Why I stopped caring about Facebook fans

Evolution of measurement 

Sometime around 2008 or 2009 when a lot of brands were establishing and growing Facebook pages, early adopting social media managers were excited to see the potential number of Facebook users their messaging could reach. A page with 10,000 fans, for example, could potentially reach close to 10,000 social media users with a single post (holding other variables constant). The excitement in growing followers during these early years was directly linked to an expanding base of sustained reach. In the early days of Facebook, authentic Facebook fan likes were just about the best way we could measure success. The improvement of data on Facebook page performance since then has opened doors to other ways to measure success.

Over the last half decade, dashboard analytics have improved and enabled managers to quickly see how many people are seeing any given post. In recent years, post feedback on Facebook has become instant. As we jump to 2014, we see that Facebook's current layout allows page administrators to see accurate real-time summaries of how many people see each post. In the example post, you can see that this post introducing an Audiologist reaching approximately 20,000 Facebook users. 

The planned decline of organic reach

As previously mentioned, a post by a Facebook page with 10,000 followers would have the potential to appear in front of all 10,000 followers in the early years of Facebook. This high organic reach justified efforts to expand the number of a page's fans. But in near perfect synchronization with the improvement of Facebook page analytics from the 2000s until now, Facebook has programmatically and exponentially throttled organizations' Facebook page reach with its increasingly selective EdgeRank. 

Managers recently began noticing downward trends in the number of people who were seeing their content as a result of timely metrics. Studies including this report by Social Ogilvy show organic reach numbers have dropped to about 2% as of February, 2014. Translation: A post from a 10,000-fan Facebook page may show up in the news feed of as few as 200 Facebook users. Ouch.

Paying to play and tracking meaningful metrics

Facebook hopes that page managers will feel inclined to replace this lost reach with paid placements but paying for something that used to be free seems to be psychologically hard for a lot of pages managers to commit to. Several pages that I've followed over the years have engagement that has completely tanked as a result of page managers refusing to pay for any added reach. 

Yes, it's not fun to acknowledge the fact that free organic reach is disappearing, but there are some perks to "sponsoring" Facebook posts:

1. Sponsoring posts allow you to set target demographics so each ad dollar is more efficient. Facebook allows you to target for age, sex, interests, and city of residence. A carefully-targeted post may create more value than a post sent out to anyone who follows your page.
2. Sponsored post CPMs tend to be much more inexpensive than most traditional print ads.

But since it's 2014, it's often no longer acceptable to just show buzz and excitement around a brand evident on a Facebook page. Social media mangers need to show value, preferably ROI on their activities. I.e., what net monetary value was created as a result of their activities in social. Conversions are one of the most important metrics to measure and track in today's social media environment. Every social media manager should know her or his organization's mission, vision, and goals and know exactly what type of actions its target audience needs to engage in for the organization to meet its goals. Whenever these actions are influenced by social, the are considered conversions. 

Photo by Lotus Head | Creative Commons 3.0 

If I manage social media for an ice cream store and the ice cream store owner's main goal is to sell ice cream, my conversion, then, would occur each time someone buys ice cream as a result of my social media activities. Focusing on conversions, not "likes," helps us to identify and communicate a lot of the value-added from a social presence. 

Why I don't care about Facebook fans

I manage a number of Facebook pages in my work as a social media manager. I don't care about how many followers or fans a Facebook page has because:

1. The total Facebook fans a page has is an outdated method of measurement that has very little association with value that page is creating for the organization.
2. There are now better ways of measuring success and better ways of adding value. 
3. Focusing on metrics that are directly tied to value, (e.g., conversions), helps shape and focus content to stay on topic and stay productive. 

Huntsman School's Road Map to Graduation

I recently completed a rewarding, challenging project with a great group of people at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business.

Academic Advisor Paige Geslin wanted to develop an advising solution to help students navigate through the sometimes complicated world of college as a business student. With registering for classes, internships, extracurricular activities, and finding a job after graduation, students need guidance to stay on track and graduate on time. 

Paige worked with the talented Brent Meacham, Laura Luke, and Klydi Heywood to develop the Huntsman School Road Map to Graduation package which included a series of videos and guiding document. 

The final project is delivered here on the Huntsman School's undergraduate advising page.

Graphic Designer Hilary Frisby put together the guiding document. Here it is (looks great, right?).

Below are the series of videos we produced. The aforementioned Huntsman School team did all the leg work to storyboard, script, cast talent, schedule shooting days and locations, provide editing feedback and critiques, and after a few revisions, we developed these beautiful pieces.

Thanks to the Huntsman School team. This was a fun project to work on.

Introduction

You and Your Advisor

First Year

Second Year

Third Year

Fourth Year

Graduation and Beyond

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National Geographic's Human Footprint Interactive

National Geographic did a bang-up job on the recent creation of an interactive learner interface where users can see what type of lifetime impact some of their consumptions have on their health and the environment. 

The tool has different interfaces built for common good we consume including eggs, gas (shown above), potatoes, and newspapers. Once a user enters her daily or weekly consumption of an item, stats appear in animated prowess with the user's lifetime average compared to the lifetime average of a U.S. resident and residents from other countries. Give the free tool a try by clicking/tapping here. 

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Creating interactive content with online quizzes

I recently worked with Connor Child and the good folks at Qzzr to create this online quiz that helps people identify a sport they might be good at. The quiz was a lot of fun to produce, and people seemed to enjoy taking it. The blog post was great way to get some focused branding shared with our audience and resulted in about 1,000 blog posts views making the post one of the most viewed posts in the Intermountain Healthcare blog history.

The ability to upload pictures to answer fields in quizzes is a great opportunity for brands to get their logos and messages added face time. The best part about creating a quiz with Qzzr is that it's free. Before you go, take my quiz and let me know what sport you get. :)

LDS Business College offering social media marketing degree

I stumbled across this nicely-done video in my Facebook feed highlighting a new Associate of Applied Science in Social Media Marketing degree the LDS Business College is offering. Featured in the video is a talented college friend Ryan Baylis who produces some outstanding videos for Goal Zero. 

Post by LDS Business College.

The video got me curious in what other schools have begun offering programs in social media. Before seeing this video and doing a little research, I was aware of USC providing a master's degree in social media and of Harvard University running a two-day spendy crash course on the subject through their department of continuing education.

After running a few search queries, I found that several universities are now offering degrees in social media management including:

• St. Edward's University 
• Southern New Hampshire University
• DePaul University
• Arizona State University

There were dozens more online universities that showed up in search results. I looks like there's an academic trend for universities to begin offering content in this area with largely new, less-established institutions acting as early adopters. My prediction is that within the next half decade, curricula in social media will be ubiquitous throughout most major U.S. universities. 

Why didn't I think of that!

People are creative. Really creative. It seems that about once per month I see a video on Vimeo or YouTube that inspires me to be a bit more creative. Ryan Fox recently produced one of those videos.

Ryan had the brilliant idea of taking a roll of duct tape and affixing a GoPro to one of his vehicle tires. What you see below is three minutes of mesmerizing footage of Ryan's car rolling through the streets of Milwaukee at night at about 45 miles per hour. Watch.  

Here are a few other unique angles I've seen captured in video. First, a dog named chicken and a stick without a name. 

And then there's this outstanding footage of a pelican learning to fly.

Finally, if you've ever wondered what a dishwasher's wash cycle looks like and you're willing to watch a video on what it looks like, you can count yourself among the 5.7 million people who have viewed this video:

Considering the relatively cheap price of these high-quality water proof cameras, we'll only be seeing more creative uses for them in the future.

Facebook conversion tracking

Website Conversions 

I have been placed with marketing responsibility for a number of sporting events in my local community within the last year including the Cache Gran Fondo, Racing For a Cure 5K, and the Fore Kids Golf Tournament. The end goal of my marketing efforts in regards to each of these events is to get people to register which helps us raise money for the good causes each event supports. A big portion of my marketing efforts for each of these events can be found in Facebook ads. 

Facebook embed code

Until recently, I was placing Clicks to Website ads on Facebook. This ad type essentially places ad content on a target demographic's Facebook feeds and sends users to a destination website when clicked on. We've had a lot of success with said setup in terms of numbers of clicks/Facebook users sent to these event websites where users can potentially register for the event. On a final Facebook push I initiated for Cache Gran Fondo registration, we tested out website conversions where Facebook can help track what actions users make after they are sent to your website.

To set up a Website Conversions ad,

1. Enter your Facebook Ads Manager
2. Click Create Ad
3. You will see the following list of advertising options to choose from. Select Website Conversions
4. Enter the website you would like to track activity on. 
5. Facebook will provide you with code you can paste between <head> and </head> on the page of your website where any actions can be tracked. We added this code to the registration completion page our website users would come to after paying for and fully registering for our bike ride. 

Measuring website conversions over click-throughs, impressions, or other social media metrics has its advantages. Conversions help us directly calculate return on investment (ROI) for the social media spend. If, for example, I were to make a $500 Facebook ad placement for an advertisement that encourages Facebook users to register for an upcoming 5K, Facebook will provide specific conversion totals once that campaigns budget has been exhausted. Facebook's cost-per-conversion metric puts a specific price tag on all those who clicked on an ad and went through all the steps to registration completion in our example. 

It's important to be aware that cost-per-conversion prices are naturally much higher than cost-per-click prices; this variation makes sense when considering the inevitable number of visitors who fall off before completing a desired action. 

Triathlon training video

Here it is. One of my personal projects I have been working on over the last six months of 2014. All footage is raw out of the camera -- no color grading done. I wanted to shoot most shots hand held and wanted the finished product to look as candid as possible. While most of the footage was handheld with the GoPro Hero 3+: Black Edition, I shot a good deal of the clips with my iPhone 5s, a handful of shots with my wife's LG G2X (yes, she's still using a phone from 2009), and a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. 

I'm happy with how this turned out. I wanted to communicate the investment of time and energy in preparing for a major athletic event like an IRONMAN and attempted to do so with a clip of each workout within a 6-month period of time. I felt it was easiest to cast myself as the subject given the extensive number of workouts involved in prep for the event.  

All graphics were design by Hilary Frisby Design and altered for each clip using Adobe Photoshop. Each exercise clip had an associated graphic that was imported into Adobe Premier as a .PSD file.