Facebook Changes...Again.

Facebook made some changes yesterday to the way pages work. They introduced "community pages" and changed some terms that you might need to change on your website as well. If your website says, "Become a Fan on Facebook" you might see how things go over the next couple of weeks and be prepared to change it to a term that matches facebook's nomenclature. You can see below that they have changed it to "like" instead.

Here is the faq section from facebook's home page on these two topics.
You can see the entire Help Center on Facebook Pages if the following doesn't provide your answer.

Community Pages
What are Community Pages?
Community Pages are a new type of Page that enable you to see what peo...
Community Pages are a new type of Page that enable you to see what people are saying about the things that matter to you, and discover the friends and people who share these connections with you. They are similar to any other Page to which you can connect, although they won’t generate stories in your News Feed, and won’t be maintained by a single author. Where available, they also show Wikipedia content for the relevant topic, which Facebook has licensed under the creative commons license.

We think your experience on Facebook will improve as your profile is turned into a living map of all the connections that matter to you, instead of a static list of your interests.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17110
How are Community Pages different from official Pages or Facebook Groups?
Community Pages are built around topics, causes or experiences. Offici...
Community Pages are built around topics, causes or experiences. Official Pages are maintained by authorized representatives of a business, brand, celebrity, or organization, and they can create and share content about the entities that they represent. Community Pages, on the other hand, won’t generate stories in your News Feed, and won’t be maintained by a single author.

While Groups allow you to communicate directly with other people on Facebook about a specific subject, Community Pages simply enable you to learn more about and see what others are saying about additional topics that interest you.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17111
Can I edit the content on a Community Page?
No. When available, we update the information and profile picture base...
No. When available, we update the information and profile picture based on the article for that topic in Wikipedia. At this time, there is no way for people who choose to connect with a Community Page to add their own pictures or edit the information.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17112
How can I tell the difference between official Pages and Community Pages?
Community Pages have slightly different content than official Pages. W...
Community Pages have slightly different content than official Pages. When available, they display a primary picture straight from the Wikipedia page of that topic, along with an info section also from Wikipedia. Related posts from other people on Facebook will also be displayed in real time.

However, since Community Pages are another type of Page, we don't differentiate between them when listed on your profile or in search results.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17113
What if there isn’t a Wikipedia article for a Community Page topic?
Community Pages are meant to be the best collection of shared knowledg...
Community Pages are meant to be the best collection of shared knowledge on topics that interest you. Where available, they show Wikipedia content for the relevant topic, which Facebook has licensed under the creative commons license.

If we can’t find the right article from Wikipedia, we might be asking for help from the community. You may see messaging on these Community Pages inviting you to make these Pages more useful and interesting by signing up to contribute in the future or by suggesting a Wikipedia article.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17138
"Liking" a Page
Why did "Become a Fan" change to "Like"?
To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we...
To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we've changed the language for Pages from "Fan" to "Like." We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17167
What does it mean to "Like" a Page?
When you click "Like" on a Page, you are making a connection to that P...
When you click "Like" on a Page, you are making a connection to that Page. The Page will be displayed in your profile, and in turn, you will be displayed on the Page as a person who likes that Page. The Page will also be able to post content into your News Feed.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17115
Can I still "Like" a News Feed story about my friends Liking Pages?
No. When you see a Feed story about a friend Liking a Page, there will...
No. When you see a Feed story about a friend Liking a Page, there will be no feedback links below that story. However, if you hover over the Page name, you will see a small preview of the Page and the number of other people who have also Liked that Page. You can then Like that Page to add it to your profile, or you can click through to the Page itself.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17116
Is there a difference between "Liking" an item a friend posts and "Liking" a Page?
Yes. Liking a Page means you are connecting to that Page. When you con...
Yes. Liking a Page means you are connecting to that Page. When you connect to a Page, it will appear in your profile and you will appear on the Page as a person who likes that Page. The Page will also be able to post content into your News Feed.

On the other hand, when you click "Like" on a piece of content that a friend posts, you are simply letting your friend know that you like it without leaving a comment.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17168

Social Media Strategic Planning

My previous post on Social Media Strategic Planning received a few off and online requests for the use of the tactical matrix.

For your convenience, I uploaded the matrix, in this presentation form, to slideshare. You can download the presentation from there and feel free to re-use and re-purpose it. I'd love to know how you might adapt it and use it in a way that fits your purposes, so please keep me informed.

The Most Practical Social Media Presentation You'll Find For Free!

View more presentations from mikeyames.

I found inspiration in the ongoing work of Beth Kanter, the consistent use of matrix grids by Jeremiah Owyang, and a conversation with my friend, Lance Bauslaugh.

Facebook Horribly Messes with Non Profits Use of Their Site.

This is an excellent post you will find on the NonProfit Tech 2.0 Blog.

I encourage you to keep an eye on the results of this test throughout next week. This could be a real disappointment for nonprofits, even those that have employed an excellent engagement strategy might find themselves severely limited in their ability to engage or communicate.

An Experiment with Facebook Advertising for Nonprofit Organizations
2010 February 9
tags: Facebook, ROI (Return on Investment)
by nonprofitorgs

The Facebook of February 2010 is quite different from the Facebook of 2009 especially when it comes to Facebook Fan Pages. If you haven’t yet noticed, three very important changes have been made that significantly effect your organization’s Facebook community:

1) Status Updates are no longer guaranteed to get exposure in the News Feed.

There is a mysterious Facebook algorithm at play here and I just don’t know what it is, but I do know that with the launch of new Facebook design in early February 2010 the vast majority of Status Updates from Pages that I am a fan of are not showing up in the primary News Feed > Top News. More are seemingly showing up in the News Feed > Most Recent view, but definitely not all. I knew this change was coming and I had read that Status Updates that receive a lot of comments and thumbs up would at the very least show up in the News Feed > Most Recent, but that’s just not happening. I have always believed and voiced that 90% of the power of a Facebook Page is in the Status Updates, so having them not show up in News Feeds is a problem.

2) It is no longer obvious that fans have new Updates.

I can’t remember exactly when this change was made, but it was at least 6 months ago. When fans logged into Facebook in the upper right of their “Home” view they used to see alerts of “New Updates!”. Now the only way fans know if they have new Updates is if they go to their Inbox > Updates or if they click “Messages” on the left of the Home view (the later was just added February 2010). Coincidently, once this change was made, activity on the Nonprofit Organizations Facebook Page declined. I no longer saw surges in traffic (via Insights) on days that I sent Updates.

As of February 2 Updates had been relegated the realm of “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”. On that day I polled fans asking if they read Updates anymore, and the overwhelming response was no. BUT now that Facebook has added the “Messages” function in the upper left of the Home view, perhaps the usefulness of Updates with rise again? I’ll send an Update next week and let you know. :)

3) The Pages Filter on the Home view has been removed and replaced with Ads and Pages.

The new Facebook of February 2010 no longer has a “Pages” filter in the upper left of the Home view. It used to be a feed of Status Updates from Pages you were a fan of. It’s gone. Now if you click “More” just below this space a new “Ads and Pages” hub appears. You do not see Status Updates, but rather the Ads and Pages you are an admin for. Useful for Nonprofit Admins who manage many Pages and people who buy and manage Facebook ads, but there’s no way around it… less exposure of Status Updates on the Home view is just not good for most nonprofits.

Thus, a $50 experiment with Facebook Advertsing for Nonprofit Organizations.

Facebook is entering an era of profitability. They have built the largest online community the world has ever known over the last 5 years and now they are positioned to make some serious cash. You can’t blame them for it. It couldn’t be free forever. That’s business. But nonprofits have sent out millions of e-mails and Tweets over the last few years asking supporters to “Become a fan!” thus helping Facebook become the powerhouse that it is today. So, there is a reciprocal relationship here, or at least there should be (I think).

I have read rumors that purchasing advertising will help your nonprofit get more action in the News Feeds. That seems fair. I am willing to pay $50 or $100 in advertising to get increased exposure in the feeds, but not necessarily to secure more fans. If those new fans can’t see my Status Updates, well then quite honestly, what’s the point?
So, I have just purchased a Facebook Ad to promote the Nonprofit Organizations Facebook Page that is to run Monday, February 15th through Friday, February 19th. Together, we will watch to see if it increases my fan base and/or Status Update activity in the News Feeds. Below you can see the steps I took to create and pay for an ad:

1) Step 1 :: Design Your Ad

Step 2 :: Target Your Ad


My ad will target people:

* who live in the United States
* between the ages of 30 and 40 inclusive
* who graduated from college
* who are single, in a relationship, engaged or married
* who speak English (US)

Facebook let me know there are 6,892,600 people that fit that description.

Step 3 :: Campaigns and Pricing

I chose to max my ad at $10 a day. For that price I could get up 17 clicks a day, or 36,000 impressions a day. The later sounded much more impressive so I went with Pay for Impressions. The ad will run for 5 days maxing at $50 starting next Monday, February 15.

Step 4 :: Review and Pay for Ad

Step 5 :: Ads and Pages Admin

As mentioned above, there is a new “Ads and Pages” option on the left side of your Home view under “More.” When the ad goes live next Monday I’ll start seeing some activity and be sure to share screenshots with you the following week. But again, this experiment is not about how many new fans an ad can generate for the Nonprofit Organizations Facebook Page, but rather if it helps the Status Updates of the NPO Page get more News Feed action. I hope so!

Little Funny

Found by way of my friend, Jeremy Gregg, over at FundVisor.

Frost/Nixon Review

I wouldn't normally care to write a review of any movie, but an interesting thing has been happening to me since I started to both blog and microblog. I have a strong compulsion to share and review and rank just about every new or unique experience I find myself in.

My wife went out with her friends. I just put the kids to bed. I had two movie options from a free month of Blockbuster's answer to NetFlix. I checked in on twitter and facebook real quick and posed a quick question and asked for my friends to decide which movie. I got 8 responses on twitter and 7 on facebook. Frost/Nixon won with the immediate responses. Andy Stuart, Matthew Slay, and Jason Mitchell came in with late votes for Milk, making the overall race much closer. But the responding crowd had spoken! Joshua Quiring asked for a review so I am compelled to oblige as thanks for his part in the conversation.

Frost/Nixon was great.
Moving, emotional, full of soul and questions, human.
Great piece of casting, especially in the role of Nixon. Frank Langella made me forget that I wasn't watching Nixon himself.

I was born the same year Nixon resigned, so I don't have any personal recollection of watergate, the impending impeachment, or the press coverage following the resignation. This one one of those portrayals that makes you want to go read some history about the subject matter. Here is the youtube clip you want to see after watching the movie.

What I love about the story that was portrayed in this film was that Nixon struggled, and hid, and dodged his own soul, and finally found redemption in the truth. What a great theme.
The stuff of many great stories.

Unfortunately, the satisfaction you get as a viewer of this story didn't actually happened that way for Nixon. The text that scrolls the screen at the end of the movie gives you a hint of what the truth was. If Nixon did find personal redemption, he never let that be seen in the public eye. He avoided the general dignitary public appearances of all other expresidents. I wonder if he was as forthcoming in the actual interview, he may have found the kind of redemption he brushed in the movie portrayal.

Either way, the movie is well worth your time.
And for those of you who voted Milk (most of which were friends from San Francisco that I grew up with) I will definitely make time to watch it as well.

Washington Post Rehashes Year-Old Facebook Fundraising News

Facebook Cause app is not getting any love from the Washington Post. The article, dated this morning, makes the same points that have been made for more than a year by social web consultants who know their business. I put together a short slideshow on it myself, just last week, after writing this blog post the previous week.

The Post is quoted...

Trouble is, there is no new information in terms of strategy and understanding the way the medium is working. A little bit of new information came out of the interview.
He said Causes raises almost $40,000 a day across its groups, up from $3,000 a day a year ago. "The biggest successes have been tiny nonprofits who don't have the name recognition of the big guys."

But in the majority of cases, that theory hasn't translated into significant dollars. Fewer than 50 of the 179,000 groups on Causes have raised $10,000, and just two -- the Nature Conservancy and Students for a Free Tibet -- have cracked the $100,000 mark.

This is great information, however, there is some buzz around the stats not being completely acurate. I would love to know if there is a public report out there that gives us access to the raw numbers related to this topic. It sounds like Allison Fine might have something for us later in the day. Either way, at the end of the day, those numbers are nothing new.

UPDATE...
Allison Fine put together a great response on her blog. here's an excerpt that will make you want to go read the rest...

There are around 250 thousand causes on the Causes platform. A cause does not have to be associated with a specific nonprofit, and most of these, over 200,00 aren’t. That leaves about 46,000 nonprofits that are connected to a cause. But, of these only 8,000 are using Network for Good, meaning they’ve created an official profile, can use their npo dashboard, and can raise money. Therefore in trying to determine the average size of donations, it is more accurate to use the 8,000 active fundraising efforts for nonprofits rather than the 176,000 used in the Post article. When the universe of causes that includes the Green on Sundays groups is included in the overall cause number, divided by the total amount of dollars given resulting in an itty bitty average gift. This is enormously skewed by the number of inactive causes on FB or the number of causes who never intended to raise money using Causes. So, according to Network for Good’s data, 8,000 causes have actively raised money using Causes for a total of $7.5 million — or an average total of donations to each cause of over $930.

Comments coming out of twitter around this discussion include...

@tactphil...maybe fundraising isn't the point?
@SMacLaughlin...Facebook Causes isn't raising a lot. Really? Duh. Social networking is friend raising not fundraising.
@weinrichc...My $.02: this enhances not replaces other efforts
@iChrisJones...Facebook app does not replace hard work, direct mail., etc... in fundraising(washpost)
@kanter...they just rehashed all the stuff that was written about this last year
@Afine...I'll be using the N4G stats in my blog piece and you'll be able to see them there.
@jeffshuck...(in response to facebook being best used for awareness building)Yes! Agree on both points! My main contention is that too often "awareness" is used after the fact to justify poor fundraising.

The point is, fundraising is hard work. Every aspect of the development cycle is hard work. Technology can build in some efficiencies, but beware building in too many. Automating your communication and solicitation strategy, and giving it over to the cause app (or any automated application)is counter productive to your cultivation and affinity building. In the case of facebook causes, it just comes across (and is ignored)like spam.

Facebook Fundraising Tips...the visual version

A couple of posts back I posted some tips and best practices for facebook fundraising. I figure that part of the population would prefer a visual presentation of that information. This slideshare is the result. Feel free to download, remix and use in whatever way it might benefit you.

How facebook is both horrible and ninja for fundraising

View more presentations from mikeyames.

Does anyone know the standards that facebook operates by to suspend or expel a user's profile?

Comprehensive Facebook Fundraising Tips Almost Anyone Can Do

I conducted a little experiment last October that was combined with a passion and fund raising cause that I was challenged with. I obviously set the goals on my experiment too low, as you will read.

Community Hunger Day is a yearly event, started by Central Dallas Ministries to raise awareness about the hunger problem in Dallas and raise funds for their food pantry. On a day in October, each year, CDM challenges people to go without food for a day and donate the money they would have spent on food to their food pantry. CDM, in coordination with several partnering food programs, can feed a family of four, for an entire week, for $28.

CDM, three weeks prior to Community Hunger Day, sent me an invitation to become a fundraiser for this day. I said, "yes," and pledged a goal of $1000 dollars. The experiment part came in when I decided I was going to focus my efforts using only the profile page that I set up on the Community Hunger Day website and facebook. No email channel, no face to face asks, no telephone calls...just facebook and a link to a secure, online donation page. I wish I could should you the microsite and profile page I set up for myself on the site, but the site is under construction and redesign in anticipation for the 2009 day in October

Here is the appeal I crafted.


If you are a professional fundraiser, try these numbers on for size.

List size - 334
Historic Open rate - unknown
Average Donor Profile - Nondonor
Gift rate - 19.5%
Total Gifts - 65
Total Donations - $1850
Average Gift - $28.46 (right at the requested appeal)

Here's the thing, Non Profit officer, what if you could get 100 of me to do the following simple things. That's nothing to sneeze at. That best way for you to leverage facebook could be to AVOID THE CAUSE APP! If you are active on facebook, you know how many causes and invitations you ignore on a weekly basis. It has become spammy. By the way, you, non profit, cannot leverage facebook. You may only leverage the relationships you have, that is (almost) all that matters in the world of social media.

The following things I did while avoiding the spam channels that most facebook users ignore.

1. Create a video appeal that addresses your facebook network specifically. Use the voice that your facebook friends know. Don't "put on" a fundraiser voice. Be yourself, that's who people will give to.

2. Group your list of friends into groups that facebook calls "friend lists." This might take you a little while, but it will help you manage your follow up much better. So do it prior to uploading your video message. If you have over 300 friends, it might feel difficult to sort through the list.
- Export your friend list with this handy app so you can use excel easily group them into commonalities
- group them into friend lists where those friends know each other. When comments start to spread about your asset, it is easier for community to be built in that comment thread when the commenters already know each other.
- friend lists can only contain 20 people, so you might be titling these lists things like "workfriends1", "workfriends2", "collegebuds1", "randomfacebookies1", "highschool1", etc.
- it is OK to leave some space to grow in each friend group, but keep track in your CSV export who is in what group. Facebook doesn't help you manage your group size at all.

3. Upload your video multiple times. You are able to tag as many as 50 of your friends in each video. You can't tag a video asset with a friend list (that would be great!) but you do want to follow the pattern that you set when you established your friend lists and group the 50 that you tag in any video with the same groups of people who know each other. Tagging your friends in the video not only causes the video to appear in their own notifications, but also sends it to the feeds of all their friends.

4. Place a link to your giving page in both the description of the video and in the first comment under the video. The URL in the comment will be hyperlinked text. The URL in the description will not be hyperlinked text, unfortunately. This is an important part of the donor funnel. If your non profit you are raising money for doesn't have a precise giving form or donor destination, consider opening yourself up a chipin widget or something like it. Community Hunger Day had a very slick, custom sponsorship microsite that was built for them by Pursuant.

5. Cultivate others comments by replying to and engaging with each comment.

6. Do a daily, stewardship, thank you and update. Here is what ours looked like.

These thank you videos should be tagged with the donors names. I had one friend who told me that he gave just so he could hear my kids say his name.

7. Half way through your campaign, and just before the end of your campaign, craft messages (video or note) that gives an update of progress. These updates should be created, uploaded and then "shared" with your friends. You don't need to upload multiple updates as you did with your initial video. Instead, you can send the one asset out using this share button several times. You friends lists show up as you begin typing them into the sent line of the share function. Facebook currently has a limit of sharing an asset with 25 friends at a time. This asset will show up in your friends inboxes instead of their notifications.

8. If you are an active facebook user, I am confident that these tips will help you reach your fundraising goals. If you are a passive facebook user I would recommend you spend three months commenting on friends photos, commenting on friends videos, uploading your own quality photos and videos, involving yourself in conversation around your friends notes and status updates. Without effectively developed relationships on the site, it will not be a quality channel for you to make a solicitation. If you are a non user of facebook...that is a discussion for another post.

Disclaimer -- Having used this precise method several times, I have never run into facebook suspending my account. I know of others who have deviated from this distribution plan and have been temporarily suspended. I don't know what triggers a suspension. Anyone who does know the current, specific triggers for suspension, I'd love to know.

Social Media Schematic or How I Use Ping.fm

When I first jumped into the exploration of ping.fm I thought that it had one application for me. I had just figured out how to use twitter as a hub, and now ping was trying to throw off my groove. I quickly concluded in a previous review, that the only reason I might use ping is if I wanted to get a quick webcam video out to my networks. Seesmic works with ping in that way in a very easy flow.

Then I added the synergy of twitter feed and my opinion has drastically changed. With these two tools working together, Ping works as a hub that I don't have to visit. It works as a background resyndicator of my content. Here's how I use the tools to sync together...
If you are going to try this out, and you don't already have profiles on some of these services, I would recommend starting with getting yourself an openID. An openID will be something that twitterfeed asks and directs you to early on in the sign up process. So, while you are at twitterfeed, you will choose to pull/push your twitter and your blog feeds. The rest of your profiles will be tied in when you open up your ping.fm account.

If you are just going to simply test this work flow, and you don't have any existing accounts, start by opening a quick email account with gmail. Don't use your productivity email account to simply test these services out. You don't want to accidentally take a potentially usable user name off the table just because you are playing around with the technology.

ALSO - THIS IS NOT A STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATION!
There can be all kinds of reasons not to follow this schematic. Most of those reasons have to do with a series of strategic questions you should ask yourself about why you are participating in these spaces to begin with. Your strategy should inform your schematic.

And, by the way, feel free to use the image however you want. I haven't dug deep into Beth Kanter's advice about the Creative Commons License yet, so the image isn't labeled properly, but feel free to take and use. I hope you can show me your own schematic work flow.

Ping.fm review revision - Got a pencil?

I think I need to draw a diagram for myself, but I think I found a way to use Ping.fm for more than just seesmic.com.

The schematic includes twitterfeed pushing my blogger posts to both twitter and to ping. In turn, facebook brings it in from twitter with the status update and a link. The feed to ping pushes it out to all my other spots, and you never have to use ping except for the setup.

I need to draw a diagram.

My Attempt to inspire Fundraising on Facebook

Well, I should relay the story of last October's facebook fund raising escapade at some point. This is my way of saying thank you to my donors and trying to inspire more generosity from their own passion for justice.

Facebook and Fundraising

I have mentioned I work for a technology company. It is actually an agency that assists nonprofit organizations in their online communication and fund raising efforts. So about a year ago, the hermit stuck his foot out of his shell and dipped his big toe in to the wide, facebook ocean.

The abuse your psyche takes while adopting facebook behavior is subject matter for another post. I just want to mention one of the transitional states that happened for me, and what propelled me into an advocate for the tool.

I joined facebook about a week before the video application was added. As soon as I saw that you could send private and public video messages to your friends walls and inboxes, facebook felt much better to me. I can't tell you the number of facebook friends who were so excited to get video messages. Especially in those early days, it was the only thing that kept me using the tool.

Then I was asked to pledge a dollar amount for this non profit group that I really cared about. In the process of figuring out how I would meet my pledge, I decided to use my facebook network. At the time I sent out this video, I had about 330 "facebook friends."



I reached my stated pledge goal within four days. By the time the day of the event came, we had raised 180% of my pledge, just using facebook.

There are dozens of little observations that can be made and applied to fund raising strategies that I could share with you from that little experience. However, at the end of the day, I really just applied sound fund raising principles and applied them to the facebook distribution channel.
I owned facebook on this one.
I honestly was able to do this without facebook owning me.

So the hermit comes late to the party, flirts with technology from a distance, and then is able to use the tool (without my facebook friends being used I didn't get punched in the throat one time!) and not be owned by the technology.