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Facebook Hacks in 45 Minutes
Delia Paunescu, Audience Engagement Editor for Newsday and amNewYork
Matthew Knell, VP of Social Media and Community Strategy, about.com

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Agenda
• We share our favorite Facebook hacks. (20 minutes)
• You ask us questions about your hacks. (25 minutes)
• You hopefully don’t call us a bunch of hacks. (Forever and ever)

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Your questions!
• Ask away and we’ll try to answer
them as best we can
• Hashtag them with #SMWKND45 on
Twitter!
GIF SOURCE: sesamestreet.tumblr.com

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About Delia
@delia_pdeliapproved
• A journalist, true and true.
• Today’s focus: Breaking news and
trending tools

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Breaking News
• You can use Facebook to convey information quickly, even without a
link.
• You can go back and update the post as news breaks, if your page
allows for page edits.
• Use language like: “BREAKING”, “JUST IN”, “UPDATE”, “DEVELOPING”
• Update as soon as you can update, but no more than every half hour
unless something major happens.
• Demo!

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Getting content out quickly
• Get it out within the first 12 hours, or don’t bother getting it out at all.
• Share evergreen stories the first day they are live, but keep track of them for
reuse later.
• Repost it when it’s most relevant: Save them for evening, weekend, later use.
• Don’t assume your audience has seen everything on Facebook; because
they really haven’t.
• Just because it flopped the first time, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it again
with a different angle.

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Sourcing trends
• Sure they're written like your grandmother on her first day of using Facebook, but that Trending
Stories rundown can also make your clicks for the day.
• The ways of finding out what's happening on social are endless (and all of these are free):
• BuzzFeed Fresh - http://fre.sh/ (looks bad, works good)
• NYTimes Trending - http://www.nytimes.com/trending/ (brand new)
• NYTimes Vellum - http://vellum.nytlabs.com/ (Twitter focused, but still useful)
• Facebook Trends - https://m.facebook.com/search/trending-news/?
ref=bookmark&app_id=343553122467255 (mobile link, but easy to use)
• MuckRack newsroom - http://muckrack.com/newsroom
• New Digg - http://digg.com/

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What type of Facebook post should I use?
• Consider the value and intent of the content - and its “curiosity” gap
• Don’t give away too much; tease responsibly, but avoid link bait.
• Ask yourself: “What’s the best way to tell the story?”
• Don’t bury the lead in content that doesn’t help tell the story.
• But, tell enough of the story to get people interested in learning more.
• Excitable language is helpful - gets people motivated.

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Photo posts
• For news items that have visual
appeal, consider pulling out some
teaser photos into a photo post, or
a multi-photo post.
• Don’t post more than 4 to 5
photos; find a line between
teasing and giving too much
away.
SEE THIS POST ON FACEBOOK

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Photo posts
• After upload, Facebook will
create an album with all of
the photos.
• Important: Make sure each
photo in the album has its
own description and link -
the post caption from the
first photo doesn’t carry over
to the rest
SEE THIS POST ON FACEBOOK

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Video posts
• Facebook is investing in the growth
of video on the platform, and thus is
giving it a bit of preferential
treatment and display.
• Does the video enhance the
existing story? Or is the video the
story?
• Consider the fact most people don’t
have sound.
• Cut longer clips to 15-30 seconds
for social use.
SEE THIS POST ON FACEBOOK

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Status post w/link
• If news is particularly shocking, use
a status with a link to get people to
click quickly.

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Link posts
• If you don’t have a better way of
telling the story, just use a link.
• Link content tends to have the best
overall reach.
• Use the caption to pair with the
metadata Facebook pulls in.
• Remember that you can edit the
metadata. Customize it to fit your
specific needs.

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About Matt
@matthewknell
• Not a journalist, a product guy turned
social media nerd
• Today’s focus: Product tweaks and tools

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The Facebook Debugger is your friend
• Gives you a glimpse of
exactly how your content
looks when it’s shared on
Facebook.
• Also, clears Facebook’s
cache, so if you change
metadata, it will rescrape.
TRY IT: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

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Get verified!
• Getting verified gives you a
few extra tools:
• the ability to edit posts after
they’ve been posted.
• the option to turn on “Smart
publishing”
• The option to do Organic
Post Targeting.
• It may help your reach as
well.
• Fill out this form to see if you
qualify.

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Organic post targeting
• Delivering content to people who are
likely to want it helps performance
and engagement.
• Shown as much as 200% increase in
CTR for us in testing.
• You can target by Gender, Age,
Interest, Language, Relationship
Status, Location, Education
• You can also add an End Date to
your posts.

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Recommended Facebook companion tools
• Use SharedCount to finding social share history on your content.
• SimplyMeasured has a bunch of free Facebook analysis reports.
• Buffer is a great publishing tool that allows easy management of content
schedules.
• BuzzSumo helps you find influencers, trending topics and share counts.
• Asana is a great tool for managing calendars and content tasks.

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Things to bug your tech team about:
Open Graph Tags
READ THE CODE: http://ogp.me
BONUS: Most OpenGraph tags work with Pinterest Article Rich Pins too!
• Specifies exactly what a
user sees when your post
is shared.
• Allows you to customize
title, description and
photo for social use.

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Things to bug your tech team about:
Campaign tracking
• By adding campaign tracking to your
URLs, you’ll be able to tell exactly where a
click is coming from.
• This is helpful when measuring
performance of visitors from your
Facebook page.
• Some social tools (most notably Buffer for
Business) already have this built-in.
• A great guide to how this works is
available here.

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Now, your questions
• Don’t forget your handout - lots of answers there.
• Ask away on hashtag #SMWKND45 or raise your hand and shout
them out!
PSST, GET THIS DECK AT: http://www.slideshare.net/matthewknell