The New Insights

Posted: December 21st, 2011

Last week, the old version of Facebook Insights faded into history, replaced by a leaner, more focused version. The new Insights places less of a focus on Likes, as maturing Fan pages switch from Growth to Engagement+Growth. Troy Thompson at Travel 2.0 made this observation earlier this year.

2012 will be all about Engagement.

It’s not enough to have tens or even hundreds of thousands of Fans if they aren’t interacting with your Brand. Engagement is about turning passive observers into passionate contributors. The Holy Grail of Engagement is a Brand who barely posts content because Fans are sharing their own content that reflects the Brand. The example below is the Powder Highway page, which has seen incredible Fan posted content.

The new Facebook Insights makes steps towards creating Intelligence on what content is engaging and highlights 4 important metrics:

  • Weekly Total Reach
    • The unique number of Fans who have seen content posted to your page
  • People Talking About
    • The number of Fans who have shared your pages content to their network by way of Comments, Posting to your Wall, Liking a Post, Answering a Question, etc.
  • Friends of Fans
    • The number of potential Fans you can reach through your pages current Fan network
  • Total Likes
    • The current number of people who Like your page (Fans)

For Tourism Organizations, the primary KPI’s to measure using these metrics are

  1. Reach (Awareness)
  2. Engagement (Organic Conversation)
  3. Industry Leads (Conversions)

Your Reach can be targeted in two ways: targeting to potential Fans, and targeting Friends of Current Fans. In a funnel Structure, this is the top and largest part of your funnel.

Your Engagement percentage is the number of Total Fans divided by People Talking About. The Goal here is to increase the People Talking About number, turning passive observers into passionate contributors.

Depending on the structure of your particular organization, Industry Leads are the Conversions that happen when Engaged Fans take your desired action, such as a click through to your website, sign up for a newsletter, or filling out a form. It’s important to note that Facebook currently does not track Conversions, so a Link Tracker must be used (such as Bit.ly) to see this data.

As part of a Social Media Strategy, filling this funnel and strengthening the levels within it is key to keeping your Fans, while turning them into SuperFans who impact your business.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in By Joel Marc, Facebook, Social Media | 3 Comments »

SoMeT Idea #3: Facebook Ads are like gold

Posted: December 20th, 2011

This is the third post in a series of ideas that Rodney shared at SoMeT.

There aren’t many opportunities as powerful as the targeting available through Facebook ads .  The demographic and interest-based targeting is almost unparalleled.

You can target an ad using traditional demographics like age, gender and location.  However you can also get more detailed and dabble in psychographics like sexual orientation, marital status or where someone went to college.  One of the most powerful tools available is targeting Facebook users’ interests – ie what they ‘Like’.

You can run ads for a variety of objectives:

1. Acquisition: One of the best ways to use Facebook ads is to grow fans for your destination or business. Make sure you’re acquiring the right fans – people who love you – rather than people who clicked ‘Like’ to win a competition or for special offer.  If you have a budget for this, spend it all at once. There’s not much to be gained by spreading it out over time.  The trick, though, is to manage the community carefully once you’ve got fans so that you don’t disengage people. This takes skill and experience.  If you do it well, you have a cash cow of advocates that you can rely on for web traffic, referrals and feedback that can offer value for the life time of your fans.

2. Engagement: Facebook offers a Sponsored Stories promotion that allows Fan Page owners to promote specific conversations in news feeds.  This is a great way to get extra exposure for a particular topic or offer.  It also helps to bump up engagement on the page and can lead to some organic fan acquisition.

3. Traffic: You can use Facebook ads to send users to anywhere on the web.  I’d recommend against linking outside of Facebook but you can use ads to drive to a competition, custom tab or application quite effectively. Generally speaking, Facebook users like to stay in the Facebook platform.

We’re seeing prices increase steadily and expect this trend to continue.  At the moment, the value that Facebook’s ad platform offers is a bargain.  As large media budgets shift towards digital in the coming months and years, they’ll force up bid prices for the same eyeballs.

Read SoMeT Idea #2: Fish where the fish are: TripAdvisor

Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

Think! opening in Amsterdam starring Isabel Mosk

Posted: December 19th, 2011

We’re very happy to announce Think! will open an office in Amsterdam on February 1, 2012 to serve the European market.

Our operations in Amsterdam will be lead by Isabel Mosk. She is well respected and brings a wealth of modern destination marketing knowledge and expertise to our team.

Isabel joins us from the Netherlands’ Board of Tourism and Conventions (NBTC) where she started in 2007 as a marketing consultant. In 2009, she made the jump to being an online consultant and started focusing on social media, online campaigns, trends and development.

While at the NBTC, she established the Innovatielab – a joint initiative between the NBTC, HSMAI Netherlands and NHTV Breda University. This group works together to increase the knowledge of social media in the Netherlands’ tourism markets and helps bring consumers and operators closer together. Isabel also established #LoveHolland, a social platform where visitors and residents share their finest videos and photos of Holland.

She earned her degree at the NHTV Breda University for Applied Sciences, specializing in Tourism and Marketing. She also spent time as the marketing communications specialist for Beverwijkse Bazaar B.V., Europe’s largest indoor bazaar – a multicultural market that saw four million visitors a year.

Having traveled around the world, Isabel has found a natural match in tourism with her love for travel and getting in touch with other cultures.

Her experience and passion for tourism will fit right in with the innovative crowd at Think! We’re all thrilled to be opening operations in Europe and are very pleased to have Isabel on board to kick things off.

Interested in learning more? You can reach Isabel at Isabel@thinksocialmedia.com and follow her on Twitter @isabelmosk

Posted in Around the office, By William Bakker, Social Media | No Comments »

Think! outside the box this holiday season

Posted: December 5th, 2011

As we have all seen over the past few months, Facebook is making a lot changes to its newsfeed, and  you may have noticed that when lots of people and pages are talking about the same thing they get grouped together.

Unless you want that happy holidays post you have planned to go unnoticed this season you are going to have to be a little more playful with your wording. The best suggestion I have for wishing your fans a happy holidays is with imagery. Encourage your fans to share a happy holidays picture like the one below or have fans use our postcards application and send cards to their friends. It will not only keep you out of the conversation filter but will grow your fan base and bring your engagement up.

Posted in By Phil Moad, Social Media | No Comments »