Katelyn Youngblood is our public relations intern for Summer 2012. She is a junior-to-be in the School of Journalism at UW-Madison and hails from Menomonee Falls. Katelyn will assist in media relations, event planning and issues management for our clients.
Author: Brian Lee
Tweet Tweet
I, like many others, use Twitter as a news source. Because I am a creature of convenience, I follow my favorite news outlets and am able to browse all of them in one stop. It’s amazingly efficient and I would highly recommend condensing your news surfing through Twitters!
That being said, it concerns me how frequently Twitter itself is news. Maybe it’s my secret addiction to entertainment news (I blame my mother and her insistence on watching Entertainment Tonight), but I have noticed an increasing amount of people reporting on what someone tweeted as a news story.
It’s a little weird to hear a story start, “So and so tweeted…” It’s like someone releasing a statement, if that statement was a stream of consciousness ranging anywhere from the mundane to the inappropriate.
I wish this was a trend I could see going away but I know that just isn’t the case. How often do you hear about a celebrity or pro athlete putting their foot in their mouth on Twitter? (Maybe I hear about it more because of my embarrassing habit of watching entertainment news channels…) As long as you give people the vehicle to say stupid things they will. And as long as people say stupid things, someone will make a news story out of it.
Improving Edgerank in Facebook
I recently spoke on Facebook marketing at the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce’s annual expo. A key point I made was that don’t spend too much time worrying about the appearance of your Facebook page, as the vast majority of interaction with fans happens in the News Feed.
For those unfamiliar with Edgerank, it’s Facebook’s tool/formula to calculate which posts matter to you the most. In other words, have you ever noticed some friends ALWAYS appear near the top of your News Feed? It’s because you’ve interacted with them more than others, and Facebook keeps track.
Edgerank applies not only to personal pages, but to fan pages as well. I’ve created this chart to explain how to improve your Edgerank on the three main categories: Fan Engagement, Time with Status and Frequency of Posts.
| Fan Engagement | Time with Status | Frequency of Posts |
| No marketing messages or any other type of “broadcasting” | Post videos | Post no more than once every four hours |
| Ask questions | Post photos | Post during peak Facebook hours; or |
| Elicit emotions | Post links | Post during your audience’s peak hours |
| Topical posts | (All suggestions from first column) |
The key takeaway is that good content should be your No. 1 goal to make your page more visible to your fans.