When your social friends over here at enter:new media woke up this morning, Facebook news feeds were ablaze with early risers discovering that Facebook had yet again launched a redesign.  Reactions ranged from snarky and entertaining to downright volatile. Let’s talk about them, shall we? The changes, not the reactions.

Recent News > Top News Is No Longer An Option

If you were the user who chose to see “Top News” by default or “Most Recent” by default, you’re going to need to adjust your visual routine because now everything is viewable as a collage of stories and activities. And did you read that? They’ve changed the language as well: everything is a story.

How Facebook Determines How Users See “Stories”

Interesting note: the Facebook obsessed user who checks their feed frequently will see it arranged in chronological order – most recent.  The user who checks less frequently will see stories arrange by top stories, or what Facebook deems as most important in terms of what you missed while you were away. Top stories are marked with a little blue corner (like a dog-eared page) and they’re the stories that Facebook has determined as the most interesting stuff you missed while you were away.

How Facebook Determines What A “Top Story” Is To Users

The way top stories are determined is pretty logical:  how close you are to the person (Facebook didn’t release the super customizable list feature just for kicks, you know), how engaging the post was (lots of comments and likes), and what type of story it is (is it a photo, video, link, plain text story, a quiz?). This algorithm is explained in quite a few Edgerank articles, including ours.

On Facebook’s blog, they liken your News Feed to a newspaper, which is a bit flawed as a newspaper doesn’t refresh if you haven’t picked it up in a week, but the idea is that rather than serve the infrequent user EVERYTHING, Facebook is serving up the most interesting.

How The User Controls Their News Feed Experience

Friend Lists are one of the Facebook user’s best friends. To view only the stories from specific friend lists, the user can click on that friend list, which is located in the left column of their home page.

The Subscribe button is one way the user can control the volume of their newsfeed. This allows any Facebook user to receive your PUBLIC Facebook updates in their feeds if they subscribe to you.  A user and their friends are already subscribed to each other, so now the added option is to unsubscribe from a friend without unfriending them.

This subscribe button is a great opportunity for agencies and brands to leverage their Facebook klout and use their public status updates to show strategic and creative thought.  There is a great FAQ on the Subscribe button on Facebook.

Users can also hide a person or a story type by clicking the drop down menu available on each story.  This drop down gives the user a variety of options like marking it as a top story, hiding the story, reporting the story or designating it as spam, and further subscription options.

Facebook wants to learn from the user, so the ability the unmark something as a top story no doubt registers in another magical algorithm that will “learn” what, or from whom, you want to hear from.

No doubt brands are concerned with how much control the user has and how little control they have over message visibility.  Clearly this is a challenge to create unhideable engaging content and rich Facebook news feed experiences like our News Feed Magazine.  At enter:new media we’ve been focused on guiding our clients in the right direction when it comes to engaging, valuable, non repetitive (spammy) content on Facebook.

Don’t be ticked at the ticker

We’ve observed the chatter today regarding these changes and the ticker has garnered the most ire today, but it’s a valuable little guy. As a brand, if you’re creating engaging, actionable content, and your Facebook community is filled with friends of friends (this can be achieved by implementing one of our Top Fan applications), that ticker will be alive with comments and likes, prompting friends of active friends to take action as well.

It seems clear that when launching a Facebook campaign there are now three main strategic “wins”: Having your “story” prominent in the Top Stories feed, creating unbeatable, unhideable content to avoid being marked as spam, and gain high visibility in friends of friends’ tickers.

To learn more about how we can help you get on top and stay there, please contact Julia Zaborowski at jz@enternewmedia.com

It’s always fun when fashion brands want to play with our new toys.  We happily partnered with Urban Outfitters on not one, but two newsfeed magazines. “LIKE” Urban Outtfitters on Facebook and take a tour!

Our news feed magazine is a great way for brands to give their fans a richer experience with their products and stories within their Facbeook newsfeeds rather than directing fans to an application tab.

We’re also really proud of the coverage we garnered with this creative partnership:

Forbes

All Facebook

Internet Retailer

If you’re interested in learning how we can help your brand, please send an email to Julia at jz@enternewmedia.com!

We are having a BLAST with Tennis Channel and the U.S. Open, despite the rain. Today the sun is poking through the clouds and it’s game on! We’ve partnered on some really fun initiatives with Tennis Channel to support their participation in the U.S. Open. Here, we’ll volley a few of them at you:

Andy Roddick Photo Retrospective: We launched a photo retrospective of Andy Roddick’s career, exclusive to our Facebook fans. We curated 35 images ranging from his professional career in 2000 through his Round 1 victory in this year’s U.S. Open. In addition, we added a module at the bottom of the app where fans can share their good luck wishes to Roddick, with the option to post that message on their Facebook wall.

Tennis Channel Top Fan

Our Top Fan contests are incredible new fan recruitment tools. AND because by design they fill your community with friends of friends, the opportunity to influence the affinity score of your EdgeRank is tremendous. The contest lasts until September 12, 2011, so we invite you to “LIKE” Tennis Channel as well and play along! We’ll be giving away a $500 Amex Gift Card to the one fan that recruits the highest number of friends to become fans of Tennis Channel on Facebook each week. In addition, we’ll be giving away Tennis Channel prize packs (t-shirt, hat, jacket, etc) to the nine runners-up each week.

Live coverage

This is obviously the most fun – watching along with and interacting with passionate fans of tennis.  The fans on Tennis Channel’s Facebook page know every backstory, every piece of trivia, they’re the truest kind of fan.  We’ve been polling them every morning to see what matches they’re most interested in seeing covered.  We listen. Based on their votes, we then cover those matches on the Tennis Channel Facebook wall, utilizing the Comments section as a live chat. As news breaks, we add additional posts, keeping fans up to date on all scores and news from NYC. We’ve also been working with their community management team, which has been a great team working experience.

If you’re following along with the U.S. Open, you should pop into Tennis Channel’s Facebook page and join in the fun, the debate, and the celebration (and maybe a little agony of defeat…): https://www.facebook.com/tennischannel

Liz Stowasky is an incredible project manager here at enter:new media. At our last workshop, she gulped down her public speaking fear and delivered some smarts in a panel titled, “How To Target Facebook Ads For Engagement”. Here’s an interview with our petite lady of all trades – and be sure to join us at our next workshop, this Wednesday. RSVP here!

So Liz, would you say that Facebook contests and promotions are so colorful and glorious that people will just FIND them without any prompting?
In a perfect world, yes colorful contests with dazzling prizes would sell themselves without any effort at all. Who wouldn’t want a free trip, an awesome cash prize or a chance to meet their childhood idol. But we don’t live in a perfect world and good old fashioned internet elbow grease is needed to create a buzz about an upcoming promotion.

How do you promote your promotions? Are there any tried and true tricks?
The easiest (and cheapest) way to promote any campaign is through active community management. However, you can’t just write a status update telling people to enter and then attach a link, you have to be very… obvious.

Imagery outweighs words and instant gratification out weighs patience. Point blank… people don’t read. Try using an arrow to point directly to your link —– > See my eyes are looking over here now, exactly where your link would be.

People don’t read directions. How many times have you promoted a campaign in a status update only to have someone leave a comment thinking that was their entry? You need to react to and guide your community if a few stragglers are off the beaten path. A simple “Hey @So and So, we want your entry to count. Click here —- > to qualify” works every time. Sometimes fans lose their minds that you were actually listening.

Would you say that Facebook promos should only be promoted on Facebook?
Facebook promotions can be promoted EVERYWHERE. The best way to get a community jazzed about something is by talking about it in the places they hang out. Print media, television, radio, Twitter, etc. Marketing types call that 360

What about growing the community via contests? How do you grab the eyeballs and actions of new fans?
Get the fans involved. We have a great fan recruitment app that inspires fans to get their friends to become a fan of a brand. It works really well because they get bragging rights, but you must reward them for their efforts. To make this type of campaign more effective, attach a Facebook targeted media buy – it’s a one-two punch.

Don’t forget the bloggers. People blog to be recognized as experts. When YOU recognize their expertise and put them on a judging panel for a food contest, for example, that exposure has legs. They’ll pump it up beforehand, during, and wrap it up after!

Finally, what’s at the base of every contest or promotion on Facebook?
Know the guidelines! Facebook has created a core set of guidelines specifically to help marketers promote their promotions. Learn them, love them, live by them – or get your app pulled.

Tired of being so popular on Facebook? Thought so. Here is how you can use the principles of Facebook’s Edgerank to go back to being a social media unknown.

What is Edgerank?
It’s the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine who sees your posts and how much.  Think of an “edge” as the activity on your post (comments, tags, likes etc).

Key Principles of Edgerank
-Affinity (the more interaction you have with your fans, the more they will see your content)
-Weight (posts with lots of edges will get seen more)
-Time decay (new stuff will be ranked higher than old stuff)

How To Ensure Your Facebook Page Stops Growing and Starts Sucking
Now for the fun part. Let’s destroy all that pesky Facebook popularity.

1. Text, please (Photos & Videos Are Too Much Work)
Photos & Videos are actually “edge” magnets. Stay away from these nasty attachments.

2. If Don’t Have Something Important To Say, Don’t Say Anything (Take A Break!)
Who wants to write status updates everyday? Take a month off. You deserve it. Plus, very few people will see your posts when you come back. Score!

3. Stay Focused On Your Promotions, Not The Audience (No Questions Please)
There is a reason people became fans of yours…you. They want you to talk about yourself ALL THE TIME. Never ask them open ended questions. That would only encourage interactions, and then more people will see your content and then – right back to being popular again. Foiled!

4. Don’t Be Bogged Down With Stats (Numbers Are Boring)
Last thing you want to do is use actual numbers to find out what is working (so you can do more of it) and what isn’t (so you can do less of it). After all, this isn’t MATH media, it’s SOCIAL media.

5. Ignore Competitors (Gentlemen Don’t Read Each Others Mail)
It’s not polite to watch what your competitors are doing to reverse engineer best practices. Plus, they suck anyway. Who cares what they do?

6. Never Take Chances (Leave Experiments To Scientists)
Social media is fun, but it’s not for trying out new things. Don’t go chasing waterfalls with new ideas about posting frequency, or new ways to engage your audience, just to see if they work. Didn’t TLC teach us anything?

-Mark Curtis, President

This isn’t the first time you’ve heard the phrase, no doubt.  If local is your neighborhood, hyper local is your street.  In terms of community management, hyperlocal messaging for the person who manages 500 pages means messaging tailored to each specific page under one brand.  Now, stick with me.

According to the article, when people check in to a “Place” that hasn’t been claimed, they are prompted with a link asking “Do you know the owner?” and can submit the contact info of the owner if that’s the case.

The benefits to the owner, should they have the free time to submit the proper documentation to claim the Place, are that they can now control their Facebook reputation more by reporting rogue Places , they can moderate the Place, and they can post relevant business awesomeness to the Place, etc.  Sounds like a page, doesn’t it?

Imagine you’re a brand that has 500 pages already established and managed by, say, Rachel Katz from enter:new media.  Did your stomach just get a little queasy at the thought of now claiming 500 new Places and keeping them clean and fresh? *Vrrrrp*

Although Facebook Places provides a great platform for store owners/managers to connect with their customers & to advertise for new customers it can also cause a brand liability and an extra job, which can be adeptly handled by their agency, like… enter:new media!

The way we work with a huge college bookstore allows managers to post relevant local information, answer questions etc. without having to worry about liability (because we track their pages).

It’s a no brainer, local business owners should claim their Places to control their reputations, and on top of that, once they become admins, they are the only ones who can purchase Facebook ads to promote their pages, pushing us closer to FacebookWorld.

Will this be the end of restaurant web sites with pdf menus?  Will this prompt another surge of Facebook sign ups as holdouts join to keep up with their local businesses?  It sounds good to us, because we’ve got the tools and the people to help.

-Kelly Samardak, Social Brand Manager

“Inside Facebook” reported on Friday (while you were gallivanting around town enjoying summer Fridays) that Pages are no longer able the tag fans in status updates.
“Inside Facebook” had been receiving reports of this change as alleged, but they are now convinced that it isn’t a bug so much as a real change that, on the whim of Facebook, could or could not return.

How does this change in the way pages create updates impact the user? There are pros and cons, of course. The pro is that now the Monchichi fan page that you secretly “Liked”, moderated by your friend, can’t tag you when crowd sourcing new adorable monkey faced doll names.

The con is that you, social media consultant to the stars, can not be tagged by your pal who admins the Readers Digest page for your scintillating, thought-leadership-packed blog post about most engaging Facebook Questions. That’s favoritism, anyway – get your own page, says Facebook (paraphrasing!). Pages can still tag pages, so if you’re that awesome, pages that aren’t manned by your roommate from freshman year at UCLA may just tag you anyway.

How does removing a page’s ability to tag users in status updates impact the socially savvy, community recognizing brand? Well… it’s all about perception.

In the very recent past, in order for a Facebook page to tag a person, the admin of the page had to “friend” that person. For the not to be overlooked or undervalued observer crowd in social networks, that engagement feels odd anyway. If Bart “liked” Kotex to enter a contest for a chance to win 10 days in a dry heat for his girlfriend, he probably doesn’t want Christy to friend request him with the personal note “Hey, thanks for being a fan of feminine protection, let’s be friends!” Now your fans won’t get that not-so-fresh stalking/calling-me-out feeling.

On the other hand, if you’re a very transparent brand, where fans of your page know who the admins are and the level of comfort is strongly established, then you are missing out on the very important step of recognizing – via a tagged status update – valuable contributors.

For example, if Chauncey McCracken not only provided great answers to other fan questions, but also wrote an incredible, high visibility blog post about your product without prompting, you can’t tag them up with personal thanks. However, you can still link out to valuable supportive content and, according to Inside Facebook, when you as the page admin use the “Share” link to promote a fan’s (friend’s) content, you can then tag them in that post.

As an agency that lives and breathes (and sometimes dreams…) Facebook and its frequent and sometimes secret changes, we are used to keeping nimble, communicating these changes clearly to the client, and immediately putting into place alternatives so that the change is but a blip, if that, in their communities’ Facebook-loving days.

-Kelly Samardak, Social Brand Manager

image from: http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/2007/08/30/idiotic-idea-of-the-day-school-bans-tag.aspx

TheCollegeJuice.com is a new blog we’ve launched for Barnes and Noble College. With an emphasis on interesting news, as well as random information and distracting games, posts on the blog run the gamut from “New Apps Keep Tabs On Your Crushes” to easy-as-pie dorm room recipes and everything in between. This blog is part of a much larger branding campaign we are putting together for Barnes and Noble College. We look forward to sharing that news with you soon”.

— Mark Curtis, President, enter: new media

I believe this type of event proves how emotionally invested viewers are in A&E’s programming. Social media is giving them the ability to get closer to other fans as well as closer to the real people they see on TV. A&E continues to pioneer transforming TV programming into “must-see, real-time events.”

– Henrietta Yuki, Accounts Supervisor, Entertainment

– Netty Devonshire, Senior Account Manager, Fashion & Retail.