iMentor30 Broad Street 9th, 10th Floor

New York, NY 10004____________________________________________________

Facebook Research ProjectRegina Hong

Digital Communications InternJune 2014 - August 2014

Table of ContentsContentsCONTENTS 3

Objective and list of targeted organizations 4

iMentor Facebook Overview 5

Edgerank Algorithm 8

Different Types of Measures 9

Frequency of Posts 11

Post Boosts 13

Other Organizations’ Social Media Strategies (KIPP NYC, College Possible) 14

Tracker of Other Organizations’ Facebook Pages and Conclusion 17

Sources 18

3

Report Objective: Identify other non-profits that are using Facebook well as a tool for iMentor to review and develop our social media strategy.

The six targeted organizations for this research:

Students First Pearson Ed KIPP NYC

College Possible Teach for America Charity Water

4

What is it?Founded in 2004 by Harvard graduate Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is an online social media networking service with over 1,310,000,000 users as of July 2014. (Statistic Brain)

iMentor’s Facebook Results (Week of 7/31-8/6):

Total Page Likes: 2,432

Chart of reach from July 9 to August 6, 2014

5

Example of post (July 31) that reached 1,778 people organically (No boost)

Average time data on how many people were reached at a certain time during the day.

*shows that from 9 to 10 PM= most reach (901,902)afternoon=most activity (slump during dinner time)

6

iMentor Demographics

7

HOW DO WE IMPROVE OUR REACH, NUMBER OF LIKES AND ENGAGEMENT ON THIS PLATFORM?

First: Understand Facebook Edgerank Algorithm

Edgerank algorithm – determining audience reachWhat is it? Facebook’s algorithm system of determining activity and reach of users based on three variables: affinity, weight and time decay.

Affinityo Measures the relationship between user and edge (fan and brand)

Edge (any activity that occurs on Facebook that can potentially create a newsfeed story)

o Factors that could affect the relationship: actions like commenting, sharing, liking messaging.

Weighto System to increase/decrease value of certain actions

The weight value of commenting > liking Time decay

o How long the edge has been “alive” The older it is, the less valuable.

Second: How do we utilize Edgerank to our advantage?6 ways to increase Edgerank

Post videos to increase weight Does Edgerank give more weight if it’s directly on FB or youTube link?

Videos on posting videos directly on Facebook vs. posting YouTube link "Video shared on Facebook performs better than video watched

elsewhere – that is, Facebook users are more engaged and tend to watch more (if not all) of the video clip. Back in April 2011, we published a blogpost on the ease of getting your videos on Facebook. One of the more exciting Facebook features introduced this year was the ability for third parties to publish & playback video content directly within their Newsfeed, allowing individuals to watch videos from all over the Internet without ever leaving Facebook. As a result, Facebook drives 11.8% of all referred video traffic to media companies.” (http://www.jwplayer.com/blog/social-sharing-publish-your-videos-to-facebook-twitter-youtube/)

Improve affinity with short Tweet-like posts Ask fans questions Improve affinity with visual posts Post images with text to increase weight and affinity Use hashtags (allows for users to easily find posts) Post at appropriate times

8

Third: Determine what Types of Measures to pay more Attention to

• Likes, shares, comments, photos etc.◦ More weight= more attention (videos, photos with text, comments, shares, etc)• Target Audience mentors/prospective mentors• What are the best pieces of information that FB provides to help us reach out to the targeted

audience?◦ Include what we’re doing (Facebook Insight)◦ We should be looking at each individual post every two days or so.

Track the numbers on the right and keep a spreadsheet. This sums up the numbers really well.

9

Think about different types of engaging posts.• What types of posts (photos, links, etc) perform best on Facebook?

*Links get the most average reach, but most engagement comes from photos.

10

Fourth: Does Frequency of Posts Matter?

• iMentor currently aims for 1 post/day and 5 posts/week.• How often should we be posting?

Is there a correlation between frequency of posts and reach of a given post?

iMentor Data (7/7 to 8/1)

Week Total # of Posts

Total Reach Average Reach

Boost (Y/N) Post Type

7/7-7/11 2 352, 6.3K 3,326 N, Y -Article-Announcement about mentee (Anthony)

7/14-7/18 4 2.7K, 580, 2.3K, 1.6K

1,795 N, N, Y, N -Anthony announcement-iMentor radio podcast-Hamptons Marathon sign-up announcement-Mentor recruitment

7/21-7/25 2 262, 1,000 631 N, N -Article-Job recruitment announcement

7/28-8/1 4 765, 427, 577, 288

514.25 N, N, N, N -Mentee job announcement-Shareables page-Instagram Throwback Thurs-iMentor cover photo update

Based on the data, Average post reach is greater when there are fewer posts/week (Both two posts/week had

greater results than 4 posts/week) But, you would still end up reaching more people by posting more

11

Week: July 7th to July 11th

Week: July 14th to July 18th

Week: July 21st to July 25th

Week: July 28th to Aug 1st

12

Fifth: Boosting Posts—Is it necessary?

Total # of Posts # of Non-Boosted Posts

# of People Reached # of Boosted Posts

# of People Reached

12 10 352 2 63002700 2300

5801600

2621000

765427577288

Sum 8551 Sum 8600Avg Reach per non-Boost Post 855.1

Avg Reach / Boosted Post 4300

Percentage Increase from Boost: 502.86% Increase

Our data has shown that we have benefited greatly from boosting posts, but the type of content of the post also affects the result.

What about other non-profit organizations? KIPP NYC promotes posts (40 cents/user)

o For specific job postings ($25-$50 to boost post)o Always think about what type of people I would want to reach.

College Possible does not promote posts

Are hashtags good or bad?

Pros (Social Media Examiner): Good for expanding reach Amplifying brand Cross social platforms Promote specials and events

Cons (Mashable): “Social media marketing company Socialbakers released data this week showing that the

more hashtags a brand uses in a Facebook post, the less engagement it receives. Based on a sampling of 200,000 brand posts on Facebook in February 2014, brands that

used one or two hashtags in a given post received an average of 593 interactions. That number dropped to 416 for brands that used three to five hashtags.”

13

Sixth: How do other non-profit education organizations utilize social media?

KIPP NYC’s strategies/thoughts on their social media platforms:

KIPP NYC’s main social media platforms include:

Facebook o Main focus is to inform, especially on FB, potential teachers and potential families

(biggest season for getting word out is late Dec-April open registration for students).

o For other audience like donors, KIPP NYC uses messaging through actual mail or specific email campaigns.

o Main content that performs the best are graduation stories, warm stories filled with fluff!

LinkedIn o Main project to try to get more engagement o Trying to see what’s out there a.k.a. should they spend money on it?

Model organizations: Charter schools (how they present their staff, school, etc) Success programs (Achievement First)

Measuring success on social media platforms: Google Analytics

o How many people actually went on your website via social media?o Real growth: how much is social media actually driving people to your website?

12,000 likes on FBo Organic reach= 1500 on average and 2700 on good posts.

Facebook Analytics

Staff time allocated to social media: Steve is responsible for website and KIPP NYC social media

o Tip: Figure out your strategy of what you can realistically do.o 30 percent of work=social mediao 1 and ½ people= marketing team

Pattern in frequency of posts on FB: Every day or two/day Should be consistent

Other information: Marketing strategy: free day of professional development they know who’s committed One out of 3 or 4 posts= about a job Keeping posts ongoing or building a voice= another strategy

14

College Possible’s social media strategies:

College Possible’s main social media platforms include:

Facebooko Has the most people on it in terms of people who are actively seeing the postso 2,736 likeso Not more than 2-3 posts per day

Twittero Focus on donors, students (current and former), Americorp members (current and

former), reporters (media outlets)o Try to get as many media hits as possible

Tweetso “Go nuts on Twitter” tweet as much as you want but try to stick to 5 to 10/ day.

Instagramo Coaches and younger demographic

Current students (juniors, seniors) posting pictureso A little over a year since they started using Instagram

YouTubeo Used to embed videos to websiteo Not heavily used

LinkedIno Americorp members private groups for former memberso Not heavily used

Pinterest (targeting as next platform to use)o Female demographic donorso Different citieso One theme per month

July 2014: college-bound

Model Organizations: Look all over the place

o Don’t depend on solely education/non-profit siteso Look at popular department stores, musicians etc.o Comedic content (Facebook and Twitter)

Denny’s, @DennysDiner

15

Charmin toilet paper, @Charmin Use of ongoing hashtags: #tweetfromtheseat Funny and clever puns that relate to the company’s purpose

Measuring success on social media platforms: Google Analytics

o Website Facebook Insight/Analytics

o Focus on likes, comments and shares The more, the more people will see

2,736 likes on FBo Organic reach= (Dec 2013-Jun 2014) ~600 and 2,500 on best posts

Staff time allocated to social media: Seth Duin is the administrator and total of 5 members around the country man each

location.o Seth spends 20-30% on social media and does external outreach

Excel spreadsheet to be used by everyone in managemento Columns of which site, date, nationally posted or local, time, buckets (list of option

of plain text post, link, picture with link, video), categories (news, event, special event, etc), which platforms)

Each person’s in charge of a monthly campaign

Other information: Encouraging results (usually including numbers) get the most posts!

16

Facebook Tracker of Other Organizations

Conclusion of Report:

iMentor should keep track at least once every two days of the individual posts. Facebook is still the primary social media networking source for the organization, so it is

important to utilize the tools that Facebook provides to improve our page and increase the engagement, likes, etc.

iMentor’s announcements about recruitment and inspirational mentee stories receive the most feedback and interest.

17

Sources

1. http://www.whatisedgerank.com/ 2. http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/1304-understanding-increasing-facebook-edgerank 3. http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/10-Ways-to-Improve-Your-Facebook-Business-

Pages-EdgeRank/4. https://www.facebook.com/iMentorNYC/insights?section=navReach 5. http://www.statisticbrain.com/facebook-statistics/ 6. http://www.npengage.com/peer-to-peer-fundraising/using-social-media-increases-

fundraising-40- percent/ 7. http://www.jwplayer.com/blog/social-sharing-publish-your-videos-to-facebook-twitter-

youtube/8. http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-hashtag-marketing/ 9. http://mashable.com/2014/03/21/facebook-hashtags-brands/ 10.

18