Thanks to their promoted posts feature Facebook ads are providing marketers with a key resource to generate interactions on fan pages (are they now called Like pages?). But in reality Facebook marketing is all about status updates.

Dustin Luther answers why marketers will want to promote individual posts with Facebook ads. This post will start the ball rolling on the “what”. What types of posts are worth advertising?

I’m sure that more than a few agents will want to advertise posts that contain properties. The problem with advertising properties posted to a Facebook page is they generally produce very little interaction. In other words they’re boring. Put simply they make a poor status updates.

Why are interactions so important to a Facebook page?

In search engine optimisation the goal is always to achieve page one in a Google search. In fact if you and you’re business isn’t in the the top 10 results you’re virtually invisible. On Facebook the goal is to get your Page showing near the top of your fans Top News feed. That’s the section of the feed where Facebook’s algorithms take a pretty good guess at the stuff that will interest you. How do they do this?

Well, it’s Facebook’s secret sauce but the number of interactions–that’s Likes and comments–are a great start. But it’s not the end of the story. The other part is how relevant those interactions are to a person’s interests. So, if you have a lot of your friends–and especially those you interact with a lot–who comment or Like something on a Page there’s a good chance it will show up in your Top News feed.

What this means is that close communities and lots of interactions are essential to the success of a Page. It’s here that the genius of the Pages advertising platform emerges by providing Page owners with a way to reach out to friends of fans and show case their best and most engaging posts; the ones that will generate the most number of Likes and comments.

The default option for promoting a post is to target the friends of fans. This makes sense on two levels.

First, it targets people who aren’t already fans. After all, why spend money advertising to people who are already fans. Second, it targets people who are friends of people already connected to the page; and this acts as a form of social endorsement for the page. As a result the conversion rate of click throughs to fans is potentially higher than a non-endorsed avertisement.

So what type of post would a brand want to advertise you a Facebook advertisement?

Well, what they wouldn’t advertise is something that’s boring. That’s hard for some businesses! What they would choose to advertise is anything that’s going to generate Likes and comments.

To generate comments takes skill, effort and creativity. Sometimes it takes a combination of all three. Saying something kind is great. Controversial also works. Questions that require only a yes or no or even a short reply also work. Ones that are long and cerebral don’t, at least not usually.

And the balancing act here is to say something that both informs and entertains, that appeals to the head and the heart. It can be tricky, but that’s social media.

The easier option is to create posts that generate a simple Like. Posts that create a clear statement that resonates with fans and that provides something of tangible value seem to work.

Here are my top five types of posts that generate interactions and would be worth advertising.

1. Something funny
2. Something controversial
3. A major announcement
4. Breaking news
5. A question
6. A request for assistance
7. Job opportunities

Do you have any others that work for you?

An agent friend recently showed me how he’s using Facebook to share property listings with his community. It’s a clever, win-win, spam-free solution. Here’s how he does it.

By the time he lists a property for sale he’s already connected with the sellers on Facebook. There are two ways sellers can connect with him. First there’s a personal profile, where he keeps things personal. Then there’s a business page, which is where he talks about what’s happening locally and shares property listings. It’s on the Page that all the action takes place.

Once the property listing is published on his website he shares the link to the property profile on his business page. He chooses to only share properties on the Page and not on on his personal profile.

The next step is gold.

He then asks the seller to click the Share button for their property on the Page and post the property listing to their personal profile.

This action achieves two outcomes that help both the seller and the agent.

First, it exposes the property to the sellers’ friends. Let’s face it, they may know someone looking to buy. Second, as sharing generates a Via notation on the shared item–this shows up in the sellers’ friends’ newsfeed–the action of sharing the property also shares the agent’s page name. That acts as a way of the seller endorsing the agent to their friends and of encouraging new people to join his business page.

This method works well for sellers but it would probably work even better for landlords.

If the agent continues down this path he may decide to limit the property listings he shares on his Page to those where the seller is willing to on-share it with their friends. This would serve to increase the level of community engagement with the content on his Page.

So how do you share properties with your community? What works for you? What doesn’t?

A recent arrival in my inbox was a missive from Facebook. In short it warned fan page owners to monitor and control what gets posted on their Page wall. Their directives include:

1. Limit what others can post on your Page: If you go to edit your Page and select “Wall Settings,” you can choose what types of content fans can post to your Page under “Fan Permissions.” For example, you can prevent people from posting videos or photos if you like.
2. Remove content: Administrators have the ability to remove any content from a Page. To do so, just select “Remove” next to the piece of content.
3. Ban fans that are being abusive: If a fan of your Page is repeatedly posting inappropriate content, you can go beyond reporting the fan by banning them from your Page by following these instructions.

I tell you what, Facebook, how about finishing the job you started instead of wasting time with such obvious suggestions. Anyone who’s had anything to do with Pages will know they have some glaring problems. Get the following done and make Pages live up to their hype.

1. Change the settings so that the person who created the page can be deleted as an administrator. Face it, staff move on. So do consultants. I don’t want one of my opposition being the administrator of my fan page.
2. Provide notifications to Page administrators when fans interact on the page wall. It’s a no-brainer.
3. Allow Page administrators to interact as fans. Let’s face it sometimes we wear both hats. Legitimately.
4. Allow Pages to be renamed. Let’s say I change my business name – or get married and take on my partner’s name as often happens – why force me to hassle my fans to switch over to a new Page, or even worse, to continue building a brand that’s no longer relevant.  Sure, restrict the number of times a Page can change names, but, please recognise that at times it needs to happen.
5. Allow genuine competitions that require fans to write on the wall. These types of competitions happen in the real world you know.
6. Provide “add a note” for Page suggestions. Rather than a suggestion appearing in a person’s notifications it would then show up with a note – possibly in their inbox – explaining why the Page suggestion was made in the first place.
7. Change the sharing options to give Page administrators the ability to share an item direct to their Page wall.

What else do you want Facebook to add to their Pages to-do list?

Our home of a decade and a half is soon to go on the market. It’s a stressful time. Choosing agents, sprucing up the gardens, patching, painting and packing. All make for challenging times.

Here in Perth, Western Australia it’s officially the start of autumn. It seems no one has told the weather though. A long, stifling heatwave would have any outsider feeling like it’s the middle of summer.

It’s not.

Soon leaves will start falling out of trees tired from a long summer of growth. The rake and leaf blower will come out of hiding to keep the yard pristine for a merry band of buyers and a host of nosy neighbours.

As much as falling leaves and leaf blowers are synonymous with autumn so is the never-ending chore of keeping friends and follower lists tidy on Facebook and Twitter. Neither job is glamorous.

Without regular maintenance gardens become messy and out of control. So do Facebook and Twitter streams.

On Twitter I regularly turn the leaf blower on spammers and folk who are only interested in pimping their eBook or affiliate programme. I clean out the gutters of my Twitter stream by unfollowing inactive accounts. With just a few minutes a day my Twitter garden is clean and tidy.

I keep my Facebook backyard in similar shape. New friends are added to lists – I have about thirty – that allow me to communicate with friends about stuff they’re interested in.

Almost all Facebook applications are blocked so my newsfeed only contains updates and news items. I don’t want leaves blowing across my front lawn and I certainly don’t want to see who’s had a psychic reading from Tara the Clairvoyant.

Occasionally I ‘hide’ a friend, a bit like I keep an old saw tucked in the back corner of my garden shed. I recently removed someone from my friends list altogether. They left a pile of spam leaves on my wall. And I take pride in keeping my wall neat and tidy.

Just like my front yard.

Best I stop writing now. I have a hedge to trim.

On Facebook yesterday I received yet another suggestion from a “friend” to join their fan page. It was the umpteenth such suggestion. As I was exhausted from hitting the Ignore button I decided to send a direct message. It said simply:

Hi Kim (not their real name),

I’m really happy to be your FB friend but would you mind not sending me invites to your FB page.

Thanks

Peter

Sure I could have gilded the lilly, wrote some crap about how lovely their page looked and how I just can’t possibly add another page to my newsfeed. Perhaps I should learn to be more diplomatic. Instead I chose instead to state clearly the action I wanted them to take. Their response was to de-friend me. Instantly!

It was an immature response. Rather than simply respecting my wishes their choice was to cut me off completely. It’s not how the “social” part of social media works.

There are a couple of lessons here for Page owners. First, don’t piss your friends off by constantly inviting them to join your page. Sure, suggesting your page to friends builds fan numbers. It’s a proven strategy. But once you’ve invited them, back off. Don’t push it too far. If you do you’ll start alienating people.

Second, if you get a message asking you not to send page suggestions don’t take it personally. Respect your friend’s wishes and look for other ways to grow your fan base. Remember, thick skin good, thin skin not so.

There are ways Facebook could help page owners. First, they could add an “invite pending” indicator to a friend’s profile pic. Currently when suggesting a page to friends those who are already fans are displayed with a slightly opaque profile pic and can’t be added to the invite list. Facebook could add a similar function with the invite expiring after a period of time, say a month or three.

Facebook could also add a “block page suggestions from this person” button. This would mute out serial page-suggesting admins. They’d never know their message wasn’t getting through. But then again they probably wouldn’t care.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barelyfitz/ / CC BY 2.0

Foursquare is rocketing up the social media popularity chart. It’s hyper-local social networking that lets you share insider info on your favourite hangouts.  In their words:

Foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so. We do this by combining our friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics – our users earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying new places and revisiting old favorites.

The service allows you to check into a location – coffee shop, restaurant, movie cinema – using your GPS coordinates. That lets your friends know where you are and what you’re up to. It’s a great way to meet new friends who enjoy the same places.
Foursquare users are encouraged to share brief tips about the places they visit. These experiences are then shared with others who check-in to the same place.  For example, if I leave a tip about a special blend of coffee at The Imp, the next time you checked-in there Foursquare would pop up a notification telling you that I suggested you try The Imp’s special blend coffee.

Here’s a few tips for agents wanting to get the most out of the service.

Get an iPhone and download the Foursquare app

Foursquare works brilliantly on the iPhone and on Android powered mobile devices. It’s a two-second operation to get working on the iPhone and it works like a charm.

Link your Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook accounts

It’s not often I recommend linking social media services but this is one exception. Once your accounts are linked when you check in on Foursquare your Facebook and Twitter status will be updated automatically (you can turn this off if you want to do a private checkin).

Add your own business location to Foursquare

Provide clients who check-in to your location regularly with loyalty rewards. Offer incentives for people to write tips that mention you by name e.g. “Go to Jones Realty and ask for Sally Jones. She knows Jonesville like the back of her hand.” It’s a great way to generate word-of-mouth referrals.

Check-in to a local coffee lounge

Invite your friends to catch up for an early morning coffee. Be spontaneous.

Introduce it to local businesses

The more people who check into a location the more tips it generates. Suggest they offer discounts or special offers to Foursquare users who write tips about their business or who become the Mayor of their business. Offer to show them how it works and how they can make sales from using the service. Become their social software go-to person. Help them out by introducing their business to your Facebook and Twitter network.

Check-in when you’re doing a home open

Let your friends on Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter know you’re out working hard. Your Foursquare checkin provides a map to your location so friends in the area can stop by for a chat.

Advertise that the property is open for review on Foursquare

Mention in your web advertising that you’ve added the property location to Foursquare. Invite home open visitors to write a review. Their review will be available to other Foursquare users.

Ask your colleagues to check-in when they show the property

Get them to add a brief review while they’re at the property on an agent caravan or when showing buyers.

Have you come across any other ways to use Foursquare?

If you enjoy a high profile it’s inevitable that, at some point, someone’s going to want to take you down. Do a Google search on the name of any celebrity or public figure along with the word “sucks” or “stupid” and you’ll find some pretty disturbing stuff.

In real estate circles Enzo Raimondo has a high profile. As the boss of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria he represents the interests of nearly 1900 real estate businesses. No doubt it’s a tough job.

As with many public identities Raimondo has his fans. He also has detractors. Notable among the latter are Neil Jenman and Peter Mericka. They appear to be obsessed with Raimondo posting regular invective on their websites aimed squarely at Raimondo.

Jenman and Mericka attack the person. They hurt feelings to create a reaction. They’re internet trolls.

The word troll conjures up images of a colourful lure being dragged slowly behind a boat to catch an unsuspecting fish. It also brings to mind a malevolent mythical Nordic monster. But whatever the imagery the association is one of cunning and mischievous deception aimed at provoking an instinctive or emotional response.

In typical troll fashion their attacks on Raimondo are usually personal and devoid of substance. For example, Mericka states : “Enzo Raimondo, CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV) is a master of the partial-truth”. The statement is directed squarely at Raimondo describing him in a way that obliquely questions his integrity without taking a stand.

In a similar vein Mericka claims that “… real estate agents don’t want consumers to be independently informed about property valuations”. Just how he is able to know for certainty what is in the mind of all agents is unclear. He presents no corroborating evidence to substantiate his claim, instead demonising all agents by making a sweeping, unprovable assertion. It’s typical troll behaviour.

Many trolls hide their real life identities behind fictional characters and pseudonyms. Take the recently suspended fake Enzo Raimondo Twitter account as an example (a cached version is currently here). The unidentified troll took on Raimondo’s name as a pseudonym posting a number of tweets that linked to a WordPress blog entitled Enzo Raimondo. In turn each of these posts linked to either Jenman’s Real Estate News or Twitter account or to Mericka’s The Australian Real Estate Blog. In both instances the troll made use of free services – WordPress and Twitter – to attack Raimondo personally whilst avoiding any likelihood of being held accountable for their actions.

So just why do trolls work the way they do? The answer to that question would take up the contents of an entire PhD thesis. What really counts though is the end result, not their motivations.

If we take Mericka’s Twitter bio on face value he’s a “consumer advocate”. Jenman similarly claims “consumer advocacy” as something he does for love. Outside of these self-disclosures I can only speculate about their motivations. But what can be stated with certainty is that four of the top ten results on a Google search (as of December 23, 2009) using the term “Enzo Raimondo” are from either Jenman or Mericka. Two men with a passionate belief – trolls if you will – are winning this battle hands down. Their personal crusades are damaging the reputation of Raimondo and the Institute he represents.

It appears that Raimondo has made a few positive, and at least one defensive, move to advance his position. In the first instance he has a static web site that employs a number of SEO measures to help it rank number one and two in a search. He’s also joined LinkedIn, which gives him position four. A 2003 press release found on Real Estate View gives him position eight. Position three, a profile on wotnews.com.au is a lost battle as both Mericka and Jenman have almost the same number of mentions as does Raimondo.

What I find staggering is the complete absence of any mention of Raimondo onreiv.com.au in the above search. I went looking and could find no Raimondo profile page on REIV (perhaps I overlooked it) and the only textual mention of his name was a few pages buried deep within the site. It is as if the team at REIV have chosen to give Mericka and Jenman a free kick at Raimondo’s head!

Defensively Raimondo, or one of his team, may have taken steps to put a stop to the fake Twitter account as it appears that the account has been reported for misuse. This would help explain the account’s suspension.

So to the point of the article, what would you do if you were Enzo Raimondo?

There is much that could be done. I don’t intend to catalogue every move available to Raimondo. That’s a question for you to help answer within the comments. Rather I will leave the final word to Seth Godin.

Lots of things about work are hard. Dealing with trolls is one of them. Trolls are critics who gain perverse pleasure in relentlessly tearing you and your ideas down. Here’s the thing(s):

1. trolls will always be trolling
2. critics rarely create
3. they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls
4. professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job.

“Can’t please everyone,” isn’t just an aphorism, it’s the secret of being remarkable.

Godin here points to the stark contrast between creators and trolls. Trolls tear down while professionals create. And creating means producing content. Lots of it. It also means building a community of similarly creative people, to lift, to extend and to carry a message.

Is Raimondo doing enough? I doubt it but I’ll leave it to you.

If you were Enzo Raimondo what would you do?

This article was originally posted to Business2.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/benimoto/ / CC BY 2.0

I have a passionate interest in what’s happening on my site. I’m especially concerned about a high bounce rate. But first, an explanation.

Bounce rate is “the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.”  Or put another way it’s “the percentage of people who come to your website and leave “instantly”“. In a YouTube video Google’s Avinash Kaushik claims that bounce rate is the “sexiest metric ever”. It’s “brilliantly dumb” he says before going on to state that it’s a visitor’s way of saying “I came, I puked, I left”.

A visit of less than 5 seconds is usually considered “instant”. Unless you own a a single page site or all of the actions you want a person to make are on a single page a high bounce rate is aways a bad thing. Why?

Well, if you’re selling advertising or affiliate products a high bounce rate means you’re ads are achieving fewer impressions, less click-throughs and lower revenue. If you’re selling real estate it means your visitor has either called your mobile or left the site after just a single page view. Trust me, you want it to be the former.

In my case I want people to do a couple of things. In the fist instance I want them to subsribe to my e-newsletter and second I want them to send me an inquiry about my consulting or speaking services. Both of these actions involve at least two page views. The first is when the person fills in an online form, the second when a confirmation page displays. So even if my page worked exactly as I wanted it to every single time I still don’t want bounces.

My blog isn’t the only blog with a high bounce rate. Social media expert Chris Brogan also laments a high bounce rate. In fact high bounce rates are common on blogs. Why? Often visitors read only the latest post. They don’t stay to click through to other pages. Of course that’s not the fault of the visitor but it does give the blog owner – myself and Chris Brogan to a name two – some work to do.

According to Maki, of Dosh Dosh, “bounce rates will vary depending on the source“. Someone arriving from a Google search may be more inclined to click around to find what they’re looking for than someone who arrives via Twitter and who’s just interested in reading a single page or post.

For example, over the past month my most visited page is Ten Tips for Creating a Great Facebook Business Page. It ranks well on Google for the search terms “Facebook business tips” and “Facebook business page tips” and produces a big percentage of the total page views on my site. Nearly 80% of the visits to this page come from Google. But it also has a high bounce rate. On some days it has a bounce rate of 100%. What this means is that people are either finding all the answers in that one post – doubtful – or they’re leaving to continue their search elsewhere. I’ll probably never get them back.

The performance of this one page is hurting me financially. Visitors are leaving without subscribing to an e-newsletter or interacting with the other content on the site. It’s great that it’s attracting visitors but it’s not helping achieve any of my marketing objectives.

So what am I doing about the problem? Here’s my to-do list. These tips are are probably relevant to a lot of sites, especially blogs.

1. Add a related posts plugin. This will add links to other posts that are related in some way to the page being viewed. Real estate agents should consider doing this with similar properties.
2. Create more internal links. I’ve done that in this post. Internal links help my posts rank better in search and give my visitors another way to access related content.
3. Improve the performance of my top content posts by creating a new post updating the information in the original post. Link to the new post from the original post.
4. Improve the call to action on my subscribe to email box.
5. Improve the call to action on the Facebook Pages e-book badge.

Finally, while bounce rate is an important metric, it’s not the only one. Without high-volume, high-quality traffic a website will never deliver sales results. Equally you can have lots of traffic but with a high bounce rate the site still won’t work. But lowering my site’s bounce rate will at least be a step in the right direction.

So how’s the bounce rate on your site? Is it high or low? What have you done to reduce it?

Photo credit: Kortoni on Flickr / CC BY 2.0

This article was originally posted on peterfletcher.com.au.

I accepted your friend request. I didn’t recognise your name, nor your face, but I was excited. Were you an old school friend? A work colleague from years gone by? Or perhaps someone with an interesting story to share?

I looked forward to your status updates, to learn about your adventures and  be teased by your Bali holiday photos. I wanted to be your new friend on the other side of the city, on the other side of the country, on the other side of the world.

Then you started sending me Facebook Page suggestions, which is great; if the pages had been relevant to my needs. They weren’t. You suggested I become a fan of pages about cosmetics and clothing, even a page about yourself. I scratched my head.

I began to question why you “added” me in the first place. Was it so you could get to know someone new? So you could make a lifelong connection? So we could meet up for coffee and discuss changing the world? Or was it that you saw me as a number, as just another fan?

I soon guessed that you were the one behind the Pages you were touting. Why else would you send me recommendation after recommendation? You could see I hadn’t joined but still you persisted. You never bothered to send me a message, to write on my wall, to ask about my interests. No chat, no conversation, no attempt to get to know me. Did you assume I’d be interested in your Pages? Or is it that you really didn’t care?

What you may now realise is that I see your behaviour in the same way as I do a spammer. You know, the kind that assumes I need Viagra or Cialis or the $27 million locked in an overseas bank account. The spammer cares nothing about what I need or want, about what’s good for me. All they care for is themselves, their sale and their own petty existence. And I’ll bet that you’re really not like that.

So tell me, just why did you add me as a Friend? I really want to know.

Photo credit:

This article was originally posted on Business2.

Google doesn’t like duplicate content. People suspected of using it to manipulate search results are punished, often by their site being banished from a high rank in a search.

Duplicate content is often legitimate and Google understands this. Take property listings for example. Jane Smith is a real estate agent. She uses MyDesktop to upload a new listing to her site. As part of the MyDesktop service her listing is uploaded to reiwa.com, domain.com.au and realestate.com.au, all via an XML feed.

It makes sense for Jane to pay for this service. She enters her listing details once but gets exposure on a number of sites. But that’s not the end of the story.

Jane is interested in more than selling her listing. She also wants to attract new listings. To do so she wants to be found in a Google search and this is where duplicate content becomes an issue.

When Google finds duplicate content they look for instructions from the webmaster about how they want a page indexed. These instructions are found within the page meta tags and help the search engine deliver the most relevant results to the end-user.

However, when Google finds legitimate duplicate content – a property listing on multiple sites for example – without these instructions they are faced with a choice: Which page of content do they deliver in the search results? Their response is to “… always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.” What that means to Jane is the original content, the page she created when posting the listing on her website, may well not be what a web searcher finds. And she’s trying to build a database of subscribers to her e-newsletter that’s bad news.

Let’s look at a real-life example. I conducted a Google search using the phrase “2brm unit for sale Victoria Park”. It’s a search term that might be conducted by either a buyer or seller. The first page of the search results contained no results from real estate agents. All were from listing portals or site scrapers. Starting to see my point?

The one that caught my eye, though, was from realestate.com.au (REA), the first entry in the search results. It included a link to a listing profile page, which contained the very same information as the original listing page on the agent’s site (when these properties are marked by the agent as sold these links may stop working). In this instance Google has determined that, of the two pages of identical property description, the one from REA was the most relevant. The agent has missed out on a visitor to their website and a chance to add to their email database.

Google’s recommendation about syndicated content, and that’s what agents are doing with their listing data, is this:

Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites…it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.

In other words Google wants to index the original content, but they need help.

Let’s look at Google’s suggestion in two parts as it pertains to the above example.

First, REA does provide a link to the agent’s website, just not from the listing page and not to the original listing page (article) as recommended by Google. There’s no way for Google to know which piece of content was the duplicate. Furthermore, when they do provide a link to the agent’s site (from within the agent’s profile page) it’s hidden by a rel=”nofollow” tag. What this means is that the link is ignored by the search engines. The agent gets no Google love from the REA link and no boost in the performance of their site in a Google search. It’s all one way traffic in favour of the portal.

Second, REA don’t add the noindex meta tag to the duplicate page. If they did the page wouldn’t be indexed and therefore wouldn’t display in the search results.

Agents who think that the reason for a web presence is just to advertise property will have no problem with the portal’s behaviour. Buyers are finding their properties and that’s all that matters. But agents who want to build a brand using the Internet will have a different viewpoint. These agents provide content to REA to advertise their listings not so the portal can dominate search results.

I concede there’s more to SEO than just dealing with duplicate content. Even if it wasn’t an issue some agents manage their websites so badly they will never be found in the first page of a search. But agents who take pride in their website and their brand are right to be peeved at REA’s ethics. And they’re also right to look to the membership organisations to which they belong to step up and help them compete.
It’s high time for agents to demand  a fair go.