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:

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Facebook ads have proven to be a powerful tool to quickly and cheaply rack up a few thousand supporters. Looks like the “cheap” part is fading into history.  According to Epolitics: Facebook’s cost-per-click jumped 22% in the second quarter of 2011, after a 40% rise in the previous quarter — and they expect ad rates to continue to rise for the rest of the year.

At the same time, Google’s cost-per-click rose 12% over the past year, helping the company to a $9 billion in second-quarter revenue.

The question is whether rising ad prices will soon price grassroots groups out of the market — and, as a result, undermine one of our most effective online organizing tools.

Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has uncovered some pretty interesting trends in their latest Internet survey. The goal of the survey was explore  the social impact of widespread use of social networking. Specifically: “Do these technologies isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way?” Here are some summary conclusions from the report:

Facebook users are more trusting than others.

We asked people if they felt “that most people can be trusted.” We found that the typical internet user is more than twice as likely as others to feel that people can be trusted. Further, we found that Facebook users are even more likely to be trusting. We found that a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day is 43% more likely than other internet users and more than three times as likely as non-internet users to feel that most people can be trusted.

Facebook users have more close relationships.

The average American has just over two discussion confidants (2.16) – that is, people with whom they discuss important matters. This is a modest, but significantly larger number than the average of 1.93 core ties reported when we asked this same question in 2008. Controlling for other factors we found that someone who uses Facebook several times per day averages 9% more close, core ties in their overall social network compared with other internet users.

Facebook users get more social support than other people.

We looked at how much total support, emotional support, companionship, and instrumental aid adults receive. On a scale of 100, the average American scored 75/100 on a scale of total support, 75/100 on emotional support (such as receiving advice), 76/100 in companionship (such as having people to spend time with), and 75/100 in instrumental aid (such as having someone to help if they are sick in bed).

Internet users in general score 3 points higher in total support, 6 points higher in companionship, and 4 points higher in instrumental support. A Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day tends to score an additional 5 points higher in total support, 5 points higher in emotional support, and 5 points higher in companionship, than internet users of similar demographic characteristics. For Facebook users, the additional boost is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married or cohabitating with a partner.

Facebook users are much more politically engaged than most people.

Our survey was conducted over the November 2010 elections. At that time, 10% of Americans reported that they had attended a political rally, 23% reported that they had tried to convince someone to vote for a specific candidate, and 66% reported that they had or intended to vote. Internet users in general were over twice as likely to attend a political meeting, 78% more likely to try and influence someone’s vote, and 53% more likely to have voted or intended to vote.  Compared with other internet users, and users of other SNS platforms, a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day was an additional two and half times more likely to attend a political rally or meeting, 57% more likely to persuade someone on their vote, and an additional 43% more likely to have said they would vote.

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

Turns out there are not huge swaths of the American public spending their day using social media.  Here are some surprising stats posted by our friends over at Frogloop:

• Twitter: 1.1 % of the U.S. population is on Twitter. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

• Facebook: While Facebook says that they have 150M U.S. “active” users, which is 48% of the U.S. population, only 50% of active users login any given day. So 24% of the U.S. population logs into Facebook on any given day to check or post updates. (source: Facebook)

• LinkedIn: 0.37% of the U.S. population is on LinkedIn. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

• YouTube: 19.94% of the U.S population is on YouTube. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

• MySpace: 1.19% of the U.S. population is on MySpace. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has conducted a study examining the top 25 news websites in popularity in the United States, looking into four main areas of audience behavior: how users get to the top news sites; how long they stay during each visit; how deep they go into a site; and where they go when they leave. The findings show that “while search aggregators remain the most popular way users find news, the universe of referring sites is diverse. Social media is rapidly becoming a competing driver of traffic.”  Here are a few of the key findings:

• Even among the top nationally recognized news site brands, Google remains the primary entry point. The search engine accounts on average for 30% of the traffic to these sites.

• Social media, however, and Facebook in particular, are emerging as a powerful news referring source. At five of the top sites, Facebook is the second or third most important driver of traffic. Twitter, on the other hand, barely registers as a referring source. In the same vein, when users leave a site, “share” tools that appear alongside most news stories rank among the most clicked-on links.

• When it comes to the age, news consumers to the top news websites are on par with Internet users overall. This stands apart from news consumption on traditional platforms, which tends to skew older, and may bode well for the industry.

• Even the top brand news sites depend greatly on “casual users,” people who visit just a few times per month and spend only a few minutes at a site over that time span.  USAToday.com was typical of most of these popular news sites: 85% of its users visited USAToday.com between one and three times per month. Three quarters came only once or twice. Time spent was even more daunting: When all the visits were added together, fully a third of users, 34%, spent between one and five minutes on the paper’s Website each month.

• There is, however, a smaller core of loyal and frequent visitors to news sites, who might be called “power users.” These people return more than 10 times per month to a given site and spend more than an hour there over that time. Among the top 25 sites, power users visiting at least 10 times make up an average of just 7% of total users, but that number ranged markedly, from as high as 18% (at CNN.com) to as low as 1% (at BingNews.com).

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.”