Category Archives: facebook

A huge development just happened in the world of Facebook. The launch of Facebook Creator is a pretty big deal for Livestreamers on the platform and we were able to download the app, set it up and go live with a bevy of new features yesterday in no time! Here is the actual broadcast:

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Thoughts & Tips on Facebook Creator

Let me take a second here to point out a couple of things and dissect our approach just on this first test of the new features in a screenshot graphic and then we’ll discuss further:

You can see in the broadcast we were able to bring Jenny Q right onto the screen (with a simple click of her comment)! There’s even a little video icon within the comments of your viewers while you’re live that lets you know who is available to join.

Now I’m not going to go into a bunch of detail about how to set this up on Facebook – instead I’m going to direct you to the link that walked me through it on Social Media Examiner written by Peg Fitzpatrick. As a side note it was Ai Addyson-Zhang‘s tweet of the article that led me to it by a simple #FacebookCreator hashtag search.

Meanwhile here’s a tip – you don’t have to purchase Canva For Work (as mentioned in the article) in order to get a transparent overlay on your screen. You can create a basic graphic in the free version of Canva and then select for it to be transparent right in the Creator app and it will convert it for you. Canva For Work might give you a little more control over this but you can get around it if you’re starting out.

Having the graphics on your screen is nice – similar to what I used to do with OBS for Periscope broadcasts for certain shows. Now granted they aren’t as flexible – you can’t change them up on the fly during a broadcast, but they are cool to have there as I outlined in the graphic above. The option to add prerecorded bumpers (prerecorded video intros like your favorite TV shows for example) at the beginning and end of the live broadcast is really nice too. We haven’t done this yet but you can bet I’m looking for ways to use all of these tools to create new content for us on Facebook as well as for my social media clients. For those of you who tune in to our Periscope broadcasts don’t worry, there are NO plans to move the Doug & Ally Morning Show to Facebook! If you’re curious here is an article I wrote earlier this year that compares and contrasts the two platforms which is still pretty on point – there have been a few changes since then obviously, but the basics remain the same.

A Couple of SEO thoughts…

I’m no expert when it comes to SEO but I have a basic working understanding of it. By using plugins like Yoast here for WordPress I’ve been able to properly place my content on the Internet so that it ranks well in search results on Google in our home base of West Bloomfield for example. Now, some might say one of the flaws in our SEO strategy is that we cast too wide a net which doesn’t allow us to dominate a niche and the people we snag aren’t as targeted as they could be. We are a high end / low volume photography studio. It’s just me and Ally and we put a ton of effort, heart and soul into every client and every portrait session. We bring a ton of experience and expertise to the table. We aren’t for everybody – we aren’t a cheap studio, don’t want to be, and yet we rank for plenty of general searches such as “West Bloomfield Photographer” which doesn’t discriminate between different tastes or budgets.

So what’s the answer? As I said I’m not an expert and I’m not ready to cast a smaller more targeted net on the web for “higher end” clients only – I’m not even sure there’s a way to do that – to only get ranked for clients who want the “best experience”… I think I’m good with how we present and differentiate ourselves online with social media and our owned online assets. I say for SEO just make sure you’re found first and foremost as a general rule and then make sure people can tell that you are a quality outfit when they find you. In the meantime though here’s my advice if your net is a little on the wide side:

I had someone call asking about pricing for a portrait session the other day. I talked him briefly through the process and the pricing and we were way out of the budget he was looking for – he wanted something really simple. Instead of turning my nose up at him I helped him through his options and what the differences are, and ultimately referred him to Focal Point in Farmington. They are a higher volume studio than us with a large staff and more basic options available. It won’t be the same experience as working with us but this guy wasn’t looking for the “best” – he was just looking for something “good” and economical. Nothing wrong with that. Focal Point been good to work with for us with seniors for class composites, they are a local family owned studio, and I still helped this gentleman – I’m comfortable sending him there because they are a professional outfit. The ease of entry has allowed too many non-professionals into this industry so I want to support actual studios. You uplift your profession, you play nicely in the sandbox and if you are in the business of helping people then do it wherever you can whether someone becomes your client or not. It’s good karma.

What are your thoughts on these topics? Are you using Facebook Creator yet? Have a good SEO take? Let me know!

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Frameable Faces Photography

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Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!

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Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com

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Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see! Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?

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Is Organic Reach Dead On Facebook? Is This A Legit Question?

November 17, 2017

by Doug Cohen

No Comments

Is organic reach dead on Facebook? Do you have to spend advertising dollars to reach anyone on Facebook now? I hear people say this more and more…. As I’ve written here before I participate weekly in a live Twitter chat and broadcast on Periscope called #LetsLivestream. It’s always a good discussion with many great guests and nice production value hosted by Jonathan Tripp, and once in a while a topic or a take in the conversation gets me thinking about a blog post. This week the topic was promotion of your live streams – best practices for promoting, various tools etc. Question 4 is the one that got me going:

Here was my answer:

A bit of a contrarian view perhaps (Wait – MOI? A contrarian view?), and even though I referenced Periscope in my tweet (keep in mind the livestream takes place ON Periscope), I continued on to include Facebook Live in my point in the chat. At that point my esteemed friend Jenn Nelson of @JennsLIVE & @WineAntics who helps produce the show chimed in with the comment “ORGANIC REACH IS DEAD ON FACEBOOK!!!” And then this happened:

This was going nowhere. We agreed to continue the discussion offline after the show which we did.

So Is Organic Reach Indeed Dead On Facebook?

I sent her these screen shots of recent analytics for our Facebook page with the organic reach numbers – these represent all the posts we made on the Frameable Faces page from 10/3/17 to 11/14/17:

Note that as of this writing we have a TOTAL of 1792 followers of our page. You too can be a follower! Give us a “Like”!!! Okay sorry that was very shameless and spammy. I digress. But the point is you’ll note in the numbers above that virtually ALL of our reach has been non-paid. There is one sliver of darker orange that represents a bit of boosted / paid reach when we spent a couple dollars to get one post going a little. In this snapshot of time the reach on our posts range anywhere from 188 at the lowest to 2.6k at the highest and roughly half of these were Livestreams. The livestreams didn’t have the peaks and valleys that the other posts did, generally ranging between a more consistent 500-1000. Meanwhile, YES – we still get plenty of organic reach and a handful of posts still go beyond the followers of our page without paying on Facebook!

Is This Even A Legit Question?

Now here is where the debate gets interesting. Jenn’s point which is shared by many is that Facebook doesn’t just automatically dole out free reach for your business page anymore. And she’s right to a point. Little by little Facebook has pulled back on how much they’ll push your content out to your followers, and many feel like it’s become closer and closer to a full on pay-to-play model to get any reach. Each time the announcement / rumor comes out that they’ve tweaked the algorithm again my response is the very same every time: Crappy content continues to get less organic reach on #Facebook. Good content still gets plenty. frameablefaces.com/2017-11-16-organic-reach-dead-facebook/ Click To Tweet

So my question is what IS organic reach? See the following conversation between Jenn and me:

How great is Jenn? Give her a like / follow! But here’s the question (to her point), a typical post of hers might only reach 40 people on Facebook on its own. That’s what Facebook is just handing her out of the gate. I would still argue that that is still not purely an automatic just because she posted – those 40 people on some level have to be 1) followers that have 2) likely shown some affinity towards her page through their Facebook behavior. Now once someone shares it it may bump right up to 200 and so on. Isn’t that STILL “organic”? In other words, good content that compels people to share will still gain reach organically. If that’s not still considered organic then what’s the point of even talking about “organic reach”? As I said to Jenn what’s the point of even creating content in the first place if no one is going to share it? If a post falls in the Facebook Forest and no one sees it did it really happen? Shares, likes, comments – engagement – is part of the deal with organic. That’s the reason we do this in the first place.

Which brings us back to the same old tried and true principle of Facebook and ALL social media in general. Make sure you are entertaining, teaching, engaging – providing value with good content and you will still get that organic reach!!!! I created this meme a while back as kind of my favorite quote for small businesses – kind of my little calling card…. follow this and yes – there is still organic reach to be had everywhere on social media. Even on Facebook.

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Frameable Faces Photography

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Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!

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Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com

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Facebook: http://facebook.com/frameablefaces

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Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see! Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?

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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!

Why Local Brands Should Be Killing It On Facebook Live – Periscope not so much…

May 25, 2017

by Doug Cohen

4 Comments

Recently I wrote an article here on the blog comparing and contrasting live streaming platforms to help people make some informed choices on which platform to consider between Facebook Live and Periscope for different types of strategies. It’s a solid piece if I do say so myself and I enlisted 4 people in the social media / entrepreneurial game I respect to include their take. That article is still on point and relevant, but this is basically a part 2 digging into a main advantage Facebook Live has for local brands.

I’m seeing more and more jarring evidence lately that points to Facebook Live as the best opportunity for small businesses and especially brick and mortars that operate mostly on a local level like us. Now to be clear, here at Frameable Faces we are NOT planning on “switching” to Facebook Live from Periscope overall. Periscope is still our first love for live streaming and our favorite especially for our Doug & Ally Morning Show that we start most of our days with. We don’t have plans to change that. But something happened this past Saturday that cannot be ignored as an obvious example of why Facebook Live is starting to pull ahead for our strategy as a photography studio as opposed to morning show hosts.

We broadcasted parts of an amazing photo session with twin babies…

Saturday we did a photo session here in the studio for twin one month old babies. The article with sneak peeks from that session will be available here on the blog soon. We did a bit of live streaming of the session and it was just cuteness overload! We’ve had plenty of babies in the studio and plenty of twins, but never twin babies! We started with Periscope and we even mentioned to our Periscope community earlier in the morning that we might go live in the afternoon with twin babies.

Periscope Results:

We Periscoped for 13 minutes and 13 seconds. 68 people watched it live. Everyone was genuinely enjoying it. People were commenting. Since the broadcast ended 39 people have watched the replay (7 more since the screen shot below) – most replay views on Periscope happen within 24 hours of a broadcast on the app. This is all fine – it was a fun scope and over 100 people got to enjoy it – nothing wrong with that at all! Here are the analytics provided by Periscope:

One more sidenote – as you can see above the thumbnail (the representative image from the broadcast) is me with a relatively silly face. NOT the amazingly cute twin babies from the broadcast. I have pointed out how important it is to be able to choose a custom thumbnail to the Periscope team but they haven’t made this a priority.

Facebook Live Results:

We then went live on Facebook Live right after the Periscope broadcast for 8 minutes and 29 seconds. There were maybe 5 – 10 people who tuned in to watch live. There weren’t many live comments if any… Granted we don’t broadcast on Facebook Live often or at regular times which can contribute to a small live audience, plus there are delays on the comments and it’s not as fun of an experience on Facebook. BUT….. I tagged Carlos (the dad) in the post who then shared the post and tagged me and his wife Gina in the post (he only tagged me and not Ally and me him and not Gina because he and I did the FB friending exchange) and then I went back and tagged Ally in the post, and then all his friends started to see the post in their feed, and a few of them shared the post, and then more people saw the post, and more and more people liked the post, which Facebook likes, so Facebook showed it to more people, and then a few more of those people shared the post, and so more people saw the post and they liked (and loved, and haha’d, and wow’d) the post and commented on the post and Facebook liked that even more so Facebook showed it to even more people and pretty soon the video had reached 3648 people and 2129 people watched it. Oh and there’s definitely a chance some people watched it because I chose an image of Harrison and Henry surrounded by Ally and their parents to represent the broadcast as you can see below (as opposed to just my face with a weird expression which I didn’t choose).

When a Periscope broadcast ends it just sort of fades into the distance of the feed of ended broadcasts… When a Facebook broadcast ends that’s when it starts to get going if it’s worthy of watching. In the case of Harrison and Henry boy did it get going…. let’s look at a few more stats which Facebook provides in about 200 different ways, sliced and diced – more information than you would know what to do with about the demographics of who watched – age, gender and a lot more. With Periscope you have to use third party apps like Fullscope or Eggdrp (both great by the way) to get any analytics worth a darn.

Now check THIS out. Here’s a visual representation of the viral nature of a really good Facebook Live video that I described in my run on sentence above (which was done purposely for emphasis haha).

This broadcast was the only one in the time frame of this graph. Note how the views climbed on the third and fourth days… the broadcast was on Saturday May 20th, but on Tuesday May 23rd 653 people watched it! You can see it spreading and the buzz growing! But wait there’s more….

Remember the emphasis in the title of this article is on local brands right?

This graphic shows me that 70.3% of the total minutes viewed of this video were viewed in MICHIGAN. Our studio is IN Michigan. This is the core of our target market for studio portraits from a practical standpoint. That’s who we’re reaching on Facebook – lots of potential clients who are friends of Carlos & Gina and friends of friends of Carlos & Gina. We have a physical storefront where we take pictures and it’s in West Bloomfield, MICHIGAN. On Periscope our audiences are 10% from Michigan at best and that’s probably very generous, not that there’s any data anywhere that tells me this conclusively. Now once again – that’s fine – we love our international community and the friends we’ve made around the world on Periscope – that’s part of what’s amazing about Periscope. We’ve traveled to photograph people we’ve met on Periscope which has been amazing and we’re even expanding our photo restoration business to clients on Periscope which isn’t bound by geography.

But if I’m advising a new local brick and mortar store on where to start broadcasting live and build community to get more people showing up at their door and becoming clients, I’m recommending Facebook first. I’m not saying don’t do Periscope per se, but if I’m picking one it’s Facebook. If I’m recommending a platform primarily to see the world, and have an amazing time for entertainment purposes and making new friends from everywhere, I’m still recommending Periscope.

Since we started broadcasting on Facebook (which we made a part of our strategy well after Periscope) we have more people saying “Hey I saw you guys doing one of your live uh…video things – like online! Looks like fun!” And I always would ask “Oh cool! On Periscope?” and they would say “On what?” and then I would say “Oh wait maybe you saw us on Facebook (remembering that yes we go live on Facebook now too)” and then they would say “RIGHT! Yeah I saw you on Facebook!” You know why they say that? Because EVERYONE IS ON FACEBOOK. Some are on Twitter where you can also catch Periscope broadcasts but not nearly as many and fewer still are actually on the Periscope app. When we started broadcasting on Periscope on March 31st, 2015 it wasn’t long before we were sure that within a year or two everyone would be on Periscope because it’s that amazing. Well we still think it’s amazing – we were right about that. But shockingly to us most people walking around on the street – the people we want to walk into our mall and into our store – yeah those people – still don’t know what it is.

These two broadcasts of the twins were done back to back, one right after the other with the same subject. Vastly different results. Results that favor Facebook Live for small local brick and mortar businesses. It’s the most obvious example I have, and while one example doesn’t necessarily prove anything, I can tell you that the conclusions I’m drawing here are not just based on this example alone…

Food for thought. For you live streamers – what do you think? There are more layers to this topic to be sure but I’d love to hear your thoughts…

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Frameable Faces Photography

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Doug Cohen provides social media training and services and can be reached at the following:

Mobile: 248-346-4121

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dougcohen10/

Instagram: https://instagram/dougcohen10/

LinkedIn: https://linkedin/in/dougcohen10/

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Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!

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Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com

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Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/frameablefaces

Facebook: http://facebook.com/frameablefaces

Twitter: https://twitter.com/frameablefaces

YouTube: https://youtube.com/frameablefaces

Instagram: https://instagram.com/frameablefaces

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/frameablefaces

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Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see! Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?

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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!

Comparing Facebook Live to Periscope – Which Is Better For You?

February 4, 2017

by Doug Cohen

2 Comments

As you know social media is my thing. I spend the majority of my time creating content to put out online for our studio and other businesses from time to time. I train people on how to use social media and very often the photography business leads to discussions about branding with our clients who come here for professional headshots to market themselves. So it makes sense for me to write articles on the things I learn about smallbiz marketing and in this case we’ll be tackling our two primary Live Video apps that we use – Facebook Live and Periscope (which is also the platform that is owned by and powers Twitter Live).

If you follow us at all or have been to this blog before you likely know that we are heavy live streamers on Periscope and more recently Facebook Live as well. There are plenty of other Live Streaming platforms (Instagram, YouNow, Twitch, Busker just to name a few) and several popular ones which have already come and gone in the last two years (Meerkat, Blab.IM, and MeVee to name a few). For the purposes of this article I am limiting my thoughts to Periscope and Facebook Live. Just a little bit of comparing and contrasting of the two to help you understand the differences and how you might use them both (or not). Let’s start with the “feel” of each:

The “Feel” of the two platforms and the Live element

Periscope

Part of the reason we just enjoy Periscope more is because we have always found it to be a much more visceral experience. The sense of community is significantly stronger because the comments are flowing in real time. As a viewer when you type a comment in, the broadcaster sees it immediately and you can become a true part of the flow and the conversation. In addition you can tap on someone else’s comment and comment directly to them, so the conversations that happen between all the viewers make it a much more social scene. If you want your broadcasts to be more interactive with a lot of audience participation Periscope has the edge. Besides, Periscope is a Live Video platform and community…..and nothing else. The people who find you there are generally looking to interact with a live broadcaster. That’s the only reason they go to that app because that’s all that’s there. You can tap the screen to give “hearts” that float up the side of the screen and they accumulate. It’s like a colorful fun applause! Periscope is very much “for the moment”.

Facebook Live

Facebook Live is not as enjoyable as Periscope for us, but what it lacks in feel it makes up in effectiveness in other ways (more on that in a bit). Meanwhile most of what Periscope is Facebook Live is not. The comments come through in a delay. It can take a while for your broadcast to be seen in the feed among all the other status updates, memes, tired political arguments etc. Heck Facebook even tells you “keep broadcasting – we’re building an audience for you” or something to that effect as if to admit “we know no one is probably here yet but just keep going” hehe… The viewers can tap a “like” button (along with the other emotion buttons) but they float upwards a bit and then awkwardly make a left turn zooming sideways and they don’t accumulate. They are actually more distracting then fun. As a viewer you can’t comment directly to another viewer – you can “like” a comment or just use the person’s name you’re talking to and comment to them assuming they’ll see it, but it’s just not the same. You end up a little closer to “watching mode” than in “active participation mode” in my opinion. Now as a broadcaster if you would rather have the space to talk and present without the distraction of comments or expectation of the audience of you responding to all of their comments in real time than this could be a better platform for you. Sometimes when I want to show our clients and potential portrait clients examples of what we’re doing I’ll broadcast here. The video becomes a little bit more of a distilled version of our services without the shenanigans – more “professional” if you will. If Periscope is “for the moment”, then Facebook Live is “for the news feed”.

Reach

Periscope

For us Periscope has a broader reach globally. We’ve grown our community way faster than we ever have on Facebook and our viewers come from all over the globe. New people we don’t know pop into our broadcasts from various countries every time we go live, and that just does not happen on Facebook. The audiences started to grow pretty fast on Periscope and we have over 21,000 followers on Periscope which is way more than any other social media platform for us by far. We gained over half of those from making the “trending list” on the app, but even without that we grew more followers organically than anywhere else in the span of less than two years. By comparison we have only 1652 followers on our FB business page. Our Periscope broadcasts tend to average between 500-2500 viewers live and then usually another 50-100 who watch the replay, but people only watch the replays usually for just a few hours after the broadcast is over.

Facebook Live

Our Facebook Live viewers tend to be more localized because our following on our business page has been built over several years mainly with our local clients. So the makeup of our audience base is much different. Most of our actual photography clients are not Twitter or Periscope users, but almost all of them are on Facebook. As I mentioned before depending on the nature of your business model your audience may look way different from another business. But here is where Facebook Live starts to reveal some major advantages – you can extend the reach quite a bit after your broadcast is over by tagging people in the video and boosting it in a very targeted way just like any other status update. This is a big advantage for Facebook Live. You can reach however many people you like for as many days as you want if you want to spend a few dollars to boost it – it’s not that pricey for a little boost.

Repurposing and Editing in the App

With either of these apps you can mirror your smartphone with a desktop and record the broadcasts with the comments intact or just save the raw videos to your device, edit them and repurpose them wherever you like. But within the apps themselves being able to edit and extend their life can be a big benefit.

Periscope

You are extremely limited here. You can have a Periscope go out as a tweet and you can then retweet it if you like. You can embed the broadcast from Twitter into a blog post which we do all the time, or you can pin your broadcasted tweet for additional exposure so it’s at the top of your page if people visit your twitter profile, but those are your main options… You cannot choose or change the thumbnail image that will represent your broadcast in the feed, nor can you tag people after the fact.

Facebook Live

To me this is where Facebook Live really shines and why I said earlier that Facebook Live is truly for the newsfeed. Once you’re done with the broadcast you can go back in and re-title the video, tag people who may have appeared in or been mentioned in the video, you can give the video keyword tags for searchability, you can select from 10 random thumbnails Facebook generates or upload your own. These screenshots say it all – all of this is available in post-production right in Facebook. NONE of this is available with Periscope.

That’s the first drop down, and then if you select “Edit Post” you get this…

Notice above that I selected “8/10” or the eighth thumbnail of 10 choices. I picked one of Ally and Angela gazing at baby Aubrey – so cute! With Periscope if the image it gave me was a bad angle of my face (is that possible? haha) I’d be stuck with it and it wouldn’t represent the content at all. So there are tons of options…. and with the overall audience on Facebook and the continued resources Facebook pours into Facebook Live you can’t really ignore it even if Periscope is way more fun. Keep in mind that these are just the basics – you could easily write a book about how to use both platforms.

But don’t just take my word for it. I reached out to 4 different pros who are my peers and friends. We’ve met all of them through live streaming on Periscope. All 4 of them continue to use both platforms consistently so I knew they would be perfect for this article…

What others are saying…

Rachel Moore

Founder of really.social, founder of #LetsLivestream & Letslivestream.live, and #BusinessUnusual & businessunusual.live

“Facebook Live may be touted as the best platform for overall livestreaming, but Periscope is uniquely poised for authentic engagement. If you miss a comment on Periscope, you missed it. Facebook is more asynchronous, allowing users to revisit threads and comment after the video has ended. However, both platforms have quality content in mind as they continue to expand production capabilities for their users.”

*Doug’s note – notice Rachel’s take on the difference in the type of engagement which basically echoes my take about Periscope being “for the moment” and Facebook “for the feed”.

Leslie Nance

Cancer Survivor, host of amazing cooking shows and food blogger at go2kitchens.com, shorty awards nominee 2017

“Periscope is where I gather my followers with my show “Lunch with Leslie”. There is less clutter on Periscope and I have found it easier to build a very authentic following there. I broadcast on schedule, every weekday at noon. After a few visits they want more so I ask them to sign up for my VIP page, g2kvip.com which amounts to a ton of freebies and they get access to a private Facebook group. This is where we continue the conversations after the Periscope show. It’s a powerful community building tool. I do live FB broadcast in the private group that are directed at my fan base and what they want to hear. It is a great way to keep the fly wheel turning. I love Periscope! It’s real time genius in my opinion! Facebook Live is a good tool but it would not be where I would send someone that is new to live broadcasting, UNLESS they had a huge fan base there already.”

*Doug’s note – Leslie refers to Periscope being “real time genius” – for the moment! FB Live is where she is going deeper to continue conversations and conversions with a private FB group. Leslie takes advantage of the ability to broadcast directly to her FB group which I didn’t even get into earlier – that’s a BIG deal (you can create groups on Periscope to broadcast to as well but they are not nearly as effective as a FB group).

John “Chocolate Johnny” Kapos

Small Business owner of Perfection Chocolates in Sydney, Australia, speaker and business advisor at chocolatejohnny.com

“Facebook Live is total business so Perfection Chocolates only does chocolates and sweets there – customers, behind the scenes, products, promos etc. etc. I’ve got a separate Chocolate Johnny FB Live and on that I do more of the fun stuff but not as much. I don’t use it as much. I use Periscope Chocolate Johnny totally for everything, BUT – the big thing is I’ll say to everyone ‘hey guys go to my FB Live at Perfection Chocolates in a half hour and I’m going to be there showing you some products or sales or discounts’ – something like that. So that’s the great thing – when you’ve got 4-5 thousand people watching you can get an extra 10-15 people coming over to a FB Live broadcast”

*Doug’s note – notice this is somewhat in line with my comments above that you can present your services without as much distraction on FB live – it seems to me that’s Johnny’s strategy in the last part of his comment is to bring people from the fun Periscope show over to FB Live where he can present his services and products and some good conversions can happen. He has fun on Periscope but FB is more business. See a pattern here?

Tawanna B Smith

Digital Marketer and speaker – owner of MGT Travel Media and travel blogger and planner – creator of Mom’s Guide To Travel

FB Live and Periscope differ greatly on the engagement side for me, personally. I am still in building mode with FB Live on business page so the viewership and live video interaction is low. If I were to go live on my personal page it’s a completely different experience because I have way more friends than I do fans and the notifications work more in your favor on your personal page than they do on your business page. The benefit of using Facebook Live over Periscope is the ease of repurposing the content, receiving comments even after the live broadcast has ended, the number of third party tools built specifically for Facebook Live, and the advertising angle (advertising before you go on, setting notifications, advertising a live video after it’s done, and soon-to-come mid-roll ads). I’m not sure if Periscope even has any of this stuff on the horizon but I do love the in-app singular purpose of Periscope that evades Facebook which is now trying to be all things (social) to everybody.

*Doug’s note – Tawanna emphasized the advertising angle and the ease of repurposing the content on FB Live, including the fact that viewers can continue to comment after the broadcast is over (another great point in FB’s favor) but once again she goes back to that “in-app singular purpose of Periscope” that FB Live just doesn’t have.

I encourage you all to click on the links and follow these brilliant creators on all the different platforms wherever they are!

So Which is Better? Who wins?

Well I guess it depends right? Who’s the winner between an apple and an orange? I don’t think there is a winner here per se. What are you trying to accomplish? Let that guide you as to which one “wins” for you. As I have mentioned we use both for different reasons and will continue to do so. Please comment with any other tips or creative ways you use the platforms or ask whatever questions you may have, and we’ll see you on Facebook Live and Periscope!

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Frameable Faces Photography

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Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!

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Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com

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Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see! Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?

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When Should You Promote A Facebook Post? Part 2 – Results

February 9, 2013

by Doug Cohen

2 Comments

Last month we wrote a piece about when to promote a facebook post which included a case study, and we mentioned that we would post a follow up with the results.

For starters let’s just say the results were….. successful to a degree but also a little mixed and confusing. We spent $15 and it did seem to reach a lot of people. From that standpoint we feel like we got what we paid for, but there are plenty of discrepancies in the numbers. Sure there is a chance I’m just not understanding them completely but I think I’m a bright guy and if I can’t figure them out then I’m guessing I’m not the only one. The engagement level was not quite what I’d expected either but I think there is a learning opportunity there.

Total Reach

First let’s look purely at the number of people the post reached. Above is the graph that breaks it down into three categories. When we selected the $15 dollar (highest) option it indicated that the reach we were paying for would be in the 2.5k – 3.5k range. When I hover my cursor over each category the organic (people who like the page and either clicked on it themselves or had it appear in their news feed before I started the promotion) shows 372, the paid shows 1637, and the viral (people who saw it as a result of a friend liking, commenting on, or sharing the post) shows 76. By my math that adds up to 2085 – not 1894 and still way short of the estimate I was given. However….

They also provide a promotion summary where I’m told that the paid reach of the post is 3215. Uh…. okay…. so which is it? 1637 or 3215? If 3215 is the number then I’m pleased with the reach. We had about 940 people following our page at the time and we promoted this to our followers and their friends so if $15 bought me 3215 people seeing this post I’m good with that. Side note: I have since found out from a friend who manages a page with a much larger following than ours that it would cost them much more to promote a post – facebook charges considerably more to a page with 100,000 followers than they do to a page with 1000 – like hundreds of dollars instead of $15.

Engagement

So far we’ve looked at the pure mass numbers of people reached. Now let’s dig into how the people who saw the post responded to it. First we’ll look at engaged users:

There were 33 engaged users (number of unique people who clicked on the post), 50 other clicks, so there were people in that group of 33 who came back to the post and clicked on it more than once. There were 10 link clicks – this was a little disappointing since I thought that the thumbnail of the damaged photo of the tent in Vietnam would compel people to check out the link. 14 stories were generated (likes, comments, shares) and only 3 out of thousands hid the link (negative feedback) which is nice – it didn’t turn people off. Overall not huge numbers of engagement. This also doesn’t tell me what kind of collective impact the post had by showing up in thousands of news feeds, but I suspect that there was some impact that I can’t measure immediately. We don’t typically advertise and I’m not an expert in open / click through rates etc. but I do know that when I promoted this our engagement level was over 1.5% and it ended up at .63% When I promoted the post it had met the criteria for Jay Baer’s STIR strategy for when to promote a post which includes waiting 6 hours to promote and only if the post has over 1% engagement. I may raise that to 3% going forward especially if it proves to be true that there will be a natural drop off in the percentage engagement once you send it out to people who may not be familiar with your brand. The last graph of data they give you is the break down of the “stories generated” or people “talking about this”:

11 likes (even though the earlier summary says 14), 2 comments, and 1 share. I think it’s great when someone shares a post because the post then reaches a whole new audience. One share isn’t much, but it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Conclusions

So as I mentioned before I would say the results on this one were mixed. The confusing numbers are a little troubling – even if it’s only $15 dollars I at least want accurate numbers. Facebook is a public company now and these tools are part of the ways they are trying to generate revenue to show Wall Street they can be profitable, but they should clean up the data if this is so critical to their future. As for whether we would promote again? I would say yes but still very selectively. This one while not a complete flop was not a home run but that’s okay – they aren’t all going to be home runs. That’s on us to make sure we learn what content has the most value and appeal for our followers.

Have you paid to sponsor or promote a facebook post? What kind of results have you seen?

When Should You Promote A Facebook Post? A Case Study

January 18, 2013

by Doug Cohen

3 Comments

This is really a follow up post to “Restoring History” which focused on photo restoration. Here is a little social media strategy discussion – as of this writing the strategy for the “Restoring History” post is in a test mode as we speak, and hopefully we can get some results we can learn from as we go along….

The Option To Promote A Facebook Post

For those who may not know, Facebook rolled out a new tool a few months ago where you can pay to promote your status updates so that they will reach more users. They also changed their algorithms so that posts don’t automatically reach as many folks as they used to without paying. If you post something that people love, comment and share then you can still get good results but it’s not a gimme like it was before. Many people became very upset about this when they saw their reach suddenly dwindle unannounced. I’ve written in the past about staying the course and not freaking out about it – in a way it’s a good thing because now boring lame content doesn’t get the free ride it used to get and good content that is useful and interesting still gets rewarded. Meanwhile if you want to give your content a boost you can pay to have it promoted.

Identifying A Guru For Some Guidance

Jay Baer is a social media strategist and author whom I follow and he posted a great article with the criteria he uses for determining How To Know When To Promote A Facebook Post back on 10/27/12. If you manage a facebook business page it’s worth reading and bookmarking. In short he discusses a 4 part “STIR” criteria that includes a waiting period to figure out first if your post is engagement worthy on its own, and the suggestion to promote a post that has a link to click on or some call to action.

Other Factors To Consider

Before yesterday we only promoted twice. Each time we did the minimum level and we only promoted to people who already like our page. There is also the option of promoting to people who like your page and their friends. Depending on your product, your overall Facebook strategy, and the post you are promoting there are a few factors to consider in addition to “STIR” when promoting:

Organic vs. paid approach. We’ve been fiercely committed to earning Facebook likes one at a time without gimmicks to inflate our numbers. We want our content to be entertaining and useful. Being “salesy” is spammy and boring. We want people to like our page because it’s likeable – not because we beg for it or flood their news feeds (they’ll shut us off if we do that anyway). Too many promoted posts can threaten that aesthetic which is why we had only done it twice before.
First impression if you go outside your likes. If you promote a post to your likes and their friends keep in mind that this post may be for many their first exposure to your brand. Is this post focused on a topic that is more tightly focused on current clients? Make sure the post serves as a good first impression and consider whether it has broad appeal.
Geography and goal of the post. Make sure you are going to get the proper bang for your buck. If you are a local business that can only serve local clients then you may want to be careful about promoting to your likes and their friends. You may spend money reaching too many folks who are out of state and may never be your client. Then again word of mouth can travel out of state and then back into your neighborhood from afar so it’s not that black and white, but just be sure to consider what are you trying to accomplish with the additional exposure you are paying for.

The Case Study

So we’ll let you in on the strategy we used yesterday when we promoted the post “Restoring History”. We did the maximum amount with the option of promoting to our likes and their friends for a three day period. First off the post met all 4 of Jay Baer’s STIR criteria before we promoted it. We also considered the 3 additional factors outlined above:

Even though it’s a promoted post which by definition isn’t exactly an organic approach, we feel it is interesting and useful content which keeps with the spirit of how we attract folks to our page. I’m not promoting a BIG SALE! or running a cheesy contest to just gain empty likes. If people follow us as a result they’ll likely do it because they appreciate the content – it will expose them to our blog and maybe they’ll see there is real value here. Like we mentioned before, we do NOT promote often and that won’t change.
Even though photo restoration is NOT our core business by any means, I don’t mind this post creating a first impression of our studio to people who don’t know us. It’s a thoughtful post that will show we have something worthwhile to say and we think it has broad appeal. Not a bad way to discover Frameable Faces.
This is one service and maybe the ONLY service that we offer that we can offer to people out of state without them ever visiting our studio. While I don’t anticipate a ton of out of state photo restoration business, in theory as long as someone can scan the damaged photo and send it to us we can do the rest – have it restored, print it, ship it. Therefore if going outside of our likes takes us out of our local geography here and there in the process that’s okay.

We will post an update to share the results good and bad. Let us know if you’ve had experiences with promoted posts and if you have anything to add!

Facebook First Aid For Brands – How To Survive The New Changes

November 7, 2012

by Doug Cohen

No Comments

I wrote a guest post back in May for The Collective where I echoed the predominant thinking about how your blog (and website) should be the center of your online universe since you own them, as opposed to your pages on Facebook and Twitter that you don’t own. You don’t know what might happen with those sites and you can’t control it. Well something indeed happened to Facebook…

Money changes everything.

The short version is Facebook went public, it didn’t go well, and now they are scrambling to make more money – fast. They have Wall Street investors to answer to now and everything has changed. I get it – they are a business. The problem is how they went about this. Now stay with me here… They encouraged brands to build a following by engaging with their fans, and then once the brands acquired the fans Facebook took away the ability to reach the fans unless the brand pays to “promote” posts to the fans who were already following the posts. A major bait and switch.

The dilemma…

Keep in mind that our philosophy at Frameable Faces like many others has been to grow our likes and our reach on Facebook in a totally organic way – steadily building relationships fan by fan without contests and cheesy promotions. This suddenly has become more difficult and it raises a two part dilemma:

I’m not in love with the idea of my peeps seeing my posts because I paid for them to see them. I want them to see our content because they like it and the posts are worthy of being seen. Facebook used to ensure your posts would show up in the news feed of people who regularly interacted with your brand. Your reach was largely a result of successful engaging posts. Not sure if that’s happening at all anymore…
Even though we’ve had some success with diversifying on sites like Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter to name a few, we haven’t been able to ween ourselves completely from Facebook for reaching our peeps or driving traffic to this blog for example.

So what next? First what NOT to do…

I read a great article by Ken Mueller on 10/22 that stated in part to “stop trying to game Facebook’s Edgerank” – in other words don’t try to cheat the system because shortcuts are not the answer. People are trying to find ways to do this like moving brand content to their personal pages for example. While I have used my personal page to promote our studio from time to time I’ve done it in a very limited fashion, and with a couple exceptions it’s usually when I’ve written a blog post that is more universal like tips on social media that I know everyone can use. If you start doubling up your content on both your business and personal pages your message can start to get lost. Think of it as making a social call on your personal friends to market your studio to them – this isn’t the exact same thing but it’s similar – in real life it’s a little awkward, in online life it’s a little spammy. The people who subscribe to our page (personal friends or not) subscribe there to follow our studio, the people who friend me want to be my friend – not necessarily my prospect.

So What Next? What TO Do…

The best bet seems to stay the course and focus on creating great content, and make sure all your eggs are never in one basket – especially a basket you don’t own like Facebook. However Facebook isn’t going anywhere and it’s critical to be able to adapt to these changes. One way to adapt unfortunately is to yes, spend a little money to promote a post here or there to make sure you continue to reach your audience. Which leads me to the following tip.

A Specific Tip I Learned From Trial and Error

I paid my first 5 dollars to sponsor a status update to see what kind of result I would get. The number of people it reached was a little disappointing, but here’s the tip – this was a post that no one commented on or liked (pretty pathetic I know). But misfires happen once in a while to the best of us, and these posts are NOT the ones you want to promote. Afterwards I came across an article by Jay Baer about when to sponsor posts and one of the things he mentioned was to only promote a post if after waiting 6 hours it’s exceeded a 1% engagement rate. Then give it a boost. Don’t try to boost a dog that no one is responding to in the first place. Promote a status update that is already proving to be engagement worthy.

Hope this helps! Please comment with any feedback or helpful tips on this topic!