Over a six week period (1 December 2011 through 17 January 2012) we gained 137 new Likes/fans for our Tourism Currents Facebook Page. That is a 101% increase over a similar time frame from the previous year.

We did not buy Facebook ads or Sponsored Stories. We did not run a contest. We only did one thing differently …. we started interacting more on our own Home page (News Feed) with other Pages that we’ve Like’d.

That was it.

Sure, our Tourism Currents Page doesn’t have massive numbers of supporters, because we have a deliberate, laser-targeted focus on social communications for the tourism and hospitality industries.  We’d rather have a small number of people from CVBs (Convention and Visitors Bureaus) and Tourist Boards who really care what we say on Facebook, and then maybe check out our online Store, than thousands of random button-clickers who we never see again.

Facebook is like blogging and most other human interaction – if you want attention, you must give it. If you want your updates to be noticed, you need people to Like, Comment and Share them; that means they must remember that your Page exists.

How We Did It

As a Tourism Currents Page Admin, I switch from acting as my personal Sheila Scarborough profile to acting as the Tourism Currents Page. You can switch roles when you’re logged into Facebook; look for a little arrow at the top right of your screen next to “Home”.  The options available to you will drop down. If you are an Admin for many Pages, there is a small gray slider bar at the side of the dropdown box, although sometimes it doesn’t show up.

At least once a day, for about 10-15 minutes, I go to the Home page/News Feed acting as Tourism Currents. I click the Sort —> “Recent Stories First” dropdown arrow option on the upper right side. That puts my Home page status updates in chronological order, without regard to Facebook’s EdgeRank, which by default sorts the News Feed into the “Highlighted Stories First” setting. I want to see fresh, new, unfiltered updates. I also want my interaction to be noticed and not buried with 573 later Likes and Comments.

Then, I skim down and “like” interesting status updates, plus leave a comment on the ones where I have something useful to say.  I know that many other Page Admins are a lot like me; they notice and investigate those who actively respond to their content. Likes and comments help increase the visibility and EdgeRank of individual updates, so not only am I calling attention to Tourism Currents, I’m also helping other people’s content get more attention.

As the screenshot above shows, once I started doing this consistently, we gained 137 new Likes in six weeks.  For a Page with 895 Likes (as of this writing) that’s a nice little jump.

Numbers Aren’t The Point, Though

Excessive focus on getting more fans or supporters is useless bean-counting, unless it’s combined with actively engaging those people and getting them interested in and talking about your destination, attraction, lodging, service or product.

At a minimum, you should have a tab on your Facebook Page for easy signups to your own email newsletter.

You’re not in business to build an empire for Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg …. you want to own your own data.

We use a Facebook app tied to our Tourism Currents MailChimp email account to encourage newsletter signups right on our Page.  To see how it’s done, here’s how to add a MailChimp signup form to Facebook; your email provider probably has a similar procedure.

I disagree with some of the current advice to increase the frequency of your Facebook posting because of the new Timeline format.  Making more noise and spewing even more content for busy people to have to plow through is not a sustainable communications tactic.

To get Likes, be a Like-er yourself, and then have a plan for what the heck you’re going to DO with the community you build.

Everyone from a newbie travel blogger to an experienced destination marketing organization has confessed to me that the only thing they pay attention to on Facebook is how to get more followers and bigger numbers.

When I ask what they are even doing on Facebook – what are their business goals for their Facebook business Page – they really don’t know.

Hint: bigger numbers for their own sake is NOT a worthy goal, especially on a site where you own nothing, zilch, nada (Mark Zuckerberg owns it all.)

Just because something is a free social communication service doesn’t mean that it doesn’t require thought and effort to be successful….in fact, they all do, which is why social media is not really “free” except in monetary terms.  Done well, it is hard work.

What are your goals for your Facebook Page?

How do you capture data that you can control, like a supporter’s email address?

Since Facebook is a job, it deserves to be treated seriously, with metrics and goals and all that serious stuff.

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Thanks to a request by Pat Jenkins on my previous post about getting a tweet to spread further, here are some ideas for getting more mileage out of Facebook updates.

I’m currently actively managing two Facebook Pages (one for Tourism Currents and one for my Elastic Waist Entrepreneur book project) plus my personal account, so it’s important to me that I put content in the right place at the right time. Just tossing it out everywhere is ineffective AND annoying to those who follow me.

Having a smartphone gives me a potent piece of equipment for making content on the fly, particularly since photos are one of the best ways to increase EdgeRank and interaction on Facebook.

Let’s walk through an example:

Send a good photo from your phone to your Page

Opportunities to create content are everywhere.

As I left the ProductCamp Austin marketing conference last Saturday, I walked past the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum enroute my car. There were several brightly-colored decorated cows scattered around the lawn in front of the museum – it’s the Cow Parade Austin public art project.

Public art has a tourism angle, so this would be a fun update for our Tourism Currents Page.

Smartphone cameras don’t handle tricky lighting situations very well, so I had to do some maneuvering to get an image that wasn’t too dark (the sun was at a bad angle,) showed off the cow’s colorful Picasso-esqe design and also included the well-known giant bronze Lone Star behind it. The star is a recognizable landmark that sits in the front plaza of the Bullock Museum. Here’s the photo on our Facebook Page.

My Android Facebook app is pretty worthless, so to send the photo to a Page, I have to send it as an attachment in an email, to a special email address just for that Page.

**  You can do this, too:  as an Admin, go to Edit Page, look to the left sidebar for Mobile, click that and you’ll see a unique Page email address to m.facebook.com that you can use to send email updates from your phone.  I haven’t tried this with a regular cell/feature phone, but since even my old flip phone could send emails with photos, I’ll bet you can.

To think about:  If you think your personal Facebook friends would also enjoy your photo subject, then feel free to send a pic up to your personal profile as well, but here are two suggestions:

1)  Send a photo of a different subject, or at least a different angle on the same subject. Some of the same people may follow both your personal profile and business Page, and duplicate content at the same time can clog their News feed and is, well, kinda boring.

2)  Once something is posted, I prefer to Share content from my business Pages to my personal profile; it gives business content EdgeRank “oomph” the more often it’s Shared, Liked and/or commented on. If my phone app was better, I could do this from the phone, but for now I have to wait and do it on my laptop.

Always Be Tagging

The ability to tag, or link to, whoever or whatever you’re discussing on Facebook is a powerful tool, so take advantage of it. Tagging means that you’ll show up on the Wall of the person or brand you’ve tagged, plus it gives your followers an easy way to find the entities you’re talking about without making them hunt around Facebook themselves to look for it.

This is sometimes easier said than done. The tagging function – put an @ symbol and then right after it type the name of who/what you wish to tag, and you can’t tag people when you’re acting as a Page – has been really balky for me lately. It also means that you may have to find and then Like the tag-ee’s Page; a requirement before you can tag them, and then you may need to reload your Page for it to “take.”

Who could I tag in this photo?  Ideas include the Cow Parade organization, the Bullock Museum, the City of Austin, the Austin CVB, the Dell Children’s Medical Center charity that benefits from this particular art project and news organizations like the Austin American-Statesman that have given it media coverage.

Again, this is easier for me to do once I get home on my laptop. You can tag brands in photos (when the feature is working – grrrr) or I can add a comment to the photo and tag in that, or I can Edit the photo later and add the tag then.

Side note:  the Cow Parade Facebook presence is wrong so I did not tag them – they’ve set up a personal profile rather than a Page, which goes against Facebook’s Terms of Service and means they could be removed at any time. I don’t connect when I see that mistake.

Bonus screwup: I saw on the Cow Parade website that they have a Flickr account. “Great!” I thought, “I’ll go add my photo to their Group Pool.”  No, their account doesn’t have a Group Pool so I can’t share anything with them. I can connect with them as a Contact, but that doesn’t do much for either of us.  This sort of wasted opportunity makes me crazy.

Understanding the Facebook ecosystem

Key things to remember about Facebook – most interaction happens on people’s News Feed, not directly on their Wall.

Even if someone has Liked your Page, they may never see any of your updates – it all has to do with the relative “weight”/importance of your content to other people, which is based on how much reaction it’s getting, who is connected to who, how often connected individuals and brands interact, how new the content is, etc. That’s called EdgeRank – here’s an EdgeRank explanation and some guidance.

Also remember that the default News feed that people see is Top News, and your content’s EdgeRank determines how often your stuff is seen in Top News.  Many don’t ever click Most Recent to see the unfiltered, chronological listing of updates from their connections.

The Most Recent feed is the default for mobile Facebook users, so that helps, but means that your content timing becomes critical or you’ll be swept away in the stream by the next 14 updates they’re looking at on that tiny mobile device screen.

Key takeaways? Craft engaging content that will bring Likes, Comments and Shares, use your smartphone to create content while you’re on the move, and post daily if you can (at different times, including outside of working hours – Jay Ehret found that his best time to post on Facebook was, yes, 11 am on Saturdays.)  Even more tips from Ohio tourism industry expert Betsy Decillis – Facebook Tips and Tricks.

Remember….

A few minutes of thought – a little extra research and digging – adds up in reach and impact.

All you’re doing is pausing to think, “Who else should know about this content, and what is the best way to get their attention?”

It’s the persistent, relentless mindset needed for winning a marathon. If you’re in the communications game for the long haul, you’ve got to play it that way.

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I’m often asked by tourism professionals what I would recommend as a good first step in learning how to communicate with social media.

More and more these days, I immediately mention a Facebook Page.

By that I mean a Facebook “Fan” or “Business” Page for your tourism-related organization, not a personal page (although you must have a personal account/page in order to start a Fan/Business Page.)

Why do it?

• Social networking dominance – over 300 million worldwide Facebook users as of this writing.  Go where the people are, because….

• Your prospective visitors are probably there already. Facebook is no longer a “young person’s thing” – the fastest-growing demographic is aged 35 and older (with a big spike from women over 55….women outnumber men on Facebook.)

• It’s free. Whose destination marketing budget doesn’t love that?

• It’s a flexible platform to post not only written news and updates, but also the all-important photos and video. More importantly, your Facebook fans can also share their thoughts/photos/videos about your destination or attraction, so it’s great for building a sense of community (one that has worldwide exposure.)

• It allows information and content to spread rapidly. For example, if I do something as simple as “Like” or “Comment” on a Wall post on the American Indian Cultural Center Museum Facebook Page, that will show up in the Home page news feed of everyone who follows me on Facebook, and it also shows up on the Wall of my personal page.  If I do that while signed in as Tourism Currents (we have a TC Facebook Fan Page) it does the same thing.

• It’s hooked right into the explosive growth of mobile and smartphones. This is a no-brainer, folks.  Worldwide Facebook mobile usage is up 300%….combine that with the sense that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of mobile/smartphone growth across the board.  You need to be in this space. Like, yesterday.

Now, I know this sets your hair on fire and you’re ready to go sign up for a Page right now, but the next step is to make sure that this fits into your organization’s communications and destination marketing strategy.

This isn’t play (although it IS fun!) – this is professional communicating.  It needs to be integrated into your overall marketing plan along with the press releases or brochures or billboard buys, but remember, the social Web is different.

It is two-way, social communications with human beings; if you just pour stuff out into a broadcast pipe like you may be used to doing, your Page will fail. Your fans want to interact with you, not read your regurgitated press releases, so get some responsive personality in there.

Think of your Facebook business page as a “digital storefront” extension of your “home base” website.  Try not to clutter it up too much, show up regularly to say hello and interact, and make sure that your fans and customers can find the page.  Put prominent links to it on your home page, in your email signatures, mention the Page occasionally on Twitter and blog about it.

Need some kick-off ideas for your posts?  Here are 30 content ideas for your organization’s Facebook Fan Page.

Now, go knock ‘em dead (and leave a comment below if you have any questions or further suggestions – thanks!)

Thanks to Facebook expert Mari Smith’s Twitter stream, I learned this morning that the rules have changed for how many Fans you need on your tourism-related Facebook page to claim a custom/vanity URL.

The requirement used to be 100 Fans, but now you only need 25.

A custom, or vanity, Facebook Page URL is shorter, more focused and appealing and easier to remember for those who are looking for your destination or attraction on Facebook.

It’s certainly not a show-stopper if you don’t have one, but it’s a nice touch if you can get it looking more clean, personalized and consistent across your various social media sites (thanks again for the tip, Mari!)

To claim your customized Page URL for both personal and business Pages, go to this link:  http://facebook.com/username.

Since I’m seeing more Facebook Fan pages like this one from Wyoming and Austin’s historic Lammes Candies Since 1885, Inc, I thought I’d better step up and get this tip out there to you quickly….

Go get that URL!