As with any new feature to Facebook, Graph Search was welcomed with some love and some criticism. The reality is, this has been a long time coming and it will probably prove to be a pretty important change to the social network. There is an ocean of information within Facebook and until now the search functionality has been less than ideal. I, for one, am excited to see what this will become.

So, what is Graph Search?

Let’s break it down. First of all, Graph Search is still in beta. This means a select crowd (invite only right now, get your invite here) will be able to test the functionality and provide feedback. It also means Facebook is still building and improving the search system before they roll it out to the general public. Graph Search will show up as a bigger search bar at the top of each page when you are within Facebook and will be used as a search engine for Facebook users to find specific content inside Facebook.

What will Graph Search do for us? Or, “Why should we care?”

With Graph Search, Facebook users will be able to:

• Ask specific questions: ‘Which of my friends live in Chicago?’ or ‘Which of my friends have been to Oktoberfest in Munich?’
• Search based on interests or places: ‘Which of my friends like Homeland?’ or ‘Restaurants my friends like in New York City’ or ‘Games my friends play’
• Search based on photos or your own past actions: ‘Photos I like’ or ‘Photos of my family’
• Search based on products or services (the things your friends ‘like’): which in turn could be useful for brands and marketers

An interesting feature to note about the listings you will receive when searching, is your Facebook friends will be ranked based on your interactions. The more you ‘like’ and comment on a friends photos and status updates, the more likely they will be at the top of the listings. Similar to the News Feed now. I do think Facebook will try different ways in the coming months to gather more specific information from users to feed Graph Search as it grows, but we can expect them to remain mindful of privacy settings. You will essentially only be able to find things that you already could find if you looked around for it. It will just be a lot easier.

So, the big question is… what does this mean for Google?

My opinion is: nothing really.

The main difference between the two right now is that Google (and other search engines) search based on keywords and serve you the best possible results from throughout the web based on those keywords and the authority of those pages. Facebook’s Graph Search will take a phrase or combined phrases and serve results based on people, places and photos shared only on Facebook (most of which is not public, but within your personal connections).

The similarity between the two is the personalization behind the search result. People are more likely to click on a result that is already endorsed by a trusted friend. Google has already brought this idea to life with Google+, serving content our personal Google network has given a +1. Facebook’s goal is to do everything it can to keep users inside Facebook, but if a user’s search does not return any results within Facebook content, the Bing web search integration will still be available to provide results from the web outside of Facebook’s walled garden.

For more information on Facebook’s Graph Search – check out Facebook’s Press Release

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Minding my own business, and doing some trolling very important research, I came across this post from Search Engine Journal.

It appears that SEJ had posted some form of politically charged blog entry regarding the availability of firearms on Google, which turned into a flamewar about firearms and politics.

These types of posts are rarely well received following traumatic events like the shootings of the past weekend, but they are more prevalent than one would expect.

Of note in this turmoil is the effort taken by SEJ to control the situation, they removed the offensive material, apologized to the readership and have allowed open discussion amongst their reader base on their Social Media outlets like Facebook. These first steps are crucial, as most readers will appreciate the opportunity to vent their frustrations and have them addressed personally.To anyone who is interested in how reputation management works, I would suggest following this event at Search Engine Journal

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If you’re a brand, or if you manage social media for a brand, you’ve probably noticed a big drop off in the number of fans you reach with each individual Facebook post. While many brands were surprised to find that 100% of their Facebook posts weren’t seen by 100% their fans, most could count on their posts appearing on the pages of somewhere around 56% of their fans at any given time.

All that changed this Fall, when EdgeRank, the algorithm Facebook uses to determine what posts users see in their newsfeed, changed its formula, resulting in a 40% drop-off, on average, in the number of fans who saw a brand’s post at any given time. While brands and brand managers scrambled to figure out to how combat the drop-off in reach, Facebook found itself having to defend charges that it changed EdgeRank in order to force brands to spend money to “promote” their Facebook posts, thereby getting their status updates back in front of a higher percentage of their fans.

No matter Facebook’s motivation in changing the EdgeRank algorithm, the fact is that the current formula isn’t going away any time soon. Luckily, the formula used by EdgeRank is widely known (Weight x Affinity x Time Decay = a posts’s EdgeRank score), and there are some easy things your brand can do to push your posts’ EdgeRank scores higher. The higher your post’s EdgeRank score, the higher percentage of your fans that will see your post.

With that in mind, here are five thing your can do to increase your EdgeRank Scores:

1) Vary the type of content (weight): The first factor EdgeRank takes into account is how often an individual fan interacts with the kind of content you’ve posted. Immediately following EdgeRank’s algorithm change, it appeared that photos were valued more highly than other types of posts, but straight text posts and links have been make a surge as of late. Brands should make sure to vary the kinds of posts to determine which kinds of updates get the most traction with their fans.

2) Vary the times of posts (time decay): Another big factor in the EdgeRank algorithm is time decay: the amount of time between an update is posted and a fan of a brand logs on to see the post. The older a post is, the lower it’s EdgeRank score will be. For this reason, it’s important to experiment with posting at different times of day. Once you know the optimal time of day to post to reach the greatest amount of fans, the better chance you have of increasing your posts’ visibility.

3) Target posts to your demographic (affinity): The third factor in EdgeRank’s formula is affinity. Simply put, affinity is the number of times a fan has interacted via likes, shares, and comments, with your posts. The more often a fan engages with your brand, the more likely she is to see your posts popping up in her timeline. In order to encourage fans to engage with a post, you need to make sure your brand is pushing out content that is targeted and of interest to your fan base. Lack of interest in a brand’s content leads to lack of engagement with a brand’s posts. For example, fashion brands shouldn’t be posting content about model cars, and model car makers shouldn’t push out content on the latest line of Jimmy Choo’s. Know your fan base and give them what they want.

4) Ask for what you want: While EdgeRank has caused many brands to re-think their social media strategy, some of the old marketing axioms hold true, one of the best being the absolute necessity of calls to action. Fans are much more likely to do what you want them to do if you actually ask them to do it. If you want fans to share your content, “share this post!” or “please share!” ” should be clearly stated. Like this post if you agree . . .” is another tried and true strategy for fan engagement. You might be surprised at how effective asking for engagement can be.

5) Have fun: Above all, remember that no one is on Facebook to read an endless stream of brand postings, just like no one watches TV just for the commercials. If brands truly want to stay in their fans’ timelines, they need to be entertaining. Talk about current events, ask questions, take polls, post cartoons. Do whatever it takes to hold the attention and favor of your fans.

Just like in real life, engaging and entertaining others means not talking about yourself all day long. A good rule of thumb to follow is to post about your brand one-third of the time, post about and ask questions of your fans one-third of the time, and post about things that are of interest to both your brand and your fans one-third of the time. While this “Rule of One-Thirds” is easily modifiable to suit your brand’s needs, it’s a good touchstone to keep you on the right path.

Has EdgeRank made it harder for brands to reach their fans via Facebook? Undoubtedly. We’ll probably never return to the days when brands are able to reach 60% of their fans without paying to do so. But, as with all things social media, creativity and flexibility remain the keys to remaining relevant, visible, and worthy of engagement by brand fans.

The post Understanding EdgeRank: Five Ways To Reach More Fans on Facebook appeared first on 435 Digital.

Have a great weekend!

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As a young crusader for all that is right and just, I was ready to throw my hat in against the tyranny of Facebook and all of the evil practices they’ve seemed to be involved in over the past year or so. A few months back, word got out that if you have a Facebook page for your company, only 16-18% of your fans were seeing the updates you put up. Predictably, outrage ensued. Community managers and online marketers shouted “If someone chooses to be a fan of my page, who is Facebook to decide when they do and do not see our updates?” from the rooftops. And for a while, I was one of them.

Things got even stickier with Facebook’s rollout of Promoted Posts. For as little as $5 per post, you can show your page’s updates to most/all of your fans, not just the usual 18%. This really set my Spider Sense off, especially because at the time all this was happening, Facebook’s new IPO was struggling, mostly because investors were concerned about the relatively low amount of revenue Facebook was generating through advertising when compared to their stock price.

It seemed like the plan of a second-rate James Bond villain:

Step 1: Facebook restricts the number of fans that see each update
Step 2: Facebook offers a solution that allows advertisers to reach those restricted fans…for a price
Step 3: PROFIT

I COULD NOT LET THIS STAND. For weeks, I read articles and bookmarked links, forming a scathing argument in my head. Facebook was going to be exposed, and I was going to be the one to do it.

That vigor and determination lasted all the way until I sat down this morning and thought about it from a distance. I realized that I, like many others, was just looking to rail against a straw man that I had mostly formed in my head for the sole purpose of tearing down. I had created my own machine to rage against.

Is Facebook restricting the number of fans your messaging reaches? Absolutely.

My advice? Deal with it. Let it motivate you. See that what they’re doing really isn’t that bad. Work around it. Let Facebook’s restrictions be your Apollo Creed from Rocky III, a former adversary that will push you to be the best you can.

1. Facebook Is Only Doing What Your Fans Are Already Doing

Last month, FastCompany published an article about how Facebook fans are already hiding your posts at an alarming rate. This is mostly because either the content fans are seeing isn’t relevant or it’s being presented in the wrong way. That’s why Facebook fanbases shouldn’t be judged on quantity alone. Rather than trying to get to 10,000 fans of any kind, connecting with 3,000 fans that are actual fans and not liking you just for promotional reasons will show much more return in the long run.

2. Make Your Updates More Interesting

Unless you want to wander down the expensive road of Promoted Posts (which do have their own time and place), you just have to accept that your Facebook posts are only going to reach about 20% of your audience on a good day. So how do you work around this? Make sure that you’re giving your fans something good enough to seek you out. Just because a fan doesn’t see your post in their news feed doesn’t mean that you’ve dropped off the face of the Earth. If you’ve got engaging and interesting content on a regular basis, the 80% of your fans that don’t see your posts in their news feed will still seek out your Facebook page to check for updates. You know how there are those friends you have on Facebook that always have something entertaining to say and you check their page daily to make sure you didn’t miss anything? Try to be like that friend, but offer deals and promotions instead of funny cat pictures.

3. Reaching 18% Of Your Audience Isn’t Bad

Let’s say that there’s a marketing avenue where fans of your product say “Yes, I would like you to contact me and let me know what you’re up to from time to time. You have my permission.” Let’s say that you would only reach about 18% of that audience with each update. Sounds pretty bad, right? Sounds just like the Facebook situation I’ve been describing that everyone is up in arms about, right?

Well it is. But I was actually talking about email marketing, where an 18% open rate is actually pretty good. So why is everyone so mad at Facebook for duplicating the same results?

The bottom line is that you have to make your messaging better and the quality of your fans better. In an ideal world, each of your Facebook updates would be inscribed on a gold plaque and hand delivered to each of your fans. But we’re not in that world. And guess what? If you’re spending time lamenting not being able to reach over 80% of your fanbase’s news feed, your competitors are thinking of new and innovative ways to work around that, because everyone is in the same boat.

Be like Rocky. Let Facebook be your master motivator. Just keep the pictures of you and Facebook Apollo Creed running shirtless down the beach to yourself.

The post Let Facebook’s Restrictions Motivate You To Improve appeared first on 435 Digital.

The Facebook cover photo is the largest image on your business Facebook page and is often a missed opportunity for many businesses. Before you start brainstorming what might look good in that space, you’ll want to know exactly what Facebook won’t let you post there:

• Calls to action (ex. “Call Now for a Free Consultation!”)
• Prices/Special Offers (ex. “All Sunglasses 2 for $20″)
• Mentions of the Like or Share function on Facebook (ex. “Like Us for More Info”)
• Contact info, which should be included in the About Us section (ex. “435 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL”)

Now that we know the ground rules, there are a lot of things that you can do to make the cover photo work for your business…

1. Think Seasonally – With the holidays coming up, you may want to consider getting festive with your cover photo. If you’re a jewelry store, for example, consider taking a picture of your products draped on garland. Having a festively-fun cover photo can help you appear more relevant and timely to your fan base.

2. Go Beyond Uploading a Basic Photo – The fun thing about cover photos is that you can be pretty creative when designing one. You’re not limited to just uploading one photo and calling it a day. Think outside of the box and design a cover photo that features several images to promote your products or services. Cover photos are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall, so get creative!

3. Say Something About Your Business – The image at the top of this blog post is our current Facebook timeline cover photo. We opted to create an image that has a word cloud of all of the various services that we provide. It’s a nice way to promote a little more of what you do and still have something visually appealing. The cover photo is a great spot to help shape your brand and show your company’s personality.

These are just a few ideas to help you think differently about how to use your Facebook cover photo to better promote your business. Our main piece of advice is to great creative and try new things. Use this space to express your brand personality and keep your audience engaged with the page. As long as you stay within Facebook’s rules, the sky’s the limit on what you can create for this space.

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Here’s a quick look at what the team at 435 Digital is reading this morning:

Our Social Media and Web Dev departments are both talking mobile a lot. This morning, we hear that 19% of new Facebook fans now come from mobile, which is significant mostly for the huge increase.

Almost one in five new Facebook fans came from mobile devices in August, an increase of 280% in four months, according to a new research report.

PageLever looked at more than 500 Facebook Pages with 100,000 or more Facebook fans and found only 5% of new fans came from mobile in May, but that number jumped to 19% in August.

People’s social activity online is often done on a mobile device, which means that all websites need to be ready for mobile viewing, too.

More on the social front: another Google Penguin update for SEO helps social media.

At least these SEO updates have cute names like Panda and Penguin. The latest Penguin update has been released and it reportedly effects 0.3% of all English websites. For you social media managers you should be thanking Google for Penguin as the Penguin Update helps social media by increasing the quality of content out there. It means your hard work isn’t going unrewarded. . .

Most social media managers don’t believe me when I say there are websites out there flooded with links and spam people land on everyday. I guess they would like to just live in the Matrix or assume they’re too smart to ever land on one of these websites. How foolish. Google has been monitoring the space for years and a simple google search (oh the irony) will showcase how people have manipulated and twisted SEO practices in the past for their personal gain. Did I say personal? I meant profitable. Highly profitable. Like millions and millions of dollars.

We appreciate, and practice, legitimate SEO that holds its value over many years. Thanks, Google!

To continue with cute animals, we have a new baby gorilla right here in Chicago at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

The Lincoln Park Zoo welcomed a new baby gorilla last Thursday, one of the critically endangered Western lowland gorillas native to central Africa. The baby’s sex has not been determined, as it is sticking close to its mother Bana, 17. The zoo says father Kwan has been watchful over the two, and the other gorillas in the group have kept their distance. This is the zoo’s 51st gorilla birth.

We hope that brings a smile to your morning!

The post What We’re Reading: Facebook Fans Are Mobile, Google Panda, and a New Baby Gorilla appeared first on 435 Digital.

Here’s a quick look at what the team at 435 Digital is reading this morning:

SEO specialists are making a lot of new friends lately:

In a joint study recently completed with Search Engine Watch and presented at Conductor’s C3 conference, 616 Search Engine Watch readers were surveyed about the state of the SEO industry. Our primary goal was to gauge the extent to which SEO is maturing in the organization.

Knowing how significant an impediment to improving natural search visibility organizational support has been, among other questions we asked respondents whether they were more or less enabled to make changes in the organization now compared to 12 months ago.

The data revealed that 71 percent of search marketers report they are “more enabled” or “much more enabled” to make changes or influence people to improve natural search visibility than they were 12 months ago.

Other than the fact that we’ve started letting our SEO gurus become more actively involved in deciding where we go for lunch, there are other reasons for this perceived empowerment of SEO experts. For example, the study indicated a much higher level of executive buy-in to the importance of SEO in recent years.

Is magazine clipping making a return?

Maz, a startup that helps publishers design magazine apps for the iPad, recently launched a new feature to make it easier for readers to virtually cut out part of a page and share it to Pinterest, in addition to Twitter, Facebook and email.

With the new feature, called Clippings, readers can pinch any part of the page to select part of a picture or a chunk of text and post it directly to one of their Pinterest boards, without ever having to leave the magazine app. Some publishing apps on the iPad do let users highlight text and share it to social networks like Twitter, but Maz is the first to seamlessly integrate with Pinterest.

Chalk up another victory for Pinterest. As more and more people move to pinning articles, rather than just images on Pinterest, a feature like this was a complete no-brainer. Once again, Apple is ahead of curve in figuring out how the iPad can integrate with other platforms.

Seeking a more tactile experience when your Facebook post gets “likes?” Do we have the perfect Christmas present for you:

There’s nothing like a bear hug from a loved one at the end of a long day. But if you live far away from your family, you now have a man-made alternative. Scientists at MIT have created a vest that inflates when your Facebook friends “Like” your posts, mimicking the sensation of a hug.

Dubbed “Like-A-Hug,” the puffy vest inflates so its wearer can “feel the warmth, encouragement, support or love that we feel when we receive hugs,” according to designer Melissa Chow‘s website. To return the hug, the wearer wraps his or her arms around the shoulders to deflate the vest, symbolizing the act of sending the hug back.

Admittedly, this item does not come immediately to mind when thinking of inventions that would make the world a better place, but is it really any worse than the KC Double Down? Boxes of wine? Jersey Shore? After all, when you’ve posted something truly amazing, who DOESN’T want 200 hugs? It could have been worse, is all we’re saying. For example, it could have been a vest that slaps you in the face whenever someone “unfriends” you.

Have a great day.

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Here’s a quick look at what we’re reading this morning:

Facebook has a bunch of new ways to make money off your personal information:

Facebook spilled the beans on its new stab at ad cash in a public blog post that most people will never even read. So, we’ll break down each section for you in Human English. Let’s begin: here’s what’s changing.

Facebook Exchange (FBX), or “We Watch What You Browse”

Facebook can now make an agreement with another website to swap (for money) information and sell things to you. Let’s say you visit J.Crew’s site and check out a new tie you like. If Facebook and J.Crew have an FBX agreement, you could see an ad for that very tie as soon as you hop back over to Facebook. How? The two companies will share information based on the cookies my browser stores. Facebook says “we only work with providers that agree to technical and policy requirements that protect the privacy of personal information,” and I have no idea what that means.

Make sure you click through to read all the other ways Facebook is mining your personal data for cold, hard cash.

Does owning a tablet make you smarter? At the very least, it appears it makes you better informed:

Almost half (43 percent) of tablet owners say they are consuming more news after getting a tablet, and 31 percent say they look at new sources for news and spend more time reading the news.

Because of this hunger for news, we are more concerned with getting our news from trusted publications. Sixty percent of readers who consume longer articles only read them from a select group of trusted news sources, whereas only 39 percent will read long-form articles from various sources.

As we discussed briefly yesterday, Facebook is encouraging marketers to get away from “clicks” and focus on reach and frequency:

“Smallwood also rolled out some new data from a study conducted with Datalogix that found 99% of sales generated from online branding ad campaign came from consumers who saw ads, but didn’t interact with them. “
“What’s the ROI of a press release? What’s the ROI of putting your pants on every day? It’s hard to measure but there’s negative consequences for not doing it.”

To illustrate his point, Buday (head of marketing and communication at star pupil Nestle) showed slides of Nestle brand Skinny Cow’s highly engaged Facebook Page. “If you look at the typical Facebook Page, it’s rarely this good,” Buday said immodestly. To achieve its high level of success, Nestle not only followed Facebook’s recommendations for reach and frequency (both of which are enhanced by ad buys), but adhered to a strict rulebook on communications on the platform.

Finally this morning, Mashable has given us a list of 10 office technologies that we on their way out. How many of these relics will you mourn?

While it’s unlikely many workers will mourn the loss of the fax machine, some may be more nostalgic for other vanishing fixtures of office life like the Rolodex or business cards (which ranked 12th on the list.)

Here are the top 10 office tools and trends that professionals think will vanish in the next five years:

1. Tape recorders (79 percent)

2. Fax machines (71 percent)

3. The Rolodex (58 percent)

4. Standard working hours (57 percent)

5. Desk phones (35 percent)

6. Desktop computers (34 percent)

7. Formal business attire like suits, ties, pantyhose, etc. (27 percent)

8. The corner office for managers/executives (21 percent)

9. Cubicles (19 percent)

10. USB thumb drives (17 percent)

Happy Tuesday!

The post What We’re Reading: Facebook Finds More Ways To Make Money Off You appeared first on 435 Digital.

Here’s a look at what we’re reading today:

While rumors of Facebook’s penchant for making your private messages public has been greatly exaggerated, there IS a Facebook bug out there that can make posting on your (former) friends’ timelines problematic. Or a whole lot more fun:

A recently found Facebook bug lets you post un-deletable messages to friends’ walls.

Here’s how it works: Once you’ve blocked a person on Facebook, he or she can no longer see content you’ve posted on the social network, including posts you’ve made to their own wall. Since the content is no longer visible, it can’t be deleted. The only way either party can see the post again is if the block is removed.

In a way, Facebook lets you know that’s going to happen when you block someone in the first place: “Blocking means you won’t be able to see or contact each other on Facebook,” reads a message that pops up when you decide to block someone (see screenshot below). However, it’s a one-sided agreement: The person being blocked isn’t notified, and all of the content you’ve previously posted on their wall remains intact but invisible to both of you.

Are you relieved to know that people you have blocked might have written un-deletable comment about you on your wall? We knew you would be.

Speaking of Facebook, is your brand over-posting? Turns out, too much content, no matter how brilliant, is one of the fastest way to lose fans:

More is not always better when it comes to Facebook. Ignoring the fact that most fans never return to a page after they like it, people get frustrated and annoyed by constant posts. Worse than that: now you, the social media professional, has to come up with a large amount of posts. When posting three or more times per day, most of those post are worthless with little value to the fans.

Here are some great stats from an article from the social business:

One-to-two posts a day is more effective than fewer or more posts per day. One or two brand posts receive 32% higher “like” rates and 73% higher comment rates compared to posting 3 or more times a day.

Engagement is highest when brands post four to five posts a week. Posting one to four times a week produces 71% higher user engagement than five or more posts in a given week. Posting less than that, does not maximize your opportunity to target your fans as often as possible.

Meanwhile, over at Google, another algorithm change is on the way, this time to reduce low-quality, exact-match domains from ranking so highly in search results:

The head of Google web spam fighting team Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google will be rolling out a “small” algorithm change that will “reduce low-quality ‘exact-match’ domains” from showing up so highly in the search results.

Cutts said this will impact 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. He added it is “unrelated to Panda/Penguin. Panda is a Google algorithm filter aimed at fighting low quality content; Penguin is one aimed at fighting web spam.

This should come as no surprise, as Cutts said a couple years ago that Google will be looking at why exact domain matches rank well when they shouldn’t, in some cases.

Likely over the coming days, you will see shifts in the search results where many sites that may rank well based on being an exact match domain may no longer rank as high in Google’s search results.

Finally this morning, take a moment to read this Sikh woman’s response to a mean-spirited photo of her posted on Reddit:

A Sikh woman’s classy, thoughtful response to a mean-spirited photo of her posted on Reddit has not only warmed the hearts of people around the globe, it has even forced the man who posted the photo to look at his actions and repent.

The original poster, a student at Ohio State University who goes by the handle “European_Douchebag,” posted the above photo with the caption “I’m not sure what to make of this.”

Classmates of the woman in the photo, Balpreet Kaur, a neuroscience and psychology student who also attends Ohio State, alerted her to the post on Facebook. Kaur is Sikh, and will not alter her appearance because of those religious beliefs.

In a response to the post, Kaur shared the reasoning behind her appearance, and why what appeared to be a big deal to the man who posted the photo didn’t matter to her at all.

“If the OP wanted a picture,” she wrote, “they could have just asked and I could have smiled.”

According to Kaur, Sikhs believe in the sacredness of the body, because “it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being… Just as a child doesn’t reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us.”

Tolerance 1, Internet Trolls 0.

Have a great Monday!

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