Facebook Frenzy

RR_GraphixGuy · **Posted:** Wed Jul 18, 2012 2:24 pm

nathansixchime wrote:

Social media is about connecting, building, and continuing a conversation with customers.

Your page insights and analytics and some targeted posting can usually determine when and how a post will be received and the number of "Likes" you have (i.e., not friends -- for a proper business page on Facebook they are "Likes") will ultimately determine the "virality" of a topic. For instance, our most popular posts (100-400+ likes with busy comment threads) are often from material we post in the evening. The same post in the morning is rarely as successful or popular unless it is significant to get enough people to Like, Share, or Comment on it, which increases its "virality," therefore spreading it into other folks' Newsfeeds, so that they can discover that content as well.

The most active time for most users 18-35 is between 8pm and 10pm, the most well received or popular postings are images. And one of the best ways to get responses is to ask questions of your followers. These are not just my practices, these are bonafide tips from Facebook itself. And also, just because it is free doesn't mean you shouldn't shirk a sponsored story or ad once in a while to further target your advertising.

In my film/creative business, we do a lot of "cultural relevancy" consulting which involves social media. The FWRHS' page has exploded recently, 500 new "Likes" in two weeks pushing us over 3,000 thanks largely to our schedule publishing, our new video, and the 8100 NKP Heritage unit. While some posts become wildly popular, trends with your audience unfold over time, and it does take time. You really have to engage people where their eyeballs are, not where we hope they'll be.

Social media as much as it is a buzz word lately is actually something that requires as much dedication as website updating and general public relations work. Consistent, interesting, diverse postings win more people over time. As Bob points out, you do need to develop a dedicated userbase to translate popularity/virality into actual dollars and support. The central website is key, but use social media as gateways to the core content, but don't forget to keep a conversation and connection going.

http://www.facebook.com/fortwaynerailroad

Now where's the "like" button for that post? :-)

Someone mentioned earlier about a threshold for something to be truly considered "viral", which might be something like over half a million, a million, or some other arbitrary huge number of unique views. If anyone has looked into the statistics and analytics ("insights" is what Facebook calls it) for their FB page, "virality" is the actual name of one of those statistics. So when John first mentioned in his post about something "going viral" for us, what I had meant was that this particular post (which incidentally was about our recent trip to Ecuador) had a different "reach" than our other posts.

First, as far as tracking the number of people reached by a certain post, there are three categories: Organic, Paid, and Viral. Paid is the number of unique people who saw a post because of clicking on a paid advertisement. WRC has not yet done any paid ads with Facebook, so this is currently always a zero for us.

Organic refers to the number of unique people who saw the post because they either (A) Subscribe to your news updates to be shown in their news feed, or (B) visited your Facebook page and saw it on your Wall-- er, uh... Timeline. For the majority of our posts, this bar of the graph is always higher.

Viral refers to the number of unique people who saw the post because one of their friends shared it with them, or otherwise took some action (e.g. "liked") that was reported to their friend that caused the friend to go see the posting. For the majority of our posts, this bar of the graph is always lower.

What made the Ecuador post different is that the Viral graph went higher than the Organic graph (about 50% higher), which means that more people saw the post as a result of sharing, rather than people initially seeing the post as a subscriber or someone who visits the page. Also the number of Viral views alone was between 2 to 3 times higher than most of the Organic views of the other posts. Hence, in that relation to the other posts, it had "gone viral".

Attachment:

File comment: The statistics on the number of unique views for our Facebook page post about a trip to Ecuador.

Screen shot 2012-07-18 at 12.15.34 PM.jpg [ 30.66 KiB | Viewed 6145 times ]

Two general statistics at the top of our Insights page are "Total Likes" or "Fans" (as of this post, now at 425... up almost 30 people since this thread was started) and "Friends of Fans" which is at 154,201. That means we have the potential to reach 154,201 with a single post, provided that every one of our fans shared it with their friends. Of course, a total reach of 509 compared to the potential of over 154,000 seems pretty lousy, but that's because what we do is of special interest, and even most of my own friends aren't interested in the details of what I do.

How many here would like 154,000 patrons to ride their train this year? Obviously, that would require a perfect world, but you get the idea. (This also doesn't say anything about the potential for friends of friends of fans... or their friends... or their friends... etc..)

Kelly, with over 3,000 fans (likes) of the FWHS page, how many Friends of Fans do you have the potential to reach... for free?

I also support what Kelly said earlier in analyzing your statistics to get the most out of your efforts. Knowing who your fan base is, when they best respond to Facebook posts, and where they are from will help you fine tune your strategies to get the most response.

I will admit that I am still learning the ins and outs of all of this, and also trying to make sense of our own statistics. Additionally, our goals are different than the rest of you... we don't have a railroad to come ride or a museum to visit and tour through. What we do have to offer doesn't appeal to the general public the same way that your museum or tourist railroad does. But we do see results in our own way, and it is something that is working for us.

RiverMP21 · **Posted:** Thu Jul 19, 2012 2:20 am

In addition to what my collegue John Isaksen has already posted, I wanted to add some specific data points. We just completed moving Diners 770 and 741 from Kansas City to Scranton. In the weeks and months leading up to the moves, we had purposely been very vague in posting when and how the cars would be moving. Mostly because we didn't have a definite date in place ourselves.

On July 9, knowing that both cars were going to begin moving that day, we started posting teaser images on our Facebook page. On July 8, we had 315 "likes", reaching 76,289 "Friends of Fans". Our daily "People Talking About Us" was 2 on July 8.

From July 9 to July 18, we provided daily updates on the current whereabouts of the cars, and by July 15, our "likes" were up to 343, and "Friends of Fans" had grown to 81,928 - an increase of 5639. (Imagine if each one of those donated $5... $28,195). Our daily "People Talking About Us" on July 15 was 27. However, on July 14 it was 64. (On July 15, the car was spending the weekend in Allentown, PA and did not move. In other words, slow news day)

I am still waiting for the Insights data for July 16-July 19, but our current "likes" are up to 352.

We saw an even bigger jump when we moved Diner 469 back in April.

Obviously, we are hoping we can take this increased awareness of our organization and project and drive increased donations and excursion ticket sales. That will certainly prove the worthfullness of having the page in the first place.

The raw data is very fascinating, and I encourage every Facebook page Admin to download their Insight data into Excel and really look over the numbers. It will amaze you how much they are tracking (the exported data goes way more into depth than the online Insight data)

Again, our Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/ELDCPS

arjay3 · **Joined:** Fri Jul 22, 2005 9:50 pm **Posts:** 162

The Anthracite Railroads Historical Society has a Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/108009319236542/

We often keep everyone up to date on our F3's status and operation and also notify for work sessions and anthracite railroad related news, such as the restoration to service of a Lehigh Valley C420 in full Lehigh Valley paint.

rlsteam · **Posted:** Sat Jul 21, 2012 2:16 pm

If of interest to anyone here, the Facebook page for the Keokuk Union Depot restoration project is at: http://www.facebook.com/KeokukUnionDepot

RDG Diesel · **Posted:** Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:23 pm

The MP&RE Dept. of the RCT&HS can be found here https://www.facebook.com/pages/MPRE-Dept-Reading-Co-Technical-Historical-Society/279477532069983

We normally have frequent updates and photos of the projects going on within our group.

S Bartlett · **Joined:** Tue Apr 05, 2011 9:26 pm **Posts:** 51

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shelburne ... 6210683933

CRHauf · **Posted:** Tue Jul 24, 2012 12:17 pm

The Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/rgvrrm

Our YouTube site is:

http://www.youtube.com/rgvrrm

We have also used Flickr for photo sharing:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgvrrm

-Chris
R&GVRRM http://www.rgvrrm.org/

wsflco · **Posted:** Tue Jul 24, 2012 12:42 pm

Page for the restoration of the Western Pacific 165 in Portola, CA:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Western- ... 9224687334

ebtrr · **Posted:** Wed Jul 25, 2012 11:36 am

Friends of the East Broad Top:
http://www.facebook.com/FriendsOfTheEBT
https://twitter.com/febt

nkpsteam779 · **Posted:** Wed Jul 25, 2012 1:55 pm

I would have to agree with Kelly on the timing of the postings and the content. We have found that sending out our newsletter gets more readers on a Tuesday or Wednesday between 10:30 AM to 12:30PM then sending it later in the week.

Due to a recent survey we placed in our newsletter we have received over 55 more likes in one week on our Facebook page because people became aware of our page even though the icon has been in our newsletter all of the time. So sometime having the Facebook icon does not advertise your page but takes a few simple words to say hey did you realize we are here too to get people to look.

Our group has found it there is no real science to getting the likes but a lot has to do with repetition and keeping good content on your site. Most folks will tune out the noise but if you keep good content on the page people will stop and read the post and take the time to look at what you have on your page.

So here is our Facebook page for American Steam Railroad.

American Steam Railroad - Frisco Mike #1352

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/americansteam
Web Site: http://www.americansteamrailroad.org

Best Regards,

Steven M Harvey

mikefrommontana · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2012 9:40 pm

The Western Montana Chapter NRHS has finally launched a page on Facebook, which seems to be a more user friendly means of setting up an Internet presence. Not much there yet, but the museum we help at (Historical Museum at Fort Missoula) finally got their streetcar back from restoration an in a carbarn today. More at http://www.facebook.com/westernmontanachapter

Michael Seitz, President
Western Montana Chapter, NRHS
Missoula MT

tim o'm · **Posted:** Mon Jul 30, 2012 10:22 pm

Steamtown National Historic Site has at least three facebook pages. I haven't done an exhaustive search on how many are out there, but there is a page set up via the National Park Service https://www.facebook.com/pages/Steamtown-National-Historic-Site/151286568217222 that could be an "official" site, but that would require a full FTE (full-time equivalent) position on the payroll to maintain. No one was hired to fill this position, and current management finds it unnecessary.

On the other hand, a few park volunteers and computer geeks are administrators of a true fan page. https://www.facebook.com/groups/steamtown/ that is very active. Frequent visitors, general interest railfans, RailCampers, employees, old and young, female and male take part in this page with several postings per day. Videos, photos, polls, and questions are usually commented on and answered almost instantly. That is a dedicated following.

Friends of Steamtown https://www.facebook.com/groups/109493199162415/ has a lot of the same following, but began as a DL&W 565 restoration page. It goes through periods of activity, and Steve Boonstra is a chief contributor, since he is the main man rallying troops to the project. It is an effective tool to communicate broadly on the progress of that project and other insights along the way.

I find Facebook to be a unique opportunity to cross the generations of interested people in any subject. You find friends, or a different sort of "friend," that is hard to explain any other way because the posts are so interconnected. The filing cabinet approach of sorting out the people in our lives is totally exploded by social media.

Frank Hicks · **Posted:** Tue Jul 31, 2012 11:10 am

IRM also has a fairly active Facebook presence, with over 3,000 fans and automatic updates linked from the museum website's blog page:

http://www.facebook.com/IllinoisRailwayMuseum