As we conclude this four part series detailing Facebook Pages, I’d like us to remember that the Facebook Page is about community.
The entire purpose for creating a Page is to engage people on a level that you may not be able to with your website alone. Your Page is an extension of your Brand, and as such must remain fresh and interactive for those engaging with it.
To recap: In this series we’ve Created a Page, gone over the Basic Editing of your Page, and covered the different ways to Promote your Page.
Today we’re going to really dig in to your Page, and look at some pretty sweet options available to customeer your Page, as well as look at the feedback your Page is already set-up to provide.
Let’s start customeering your Page.
Customeering Your Page
Ok. You’re an expert on the basics, right? Good. (If you missed them, or you just need to brush up, check out the Related Posts at the bottom of this post.) Now let’s go over some of the features that will make your Page really stand out.
Notes
Notes can be used for a number of functions. One of the most useful is to have the posts from your blog published directly to the Wall of your Page.
To enable this feature go to the Edit Page screen (The Driver’s Seat) then go to the Notes box and click Edit.
To add a blog, just click “Import a blog” in the box on the right.
Enter your information in the screen that follows.
I’d like to point out that you can import the RSS from your Twitter feed here as well. This is really handy if your organization doesn’t have a blog.
However, I want to throw some caution down here about too much automation with your Page. Remember, the point of your page is to build community. If you’re only automating the interaction from one end, your fans will notice and will quickly lose interest. If you automate, remember that you’re not precluded from actually interacting with your community.
Static FBML
Static FBML whats-a-whos-it? Yeah, I had the same reaction. Here is Facebook’s definition:
Add advanced functionality to your Page using the Facebook Static FBML application. This application will add a box to your Page in which you can render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for enhanced Page customization.
And here’s mine: Make your Page really shiny.
To get it, go to the Static FBML Page here or by searching for it in the Facebook search box. Once on the Static FBML Page, click on “Add to my Page” and select the Page you want to add it to in the pop-up window.
Editing Static FBML
Add FBML to your Tabs. (If you missed it, go back to this post and watch the video about Adding Tabs to your Page.) Next- yeah you guessed it- we’re going back into the Edit Page screen and clicking on Edit in the FBML box.
The title is what will appear in the Tabs of your Page.
Be specific and purposeful in choosing the title for FBML.
To add more than one FBML Tab to your Page, click “Add another FBML box” at the bottom left of any existing FBML Edit screen for your Page.
FBML: The Code
Basic HTML will work in FBML, but even that can be a bit complicated. For the complete resource on FBML, check out Facebook’s Developers Wiki on FBML. There are a lot of resources out there for this, but this is one of the best. If it doesn’t have an answer you’re looking for, contact Facebook and they’ll answer it for you as soon as they can. The biggest thing to remember while creating your Page is that less IS more. Don’t worry about winning awards here- at least not yet.
Make it excellent, but don’t kill yourself.
Publish Your Page
Just click the red “Publish this Page” at the top of your Page. (If it’s not there, your Page is already published.) Yeah- it’s that easy.
Page Insights
As you may know, part of our mantra here at the 8BIT Network is transparency with stats.
The biggest reason for this: they’re important. Facebook provides Page Administrators with a great look at how their Page is interacting with it’s community.
The easiest way to access Page Insights is to go to your Page’s wall and click on “See All” in the Insights Box in the left column. If your Page is new- especially if you’re light on fans- you’re not going to have much in this area, but it will grow as your Page grows!
There are two main areas to focus on here. Fan Interaction and your Fans themselves.
Here’s a look at Facebook’s explanation of these areas:
Fan Interaction Dashboard
- Page admins who post engaging, high quality content will have interactive fan bases capable of virally spreading content through the social graph. The following graph shows how fans are interacting with your posts and consuming your material.
- Interactions: Total number of comments, Wall posts, and likes.
- Interactions Per Post: Average number of comments, Wall posts, and likes generated by each piece of content you post.
- Post Quality: Score measuring how engaging your content is to Facebook users. A higher Post Quality indicates material that better engages users.
- Stream CTR / ETR: This graph is a measure of the Click Through Rate and Engagement Rate for your content appearing in the Facebook News Feed. If a user clicks on one of your posts, that will be counted as Stream CTR. If a user likes or comments on one of your posts, that will be counted in the Stream ETR. Please note that Stream data is based on a sample and therefore is an estimate of your Stream CTR and ETR. (Coming soon)
- Discussion Posts: The number of Discussion topics users have created on your Page.
- Reviews: The number of times fans have used the Reviews application to rate your Page.
Fan Dashboard
- Page admins who post meaningful content will retain fans, while admins who post spammy or low-quality material will lose fans and subscribers. The graph below shows trends in user acquisition and subscription.
- Total Fans / Unsubscribers: Total number of fans over time, overlaid with the total number of fans who have chosen to hide your posts in their News Feed (unsubscribers).
- New / Removed Fans: The number of people who have become a new fan of your Page or stopped being a fan of your Page.
- Top Countries: Growth of your fan base over time broken down by country.
- Demographics: Growth of your fan base over time broken down by age and gender demographics.
- Page Views: Total number of times a Page was viewed per day.
- Media Consumption: Total photo views, audio plays, and video plays for the content you have uploaded to your Page.
- Unsubscribes / Re-subscribes: The total number of times fans unsubscribed from your Page, and the total number of times fans re-subscribed to your Page.
And here’s my explanation: Stellar feedback for every part of your Page!
To see different aspects of the Fan Interaction Dashboard or Fan Dashboard, just choose a graph and it will update automatically.
Post Quality
Facebook explains this very well, so I’ll just quote them here.
The Post Quality score measures how engaging your Posts have been to Facebook users over a rolling seven-day window.
When you create compelling content, your fans may choose to interact with the material by commenting, liking, or writing on your Wall.These fans help to spread your content virally throughout Facebook, as their engagement leads to organic stories being published in their friends’ News Feed.
Your Post Quality is determined by the percentage of your fans that engage when you post content to your Page. It is calculated on a rolling seven-day basis. The number of stars depends on how your Post Quality compares to similar Pages (for example, Pages that have a similar number of fans.)
To increase the number of Interactions and improve your Post Quality you may consider:
- Making sure that your posts, whether they are Status Updates, photos, links, or videos, are relevant to your fans.
- Posting engaging content is the best way to get people to interact with your Page.
- Posting frequently, but not posting an overwhelming amount of content that users may find spammy or burdensome to consume.
- Increasing your total fan base to generate more interactions: Promote your Page with an ad.
Active Fans
Facebook users who have written on your Wall or engaged with your posts are considered active fans. The demographics and geographic locations of your active fans are displayed below, calculated over a rolling seven-day window. The total increase or decrease of weekly active fans is displayed to the right.
It’s About Community
I’d like to emphasize (again) that your Page is a community– don’t neglect it! Regular interaction with your community is the key to growing it and creating true fans. Imagine how successful your organization would be if it gathered a whole bunch of people together, created excitement and interest around what they were doing, and then just checked in every now and then whenever they had time.
This simply wouldn’t work in the “real world” and it won’t work for your online community.
You have to designate and delegate your resources to this. (If you’re a leader reading this, you need to read that sentence again.) Pete Wilson of CrossPoint.tv has done an amazing job at this, and he’s just one of the many examples out there that understand the value of online community.
If you’re a smaller organization, find a volunteer that’s passionate about Facebook and social media- you know, the person that seems to always be on their social networks. They don’t have to be an expert, they just need to have passion and hustle. Passion means they understand the value. Hustle means they’ll get things done.
If you’re a larger organization you may need to seriously consider creating a paid position in this area. However, DO NOT pass this off to someone that doesn’t have the passion for it, because it will quickly go by the wayside.
Lastly, but most importantly, social media is literally changing the face of our society.
I am a huge fan of social media, but I’m a bigger fan of real, face to face interaction with real people with skin on. Our greatest example of this is modeled in Jesus: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” -John 1:14 (The Message, emphasis added)
If our calling is to extend Jesus Christ to the people of this world, we must be Jesus with skin on.
Ryan Spilhaus says
Thanks for the resource. I created a page with FBML for our church a few weeks ago. Check it out at http://facebook.com/frontlinedc and let me know what you think!
Nick Shoemaker says
Ryan! This is amazing! I feel like you should have written this series man! Great use of the FBML function man!
Ryan Spilhaus says
Thanks!
Barry Whitlow says
Incredible job Ryan! Do you know any freelancer’s that could assist us on setting up a page for our church plant? Thanks–
Stephen Bateman says
Nice article Nick.
One thing that bugs me about most imported blogs from the interwebs is there is no permalink, so if I want to respond I have to do so in the comments. Is there a workaround?
Ben Miller says
Actually, the permalink is there in Facebook, but it’s difficult to find. From the wall, if you click on the Note title, on the next page there is a link below the post that says “View original post.” Most people won’t see it, unfortunately. I guess Facebook doesn’t want to make it easy to click off of their site. 🙁 If anyone knows of a way to change this, I’d love to hear about it!
Ben Miller says
Actually, I did have an idea to fix this, but I haven’t tried it yet. Create a custom RSS feed that you would only use for Facebook. At the beginning of each post in this feed, you could have a permalink with the text “From our blog” or something like that.
Nick Shoemaker says
Thanks Ben!
Ben Miller says
I just discovered the RSS Graffiti Facebook app, and it fixes a lot of the little issues and annoyances with the standard importing of a blog feed to your page. I’ve only been using it for a short while, but it seems to work much quicker and better than the old method.
Stuart says
Nick – thanks for all these.
I’m a little despondent that I douby my church will ever un-blinker itself and utilise social media / this ‘ere new fangled thing, but as I’ve said before (and will likely do so again so apologies up front for boring anyone) I remain hopeful that showing some of this stuff to my pastor will eventually, one day, bring reward.
Nick Shoemaker says
I hear ya Stuart.
There are some great resources out there for helping your leadership understand how useful a social media strategy can be.
Another resource I would highly recommend is The Church of Facebook by Jesse Rice.
I am praying that your leadership begins to come to an understanding of how we can utilize these tools as part of our Commission to reach the world for Him.
VietChristian.com says
Thank you. I learn something new today. I now know how to import RSS Feed to FB Notes. Cool!
Nick Shoemaker says
Glad to help! 🙂
Mike Henderson says
Can I link my blog to automatically go to our church fan page? And can I change the URL of the Fan page.
Nick Shoemaker says
Mike,
A couple clarification questions:
Are you wanting to redirect your blog to your church fan page? (For example, someone types: mikesblog.com and you want them to be redirected to facebook.com/ourchurchfanpage)
You cannot change the URL of the fan page once you have set it up. For me to better understand, what is the current URL for the fan page?
Jason Cooper says
Does anybody know if there is a way to migrate your fan page away from your personal profile to a stand alone page???
When I created our church page, I didn’t know you could do it any other way other than to link it to a profile, so i set our up through my profile but would prefer it to be stand alone assuming at some point i might not be at this church any more (for whatever reason)…
Anybody?
http://www.facebook.com/CalvaryChristianChurch
Oh – and i love that Facebook is now emailing me a weekly update about my page with fan +/- infor, and site view info.
Nick Shoemaker says
Jason,
You would need to remove yourself as an admin in this instance.
What I did was create a Profile for the church and then add that Profile as an admin for the Page.
BE SURE TO CREATE THE PROFILE AND ADD IT AS AN ADMIN BEFORE YOU REMOVE YOURSELF!
YES! The weekly page updates just started a couple weeks ago, and they are a great addition to the administrative tools.
The Page looks great man. Good work!
Carl Franzon says
I had the same question as Jason about migrating the fan page away from my personal profile (I don’t remember there being any option to do it any other way when I first did it). Creating a profile for the church seems to be the only way to work around this but I was under the impression that you could not set up a profile for an organization.
Nick Shoemaker says
Carl,
You can set up a profile for an organization…kinda.
The kinda part is that you’re going to have to be creative in the name part.
For example: Life Church probably won’t fly with the Facebook sign-up bots. But something like LifeChurch DotTV more than likely will. I’ve seen a number or organizations, people, bands, groups, et cetera use this successfully.
Give it a try- you may need to go a few rounds with the sign-up bots, but I’m sure you can think of something creative enough work around them.
Best of Carl! Let us know how it goes man!
Kelley says
Just a note for anyone having problems adding the FBML application to their page. If you chose to create a new login for your page (option A way back in part 1), when you go to the Static FBML page you will not get the “add to my page” link. You need to add your personal account as a page admin, log in as your personal account, go to the Static FBML page and the link will be there.
For some reason Facebook does not allow you to add applications to your page while you are logged in as the “business.”
Thanks for the great series, Nick. I’m working on getting our page put together. Hopefully I’ll have a link to share later this week.
Nick Shoemaker says
Thanks for letting us know about this Kelley! Looking forward to seeing the Page soon!