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Facebook Hacks in 45 MinutesDelia Paunescu, Audience Engagement Editor for Newsday and amNewYork

Matthew Knell, VP of Social Media and Community Strategy, about.com

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Agenda

• We share our favorite Facebook hacks. (20 minutes)

• You ask us questions about your hacks. (25 minutes)

• You hopefully don’t call us a bunch of hacks. (Forever and ever)

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Your questions!

• Ask away and we’ll try to answer them as best we can

• Hashtag them with #SMWKND45 on Twitter!

GIF SOURCE: sesamestreet.tumblr.com

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About Delia

@delia_pdeliapproved

• A journalist, true and true.

• Today’s focus: Breaking news and trending tools

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Breaking News• You can use Facebook to convey information quickly, even without a

link.

• You can go back and update the post as news breaks, if your page allows for page edits.

• Use language like: “BREAKING”, “JUST IN”, “UPDATE”, “DEVELOPING”

• Update as soon as you can update, but no more than every half hour unless something major happens.

• Demo!

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Getting content out quickly• Get it out within the first 12 hours, or don’t bother getting it out at all.

• Share evergreen stories the first day they are live, but keep track of them for reuse later.

• Repost it when it’s most relevant: Save them for evening, weekend, later use.

• Don’t assume your audience has seen everything on Facebook; because they really haven’t.

• Just because it flopped the first time, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it again with a different angle.

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Sourcing trends• Sure they're written like your grandmother on her first day of using Facebook, but that Trending

Stories rundown can also make your clicks for the day.

• The ways of finding out what's happening on social are endless (and all of these are free):

• BuzzFeed Fresh - http://fre.sh/ (looks bad, works good)

• NYTimes Trending - http://www.nytimes.com/trending/ (brand new)

• NYTimes Vellum - http://vellum.nytlabs.com/ (Twitter focused, but still useful)

• Facebook Trends - https://m.facebook.com/search/trending-news/?ref=bookmark&app_id=343553122467255 (mobile link, but easy to use)

• MuckRack newsroom - http://muckrack.com/newsroom

• New Digg - http://digg.com/

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What type of Facebook post should I use?• Consider the value and intent of the content - and its “curiosity” gap

• Don’t give away too much; tease responsibly, but avoid link bait.

• Ask yourself: “What’s the best way to tell the story?”

• Don’t bury the lead in content that doesn’t help tell the story.

• But, tell enough of the story to get people interested in learning more.

• Excitable language is helpful - gets people motivated.

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Photo posts• For news items that have visual

appeal, consider pulling out some teaser photos into a photo post, or a multi-photo post.

• Don’t post more than 4 to 5 photos; find a line between teasing and giving too much away.

SEE THIS POST ON FACEBOOK

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Photo posts• After upload, Facebook will

create an album with all of the photos.

• Important: Make sure each photo in the album has its own description and link - the post caption from the first photo doesn’t carry over to the rest

SEE THIS POST ON FACEBOOK

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Video posts• Facebook is investing in the growth

of video on the platform, and thus is giving it a bit of preferential treatment and display.

• Does the video enhance the existing story? Or is the video the story?

• Consider the fact most people don’t have sound.

• Cut longer clips to 15-30 seconds for social use.

SEE THIS POST ON FACEBOOK

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Status post w/link• If news is particularly shocking, use

a status with a link to get people to click quickly.

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Link posts• If you don’t have a better way of

telling the story, just use a link.

• Link content tends to have the best overall reach.

• Use the caption to pair with the metadata Facebook pulls in.

• Remember that you can edit the metadata. Customize it to fit your specific needs.

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About Matt

@matthewknell

• Not a journalist, a product guy turned social media nerd

• Today’s focus: Product tweaks and tools

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The Facebook Debugger is your friend • Gives you a glimpse of

exactly how your content looks when it’s shared on Facebook.

• Also, clears Facebook’s cache, so if you change metadata, it will rescrape.

TRY IT: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

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Get verified! • Getting verified gives you a

few extra tools:

• the ability to edit posts after they’ve been posted.

• the option to turn on “Smart publishing”

• The option to do Organic Post Targeting.

• It may help your reach as well.

• Fill out this form to see if you qualify.

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Organic post targeting • Delivering content to people who are

likely to want it helps performance and engagement.

• Shown as much as 200% increase in CTR for us in testing.

• You can target by Gender, Age, Interest, Language, Relationship Status, Location, Education

• You can also add an End Date to your posts.

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Recommended Facebook companion tools• Use SharedCount to finding social share history on your content.

• SimplyMeasured has a bunch of free Facebook analysis reports.

• Buffer is a great publishing tool that allows easy management of content schedules.

• BuzzSumo helps you find influencers, trending topics and share counts.

• Asana is a great tool for managing calendars and content tasks.

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Things to bug your tech team about: Open Graph Tags

READ THE CODE: http://ogp.meBONUS: Most OpenGraph tags work with Pinterest Article Rich Pins too!

• Specifies exactly what a user sees when your post is shared.

• Allows you to customize title, description and photo for social use.

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Things to bug your tech team about: Campaign tracking

• By adding campaign tracking to your URLs, you’ll be able to tell exactly where a click is coming from.

• This is helpful when measuring performance of visitors from your Facebook page.

• Some social tools (most notably Buffer for Business) already have this built-in.

• A great guide to how this works is available here.

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Now, your questions

• Don’t forget your handout - lots of answers there.

• Ask away on hashtag #SMWKND45 or raise your hand and shout them out!

PSST, GET THIS DECK AT: http://www.slideshare.net/matthewknell