Tag: Facebook

When it comes to Social Media think “Quality not Quantity”

Wolverhampton Federation of Tenants Associations

I was at the Wolverhampton Social Media Surgery this week when a patient came for some help, who highlighted to me in a practical way somethings I’ve known and we’ve taught for a long time….

When it comes to Social Media it’s quality over quantity is what you’re looking for and being useful is what matters most.

Lorraine had come for some advice with the Wolverhampton Federation of Tenants Associations (WFTA) facebook page. I’d helped her set it up at a previous surgery  and now she’d come along asking for help getting more “fans”, as at that point the page only had 44 “likes”.

The WFTA promotes the interests of social sector tenants within Wolverhampton and aims to ensure tenants and prospective tenants are able to have a say over services and are able to influence them so they are relevant to their needs. The WFTA facebook page is used to share information about the service the WFTA offers, engage with tenants and to advertise events they have coming up, most recently around welfare reform and regeneration. Lorraine wanted more fans so she could reach a wider audience, for more people to see the content  for the benefit of the community but also as evidence to her boss, and the project funders that their social media was working.

Not only 44

She was fixated on that number 44, “only” 44 people were engaged with her page –  “only” 44 people had clicked like – “only” 44 people are seeing my posts And on she went asking should I pay for advertising?  How can I get MORE people to like the page –  So I suggested that before she rushed out to pay for promoted content (something she had asked about) we look at the insights for her page….

We looked at the the reach of the page and the reach of individual posts. One update alone had reached 358 people. Some had more, some had less but that’s the one we focused on, so lets work that out in percentages, ((358-44)/44)*100= 713.63,  rounded up  that’s a 714% increase in the actual amount of people that were seeing the post  to what she had thought were seeing it as evidenced by the number of people that like her page.

So where were the views coming from – how was she reaching so many people when she only had 44 likes?

The Right Content

Lorraine was being useful to her target audience and so in turn her content was being shared.

She could have only had 244 fans and still ended with a a total reach of 358 or maybe even less for that post if 200 of those people were the WRONG people to be talking to and the content was irrelevant.

Those 44 people were the right people for her to be engaged with. They thought the message she was sharing was useful and they in turn were sharing across to their own profiles and pages ultimately it IS the quality of the engagement that matters more than the number of people you think you’re engaging with.

 

New Facebook Stats for Page Admins

Facebook have rolled out another update to pages. But unlike the last one that I feel may have  hindered engagement this one seems to have been given a little more thought and actually, to page owners, could prove quite useful. It’s to their page insights, the analytics panel available to all admins running pages with over 30 “likes”.

The WV11 page I run has had the new insights made available to us today, and on first appearances I’m like what I’m seeing, It’s obviously geared up to encouraging you to “boost” or promote posts (pay for more people to see them) BUT in saying that it’s not too intrusive. The data it offers you is quite insightful and I can see it being really helpful to brands or organisations trying to maximize their reach – It has really good comparison graphs for trends and long range interactions and individual break down of stats for each post.

Here’s a grab of the currents stats from a photo album we created Saturday of images from the Summer Fun Day – You can click on it to open it large to see what I mean.

Fun Day Stats

Clear and concise figures easy to read at a glance and all still exportable – although I haven’t yet tried to see how clear they are in CSV format – but I’m hoping they can’t be any harder to decipher than with the last insights update!

I need to play more to see what else it has to offer but on first glance it looks good!!

The value of Social Media in neighbourhoods and appealing to communities

Yesterday a sad thing happened; 2 children went missing. It was presumed at the time that they’d gone of their own volition and they were later found well and safe, but none the less it was an awful thing to happen.

This all happened in Darlaston, 5 miles from my house, in Wednesfield and as such when the press release went out appealing for witnesses we posted it to the WV11 site and Facebook page. We were aware that while the children weren’t strictly from the WV11 area our readership expands beyond our borders, and friends,and friends of friends,  would most definitely cross over into Darlaston and the surrounding areas.

We posted the photo from the appeal along with the copied the police release verbatim,  all we added to the post was two words at the end “please share”

And share people did.

Within an hour 565 people had re-posted the news direct from our facebook page and less than 2 hours later that number had jumped to 1984!

It seems to me 2 things had happened to make the numbers jump like that  – every parent that uses our site could empathise with the  situation these parents were in, no one can imagine, or would want to imagine, what it feels like to find your child missing like that, and going on the old adage that “it takes a village to raise a child” everyone wanted to help raise awareness to bring these children home safely.

The other thing that happened was we were there, we were local and we we part of the community and we appealed to them directly with the “please share”!

Darlaston falls under Walsall Council  but it is fairly close to the border with Wolverhampton. Both Councils picked up the police release and shared to their facebook pages, Walsall’s post was shared 20 times, Wolverhampton’s 136.

The local radio station, Free Radio also picked up on it and shared to their page too, Their story was shared 550 times.

Looking at those figures it seems clear that being community based and very local really had an impact on the way the community interacted with the appeal.

The important thing here of course is that the children were found and returned home safe and well,  but as an observation it is interesting how much being part of a community can make a difference

 

 

Why do people attend Social Media Surgeries?

Yesterdays Social media Surgery in Low Hill, Wolverhampton was attended by Jerome Turner, research fellow on the Creative Citizens research team at Birmingham City University. It was Jez’s first time at a surgery and he’d come with lots of questions for his research about why people chose to come along to either give or receive help.

Jez recorded some of the answers and shared them with us via  audioboo and you can listen to these below .

Patient Pat Fullwood came along for assistance setting up a Facebook page for her Neighbourhood Watch group and for support on a page she’d previously set up for the Long Knowle Community Association.

Jaswinder Singh Chagger (aka Handsome) came to look at how he could use Facebook and Twitter to connect with organisations across the city of Wolverhampton.

James Clarke from WV11.co.uk came along as a surgeon again and he said the thing that makes him keep coming back is being able to share his knowledge with others “opening their eyes to a whole new world”