Lessons Learned in

Optimizing Facebook

Brand Pages

Confidential to IT Agility LLC

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Discussion Agenda

1. Why Facebook matters to brands

2. Experience context (scaling

Facebook fan pages)

3. Leading Practices for Brand fan

pages

4. Questions/Discussion

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Why Facebook Matters to Brands

• Over 600 Million users at the end of 2010 (now 630M+)

• Most searched term and site with the most time spent

• Strong position (lock-in, network effect, market cap)

• Cost effective marketing (viral effect)

Source: Socialbaker

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Business and organization Facebook pages are rapidly

growing to pursue the consumer volume on Facebook.

• The top ten brands on Facebook have over 232

million Facebook fans

• 50% of the Fortune 100 have active Facebook

page(s)

• Social Marketing Software as a Service (SaaS)

offerings for organizations are a rapidly emerging

market

– Facebook has over 700,000 local businesses with

active company pages (Facebook, January 2010)

– Several start-ups have started to provide

Facebook SaaS offerings (Involver, Wildfire

Interactive, Buddy Media, etc.)

Facebook Business/Organization Pages

Source: Fanpagelist.com, April, 2011

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IT Agility has captured lessons learned from scaling ten

Facebook fan page and application sites.

http://www.facebook.com/ITagility

IT Agility’s Initial Consumer Facebook Offerings

5 http://apps.facebook.com/celebbistro/

Providing a fan page and application for each pop culture

area optimizes our overall fan base.

CelebBistro Fan Page CelebBistro Facebook App

• Gained over 330,000 fans in ~8 months

• Averages ~40,000 impressions per post providing free

viral marketing and ―social clicks‖

• Creates great fan interaction (comments and likes)

• Has 170,000 monthly active users

• Provides one stop shopping for content

• Makes it easy to socially share content

http://www.facebook.com/CelebBistro

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#

Representative

Celeb Sites on Facebook

Facebook Fan page Site URL

Fans As Of

May 4, 2011

1 The Hollywood Gossip http://www.facebook.com/thehollywoodgossip 638,804

2 US Weekly http://www.facebook.com/UsWeekly 430,460

3 TMZ http://www.facebook.com/TMZ 433,876

4 CelebBistro http://www.facebook.com/CelebBistro 304,241

5 Entertainment Tonight (CBS) http://www.facebook.com/EntertainmentTonight 262,423

6 Perez Hilton http://www.facebook.com/PerezHilton 168,600

7 E Online http://www.facebook.com/eonline 125,955

10 Access Hollywood http://www.facebook.com/AccessHollywood 77,447

11 PopEater (AOL) http://www.facebook.com/PopEater 62,142

12 Showbiz Tonight (HLN Network) http://www.facebook.com/ShowbizTonightHLN 58,330

9 Gawker http://www.facebook.com/Gawker 78,007

8 Entertainment Weekly http://www.facebook.com/entertainmentweekly?ref=ts 113,990

13 Wonderwall (Microsoft) http://www.facebook.com/Wonderwall 27,238

CelebBistro Fan Page Position (after 8 months on Facebook)

By converging dynamic content, custom search, and

community features as native Facebook applications, we

are disrupting the traditional media leaders.

• CelebBistro fans are achieved without promotions or incentives

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Fans for Representative IT Agility Test Sites (As of 05/07/2011)

The initial five test sites achieved over 638,000 fans and average 80% “like”

rate from visitors (without the use of promotions/incentives).

314,000 fans 47,000 fans

101,000 fans 136,000 fans 40,000 fans

http://www.facebook.com/CelebBistro

http://www.facebook.com/MovieNewscast

http://www.facebook.com/TVaficionado

http://www.facebook.com/HipHopBistro

http://www.facebook.com/CountryMusicBistro

Our Facebook test sites demonstrate that users like to

receive and share content within Facebook.

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Companies should adopt several leading practices for

their brand pages.

1. Understand the Facebook edge algorithm and how to

maximize impressions

2. Make high quality fan page posts

• Write compelling and optimal fan page posts

• Be responsive to fan posts/comments

• Monitor and understand Fan Page engagement

rates (time to post, post characteristics, etc.)

3. Optimize your page configuration

• Ensure your photostrip is relevant

• Select the best page category relevant to your

brand page

• Make page settings relevant to your brand

(everyone posts, profanity level…)

• Add Custom tabs and compelling application

features for your targeted audience

4. Make a compelling landing page

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90% of fans do not revisit fan pages which makes fan

page posts critical to driving impressions.

1. The average Facebook person ―likes‖ a

multitude of pages and interests

2. Over 90% of fans do not revisit the fan

page

3. Most fan page posts are consumed via the

broadcast out to fan newsfeeds

4. 99% of comments and likes come from fan

interaction via the newsfeed

5. Newsfeed impressions measure how

many fans see your fan page posts

It is critical for brands to make high quality fan page posts

and optimize impressions via newsfeeds.

Source: IT Agility experience across our 11 managed pages

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• Edge rank is an affinity score between the viewing user and the item’s creator (if you

send your friend a lot of Facebook messages and check their profile often, then you’ll

have a higher affinity score for that user than with an old acquaintance you haven’t

interacted with in years).

• There’s a weight given to each type of Edge (a comment has more importance than a

Like)

• Time is a factor….the older an Edge is, the less important it becomes.

• Multiply these factors for each Edge then add the Edge scores up and you have an

Object’s EdgeRank. The higher the edge rank is, the more likely your Object is to

appear in the user’s feed.

• The act of creating an Object is also considered an Edge, which is what allows Objects to

show up in your friends’ feeds before anyone has interacted with them.

EdgeRank News Feed Optimization

Understanding the Facebook EdgeRank Algorithm is

critical for optimizing fan page posts.

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• A frequent fan page visitor and active user creates a

higher affinity score with that fan

• High volume of likes and comments drives a higher

EdgeRank

• Time remains a factor….the older an Edge is, the less

important it becomes.

• Attached content (video and photo links) drives a higher

edgerank

• Several factors appear to drive relative Facebook

impressions across fan page posts

• Competition against other fan page posts

• Weighting of factors driven by Facebook (e.g.

promoting places feature)

• Volume of fans on your page helps (critical mass

helps to drive more likes and comments)

EdgeRank Brand Page Optimization

Business Fan Pages have several EdgeRank

considerations.

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• Facebook engagement has three engagement peaks: early morning (7 a.m. EST),

after work (5 p.m. EST) and late at night (11 p.m. EST).

• Non-work hours have the highest engagement rate peaks

• Thursday, Friday and Sunday posts have the highest engagement rates

• Each brand needs to consider the behavior and peak engagement rates for their

audience

Facebook has optimal times to post fan page content.

Source: Buddy Media Study

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• Using action words increases fan

interactions wit h your posts

• ―Like us‖ if you ……works

• Asking for comments works

• Posts with 80 characters or less gain 27%

more engagement than posts that were

more than 80 characters.

• Only 19% of posts in the study were

shorter than 80 characters

• Posts with a full-length URL had three

times the engagement of their shortened

bit.ly, ow.ly and tinyurl counterparts (the

likely reason is readers want to know the

link destination)

Post characteristics drive engagement rates.

Source: Buddy Media Study

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Optimal frequency of posts varies by type of

business fan page.

• Optimal Post Frequency is relative to the type of

brand page site

• 1 – 2 posts per day for a typical company brand

page

• 3 – 4 posts if you have interesting and

compelling content

• 6 – 12 posts per day for media sites

• Post at least 1 hour apart

• Don’t repost the same content

• Write an optimal status update with the content

• > 4 lines will yield …‖more‖ link to see full post

• Video and Photo links increase post quality and

ultimate Facebook impressions

• Ending with a question increases comments

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Page engagement rates vary based on the

overall volume of your fan base.

• Engagement rate measures how compelling your fan page posts are

• Page engagement rate is total fan interaction (comments, likes) / total

page fan base

• Average engagement rate varies by page’s total fan volume

Source: Socialbaker’s page analysis of 9,000 Facebook brand pages

Average Fan Engagement Rates

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On February 10th 2011, Facebook completed platform updates to

allow application integration with company pages.

Sources: http://developers.facebook.com/roadmap

This update

allows companies

to add dynamic

content and more

advanced

applications as

custom tabs on

their brand page.

Adding Compelling Application Features

Facebook Developer Blog (February 10, 2011)

http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/462

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Adding search services and targeted/dynamic content on

your Brand Page improves fan conversion rates.

Our platform provides news to our

Company Brand page:

• Facebook News

• Social Media

• PR News

• News tabs achieve a 45%

―like rate‖ from visitors

• Attracts visitors and

increases fan engagement

• Achieves significant savings

in ad spend and reduction in

promotions/incentives

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Beer News | Cocktail News | Wine News |

http://www.facebook.com/bartab

Bartab achieves a 70% like rate by featuring beer,

cocktail and wine news on their company brand page.

• Webtab/Bartab—added relevant beverage

industry news to Bartab’s Facebook

company page (achieves a 70% ―like‖ rate

from the drink news tab)

• Drink news provides a much larger

population to target with Facebook ads

• Driving more fans to your company page

increases the newsfeed volume for your fan

page posts

• Higher newsfeed engagement drives

increased impressions

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Make a Compelling Landing Page (CelebBistro Example)

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Make a Compelling Landing Page (Coca Cola Example)

Coca Cola is the most popular brand page on Facebook with over 22 million fans

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Make a Compelling Landing Page (Red Bull Example)

Red Bull is the 5th most popular brand page on Facebook with over 15 million

fans

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Questions?