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Monthly Archives: March 2013

Facebook Graph Search Now Passing Keyword Data To Webmasters

26 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Facebook

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Analytics, Keyword, SEM, SEO

Mar,  25, 2013 at 8:18am ET by Greg Finn

This is awesome news, Thanks Greg!

To read a more in depth article click here

When Facebook launched Graph Search earlier this year,a noticeable element missing to marketers was the lack of keyword data that was passed. Well, this weekend Glenn Gabe of G-Squared Interactive uncovered the fact that Facebook has begun passing keyword data within referral strings.

The keyword data is passed from Facebook with a query string [q={keyword}] appended to the end of the referring URL.  Since analytics providers like Google don’t view Facebook as a search engine, the data must be parsed as referring traffic, not as a search engine.

facebook-graph-search-query-string

While the data exists, it takes some finessing  to gather it. Glenn breaks the process downstep-by-step, showing each element (and filter) required to pull the data. The end result is that users can set up their analytics package to capture and report keyword data from Facebook Open Graph with results looking similar to these in Google Analytics:

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Feature Forward: Enhanced Search Query Report Offers Even More Specific Options

21 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Uncategorized

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Advertising, Bing, Online Marketing

It would appear that Bing (Microsoft) has been taking notes. The following was released today from Bings Nishant Gupta

Updates from your feedback. One of these updates is an enhanced Search Query Report.  Currently in development, the new report offers an additional set of options to help you drill further into your campaign’s search data.  One of our most popular tools, campaign managers use it to:

1) Identify opportunities for new keywords and adjust your bids to maximize ROI

For example, if the Search Query Report shows your broad match keywords, golf clubs, is attracting clicks from search queries for: golf clubs sales and junior golf clubs.  You should add those two terms to your keyword list as exact match and bid appropriately to generate more click volume.

2) Control search traffic engaging with your campaigns

Also if the Search Query Report shows your broad match keyword, golf clubs, is attracting clicks from the search query: joining country clubs, but that term isn’t converting well on your web site, you could:

  • Use a broad match modifier to emphasize that your business is selling golf clubs: Add a “+” sign immediately in front of the word golf.  The modified keyword: +golf clubs will engage with search traffic that has the word golf in the query.  Also, you could consider adding joining country clubs to your negative keyword list to specifically block this traffic.

You can learn more about these two optimization techniques at  Bing Ads Cure Keywords Caught in Bad Romance

Over the next few months we’ll be working to improve the options available to you in this report—specifically, options that give you greater control over your data and the insights you can gleam from it.

For example, we will provide stop words and additional characters in the search query column of the enhanced report. The addition of stop words will give you access a more detailed level of search terms data, with insight from which you can then use to better optimize for a wider variety of specific search terms.

The following are some examples of stop words and additional characters that Bing Ads is working to include into the Search Query Report.  I’ve also added an example of how this information can be useful in optimizing your campaign.

Search Query_Example of Stop Words and CharactersBenefits of this enhancement can be illustrated by following example:

Play GolfCurrently the data for the search queries: how to play golf andwhere to play golf are both summarized under play golf in the search term column of the report. If you are teaching golf, you are much more interested in the first search query, but with the current report it is difficult to effectively monitor and manage those two search terms individually.  The enhanced Search Query Report will separate those two terms and their KPIs to enable golf teachers to apply specific optimization tactics to each of those two terms.

Giving you more granularity and insight on the Search Query Report is part of our continuing efforts to enhance Bing Ads’ performance.  We will keep you updated on the availability of this enhancement via this Community Site.

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Klout’s New Product Invites Businesses To Get Serious About Social Influence

20 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Uncategorized

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This article is provided via Marketing Land. I have not personally tested this product out yet, but it does look

This article is provided via Marketing Land. I have not personally tested this product out yet, but it does look really promising. I will up date this post as soon as I have had time to “play”

Mar 20, 2013 at 2:42pm ET by Matt McGee

Klout is hoping businesses will start to take social influence — and Klout itself — more seriously with today’s announcement of an analytics dashboard called Klout for Business.

Klout describes it as “a set of tools designed to help you unlock the reach and power of your most influential audience members.” It’s not Klout’s first business tool — the company has grown its Klout Perks offering that gives brands a way to connect with people that Klout considers to be influential consumers by offering them access to products, services and experiences.

Klout for Business is separate from the Perks program, and instead helps brands understand how they’re engaging with influencers on other social networks.

Businesses will be able to look at an easy-to-read dashboard that tells you, at-a-glance, whether you are engaging your influencers on the networks where they are most actively exerting their influence and on which Klout Score ranges you could stand to amp up your efforts. Most importantly, Klout can tell you which topics your audience influences others on, helping you maximize your content efforts to drive consideration for your brand.

promising. I will up date this post as soon as I have had time to “play” Mar 20, 2013 at 2:42pm ET by Matt McGee Klout is hoping businesses will start to take social influence — and Klout itself — more seriously with today’s announcement of an analytics dashboard called Klout for Business. Klout describes it as “a set of tools designed to help you unlock the reach and power of your most influential audience members.” It’s not Klout’s first business tool — the company has grown its Klout Perks offering that gives brands a way to connect with people that Klout considers to be influential consumers by offering them access to products, services and experiences. Klout for Business is separate from the Perks program, and instead helps brands understand how they’re engaging with influencers on other social networks. Businesses will be able to look at an easy-to-read dashboard that tells you, at-a-glance, whether you are engaging your influencers on the networks where they are most actively exerting their influence and on which Klout Score ranges you could stand to amp up your efforts. Most importantly, Klout can tell you which topics your audience influences others on, helping you maximize your content efforts to drive consideration for your brand.

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How and Why to Schedule Google+ Posts

18 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google+

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Blogging, Engagement, Google+

News from Social Media Today…Good info if somewhat obvious.
by Mike Allton

While I do not recommend trying to fully automate all of your social media activity, as that defeats the purpose of social networking, I do recommend that businesses with an active blog find a way to re-post old blog entries. Re-posting blog entries is great for reminding your followers on great points you’ve made, as well as sharing that content with new followers who might not have seen the post the first time around.

It’s also important that businesses use social media to share content from other sources that your followers may find interesting, but you don’t want to spam them with a bunch of links just because you found 5 interesting articles to share. That kind of activity needs to spread out throughout the course of the day.

I have talked about using Buffer for scheduling Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter activity, and manyWordPress users swear by TweetOldPost. I have also mentioned how HootSuite can be used to schedule posts. And while HootSuite does support Google+ Pages, the bulk scheduling utility requires some cumbersome Excel work, and the application still doesn’t support personal Google+ profiles.

To make sure that your Google+ personal and business profiles have regular activity, and that your followers get to see your older articles, I recommend checking out Do Share.

What is Do Share?

Do Share is a plugin for Chrome from Tzafrir Rehan that currently boasts more than 10,000 users. The obvious drawback to this utility is that it is for Chrome only. There are currently no solutions for other browsers. Fortunately, both Chrome and the plugin are free and can be installed on both PCs and Macs.

To get started, open Chrome (download and install it first if you don’t already have Chrome) and go tohttps://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/do-share/oglhhmnmdocfhmhlekfde… to open the Do Share page within the Google Chrome webstore. You read an overview of the plugin and read some of the reviews. When you’re ready, click on the ADD TO CHROME button in the upper right corner of the pop up window.

Installing the Do Share plugin for Google Chrome is easy.

Once the plugin is installed, a new icon will be added to the Chrome toolbar that is initially 0 and will change to reflect the number of posts that you have scheduled.

Do Share button in Google Chrome

How to Share Posts to Google+ Using Do Share

Once installed, go to the blog post that you want to share and click on the yellow Do Share button. That will open a new tab for Do Share. It’s a little tricky at first, so I’ll walk you through the process.

The first screen you will see will present you with a field for a new post, and below that, you should see a link to your blog post. You must click the link to tell Do Share that that’s what you want to share. When you do, the screen will change to optional Title and Description fields, plus a preview of your blog post.

Create a new post using Do Share

Make sure that you choose whom you’re going to share your post with. The first time you share, that field may be blank. You will typically want to simply select Public and that should be set by default for future posts. You can, however, choose to schedule posts for specific circles or communities.

Under the description field are options to add a poll, image and link. There is also an icon which should be your Google+ profile image. This is where you can choose to post as one of your Google+ Pages. You will not able to schedule posts for more than one account at a time, but you can at least choose to post to any one of your Google+ Pages.

Using Do Share to post a link.

Once you’re happy with the post and settings, you have three options. You can save it to Drafts, Share it immediately, or Schedule it for future posting. Click on Schedule and a calendar will appear that defaults to the current date and time. You can change the date, and either type in a time or use the sliders to adjust the hours and minutes. Click on Schedule once you have selected when you want the post to go up and it will be added to your queue.

Now, because Do Share is a Google Chrome Plugin, and not a web service, you must leave Google Chrome running on your computer. You must be logged in and it must have access to the Internet to work.

Do Share is great because it allows you to introduce your post with a Title and discussion text, and even offers more convenient formatting options over the Google+ normal _ and * selections.

How Often Should I Schedule Posts on Google+?

This is a question to be debated, and I would love to hear your opinions in the comments below. While we may be able to provide a guideline, there are no firm rules. Every business and industry is different, and so how you use Google+ may vary. More importantly, it’s really your followers, the users who have circled you, who should be driving your engagement levels.

One consideration is the type of information that you’re sharing. You certainly don’t want to share content that is dated or redundant. Hopefully you have past posts and articles that might be considered “timeless.” At The Social Media Hat, for instance, a large percentage of our content consists of news stories on developments in the social media world. Those stories generally have no interest after a short amount of time and should not be re-posted. Our How To articles and guides, however, make for great posts all the time.

Another consideration is your followers themselves. Are they active on social media and Google+, or not? If they don’t look at their Google+ stream very often, than it’s likely that when you re-post an article, they will be seeing it for the first time. If you’re lucky enough to have a dedicated following that +1’s and comments on all your posts, you may want to keep your stream 100% fresh content.

As with most social media marketing strategies, it’s usually best to try various methods and techniques and monitor results to find out what works best for you. You might try starting with just one or two scheduled posts a day and see how that goes for a few weeks, and then try increasing the frequency.

If you’re already scheduling posts to Google+, what’s working for you? How often are you posting, and are you using a different tool or technique?

 

Thanks Mike!

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Timeline Redesign Provides Opportunities For Developers To Showcase Their Apps

13 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Uncategorized

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Blog, Facebook, Social Media

David Cohen on March 13, 2013 3:43 PM

The redesigned timeline Facebook introduced Wednesday gives content from applicationsprominent placement, and the social network is taking steps to ensure that developers can benefit.

In a post on its developer blog, Facebook advised developers on how to optimize their collections sections, encouraging users to add their apps, and improved documentation.

Highlights of the developer blog post follow:

As part of this update, we’re giving people more control over which apps they want to show on their timelines. To add your app as a section, people will need to install your app and click the “add to profile” button on their app section pages. You should encourage your users to add your app by linking to it on Web or invoking it on mobile.

To help you set up app sections, we’ve added a new “collections” tab. After you create collections, you will need to submit them for review so we can ensure that they meet our quality guidelines.

We are making it simpler to get started with open graph by removing the need to configure common actions. They now automatically appear in the “review status” section after you publish an action. For developers that can’t use the common actions, we’ve created a more intuitive flow for creating custom actions and previewing how stories will look in news feed.

We’ve also made a variety of improvements to our open graph documentation. We’ve revised the content, added more sample code, and now automatically generate the reference docs from source code.

We are beginning to gradually roll out these new features to users and developers Wednesday. As apps become an increasingly important part of people’s identities, we’re excited to create a more organized and consistent way for apps to live on timeline.

Developers: Are you excited about the opportunity for content generated by your apps to secure prominent real estate on users’ timelines?

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Facebook Will Launch Content-Specific News Feeds, Bigger Photos And Ads On Thursday

07 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Facebook

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Facebook, RSS

At a big press event on Thursday, Facebook plans to launch new ways to filter the news feed. These include a Photos feed of Facebook and Instagram photos, as well as a revamped Music feed of what friends are listening to, concerts, and new albums, according to multiple sources both within and close to Facebook. Larger images and image-based ads in the web and mobile feeds are coming too.

Why is Facebook adding new streams? Because we are information junkies. Give us a feed and we’ll read it. But when we scroll so far we hit re-runs – we hit the road. So Facebook has a plan to give us something different to look at starting March 7th. If the “new look” for the news feed that it’s unveiling works, it could get us spending more hours on Facebook and seeing more — and more intense — ads.

Facebook has neglected the news feed, which has functioned largely the same since it launched on the web in 2006, and on iPhone in 2009. A column of friends’ faces on the left, their status updates to the right, and a whole lot of white space. Content-specific feeds have been hard to access, and the “Top News” or “Most Recent” sorting options mostly re-shuffle content rather than surfacing different stories.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a Facebook employee, a member of the social ads industry, and several developers concurred that multiple feeds and larger images in posts by users, Pages, and ads are what’s in store for Thursday.

TechCrunch Facebook News Feeds Mockup

As for what’s not confirmed for this week is the employee-only test build of a radically redesigned mobile feed in a native iOS app that I witnessed a few months ago. One source said that they didn’t think this major mobile redesign is ready yet, contrary to my initial speculation when the launch event was announced. All in due time with that one. If it does launch this week, it could be a standalone app like Camera, or an option in the primary apps.

Before I get to the details about what my sources say is launching, let’s look at some supporting evidence and reasons why these are the right moves for Facebook. If you want the abbreviated version, skip to “So What’s Launching?”

EVIDENCE OF WHAT’S COOKING

BURIED FEEDS

Over the last year, Facebook has been piling up some dedicated, content-specific feeds. But they’re tough to find. Just after its September 2011 developer conference, the company debuted a Music feed, which it’s been slowly adding more content to. At first it was just what friends were listening to in apps like Spotify, but now it includes updates from musician Pages, upcoming albums and nearby concerts, as well as suggestions of music you might like. Few users know about it, though, as access is hidden deep in the Apps section of the sidebar.

Considering how popular link discovery sites like Reddit have become, it’s strange that Facebook doesn’t highlight its links feed anymore. The tough-to-find link lets you see all the websites friends have shared.

Facebook Music FeedIn October 2012, Facebook added a Pages-only feed that only shows updates from Pages you Like. There’s also the recently tested “My Offers”feed and even a forgotten Notes feed.

What all these separate feeds have in common is that they’re buried in the sidebar navigation menu and scattered across categories like Favorites, Pages, and Apps. If Faebook surfaced at least some of them in a more prominent, cohesive way, we’d be a lot more likely to switch to them when we finish reading the main feed.

FEEDS THAT DON’T EXIST BUT SHOULD

When I talked to product manager Josh Williams ahead of the launch of Facebook’s new location-discovery service Nearby, and to CTO Cory Ondrejka at a Facebook reporters event, both said there were interesting things to be done with content-specific feeds. For example, stories shared from third-party Open Graph apps like Instagram, RunKeeper, Foursquare, and Foodspotting could benefit from their own feed designed to show what friends are up to off Facebook and help you find new apps to download.

When Facebook launched the Music feed the day after f8, I suspected “news” and video feeds to launch, but they never did. The lack of a “news” news feed was odd considering Facebook wants to compete with Twitter as a place where people discover…news. The lack of a video feed of what friends had been watching was actually the result of a legal ban. But in December the U.S. government eased restrictions from the Video Privacy Protection Act, paving the way for a feed of Netflix and Hulu activity.

Most surprisingly, there’s no feed of just photos, though there used to be. Now the Photos sidebar bookmark just leads to your own images and albums, which isn’t very helpful. A photo-only feed viewed full-screen or at a much wider width could be a hit. It’s been very successful for Instagram, and Facebook has been doing its best to take cues from its fresh and beloved acquisition.

ZUCK SAID THE FEED WILL GET A RICHER DESIGN

CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself said the news feed needs to evolve to be more vivid. Smartphones and fast connections make it much easier to share media than when the feed first launched. AsBusiness Insider mentioned last week, Zuckerberg said on the Q4 earnings call that:

“As our news feed design evolves to show richer kinds of stories, that opens up new opportunities to offer different kinds of ads as well…One of the product design principles that we’ve always had is we want the organic content to be of the same basic types of formats as paid content, right? So, historically, advertisers want really rich things like big pictures or videos and we haven’t provided those things historically. But, one of the things that we’ve done in the last year is you’ve seen the organic news feed product that consumers use moving towards bigger pictures, richer media and I think you’ll continue to see it go in that direction. And, I think that a lot of the success of products like Instagram is because of that. It’s a very immersive – even on a small screen, just – it’s a wonderful photo product.”

The key word in Zuckerberg’s comment is “immersive.” Facebook’s web and mobile feeds are full of chrome. There are always-visible navigation bars on the top of both web and mobile, as well as sidebars galore on the web. Facebook tried to give the news feed a more real-time feel last year with Ticker, but a lot of people hate it, ignore it, or take advantage of Facebook’s kind option to minimize it.

By taking the navigation chrome, sidebars, and Ticker and trimming them down, hiding them while we browse, or cutting them entirely, Facebook could free up a ton of space. It could use that to expand the width and height of the feed so it could show more stories and bigger images. This would keep us focused on the beautiful content shared by our friends, reduce exhaustion, and keep us scrolling.

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Google Lets You Export Your Blocked Sites From Chrome to Google Account

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google+

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Chrome, Google Analytics

List will apply as long as you’re signed into your Google account. A word of warning from Google…maybe, or maybe Google is just raising the bar for better content. You be the judge.

Google has added a new export feature to its Chrome extension that lets you block sites from your search results. You can export the list from Chrome to your Google account.

This makes a lot of sense, as you should be able to keep these sites blocked from whatever browser or computer you happen to be using.

“By storing your personal blocked sites list with your Google account, Google hides these sites from your search results when you’re signed in,” says Google Search Quality Engineer Ray Zhong.

Block Domains in Google Results

“The sites that you export will be hidden from your searches while you are signed into your account,” Zhong says. “You can unblock or manage the blocked sites at any time in the Search Settings Blocked Sites screen.”

If you use the extension, just click the extension’s logo, select “export” from the screen that shows your personal blacklist, then click “export to Google”. You can then disable the extension if you want.

Of course the Chrome extension already wasn’t the only way users could block sites. There’s a feature right in Google’s results themselves that let you block the site after you’ve visited it.

Google has made it clear that that it takes into account blocked sites in its ranking algorithm.

So, if you’re producing content that is likely to irritate people when they’re searching for something, this may hurt you. The moral of the story is to produce content that doesn’t irritate people.

Still, I’d be interested to know how much these site blocking features are really being used.

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STUDY: One-Third Of Facebook Users’ Friends See Their Posts, On Average.

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Uncategorized

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Analytics, Facebook, Insights, Social Media

This in from one of my favorite Social Media Guru’s and frequent contributor to “AllFacebook” If your into Social Media this is a must read. Do yourself a favor, read the article all the way through.

STUDY: One-Third Of Facebook Users’ Friends See Their Posts, On Average

David Cohen on March 6, 2013 11:36 AM

The reach achieved by posts from Facebook pages has been the hot topic of late, with reporter Nick Bilton of The New York Times helping to bring the issue to the forefront. But how many of Facebook users’friends actually see their posts, on average? About one-third, according to a study by the Facebook Data Science Team and the human-computer interaction group at Stanford University’s computer science department.

The New York Times’ Bits blog reported that an analysis of 220,000 Facebook users’ posts, conducted last June, showed that on average, one-third of Facebook users’ friends saw each post.

The study also found that Facebook users “consistently underestimate” their audience sizes, according to Bits.

The study concluded:

Posting to a social network site is like speaking to an audience from behind a curtain. The audience remains invisible to the user: While the invitation list is known, the final attendance is not. Feedback such as comments and likes is the only glimpse that users get of their audience. That audience varies from day to day: Friends may not log in to the site, may not see the content, or may not reply. While established media producers can estimate their audience through surveys, television ratings, and Web analytics, social network sites typically do not share audience information. This design decision has privacy benefits such as plausible deniability, but it also means that users may not accurately estimate their invisible audience when they post content.

We have demonstrated that users’ perceptions of their audience size in social media do not match reality. By combining survey and log analysis, we quantified the difference between users’ estimated audience and their actual reach. Users underestimate their audience on specific posts by a factor of four, and their audience in general by a factor of three. Half of users want to reach larger audiences, but they are already reaching much larger audiences than they think. Log analysis of updates from 220,000 Facebook users suggests that feedback, friend count, and past audience size are all highly variable predictors of audience size, so it would be difficult for a user to predict their audience size reliably. Put simply, users do not receive enough feedback to be aware of their audience size. However, Facebook users do manage to reach 35 percent of their friends with each post and 61 percent of their friends over the course of a month.

Stanford University Computer Scientist Michael S. Bernstein and Facebook Data Science Team members Eytan Bakshy, Moira Burke, and Brian Karrer worked on the study.

Readers: What is the average percentage of your Facebook friends that you think sees your posts on the social network?

FBDataScienceStanfordChartFBDataScienceStanfordChart2

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Pinterest Now Generates More Referral Traffic Than Twitter: Study

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Pinterest, Twitter

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Pinterest, Referral Trafic, Social Media, Twitter

This is big. A new study by online sharing tool Shareaholic has found that Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than Twitter. Again, when it comes to referral traffic, Pinterest > Twitter. The data is based on analytics from 200,000 publishers which reach approximately 270 million unique visitors a month. Now, it was big news back in February when Pinterest surpassed Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined in referral traffic, but Twitter has made a name for itself as the de facto sharing network with URL shorteners abounding and real-time, concise flow of information. Still, Pinterest closed the gap within the last month going from a .85 percent share of referral traffic visits to 1.05 percent from January to February. The social pinboard site is now trailing behind Facebook and StumbleUpon.

Pinterst Twitter study

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4-best-practices-for-choosing-a-facebook-contest-winner

01 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Facebook

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Best Practices, contests, Facebook, Social Media

Love, love, love those peeps over at ShortStack. Here is yet another reason to love them.

 

All good things must come to an end. However, when a Facebook contest is over, there’s still some work to be done. Job #1: picking a winner! There are some important steps to take to ensure that your selection process meets Facebook guidelines and doesn’t have any of your entrants crying “foul!”

Here are 4 best practices to keep in mind when choosing a Facebook contest winner.

#1: Keep it fair

Before you announce your contest, write some rules and regulations for the promotion. Facebook has a plethora of guidelines you must follow but there is one unwritten rule that we always include in our contest regulations: we tell our users how we will select a winner.

There are a few things that we’ve learned work well:

The more transparent and specific you are with your fans the better. Whether you plan on having a panel of judges, one judge, or a tool that randomly selects a winner, be sure to explain in full detail how a winner will be selected.

  • Include any details that will go into the winner-selection process. For example, if you’re running a photo contest and you plan to judge based on picture relevance, creativity, or lighting, be sure to include these criteria in your rules.
  • Disclose how you will contact the winner and the guidelines that go along with the selection process. When we select contest winners we first notify them by email and then give them between 15-30 days to confirm that they received the email notification. If we don’t receive the confirmation, we move on to the next winner. This is an example of the type of information to include in your rules and regulations.
  • Don’t forget to include that you (the contest sponsor) have the right to change the winner selection at any point in time, just in case you run into any hiccups along the way.

Here is an example of the Winner Selection portion of the rules for a recent contest we ran:

*this is just a sample of our rules and regulations. Please check with local and state laws and a legal counsel before creating your own rules and regulations for Facebook contests.

WINNER SELECTION
All eligible entries received during the Submission Period will be gathered into a database at the end of the Contest Period. A winner will be selected by a panel of judges and will be based on creativity. Sponsors reserve the right to change the winner selection method at its sole discretion.

Announcement that an entrant was selected will be sent to the email address supplied on the contest entry form. Each entrant is responsible for monitoring his or her email account for notification and receipt or other communications related to this contest. The winners will be announced by October 5, 2012 on or about noon PST.

PRIZE:
One ShortStack t-shirt
One ShortStack mug
Variety of ShortStack stickers

Winner will receive the allotted prize within 30 days of notification. An announcement that an entrant will be receiving a prize will be sent to the email address supplied on the potential prize winner’s entry form. Each entrant is responsible for monitoring his or her email account for notification and receipt or other communications related to this contest. If a potential prize winner cannot be reached by Administrator (or Sponsor) within fifteen (15) days using the contact information provided at the time of entry, that potential prize winner shall forfeit the prize. Upon the request of the Sponsor, the potential winner may be required to return an Affidavit of Eligibility, Release and Prize Acceptance Form and IRS W-9 form. If a potential winner fails to comply with these official rules, that potential winner will be disqualified.

Terms and conditions may apply. Incidental expenses and all other costs and expenses which are not specifically listed as part of a prize in these Official Rules and which may be associated with the award, acceptance, receipt and use of all or any portion of the awarded prize are solely the responsibility of the respective prize winner. ALL FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL TAXES ASSOCIATED WITH THE RECEIPT OR USE OF ANY PRIZE IS SOLELY THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE WINNER.

#2: Decide how you will select a winner

When it comes to selecting a winner, you have a few options depending on the type of promotion you’re running. If you’re running a voting contest where the person with the most votes wins, there’s not much you need to do. However, you should be aware that even if the prize isn’t especially valuable, people will try to game the system. To prevent voting fraud, we recommend setting up the contest so that you pull the top five or 10 entries with the most votes and then randomly choose the winner from that smaller pool using a “random winner picker” tool (details below).

Non-vote contests will require you to select a winner yourself and there are a few ways to go about it.

If you’re running a contest that has a long list of judging criteria you will have to sit down with your team and separate the ones that meet the criteria from those that don’t. From there your team can choose a winner, or you can use a random entry picker tool — we have such a tool in our database system to make it easy to select a winner. You can choose between one and 25 winners, filter entries, allow the same entry to be chosen more than once, and give an extra chance to win to those who have shared the contest with their friends. To learn more about ShortStack’s random entry picker tool visit here.

If you’re interested in being transparent about picking a winner, try videotaping your winner selection process. You can see an example here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoLlMTcSvEM.

We thought this was pretty cool, it gives fans a firsthand look at how you select your winner so they know they didn’t get cheated in any way.

#3: Follow Facebook guidelines about informing the winner

Facebook has very specific rules and guidelines about how to announce a winner and you’ll want to be sure to follow the rules. The main thing to remember is that you are not allowed to notify winners through Facebook. This includes using any Facebook feature such as Facebook messages, chat, posts on Timelines or Pages.

You must notify the winners outside of Facebook first and once they have confirmed that they’ve received your notification you can announce on Facebook who won your contest.

We also recommend notifying all of the entrants who didn’t win. A short email to all entrants thanking them for their entries and letting them know someone else has won shows that you’re actually looking at entries and you appreciate your fans engagement with your Facebook Page.

#4: Upgrade your app

Just because a contest is over, doesn’t mean your app should be forgotten. It’s important to remember that a link to that contest is still out and about in the public eye so we always recommend updating your app with a note that lets your fans know that the contest has ended. If appropriate, put in the name of the winner and the contest entry so your fans and other entrants can see who won. Here is an example of a contest we ran awhile back (it has since ended):http://guessjimsmood.pgtb.me/dl5czz.

You can always delete an old contest app, but we recommend updating it and keeping it published for a few weeks after the contest.

Following these best practices will ensure that you don’t have entrants complaining about you choosing a winner unfairly. We’d love to know what has worked — and what hasn’t —  for your contests. Let us know @shortstacklab.

– See more at: http://www.sociallystacked.com/2013/02/4-best-practices-for-choosing-a-facebook-contest-winner/#sthash.v2cTxARr.dpuf

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