James McDonald Breaks Down Facebook

In Chapter 2 of James McDonald's Social Media Marketing Workbook, McDonald breaks down all of the ins and outs of Facebook. He starts off by reminding everyone why it's still important to market using Facebook. The reason is because Facebook is still the largest social media platform with over 1 billion users all over the world. This boggles my mind because it's hard for me to imagine so many people all over the world who use this website. It humbles me to know that someone from the state over, country over or a different continent completely can and do see the same posts as me.

Back on track after my existential crisis, McDonald starts off with the basics and explains the skills we learn on Facebook are easily transferable to other social media platforms. This made me happy because I would love to just learn something once instead of a bunch of different times.

I really liked what McDonald had to say about Facebook being like a huge interactive scrapbook because it's so true! On Facebook, and other social media platforms, we are essentially only posting about the events we want to remember. Beyond posting about fun activities/events we were a part of, McDonald separates the rest of the posts into categories, such as: photos, friends, family, fun, games, social contests, groups, social causes/endorsements and news/commentary. You can look at these categories and use them in conjunction with your company's vibe/culture when figuring out how to best market to your intended audience. For instance, if you were running an account for a hip restaurant chain like Chipotle, you might be more apt to share posts with photos or social contests instead of a post about a horrific event on the other side of the world.

Going back to the party comparison from last week, it's encouraged for you look at other Facebook pages similar to your own brand and see what they are doing and evaluate what you like/dislike in order to inspire what you do with your page. You can do this by searching for keyword themes on Facebook which relate to your brand. McDonald used the example of searching for "baby food" or "organic food" if you owned an organic baby food making company. If you find any companies you want to keep an eye on you can go on the Insights tab and add them to your "pages to watch" list. I thought it was almost funny how Facebook created this feature for companies to basically spy on each other. If I hadn't received this information from McDonald I might have just liked my competitor's Facebook page! I don't want to give my competitors an extra like on their page, but thankfully I don't have to with the "pages to watch" tool on Facebook.

The most interesting aspect of Facebook McDonald taught me about is Edgerank. This is Facebook's algorithm for sorting posts based on what it figures you want to see most. Edgerank places posts with the most reactions, comments and shares at the top of the news feed. Edgerank also prioritizes posts from profiles over those from pages. McDonald stresses this is why you want to make a lot of "fun" posts so people will share them and increase the visibility of your post. Because the post is now shared from a profile it will be seen by the friends of the person who shared it towards the top of the news feed. With these "fun" posts, McDonald recommends making your page 80% "fun" and 20% marketing your brand. The idea behind this is the "fun" posts will be shared and increase your page's Edgerank and then more people will see your marketing posts. This makes sense to me, and seems like a viable practice when trying to increase your reach on social media. I went into this chapter thinking I knew how Facebook worked. While I may have been a tiny bit wrong, I am really glad I got to learn all of this valuable information about the platform and how to use it for marketing. Hopefully these skills will transfer just as easily as McDonald made it seem.