Friday Facts: Facebook Losing Users, Unappealing to Teens

Following last weeks' article with interesting statistics about the penetration of the internet and social media around the world, a couple other articles came across my Twitter feed talking about the decline of Facebook users, especially among younger generations.

According to Complex, Facebook has lost more than 11 million users since 2011.  And to be honest, that's not a real surprise to me either.  Think about all the fake accounts that get purged or people who have multiple Facebook accounts (for whatever reasons) that either get busted by Facebook or decide to close down some accounts.

You then have other folks who decide to "Leave Facebook" for a while and close out their accounts and either eventually reopen them or just don't come back at all.

The Complex article, however, touches on a secondary subject regarding high school and college students abandoning Facebook and using other services, such as Instagram and SnapChat.  That fact is backed up by the Forbes article linked below.

Fact of the matter is, if you have a teen, you'll know that most of them are veering away from Facebook because they feel it is populated by "old people" and prefer to post graphic images via Instagram and SnapChat to their friends.  And I'm sure once they realize "old people" like me are on Instagram too, they'll eventually move on to other social media or create something of their own.

It is interesting to note, looking through growth charts and active user charts, the number of active users have been increasing each quarter - at least according to Inside Facebook.

Social media is evolving and anyone involved in Social Media has to keep their finger on the pulse to be able to stay in the know.  As of right now, you can still reach a cross section of generations via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., but it's good to be aware of what changes could be on the horizon too.

Do you have a high school or college student?  If so, what do they think of Facebook and Twitter?  What are they using to communicate with their friends?

Sources:

Forbes: Facebook is Losing Teens, And New Privacy Settings Won't Bring Them Back: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/10/19/facebook-is-losing-teens-and-new-privacy-settings-wont-bring-them-back/

Complex: Facebook Has Lost 11 Million Users Since 2011, Analyst Says: http://www.complex.com/tech/2014/01/facebook-loses-11-million-users?utm_campaign=complexmag%2Bsocialflow%2B01%2B2014&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Inside Facebook: Facebook’s global growth in Q4: 1.06B MAU, mobile surpasses web:  http://www.insidefacebook.com/2013/01/30/facebooks-global-growth-in-q4-1-06b-mau-mobile-surpasses-web/  (Article image comes from here).

Thursday Tutorials: Setting Your Cover Photo

There are lots of ways to customize your page and tweak things - so many that going into them all at once might be overwhelming.  Instead, we'll take a section each week, alternating between how to do things mentioned in Tuesday Tips, to review in Tutorials.

This week, we're going to look at setting up your cover photo.  A cover photo is, by no means, required, but is a nice addition to pages.  For example, if you have a bigger logo that you can use for the cover photo and an abbreviation you use an avatar, you'd use the logo as your cover photo while the abbreviation design as your avatar.  Or if you have a store front, you could put your logo as your avatar and a nice storefront picture as your cover photo.

So to get started, click on the "Add Cover Photo" button on the left hand side.  When you mouse over it, you'll see this text here.

Once you click on "Add A Cover" this text box will pop up before you can go any further:

Once you click "Okay" you are taken back to your main page where you can once again click on the "Add a Cover".  This time you are given options to select a photo or upload a photo, as seen below.

I ended up choosing the "Upload a Photo" Option.  Though if you, or another admin, have uploaded cover photos in the past and you want to choose from photos you have uploaded, chose the first one, then it will take you to your uploaded photos for the page to select from.  The second option will give you the typical find file window.  Navigate to your image and select it and it will upload.

Note: Cover photos are supposed to be 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall.  If you upload a file larger than this, Facebook will attempt to resize it appropriately.  The smallest image dimensions that will work for a cover photo is 399 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall.  More information can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/help/125379114252045 .   These dimensions apply to pages as well as cover photos for personal profiles.

I uploaded a free cover image, appropriate to my page, found here:  http://www.coverphotoed.com/photo/facebook-like

Once uploaded and processed, it will appear like this.

In this screen, you can adjust the image if it's not how you want it to appear, moving left, right, up or down till it's how you want it. Once you are done, click "Save Changes" and it will take you back to your page with the new cover photo in place with everything else, as seen below:

If you have a graphic designer on your team, I strongly encourage allowing them to create, upload and adjust the photo so it works well with your avatar.  If you don't have a graphic designer and aren't good with making them yourself (or are in a rush), you can find a number of free cover photos online.  Check out these sites (I found these just by googling "free facebook page covers".  My cover for this page that I uploaded comes from CoverPhotoed.

1. https://www.facebook.com/freecoverphotos
2. http://www.pagemodo.com/welcome/cover-photos  - helps you create your own cover photos too.
3. http://profilerehab.com/facebook_home
4. http://www.coverphotoed.com/

There are many sites out there, just be sure to read through their stuff and make sure it's okay for pages to use.

Hope this is helpful to some!

Thursday Tutorials are a series of tutorials designed to help people who may not be as Facebook savvy as other people.  Some tutorials will be targeted towards newbies to the social media world, others will include tutorials for more advanced users.  Thursday Tutorials are written for the layman and are designed with everyone in mind.  You can find all the Thursday Tutorials by clicking on the Thursday Tutorials tag below.

Wednesday Words: Sharability

Today's word - sharability - applies to all social media and isn't specific to just one or another.

Almost everyone on the internet recognizes the "Share This" icon that appears on websites and our smart phones, encouraging us to use one of the many ways to share something we like with others.  Sharability is the "measurement" of how engaging a post is which is likely to cause it to be shared.

This means, how likely are your fans/users to retweet/share/comment on your posts, videos and images to their fans/followers/wall?

Having sharable content is important for user engagement and gaining new users.  Keep in mind, it's not an invitation to create things that are likely to cause people to spam it, but sharing things genuinely of interest to others.

Ultimately, when creating posts, see what types of posts your users share more often.  It may take a month or two to figure that out, but once you do, you'll know what combination of posts to make each week to help raise the amount of likes your page has and how to increase the visibility of your page/tweets/content.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media.  These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media.   You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.

Tuesday Tips: Create Quality Content

Sometimes it's not about creating a lot of content, but about creating quality, share-able content.  You can have a lot of content pouring out - and many pages do - but if users aren't engaged and the posts aren't share-able, then you have a problem.

As a page admin, or content manager, it is your (or your team if you have a team) job to create content that is useful and relevant to your fans/followers.  It is also your job to encourage those same fans/followers to comment and share your content - which means it has to be engaging.  Ultimately, it all boils down to shareability.

A great way to do this is to ask open ended questions that target your audience - whether it be about your brand, product or upcoming event.  Encourage them to answer.

Post photos and videos that are relevant to what your page is about.  Posting things that aren't relevant in an attempt to click farm likes is just not kosher.

Put thought into what you post and what you schedule to post.  Is it something you would share if you weren't the admin?  Is it something your most cynical friend would share?  Admittedly, not everyone will share everything you post - but getting some shares is always a good thing.

If your page is starting out, you should target to post to your audience at least once a week, but more likely three times a week.  You can go more or less than three times a week, but three times a week will help keep your fans engaged and returning.  The larger your fanbase is, the more often you can, and should, post.

Tomorrow, in Wednesday Word's, we explain shareability and why it's important.

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.

Video: Why Facebook is Broken

I posted this to the Facebook Page on Friday, but it's good to have it here too.

This video can help you understand why Facebook is hard to market with and why every like, share and comment is important to small business pages who are trying to reach more of their users.  While I agree, we shouldn't have to like a page, then like a post and share their posts to guarantee we see their posts, it's the least we can do to help small businesses.