How to Maximize Your Facebook Engagement

If you have a Facebook page, you likely know how important it is to get likes and comments. Without those, your EdgeRank suffers, and your posts are seen by fewer fans in the future. Facebook has already admitted that the average Facebook page only reaches about 17% of its fans. Since less than 1 to 2% of fans go back to your page, EdgeRank and newsfeed visibility are critical.
When you get a new fan, you have the opportunity to keep them engaged. If you don’t, they’ll simply stop reading your posts. Here are some of the things you should keep in mind as you determine how best to engage your Facebook customers.

Which Days are Your Fans Most Responsive?

You need to maximize likes and comments to be visible to fans. Part of getting better engagement results is knowing which days of the week your fans are most and least responsive. This is different for every company and industry. Knowing the best day of the week for all Facebook pages won’t help you with your brand. So even if the best overall day is Tuesday, your company’s best day might be Sunday. For example, recent research indicated that the most responsive day for high-fashion brand pages is Wednesday, while the most responsive day for outdoor clothing brand pages is Thursday. Why should brands care? Well, even if you post every day, your greatest focus should go to those days when followers are most responsive. So, if your best day is on the weekend, make sure you have that covered.
It also turns out that the best days of the week to post on Facebook are not always the same days brands create the most posts. Sometimes it’s a Sunday, and maybe no one is working. It appears that the amount a brand posts is not based on their most responsive days, but perhaps just on convenience or coincidence.

Case Study: Chanel

When you compare individual companies, you see that the days they do the most posts are not the same days that they get the most likes and comments per post. For example, see the following charts: Here is when Chanel posts the most (average posts per day over 90 days):

Facebook_Page_Data_Shows_Some_Brands_Aren

And here is when their fans are the most responsive (likes + comments per post):

Chanel’s fans are most responsive on Saturdays, but it’s their second-to-least posted on day of the week. Most likely, their social media person isn’t working that day, and they’re not scheduling posts for that day. Without realizing it, they’re missing out on a lot of likes and comments, which of course hurts their Edgerank and lowers their fan page’s post visibility.
This highlights that you shouldn’t post most when it’s convenient for you, but when your fans are most responsive.

How to Maximize the Most Engaging Days

If you want to figure out this data for your page, here are the steps:

1. Go to your Facebook page insights and click on likes.
2. Click on export data. Choose post level data, then select at least a two-month range so you have a good sample.
3. Save it and open it in Excel.
4. There’s not a quick way in Excel to group dates by day of week, but with a bit of manual work, you can find the average lifetime of engaged users per post, per day of the week.

The only shortcoming here is that the data is limited by how good and engaging your posts have been. It’s better to look at 10 to 20 brand pages per industry. You will have to manually look at hundreds of posts, or find a way to scrape that data. Then you can find the average likes and comments per post, per day of the week across an entire industry.
If one of your competitors is doing a much better job at getting likes and comments, you might want to follow their lead. It could be, in part, the days of the week they post, and also the type and quality of content.

Photographic Composition

The term composition refers to the content of a photograph; specifically, the way everything in

the photo is laid out. This includes the subject matter, the relative size and positions of objects within the photo, lighting and tonal balance, etc.
There are lots of rules about composition, most of them fairly simple. If you follow the rules (at least when you're starting out) you will find your photos naturally become better.
One of the most important rules in photographic composition is the rule of thirds.
The following pages provide more tips on composition:

Be clear about the subject
Compose the entire frame, not just the subject
Use different camera angles
Strive for balance
Use lines

Video Streaming

When creating streaming video, there are two things you need to understand: The video file format and the streaming method.

File Formats

There are many video file formats to choose from when creating video streams. The most common formats are:

Windows Media
RealMedia
Quicktime
MPEG (in particular MPEG-4)
Adobe Flash

There are pros and cons for each format but in the end it comes down to personal preference. Be aware that many of your users will have their own preferences and some users will only use a particular format, so if you want to reach the widest possible audience you should create separate files for each format. In reality this isn't usually practical so you need to make a judgment call on which formats to provide. Obviously the better you understand all the options, the better your decision is likely to be.
At this stage we won't worry too much about individual formats (we'll come back to them in the format tutorial).

Streaming Methods

There are two ways to view media on the internet (such as video, audio, animations, etc): Downloading and streaming.

Downloading

When you download a file the entire file is saved on your computer (usually in a temporary folder), which you then open and view. This has some advantages (such as quicker access to different parts of the file) but has the big disadvantage of having to wait for the whole file to download before any of it can be viewed. If the file is quite small this may not be too much of an inconvenience, but for large files and long presentations it can be very off-putting.
The easiest way to provide downloadable video files is to use a simple hyperlink to the file. A slightly more advanced method is to embed the file in a web page using special HTML code.
Delivering video files this way is known as HTTP streaming or HTTP delivery. HTTP means Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, and is the same protocol used to deliver web pages. For this reason it is easy to set up and use on almost any website, without requiring additional software or special hosting plans.
Note: This is not technically "true" video streaming — the best it can do is a passable imitation.

Streaming

Streaming media works a bit differently — the end user can start watching the file almost as soon as it begins downloading. In effect, the file is sent to the user in a (more or less) constant stream, and the user watches it as it arrives. The obvious advantage with this method is that no waiting is involved. Streaming media has additional advantages such as being able to broadcast live events (sometimes referred to as a webcast or netcast).
True streaming video must be delivered from a specialized streaming server.

Progressive Downloading

There is also a hybrid method known as progressive download. In this method the video clip is downloaded but begins playing as soon as a portion of the file has been received. This simulates true streaming, but doesn't have all the advantages.

Which Method to Use?

The method you choose will depend on your situation, but most people will opt for HTTP streaming (download or progressive download). This is the easiest and cheapest way to get started. If necessary you can upgrade to a streaming server later.
Still, you will want to understand both options so the next two pages of this tutorial look at each one in a bit more detail. After that we'll talk about how to create the actual video files.

Streaming Video Servers

A streaming media or streaming video server is a specialized application which runs on an Internet server. This is often referred to as "true streaming", since other methods only simulate streaming. True streaming has advantages such as:

The ability to handle much larger traffic loads.
The ability to detect users' connection speeds and supply appropriate files automatically.
The ability to broadcast live events.

There are two ways to have access to a streaming server:

Operate you own server (by purchasing or leasing)
Sign up for a hosted streaming plan with an ISP (Internet Service Provider)

Operate your own server

Sign up for a hosted streaming plan

HTTP Streaming Video

This is the simplest and cheapest way to stream video from a website. Small to medium-sized websites are more likely to use this method than the more expensive streaming servers.
For this method you don't need any special type of website or host — just a host server which recognises common video file types (most standard hosting accounts do this). You also need to know how to upload files and how to create hyperlinks (see our website tutorials for more info).
There are some limitations to bear in mind regarding HTTP streaming:

HTTP streaming is a good option for websites with modest traffic, i.e. less than about a dozen people viewing at the same time. For heavier traffic a more serious streaming solution should be considered.
You can't stream live video, since the HTTP method only works with complete files stored on the server.
You can't automatically detect the end user's connection speed using HTTP. If you want to create different versions for different speeds, you need to create a separate file for each speed.
HTTP streaming is not as efficient as other methods and will incur a heavier server load.

These things won't bother most website producers — it's normally only when you get into heavy traffic that you should be worried about them.

To Create HTTP Streaming Video

Create a video file in a common streaming media format
Upload the file to your web server
Make a simple hyperlink to the video file, or use special HTML tags to embed the video in a web page.

That's essentially all there is to it. When a user clicks the hyperlink, their media player opens and begins streaming the video file. If the file is embedded, it plays right there on the page.
Now let's look at how to create the necessary video files...

Streaming Video with Real Media

Hyperlinks to RealMedia Files

There are two ways to link to RealMedia files. The first is to make a hyperlink directly to the video file - in this case the whole file will be downloaded before viewing (i.e. it will not stream). Use this method if you specifically want this outcome. For example:
<a href="video01.rm">Click here to download video</a>
To make the video stream you actually need to create another file - a simple text file with a .ram extension. This is known as a metafile - a file which contains data about another file.
To create the metafile, open a text editor (such as Notepad) and enter the URL of the video file. For example:

Save this text file with the extension .ram. It probably makes sense to use the same file name as the video file — this will make file management easier. Now create a hyperlink to the metafile like so:
<a href="video01.ram">Click here to view streaming video</a>
Notice the only difference between this and the previous hyperlink: The file extension is .ram instead of .rm (so it points to the metafile instead of the video file).
When the user clicks this hyperlink, the metafile opens and in turn opens the video file - except this time it will be streamed instead of downloaded. This process is transparent to the user - as far as they are concerned the hyperlink just starts the streaming.
Note: In order for RealMedia files to stream from your website your host server must recognize the .ra, .ram, .rm and .rpm mime types. These are standardized file classifications and if your host doesn't support them, you should request that they do or find another host.

Embedding RealMedia Files

Use the following code to embed a real media file. Change "videofilename.wmv" to your own file name in both instances.

Learn Technology

Friday, April 27, 2012