Building a (useful)Facebook Site

• Building a Facebook successful site is the same as building a successful site of any other kind.

• There is no “special knowledge” required just because it is Facebook

• IT is the easy part. The vast majority of your work needs to go into the planning stage.

• Use your IT staff. You hired them for a reason, listen to their expertise.

HAVE A PURPOSE

• Why are you building a Facebook site? What are its goals? How will you measure to see if these goals are met?

• Define all this in a written statement of purpose.

• Purpose of TAMU site

• Purpose of Dr. Loftin’s site

Personally, I liked the University; they gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there. I've worked in the private sector --they expect results.

Ghostbusters

• We’re like the private sector now, we do expect results.

• Projects cost time and effort, which must be carefully managed in today’s environment.

• We need to be sure that projects we devote our time and effort to produce some tangible benefit

• Social media funnel

• Use social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all of them) as a way of channeling potential customers to the information you want them to obtain.

NEVER, EVER TURN YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE INTO A FINAL DESTINATION.

ALWAYS USE YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE TO DRIVE TRAFFIC TO WHERE YOU CAN GIVE VISITORS WHAT THEY NEED TO KNOW.

• Funnel diagram– Seek

– Engage– Retain

SOCIAL MEDIA

Respect the Platform

• Facebook is social media. Don’t use it in a way that breaks the norms or expectations of social media. (Be authentic, be willing to accept criticism, interact with audience, etc.)

• Your desired audience is savvy and will turn away in an instant from what they perceive as traditional institutional marketing on these pages.

• Social media is by very definition social.

• This means finding content that will allow your users to interact with the site.

• What kind of content do you want?

• This brings us back to planning. Decide on the desired content, then figure out how to implement it.

• Don’t implement features that are “cool” for their own sake, have a purpose for everything.

I want to post a video… OK, so what does the video tell me or try to do? … I don’t know, but everybody is posting video now so we need to as well.

• Wall posts

• Images/Links to other sites

• Applications– Photos– Videos– Events– Polls– Gifts

• How do I get an app to do [whatever]?– Build one if you have the staff, time, and

expertise– Use a pre-written one. Facebook is big, and

somebody has likely already written an app to do whatever it is you want (i.e. to borrow from another presentation, “there’s an app for that”)

– Use Google to find them

• Gifts application added to Dr. Loftin’s site– After fast growth we have reached a plateau

in growth; add something as a way of increasing interaction.

• Applications

• How do I find the right one?– Right one for me might not be the right one for you. (YouTube

on TAMU vs. Dr. Loftin)

• Potential pitfalls– There is no such thing as a free lunch

Make Sure You’re doing it Right

• Monitor your site traffic

• Install Google analytics– USE Google analytics

– Didn’t know that you could use Google Analytics on Facebook? See http://webmaster.tamu.edu/2010/04/09/google-analytics-in-facebook-pages

Ignore your “fans” count.

It means nothing.

• Fans = number of people who have visited since day 1 and have clicked a button.

• Doesn’t tell you about whether they have ever come back.

• Doesn’t tell you about whether they read your posts.

• Doesn’t tell you whether they interact.

• OK, almost nothing.• Since this is Facebook rather than a

traditional website Fan count does give you an idea of how many people are (potentially) seeing your messages since they go to each fan’s wall.

• Note that this is all they get, they still might not be interacting with the site or even reading these messages.

• Does Walmart stockholders’ meeting report the number of people walking through the door? No, they report actual sales receipts.

• Friending IS an interaction, but…

• Our object is to have repeat visits and site interactions.

• Fan count IS useful when you look at the rate at which it is increasing as this gives a measure of site use and interaction levels.

• Even this alone is not enough.

• Absolute numbers can be deceptive because of site size. Compare rate to actual traffic levels.

• How? – Use Google Analytics

• Examination of what information is available in Google Analytics