Provides Facebook lessons learned including: why Facebook matters to brands, scaling Facebook brand pages, optimizing your Facebook newsfeed, adding dynamic content to brand pages, and creating compelling landing pages. We have gained 800,000 Facebook fans in ~8 months and the attached shares our lessons learned.

1. Lessons Learned in
Optimizing Facebook
Brand Pages
Confidential to IT Agility LLC

2. Discussion Agenda
1. Why Facebook matters to brands
2. Experience context (scaling
Facebook fan pages)
3. Leading Practices for Brand fan
pages
4. Questions/Discussion
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3. Why Facebook Matters to Brands
• Over 600 Million users at the end of 2010 (now 630M+)
• Most searched term and site with the most time spent
• Strong position (lock-in, network effect, market cap)
• Cost effective marketing (viral effect)
Source: Socialbaker
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4. Business and organization Facebook pages are rapidly
growing to pursue the consumer volume on Facebook.
Facebook Business/Organization Pages
• The top ten brands on Facebook have over 232
million Facebook fans
• 50% of the Fortune 100 have active Facebook
page(s)
• Social Marketing Software as a Service (SaaS)
offerings for organizations are a rapidly emerging
market
– Facebook has over 700,000 local businesses with
active company pages (Facebook, January 2010)
– Several start-ups have started to provide
Facebook SaaS offerings (Involver, Wildfire
Interactive, Buddy Media, etc.)
Source: Fanpagelist.com, April, 2011
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5. IT Agility has captured lessons learned from scaling ten
Facebook fan page and application sites.
IT Agility’s Initial Consumer Facebook Offerings
http://www.facebook.com/ITagility
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6. Providing a fan page and application for each pop culture
area optimizes our overall fan base.
CelebBistro Fan Page CelebBistro Facebook App
• Gained over 330,000 fans in ~8 months • Has 170,000 monthly active users
• Averages ~40,000 impressions per post providing free • Provides one stop shopping for content
viral marketing and ―social clicks‖ • Makes it easy to socially share content
• Creates great fan interaction (comments and likes)
http://www.facebook.com/CelebBistro http://apps.facebook.com/celebbistro/ 5

7. By converging dynamic content, custom search, and
community features as native Facebook applications, we
are disrupting the traditional media leaders.
CelebBistro Fan Page Position (after 8 months on Facebook)
Representative Fans As Of
# Celeb Sites on Facebook Facebook Fan page Site URL May 4, 2011
1 The Hollywood Gossip http://www.facebook.com/thehollywoodgossip 638,804
2 US Weekly http://www.facebook.com/UsWeekly 430,460
3 TMZ http://www.facebook.com/TMZ 433,876
4 CelebBistro http://www.facebook.com/CelebBistro 304,241
5 Entertainment Tonight (CBS) http://www.facebook.com/EntertainmentTonight 262,423
6 Perez Hilton http://www.facebook.com/PerezHilton 168,600
7 E Online http://www.facebook.com/eonline 125,955
10 Access Hollywood http://www.facebook.com/AccessHollywood 77,447
11 PopEater (AOL) http://www.facebook.com/PopEater 62,142
12 Showbiz Tonight (HLN Network) http://www.facebook.com/ShowbizTonightHLN 58,330
9 Gawker http://www.facebook.com/Gawker 78,007
8 Entertainment Weekly http://www.facebook.com/entertainmentweekly?ref=ts 113,990
13 Wonderwall (Microsoft) http://www.facebook.com/Wonderwall 27,238
• CelebBistro fans are achieved without promotions or incentives
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8. Our Facebook test sites demonstrate that users like to
receive and share content within Facebook.
Fans for Representative IT Agility Test Sites (As of 05/07/2011)
314,000 fans 101,000 fans 136,000 fans
47,000 fans 40,000 fans
The initial five test sites achieved over 638,000 fans and average 80% “like”
rate from visitors (without the use of promotions/incentives).
http://www.facebook.com/CelebBistro http://www.facebook.com/TVaficionado http://www.facebook.com/CountryMusicBistro 7
http://www.facebook.com/MovieNewscast http://www.facebook.com/HipHopBistro

9. Companies should adopt several leading practices for
their brand pages.
1. Understand the Facebook edge algorithm and how to
maximize impressions
2. Make high quality fan page posts
• Write compelling and optimal fan page posts
• Be responsive to fan posts/comments
• Monitor and understand Fan Page engagement
rates (time to post, post characteristics, etc.)
3. Optimize your page configuration
• Ensure your photostrip is relevant
• Select the best page category relevant to your
brand page
• Make page settings relevant to your brand
(everyone posts, profanity level…)
• Add Custom tabs and compelling application
features for your targeted audience
4. Make a compelling landing page
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10. 90% of fans do not revisit fan pages which makes fan
page posts critical to driving impressions.
1. The average Facebook person ―likes‖ a
multitude of pages and interests
2. Over 90% of fans do not revisit the fan
page
3. Most fan page posts are consumed via the
broadcast out to fan newsfeeds
4. 99% of comments and likes come from fan
interaction via the newsfeed
5. Newsfeed impressions measure how
many fans see your fan page posts
Source: IT Agility experience across our 11 managed pages
It is critical for brands to make high quality fan page posts
and optimize impressions via newsfeeds.
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11. Understanding the Facebook EdgeRank Algorithm is
critical for optimizing fan page posts.
EdgeRank News Feed Optimization
• Edge rank is an affinity score between the viewing user and the item’s creator (if you
send your friend a lot of Facebook messages and check their profile often, then you’ll
have a higher affinity score for that user than with an old acquaintance you haven’t
interacted with in years).
• There’s a weight given to each type of Edge (a comment has more importance than a
Like)
• Time is a factor….the older an Edge is, the less important it becomes.
• Multiply these factors for each Edge then add the Edge scores up and you have an
Object’s EdgeRank. The higher the edge rank is, the more likely your Object is to
appear in the user’s feed.
• The act of creating an Object is also considered an Edge, which is what allows Objects to
show up in your friends’ feeds before anyone has interacted with them.
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12. Business Fan Pages have several EdgeRank
considerations.
EdgeRank Brand Page Optimization
• A frequent fan page visitor and active user creates a
higher affinity score with that fan
• High volume of likes and comments drives a higher
EdgeRank
• Time remains a factor….the older an Edge is, the less
important it becomes.
• Attached content (video and photo links) drives a higher
edgerank
• Several factors appear to drive relative Facebook
impressions across fan page posts
• Competition against other fan page posts
• Weighting of factors driven by Facebook (e.g.
promoting places feature)
• Volume of fans on your page helps (critical mass
helps to drive more likes and comments)
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13. Facebook has optimal times to post fan page content.
• Facebook engagement has three engagement peaks: early morning (7 a.m. EST),
after work (5 p.m. EST) and late at night (11 p.m. EST).
• Non-work hours have the highest engagement rate peaks
• Thursday, Friday and Sunday posts have the highest engagement rates
• Each brand needs to consider the behavior and peak engagement rates for their
audience
Source: Buddy Media Study
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14. Post characteristics drive engagement rates.
• Using action words increases fan
interactions wit h your posts
• ―Like us‖ if you ……works
• Asking for comments works
• Posts with 80 characters or less gain 27%
more engagement than posts that were
more than 80 characters.
• Only 19% of posts in the study were
shorter than 80 characters
• Posts with a full-length URL had three
times the engagement of their shortened
bit.ly, ow.ly and tinyurl counterparts (the
likely reason is readers want to know the
link destination)
Source: Buddy Media Study
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15. Optimal frequency of posts varies by type of
business fan page.
• Optimal Post Frequency is relative to the type of
brand page site
• 1 – 2 posts per day for a typical company brand
page
• 3 – 4 posts if you have interesting and
compelling content
• 6 – 12 posts per day for media sites
• Post at least 1 hour apart
• Don’t repost the same content
• Write an optimal status update with the content
• > 4 lines will yield …‖more‖ link to see full post
• Video and Photo links increase post quality and
ultimate Facebook impressions
• Ending with a question increases comments
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16. Page engagement rates vary based on the
overall volume of your fan base.
Average Fan Engagement Rates
• Engagement rate measures how compelling your fan page posts are
• Page engagement rate is total fan interaction (comments, likes) / total
page fan base
• Average engagement rate varies by page’s total fan volume
Source: Socialbaker’s page analysis of 9,000 Facebook brand pages
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17. On February 10th 2011, Facebook completed platform updates to
allow application integration with company pages.
Adding Compelling Application Features
This update
allows companies
to add dynamic
content and more
advanced Facebook Developer Blog (February 10, 2011)
applications as
custom tabs on
their brand page.
Sources: http://developers.facebook.com/roadmap
http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/462
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18. Adding search services and targeted/dynamic content on
your Brand Page improves fan conversion rates.
Our platform provides news to our
Company Brand page:
• Facebook News
• Social Media
• PR News
• News tabs achieve a 45%
―like rate‖ from visitors
• Attracts visitors and
increases fan engagement
• Achieves significant savings
in ad spend and reduction in
promotions/incentives
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19. Bartab achieves a 70% like rate by featuring beer,
cocktail and wine news on their company brand page.
• Webtab/Bartab—added relevant beverage
industry news to Bartab’s Facebook
Beer News | Cocktail News | Wine News |
company page (achieves a 70% ―like‖ rate
from the drink news tab)
• Drink news provides a much larger
population to target with Facebook ads
• Driving more fans to your company page
increases the newsfeed volume for your fan
page posts
• Higher newsfeed engagement drives
increased impressions
http://www.facebook.com/bartab
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20. Make a Compelling Landing Page (CelebBistro Example)
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21. Make a Compelling Landing Page (Coca Cola Example)
Coca Cola is the most popular brand page on Facebook with over 22 million fans
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22. Make a Compelling Landing Page (Red Bull Example)
Red Bull is the 5th most popular brand page on Facebook with over 15 million
fans
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23. Questions?
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