In a recent post on TechCrunch Facebook developers revealed some of the Secret Sauce behind the algorithm that determines what shows up on the Facebook News Feed.

The News Feed is the first thing that a Facebook user sees when they log on to the site.  For businesses and individuals looking to generate attention or awareness through Facebook pages or profiles getting on the News Feed is important.  Not every update that a page or person makes on Facebook is displayed on the News Feed.  The News Feed is customized for each individual person and includes the content or updates that are most relevant to that individual based on a mathematical formula (or algorithm).  According to Facebook an average person on Facebook is connected to 130 people and 80 pages, groups and events.  An average person posts on Facebook 3 times a day, which means that you would be inundated with 390 posts per day, just from friends.

So the Facebook News Feed does not display everything posted by all of your friends.  It is optimized by something called EdgeRank, which is a mathematical formula that determines the most relevant posts for your individual news feed.

The Facebook News Feed Formula

According to TechCrunch the Facebook News Feed is based off a formula based on three factors:

First, there’s 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 you would, say, an old acquaintance you haven’t spoken to in years.

Second, there’s a weight given to each type of Edge. A comment probably has more importance than a Like, for example.

And finally there’s the most obvious factor — time. 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. And the higher that is, the more likely your Object is to appear in the user’s feed.

Essentially, an Object or post is more likely to show up in your News Feed if people you know have recently interacted with it.  This probably isn’t very surprising.

Implication: Post Content People Interact With

The key then, for brands and individuals hoping to generate awareness on Facebook is to create posts that people interact with.  If all of your posts have 0 interactions, it is likely that nobody is even seeing them in their News Feed.  To get real marketing value from Facebook you have to post content that gets interactions.

How to Drive Interactions with Facebook Content

The key to success is driving interactions with Facebook content, but how can companies do this?  Here are some ideas:

• Ask Questions – Posing questions that your fans/friends will have a quick and simple answer to is a great way to encourage interaction.  Get the ball rolling by specifically asking a few of your friends to respond.
• Run a Contest – You can use a free plug-in on your Facebook Fan Page like PollDaddy to easily run polls on your fan pages.
• Share Ideas – Today I discovered BulbStorm, an application that is specifically designed to drive interactions and engagement on Facebook Fan Pages through idea sharing.
• Tag People – If you reference specific people in your content tag them!  This will draw their attention to your content and increase the probability that they will comment or interact with it.
• Be Interesting.  Really Interesting. – Some of the most commented on things that I see on Facebook are interesting or funny videos, quotes or articles.  Look for opportunities to post content that your friends/fans will really be interested in.

Any other tips on driving interactions?

Does anyone else have tips/ideas/thoughts on how to drive interactions on a Facebook Fan Page?  What kind of content or posts do you interact with on Facebook?

I spent a few days in Seattle this week and was sincerely overwhelmed. Though I was jokingly told I came for its annual one week of summer, the weather, the people, the Social Media Club, the community … everything about the trip was perfect.

Typically, I don’t blog about the trips I take. I take far too many of them, am not a travel blogger and me talking about what I’m doing has to be monumentally boring for you, as Twitter-esqe as that concept might be.

But Seattle is one of those communities that when you walk away, you think, “I’ve got to tell people about this place.”

I was there to speak to Social Media Club Seattle, a local chapter of SMC that was started by my friend Kevin Urie. At dinner on Monday with Joann Jen, Shauna Causey, Eric Berto and Urie, they told me that the 225-seat event sold out in eight hours and they had 110 people on a waiting list to get in. (Clearly, they don’t realize how unimpressive I really am, my wife was quick to remind me.)

It’s not the number of people that’s important here, it’s actually the quality of the people. SMC Seattle has grown to perhaps one of the more active chapters in the umbrella organization’s network. I was assured several times that the audience wouldn’t tolerate 101 content. This was a 301 audience. They needed to be pushed.

Thank God!

And I was told they would push back.

Double Thanks!

I was asked a tough question or two from the crowd, which I appreciate. When everyone walks away with, “Great talk.” I get frustrated. I want people to push back, get uncomfortable and maybe even be a little mad. It makes them think about the issue more which produces more clarity of thought moving forward. You don’t have to like me for me to be useful to you. Often times, I’m more useful if you don’t.

One question I was asked had me perplexed. I’m still chewing on it and will probably blog it soon. More later.

Perhaps its the fact that everyone seems to have some Microsoft connection in Seattle. They either worked there or work for someone who works with them. Perhaps its because they have Starbucks here like most cities have fire hydrants. But there exists in Seattle an awesome tech community. And those here who are passionate about social media are passionate AND knowledgeable. There’s also a cohesiveness in Seattle’s social media enthusiasts you can sense. The people I encountered unknowingly showed me how it ought to be done. Ironic since Urie insists my co-founding of SMC Louisville inspired him to do the same here.

I walked away from SMC Seattle wishing SMC Louisville could be more like them and that we could all have the benefit of such a passionate, smart community just outside our door. Maybe you have that in your community. Cherish it.

From my hour talking to Neil Crist and Pete Mannix from ValueVine to hanging out with Jeff, John and the gang at the Whrrl offices, to getting a Windows Phone demo at the gdgt event I crashed, to the chic and social media hip Hotel Max, to Shauna Causey trying to cheauffer me around town in a car the size of my left thigh, every bit of Seattle made me smile.

I even got a big-time save from Alaska Airlines when my crazy schedule put Wednesday’s PRSA Independent Practitioner’s webinar (of which I was a speaker) butted up against my return flight. Elliott Pesut, Bobbie Egan and crew snapped a few fingers and booked me a board room in their elite traveler’s lounge so I could be on the call and not have to race to the airport after.

Thank you, Seattle. You reminded me this week what it means to have a community that oozes its essence. I got a little on me. And it’s nice.

Note: I have to give a shout out to Blake Cahill who really started the ball rolling to get me to Seattle. Blake, you’re a saint. Thank you for inviting me.

Follow-Up: I knew I’d forget someone important (and ironically unforgettable). Brian Westbrook was not only Mr. coordination for all I was doing in Seattle, but is the emcee and host of SMC Seattle’s live streams and events. The guy is the bomb. Hopefully, he won’t blow me up for not mentioning him on my first run through. Watch the stream below. He steals the show.

A video of the event (SMC Seattle live-streams their events and run them like a TV show … very cool) is online at UStream.There are some great pictures of the SMC Seattle Event taken by Berto here. Tac Anderson recaps my talk on his blog as well. And I uploaded my snapshots from the trip to Flickr.

This is Frank Eliason‘s last week at Comcast. The poster boy for leveraging social media for customer service and, in the process, turning around a struggling company’s image, will no longer be @ComcastCares on Twitter. Eliason is moving on to Citi where he will head up their social media efforts.

On the surface, it’s a neat, new plum job for a great guy who is a leader and pioneer in corporate social media. But there’s a lot more to the story because it writes another chapter in the personal vs. company brand playbook.

Yeah, Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang left Forrester and are now reunited at the Altimeter Group. But those two were analysts at a tech-oriented company who branched out to be analysts at their own tech-oriented company. (Yes, they serve non-tech clients, but they’re tech/social analysts.) Robert Scoble? Same thing … tech to tech. Different deal.

Eliason leaves a cable company to go to a financial services company. It’s a bit different when it is out of the tech bubble. Eliason is also, intentional or not, the face and voice of Comcast customer service, not just a shining star on a team of content providers.

Frank Eliason is many people’s personal connection to Comcast. Losing him will be a blow to the cable company, and one more impactful than other personal brands moving on have been. You would think that Comcast would realize that and make every effort to keep Eliason in that position. Not so says a friend in the know at the company.

I’ll also be watching Eliason’s move to Citi because the position there, as I understand it, reports to marketing and isn’t a delineated customer service initiative. Eliason is a customer care and quality assurance guy, so he’ll stir the pot at the financial services company, I’d bet.

More importantly, though, I’m interested to see how @FrankEliason evolves as a face and voice on Twitter. Will Citi position Eliason as an employee handling social media or a personal brand speaking for the company?

Ford’s Scott Monty oversees many social media efforts, but is perhaps most effective for the company on Twitter as himself. Yet, in many ways he has leased his name to Ford. (Not a criticism. Ford is his job. And it’s not my opinion. Look at his Tweet cloud.)

What happens if Monty were to leave Ford? Yes, their social media efforts would go on, and perhaps largely unaffected. Monty has wisely built a robust social presence for the Ford brands there and the company isn’t as dependent upon him as Comcast is on Eliason. But what about the Scott Monty brand? If he moves to, say, Sony, and suddenly becomes Sony fan boy number one, I worry that his personal brand may become the Rent-This-Space of the social world.

What happens to Frank Eliason’s personal vs. company activity is going to be interesting to watch. What could happen if Monty ever leaves Ford might be more interesting, but we may not see that any time soon. My guess is that Ford won’t let him go easily the way Comcast allegedly has Eliason.

But this new chapter in personal vs. company brand is being written now. How will the chapter end? What challenges do you see Comcast facing in the coming weeks? What challenges does Eliason have before him at Citi in terms of him vs. the company? The comments are yours.

NOTE: Frank Eliason and Scott Monty are both friends but also semi-public figures in this space. I did not contact either of them about this issue before writing it. I only offer the questions and scenarios here as what-ifs for us to consider about personal brands and company presences in the social media space. I wish Frank the best at Citi and know he’ll be as terrific for them as he was for Comcast. I love Scott Monty like a brother and, though I’m perhaps more critical of him as a result, think the world of what he has done at Ford and before. I also consider him perhaps the best corporate social media lead on the planet.

In the past two weeks, I’ve been asked a version of the same question about four times. The questions came from decision-makers at three companies/brands and one advertising agency. The question was generally this one:

Why on Earth would we allow our employees to openly represent us online?

Yes, all you social media purists out there, there are still non-Kool-aid drinkers amongst us. In fact, 90 percent of the world is still old school about marketing and communications. Keep on Kumbaya-ing with your “l love your blog” crowd. The rest of us will do the hard work.

While the answer to that question varies by client, environment and more, I generally answer it with, “If you are afraid of what your employees will say about you online, then your problem is not your employees, it’s you. Hire smarter.” There are nuances, though. Employees don’t have to be “official” spokespeople and so on. But, generally speaking, people with the “can’t do that” attitude are afraid of their hires, not the principal.

To give you an example of what empowering your employees might look like, I need only show you this chalk board from Java Brewing Company in downtown Louisville. Jamie, Ashley, Suemi, Arielle and Laura work for the company. As patrons enter, they are introduced to their baristas.

If you ask any of them a hard question, they’ll answer, “Let me check with my manager.” If you complain about the quality of your coffee, they apologize and give you a new cup or extend an offer for you to talk to the manager. If you ask them something they don’t know, they even say, “I don’t know.”

My guess is that if they are asked those same questions on Facebook, they’ll say the same things.

Jamie, Ashley, Suemi, Arielle and Laura aren’t just baristas. They are community managers. Just without computers.

More importantly, though, Java Brewing Company proactively introduces them to you, tells you a few things they like and what their favorite drink is. This gives you suggestions on what to order, but also comfortable topics to use in conversation with the baristas as you get to know them.

I want to ask Jamie how she got to Louisville from Spartanburg, S.C., and how she likes being a Duke fan in a state that appreciates Duke as much as it does Kim Jong Il. It’s an ice-breaker, and entree to further conversation. And immediately makes me think I’m doing business with someone I know, not just some company that takes my money.

This humanizes Java Brewing Company.

So think about how you would react to buying coffee from such a place if you “knew” the staff, had talking points to strike up conversations (Not even about their company, just random, life-fulfilling conversations.) and saw it as more than just a store where you spend money for a cup-a-joe.

Then tell me about your company’s baristas.

You can’t be 100% certain.  Werner Heisenberg made this point in his experiments with subatomic particles.  Heisenberg stated while you can approximate both the velocity and position of a particle at a specific instant in time, it is impossible to exactly measure both.  The more tightly you focus in on one measuring one aspect, the less certain you can be about the other.  Further, the simple act of measurement itself will alter the outcome.

I believe this theory has some interesting implications for marketing professionals.  As we move into a digital world, there are so many things we can measure about people.  What they say, who they are friends with, what games they play online, what they “like” on Facebook, what they Tweet about, where they check-in on Foursquare, and on and on and on.  This data opens up immense potential to understand more about people.  The data that is being gathered and analyzed is producing mind-boggling insights about our collective and individual behavior.  This data is extremely valuable, and represents the future direction of business.  Yet it is not perfect, and never will be perfect.  Like subatomic particles it is simply impossible to measure and predict what humans will do with 100% certainty.   The greater emphasis that is placed on one single motivational factor, the less certain you can be about others.  You can assess probabilities about what will happen, but the reality is you never know.

Although you can’t be certain, that does not mean you should just blindly guess or abandon measuring all together.  Measurement is a critical part of marketing, and one that is rapidly getting easier and much more useful.  You can now have a better understanding of what to sell, what price point to use, what channels are most effective, what people love and hate about your brand, and so much more.  You can monitor opinions, gauge performance, and collect sales information in real time from all around the globe.  You can learn a great deal from data – but you can’t learn everything.  You can never completely eliminate the risk of the future no matter how much you measure.  Yet everyday businesses regularly find themselves in a state of paralysis by analysis, searching for the perfect answer instead of actually acting on a probable outcome.  They are unwilling to take risks until the course of future is seemingly certain – which, of course, is an illusion.

We can’t measure the future.  What we can do is continuously use data to be reasonably confident in probability, realistic in expectation, and responsive to the results of our measurements.  We look for trends.  We address the obvious.  We dig deeper where appropriate.  But we realize that we can’t ever be certain.  Perhaps you can simply use the teachings of Heisenberg to move you from waiting for the perfect answer, the ideal scenario, the one big chance to accepting the uncertainty of the universe and choosing to make something happen.  You never know what might happen.

“One of the easiest things to do to make yourself standout within the digital world is to hit a homerun with the design and experience.  If you invest significantly in this area, then you are going to standout from all the rest.” – Darren Herman

Darren is the Chief Digital Media Office at Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners and one of those guys that just plain “gets it.”  He wrote the above quote when talking about why Flipboard is suddenly the hot start-up of the week in the media world.  Ironically it is a sentiment that I was just discussing yesterday with a VC in NYC as it relates to the power of branding in the digital media.

Not enough companies in the digital world invest behind design, branding and experience.  In many ways, Google won the search war because its simplistic design made it stand out from crowded search portals.  The same goes for Facebook, a company that spends a disproportionate focus on user experience.

Forrester Research has produced another interesting report, this one focusing on perhaps the hottest topic of the social media world over the past year: The ROI of Social Media Marketing. The piece, primarily authored by Forrester analyst and friend Augie Ray, offers what Forrester calls a balanced scorecard for measuring the ROI of social media, complete with expected Forrester graphics and interview-based insights.

Ray uses the 1996 book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton to offer the argument that the best way to measure the impact of social media is through a wide range of metrics that are both directly and indirectly financial. The report says a balanced social media marketing scorecard will consider and monitor effects across four perspectives that balance the short- and long-term implications while looking at direct and indirect financial implications. These four are:

• Financial metrics
• Digital metrics
• Brand Metrics
• Risk Management

The report goes on to detail how to measure them and calculate your ROI.

While I applaud Ray and Forrester for being perhaps the first research organization to recognize that measuring success is more than just measuring the bottom line, I have to say I was a bit disappointed by this report. First of all, ROI is a business metric, not a media metric. Stop calling measuring social media marketing success a calculation of “ROI.” It’s not if you’re measuring all of what social media can do.

There’s also a lot of what social media marketing does that isn’t covered in their reporting mechanism. My own presentation from the Social Media Success Summit this year outlined five areas of benefit for a company’s social media marketing efforts and details how to measure them. They are:

• Branding and Awareness
• Building Community
• Customer Service
• Research and Development
• Direct Sales

I’ve added Reputation Management to that presentation since. While I’m sure you could spin each of those into Forrester’s four, and I make no claim to be the know-all and end-all to what social media marketing knowledge or opinion, it almost seemed like they edited down the various benefit areas of social media marketing to fit on an X-Y grid.

Is the report useful? For Forrester clients already paying a subscription fee, sure. But there’s a lot of great wisdom about measuring social media success out there that could have made this report better … and that’s not including my own.

If you really want to measure social media marketing success, you don’t need this report. You need to ask what you were trying to accomplish with social media marketing. Based on that goal, ask yourself if you accomplished it or how far you got. Pull your measures from that and you’ll know how you did.

There’s more information on the unfortunate topic of the “ROI” of Social Media available on Exploring Social Media for a considerable amount less than a Forrester Report.

NOTE: Exploring Social Media, an online learning community, is in active BETA. Should you choose to subscribe, know the tool is still being tested and the full array of its content and functionality is not yet available.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Forrester: If You Think Social Media Marketing is Worthless, You’re Doing it Wrong (readwriteweb.com)
• The ROI of Social Media Marketing: More than Dollars and Cents (blogs.forrester.com)
• PR Squared: ROI for Social Media Marketing: It’s Complicated (pr-squared.com)
• Social Media Fairies And Pixie Dust (twistimage.com)

Today I’m excited to announce the launch of The Brandery, a new seed stage consumer marketing venture accelerator.   The Brandery will be a three-month-long program held in Cincinnati, Ohio that is focused on turning your great idea into a successful, brand-driven start-up.  For our inaugural class this Fall, we are selecting 5 companies, with each receiving $20,000 in seed funding, three months of mentorship, and the opportunity to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the program.

The full press release is listed below.  For more information, please “like” us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and check out our site at http://brandery.org Applications close on August 11th so if you know of any companies who would be interested, please encourage them to apply today.

Consumer marketing execs launch nonprofit startup accelerator

CINCINNATI (July 19, 2010) – Cincinnati digital marketing executive David Knox and serial entrepreneur J.B. Kropp have teamed up to launch the region’s first startup company accelerator, a nonprofit organization called The Brandery that will package funding, mentoring and partnerships around local entrepreneurs to help grow consumer marketing businesses here.
Knox, brand manager of global branded entertainment at Procter & Gamble, and Kropp, vice president of channel development at Vitrue who also has been integral in launching six startup companies, joined with Taft Stettinius & Hollister attorney Rob McDonald to create The Brandery. The name, coined by Brandery mentor and P&G brand manager Bryan Radtke, was designed to convey both the consumer marketing/branding focus as well as the idea of generating new companies.

“The power of The Brandery is the collaboration between people and companies in our community,” says Knox. “Entrepreneurs will benefit from a wide range of talented people in consumer marketing here as well as globally.”
The Brandery is looking for consumer-facing businesses such as consumer Internet, media and entertainment companies, based on technology platforms.

The 12-week program will include a structured curriculum that includes seed investment, industry leader mentors and access to top talent in the industry.

About 30 mentors will participate, ranging from local experts such as Bob Gilbreath, Bridge Worldwide’s chief marketing strategist and Pete Blackshaw, executive vice-president of Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services to high-profile entrepreneurs such as Wendy Lea, CEO of Silicon Valley startup Get Satisfaction. (Click here for a full list: http://brandery.org/mentors/)

Each company that is selected through a review process will receive a $20,000 grant in exchange for equity in the company. As part of their participation, each company also will receive brand identity guidance from leading agencies including LPK, Resource Interactive, Barefoot Proximity, Empower MediaMarketing and Ample.

Companies can begin applying immediately at Brandery.org. Deadline for submissions for this first session is Aug. 11, 2010. Five companies will be selected for the first session, which will begin in late August.

The $20,000 company grants will come from CincyTech, a public-private venture development group that invests in high-tech startup companies. CincyTech is using its Imagining Grant funds, which are aimed at growing companies to the point where they are investable. “Our hope is to create a whole new pipeline of startup companies that focus on consumer marketing, to complement our portfolio of companies in information technology, bioscience and advanced manufacturing,” said CincyTech President Bob Coy. “Our mission is to grow jobs in thriving industries.”
In addition to CincyTech and the five creative agencies, support is coming from the Haile/U.S. Bank Foundation, the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, and Xavier University’s Williams College of Business, which donated money for operating capital for The Brandery, a 501c3. The Brandery also is endorsed and supported by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, Queen City Angels, Hamilton County Development Corp., and other local entrepreneurial organizations.

The Brandery was modeled after TechStars in Boulder, CO.; Y: Combinator in Silicon Valley; and Capital Factory in Austin, Texas; among others. However, while most of the others focus on scalable technology and Web-service startups, The Brandery is the first to focus exclusively on consumer marketing, Kropp said.

The strategy fits well with Cincinnati’s positioning as a national Consumer Marketing Hub through the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber’s Agenda 360 regional action plan.

The Brandery will serve as the region’s incubator for consumer marketing companies as promised in the Agenda 360 Consumer Marketing Center and Ohio Hub of Innovation plans, said Rich Kiley, who is serving as head of the Consumer Marketing Center for the Chamber. “The Brandery is an innovative way to leverage the competencies uniquely available in this region,” said Jerry Kathman, CEO of LPK. “This will burnish our region’s reputation for brand-building excellence.”

If you did a tag cloud on what was being bounced around the social media echo chamber in the last 14 days, the word “influence” would probably be the largest. Yes, even larger than “Old Spice.” Whether it’s the sadly lacking Fast Company Influence Project or the various voices in the social world trying to defend or attack it, we’ve suddenly become obsessed with measuring influence, finding out who is influential and figuring out how to generate influence.

Not a bit of it matters. If you’re looking at influence, you aren’t looking deep enough. It’s like judging a car by its color and not its engine. Influence is only a coat of paint. What drives influence is trust. He who has earned the most trust wins.

Do you trust Guy Kawasaki? Perhaps. But when you find out he has a team of people tweeting on his behalf, your trust in him is likely diminished. He has influence, but not as much trust as some. Do you trust Perez Hilton? I sure hope not … or at least not for most things. But Perez Hilton has a great deal of influence.

The difference in influence and trust is the difference in quantity and quality. Perez Hilton can get you a lot of eyeballs, but are they the right eyeballs and will they do anything with your information? Louis Gray won’t get you a lot of eyeballs, in comparison, but the ones he gets are golden. He gets them because his audience trusts him.

Stop looking for the candy apple red and start looking for the V6. It will make you a smarter PR pro.