How Facebook works (or not)

[Paul Frost]

This YouTube video explains why many of your posts will not be seen by most of your followers, friends or likers.

There is a follow up video that details how having a large number of likes from people that are not really interested can further damage your visibility.

You should take the time to watch both videos (not just click the like button), if you or your club have decided to use facebook to engage and attract newcomers you should understand how it works.

To summarise the problem:
If you have 200 genuinely interested people liking your page facebook may initially only display your status update to 20 of them. It's quite likely they will engage and the then the other 180 will see it. If you have an additional 800 vague/worthless likes then it's quite possible none of your genuinely interested people will ever see your update as the initial distribution is much more likely to go to the worthless ones and so not get any engagement and then die.

This is not a "I hate social networks rant"
Many people think I am anti social networks, but that's not true. I have always argued that it's the mass likes or follows by uninterested people that is the problem. Having a limited number of genuine interested people is much better than having thousands of worthless ones. Post stuff that is genuinely interesting and you will get engagement and comment, post pointless stuff and you might get a click on the like button, whatever that's worth.

So I'm not looking for a heated argument about how good or bad social networks are, I'm just keen that people understand them better.

[Paul Frost]

Widespread concern about the drop in “organic reach” on Facebook (basically, fewer people are seeing your updates) has prompted FB to post a response. Their take? There’s too much content being shared now, and if FB just plonked it all on people’s newsfeeds click-through rates would drop. Which is weird, because later on the post mentions that you can pay to have your content plonked onto everyone’s feed. Nothing like a passive-aggressive shake-down to reassure you, huh?

This backs up my concern that there is too much stuff posted to facebook, and so clubs relying on it for reaching people may not be getting the return on investment they thought.

Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300.
So how does News Feed know which of those 1,500 stories to show? By letting people decide who and what to connect with, and by listening to feedback. When a user likes something, that tells News Feed that they want to see more of it; when they hide something, that tells News Feed to display less of that content in the future. This allows us to prioritize an average of 300 stories out of these 1,500 stories to show each day.
The News Feed algorithm responds to signals from you, including, for example:

• How often you interact with the friend, Page, or public figure (like an actor or journalist) who posted
• The number of likes, shares and comments a post receives from the world at large and from your friends in particular
• How much you have interacted with this type of post in the past
• Whether or not you and other people across Facebook are hiding or reporting a given post

Make sure you understand how a tool works before relying it.
For an interesting view on How to Determine Return on Investment of anything

[frog]

I get annoyed with facebook because each time I log on I set my news feed to "most recent" and each time I log off it defaults to "top stories"

[RJ]

Paul, we, WCOC, use Facebook to report on activities that have taken place. That is, we post a series of photos (which Facebook are very good at) with a little comment on those taking part. We get a lot of hits from people who go to see photos of people they know, often because the photo has been linked through to a friend.

We don't use it as a means of advertising events or activities, but merely as a way of showing what we have just done. Most of the response to the postings is from existing club members (who are Facebook users) or from family members of those who appear in photographs.

So what is the point of it? Well, I feel we present an image in a media, much the same as getting event reports in the paper, and readership from those who stumble upon the media may produce a lasting interest in the sport. It also brings the general club membership closer to the action and keeps them informed about what is going on. Perhaps a bit like a frequent newsletter!

[Paul Frost]

You've hit one particular nail right on the head, photos.
I was told by a social media expert at a presentation that if you don't include a photo in a Facebook post you have wasted your time, it will be invisible. Even Twitter posts will be significantly more effective with an image.
But we are not very good at photos, look around most orienteering websites and you find very few photos. I constantly struggle to get good images to use on the sites I build.

[roadrunner]

I think you've got a good point there, Paul, and maybe it's to do with the nature of the sport. My running club's Facebook group (and website) has a good selection of photos, a mix of group shots of the club members before or after a race - all in club kit - and shots of individual runners during the event. But with the spread of start times in a typical orienteering event, what's the chance of getting most club members together either before or afterwards? And the concept of supporting people on during the race is a bit alien to orienteering, except on the run-in (and then mostly by other competitors).

[bewildered]

Just to give an indication of how Junior Fellrunning looks in pictures you can take a look at these pics of a junior race at Kettlewell yesterday (in the sun):
[url]
https://plus.google.com/photos/11043957 ... banner=pwa[/url]

and these from the Junior Uphill Champs from Saturday (not in the sun):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/42619358@N06/sets/72157645072094271/page2/

It is rare that orienteering shows pictures that are anywhere close to these. Partly it is the nature of the sport. Try to Google BOC 2014 images and see what you get - it isn't too inspiring!

Given what we do, surely we must be able to get something to match this http://www.youspoon.com/chat/images/output_vf8jcz.gif

[Roomungous]

We are fortunate to have a keen semi-professional sports photographer in our club, who has also done a fair bit of photography during the Scottish 6 Days. I think plenty of his pictures give a good feel and they help within our website, on social media and, in particular, in going with our local press articles. I believe it is one of the many things that is contributing to a significant growth at grass-roots level in Orienteering in our area. Check out his pictures at http://www.activnorth.com/-/galleries.
Reflecting on the link that Paul posted earlier on Return on Investment is key. It takes a lot of co-ordinated effort of not only the club, but also the region/BOF and a number of other agencies/organisations outside orienteering to engage with what you are doing and for you to engage with what their message is as well.

[buzz]

Paul - couldn't find the like button on your post

[buzz]

SYO ran a photo competition which unearthed a few good snaps
http://www.southyorkshireorienteers.org.uk/members/photo-competition
But I agree orienteering web sites are woefully short of inspiring images.

[Sunlit Forres]

Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300.
So how does News Feed know which of those 1,500 stories to show? By letting people decide who and what to connect with, and by listening to feedback. When a user likes something, that tells News Feed that they want to see more of it; when they hide something, that tells News Feed to display less of that content in the future. This allows us to prioritize an average of 300 stories out of these 1,500 stories to show each day.
The News Feed algorithm responds to signals from you, including, for example:

How often you interact with the friend, Page, or public figure (like an actor or journalist) who posted
The number of likes, shares and comments a post receives from the world at large and from your friends in particular
How much you have interacted with this type of post in the past
Whether or not you and other people across Facebook are hiding or reporting a given post

So a concerted effort by a club's membership to help their social media rep get their Facebook posts up the pecking order is what's needed for Facebook to be an effective club merketing tool.

Most posts on Facebook that I see from orienteering clubs tend to be "engaged with" by a small handful of the same people. Good publicity is a team effort. There is much we could still do within this sport to think of ourselves as a team and develop more of a team mentality. Quite frankly (with the exception of a few very noticeable exceptions) we're not very good at it.

A club is more than than a group of individuals who go happen to go for a run in the woods at the same time as a few others. Think of the last event you went to. Did you meet up with everyone else in your club? Did you recognise everyone else in your club? Did you talk to everyone else in your club? Did you share a lift with a club mate to the event? If you didn't, make a point of doing so next time and you might be pleasantly surprised.

[Paul Frost]

So a concerted effort by a club's membership to help their social media rep get their Facebook posts up the pecking order is what's needed for Facebook to be an effective club marketing tool.
Most posts on Facebook that I see from orienteering clubs tend to be "engaged with" by a small handful of the same people.

But this is one of my issues with facebook, I'm expected to have to click "Like" for every post I read from a given source or I might never see anything from them again.
I understand that what everyone wants is a measure of engagement, but I don't want to have to keep taking affirmative action to show that I am still interested.
There are many items in my news feed that I am not particularly interested in and will skim over, but it seems that if I (or anyone else) don't "Like" most or all of them I will not see things from that source again. Facebook is making the decision that if the majority don't "engage" it has no value, which I guess to them it doesn't, as they are only interested in monetising your content.
As an author and a reader of content I want to control/decide what I see and when, I'm not a sheep!

[Sunlit Forres]

As an author and a reader of content I want to control/decide what I see and when, I'm not a sheep!

OK Paul, fine. So let's just accept that Facebook won't be as effective as a club promotional tool as it could be. Liking a couple of Facebook posts a day to help your club takes a lot less time than writing some Nopesport posts that I can think of.

[RJ]

An interesting thought Sunlit Forres

However, lets go back to what we want from the Facebook experience. We (WCOC) would just want to engage existing membership and existing participants at our events. With photos they can see what went on, and rather like a very frequent newsletter, they can dip in when they wish. It can be on their favourites menu and they make the conscious effort to visit the page themselves. If the photos also include other, perhaps, juniors which other family members hear about then they may visit the page. Our posts can get 200+ visits depending on the content, others 50/60.

But it is all about content. If it is interesting to your members then they will visit the page. It will evolve naturally with folk liking the posts because they really do, like the post. Similar to saying well done to someone in the car park!

If you want to promote your club more widely, advertise events, and attract new members then you will have to consult the marketing gurus. That is a different animal and obviously requires skill to get a proper return.

[MikeShires]

It's interesting stuff to see different views on Facebook and the differing ways clubs use it. Personally, and from our experience at TVOC (where Facebook has now become our most successful marketing tool to attract newcomers), there are different ways to use it and engage people.

Firstly, as others have said, a FB page is infinitely better than a group for marketing purposes. A group is pretty useless for attracting newcomers, but very useful for existing members - a group is more suited to group discussions amongst members. TVOC has a group for this purpose and the separate fan page (which I manage) is purely a marketing tool - to attract newcomers to the sport rather than for existing members. Only a handful of members have actually liked the fan page and probably 99% of the 700-odd likes we have are from local people who have expressed an interest.

When it comes to promoting events, FB isn't just about posting information and hoping people see it. Like others say, whether or not this gets displayed in people's newsfeeds depends on how many people like the posts and interact with the page. Clearly, FB wants you to pay to promote your posts. I would never just rely on writing a promotional post. Most of our important posts are promoted and appear as 'sponsored' posts higher up people's newsfeeds - i.e. to whoever I target them to. Having a club that covers two counties is challenging and why I always segment the target market into areas. In relation to FB, this means paying to promote a post to people who live within, say 10km of Oxford, aged between 25 and 50 and who like running, outdoor sport etc. I used to target people under 25, but they didn't often interact with the page and it's the 25+ ages that get better results, for us anyway.

FB Insights is a wonderful tool that gives the administrator a whole mine of information - the ages, locations etc of everyone who interacts with the page and each post.

When promoting a post, as Paul says above, images work far better than just promoting a link - and you can sill put a link in the post's text, as well as an image to grab people's attention (but the image itself can't contain more than 20% text otherwise FB will reject the promotion). Although it's common sense, it's important to use an image that reflects the target market - who are you targeting? Runners? Walkers? Families? Talking about other social media, when using Twitter, it's been shown by a lot of research that tweets with images get much more interaction than plain text tweets.

There are loads of great stock images on various websites, which only cost about £2 or £3 to download and you can then use them to your hearts content - including on printed flyers.

Some of the above posts refer to interactions with FB fan pages - I wouldn't expect a huge amount of interaction with a fan page, as it's almost an extension to the club website. Most interaction, discussion, etc would take place on a FB group. However, fan pages still do get a fair bit of interaction. With respect, I'm not sure what sunlit forres was looking at on our page, but it does get a fair bit of interaction, as the attached image (from the Insights tool) shows. Taking the past week for example, we've had 93 separate people interact with the page - that includes sharing events, posting comments, liking the page and clicking on our posts. That's actually fairly low for our page, as I haven't done much promotion over the past week. We normally get 150 or so people per week interacting with the page and when I've paid for a promoted post or an advert, then that can be considerably higher.

However, I find that marketing on FB is much more productive when using a variety of different methods - not just posts. I've regularly used paid adverts, which can be very specifically targeted to an area, to people of certain ages, and who like specific activities. Adverts can even be targeted to people who like orienteering within a certain area, thereby specifically targeting people who have liked your page, which is a useful tip. I've also done a family related advert, using the same criteria but limiting it to only appear on people's pages who are parents. To gain newcomers, you need to use promoted posts and adverts wisely, but also engage with other pages, getting them to share your events and posts. I've built up good relationships with the local County Sports Partnerships, Sports Development Officers, local running clubs, triathlon clubs, etc - and they often share our events, which of course is free publicity.

Some of the above probably sounds expensive, but if it's done well, it doesn't have to be. I generally spend around £20-25 per event on FB, and the income that generates from newcomers far outweighs that cost. Facebook promotion now accounts for around 30% of our newcomers (from our research) and given that we've been getting up to 90 newcomers (IND competitors) per event, and an average of around 50 newcomers per event, it's worked incredibly well. I would estimate that over the past year, we've had around 600 runs from newcomers and our FB promotion has probably generated around 200 of those (if half of those are adults and half pay a junior rate then a conservative estimate would say that results in an income of £700, which (even taking into account event expenditure, map costs etc) eclipses the £250 or so FB budget).

Interestingly, of the steady trickle of new members we've had recently, I've noticed that a large proportion of these have resulted from Facebook, i.e. the people that originally clicked on adverts and promoted posts and came along to an event. This shows FB promotion does target the right people, if done well.

Sorry for the rambling post and well done to anyone who's got this far... but as a final point, it's important to use a variety of publicity methods according to which target markets you're aiming for - Facebook should be an important part of that marketing mix, and I believe that any club that doesn't use FB well is at a disadvantage, but other traditional methods (flyers, newspapers etc) all have their place too. It's about using the best methods for each target market. I sound a bit like a marketing consultant there... which incidentally is what I used to be... which is very helpful when it comes to transferring those ideas to promoting orienteering!