ticker more often.

Make sure you are sharing great, relevant content and ask questions related to that content in the update, just as AllFacebook.com did in the Ticker shown here.

3. Stay on top of the Top Stories

Top Stories aren’t actually completely new.

We used to have Top News and Most Recent on separate tabs. But now they are blended into one stream. Top Stories are what Facebook thinks you want to see, based on past interactions.

If you want to be a Top Story, make sure you are getting those comments and Likes.

So how do you get more comments and Likes?

 

Twitter Hashtags got you stumped? M+R blog has come to the rescue. They’ve put together a quick list of tips of how to strategically use hashtags to expand your organization’s reach.

For those of you that are wondering what on earth a hashtag is: For those less familiar with the Twitterverse, hashtags are akin to keywords. Created as a way to group information on Twitter, hashtags allow you to categorize the 40,000+ Tweets that happen every minute.

To create a hashtag, just place the hash symbol (#) before any word or phase. The hashtag can go anywhere in your Tweet.

By strategically incorporating trending hashtags into your Tweets, your organization can begin to increase its reach on Twitter. Here’s how:

1. Find out what’s trending by visiting search.twitter.com or whatthetrend.com, a website dedicated to tracking and defining trends.
2. Take advantage of existing trends by incorporating a trending hashtag into your Tweet!

For example: During the last week of 2010, #2010was and #iprefer were both trending topics for several days. Either hashtag could have been easily worked into any organization’s Tweets:

#iprefer a world where everyone is equal. Tell your senator to support XYZ policy: YOUR LINK

#2010Was the year that @YourOrg supporters sent 700K letters in support of #equality: YOUR LINK

Users monitor the hashtags they care about. If a hashtag is trending, that means it is one of the most popular hashtags currently being used on Twitter. In other words, thousands of people are actively using (and likely monitoring) that particular hashtag! By Tweeting with that hashtag, you’ve broken out of your organization’s direct circle of followers and inserted yourself into a new, wider audience.

When someone monitoring the trending hashtag sees your organization’s Tweet and retweets it to one of their own followers, your organization’s circle expands to include their followers as well.

Facebook Pages, as opposed to Profiles or Groups, have evolved into a powerful platform for groups to keep in touch and engage with their online supporters. Here’s a list of tips from social media maven Beth’s Blog:

1. Keep your page name short and accurate, you can’t change it after you create it
2. There is a day or two lag for it to show up in search
3. Content is lifeblood of your page
4. Start with information tab: be complete, accurate, and honest
5. The Fan Page backend is like a cms and if you know a little HTML you can do some spiffy stuff
6. Not all applications are optimized for pages, visit the app page to check
7. All pages require an ADMIN (person with a designated FB profile) for security reasons because they want a real person
8. Admin are not public – always have multiple admins (add multiple admins via email or FB) as a precaution so you don’t lose access to the page.  Standard best practice
9. Wall Tab – accuracy updates of information.  “Write Something” lets you post rich content
10. More interactive content is better – the Wall is a history of interactivity
11. Worst thing you can do with a page is dump an RSS feed into the Page – it won’t be as successful
12. When you make updates to the Page, it appears in the streams of your fans or people who have joined your page.  This is very powerful viral marketing
13. When you start to write in the “write something” you get options to add links, photos, videos – post things that are beyond promotion content. Be interactive, make it interesting, provide behind the scenes content.  Incorporate events into your page.  “Exclusive content is good”
    Shed the tradition PR schtick content and make it real.
14. Lexicon on Facebook lets you track words and phrases

Twitter still got you stumped? Mashable has put together 17 twitter tips — as zen koan-like tweets, of course.

1) @jeffpulver,“The secret to Twitter is to listen, connect, share and engage. It’s the conversations that matter.”
2) @davepeck,“Respond to everybody, positive or negative.”
3) @michiganflavor, “Retweet, retweet, retweet. People love to see their stuff retweeted, and they’ll start retweeting you.”
4) @shrmsocmedguy, “Use your tweeting to set up meetings.”
5) @dstatusstalker, “Start a conversation. Reach out to others, and say hello.”
6) @kratzpr, “Don’t think of it as a tool, think of it as a gateway for being social.”
7) @ctreada, “Ignore it; they’re all pornographers anyway.” (Chris’s other tip: “Chill out.”)
@jkrohrs, “Don’t tweet if you can’t spell.”
9) @moniguzman, “Tweet what comes naturally. Don’t try to fulfill someone else’s expectations.”
10) @shashib, “More than an RSS feed, connecting with people on Twitter gives you interesting content that is validated by them.”
11) @jennydevaughn, “You need to have brand sacrifice if you want to be viewed as an expert in your field. Only tweet about 10 topics, events or ideas.”
12) @robkey, CEO, Converseon: “Embrace your insignificance.”
13) @zagrrl “The best way to learn is to share.”
14) @heidiotway “Follow the best, learn from the best.”
15) @jonnorp, “Remember that it flies forever.”
16) @chrisvary, “Don’t connect your Twitter to Facebook.”
17) @joeyinteractive, “Marketing doesn’t spread; stories do.”