Cerebra

Confessions of a Content and Community Manager: Where did all my Pageviews go?

2011 has come and gone, giving most of us a good hiding in the process. I for one am happy to see the back of this year but before it goes anywhere I must say thanks, because like every other hiding I got growing up it taught me a few valuable lessons.

I recently had a look at some of the stats from one of my clients Facebook page and after hitting the ‘Sherlock Holmes pipe’ I found something pretty interesting…

The fanpage in question grew by little over 120 000 fans from January 2011 to November 2011. Now I know the pageviews and unique pageviews will be impacted by what campaign or competition is running at the time (See the spike in the graph above), so don’t jump down my throat just yet. What I find hard to believe is that with over 120 000 new fans there is only a difference of 40 000 pageviews when there is no special competition.

Fans aren’t popping in for a visit, unless they have a reason to - like a shiny new iPad or to rant on your wall. Yet if we look at the Comments vs. Likes vs. User Generated Content (Wall posts) we see a lot of growth in terms of engagement.

The reason for this is simple: people are inherently lazy - they would rather ‘like’ or comment on an update direct from their news feed. It’s easier that way, especially for mobile users. What this means for brands is their presence is limited to the update filtering through their fans’ feed. It’s a trend that we expect to continue as basic smartphones are predicted to outsell feature phones for the first time in history next year. This translates into more ‘mobile social networkers’ than ever before. Rumour has it that plans are underway to get tabs onto mobile, but until such time, what are these fans really missing by not visiting your page?

If you want to get those numbers up without big ad spend, we’re going to have to go back to the ‘Content is King’ argument, as that is more than likely the only thing your fans are seeing. The brief five seconds in a fan’s newsfeed is all you have to work with so you better make it good. If you want more traction on your updates, you have to make them ‘Shareable’ (not sure if that’s a real word, but you get what I’m saying). The ‘share’ is the Facebook equivalent of a Twitter retweet except it lasts longer. Start having a closer look at what content updates your fans are sharing to their wall for their social network to see. I’ve found that including rich media in an update works quite well, but the general rule of thumb for shareable content is less sales and more lifestyle – does it resonate with your fan’s lifestyle or personality? At the end of the day it comes down to how well you know your audience.

In terms of analysing this data for your clients, it’s probably best to let your clients know that they shouldn’t be reading too much into the number of pageviews you get as it’s not exactly an accurate measurement of how well you’re doing. We’ll be having an in depth look at the recently released Reach graph, and how this is a new measure for your KPI’s as well as showing valuable return

All that being said, bring on 2012.