If you attended our live ICCFA webinar earlier this week for learning how to take your pet loss business to the next level with Facebook, you learned some secrets about how Facebook works and how you can use that knowledge to gain a step up.
If you want the full slide deck from the presentation, you’ll find it all here!
The Facebook Formula for Pet Loss Professionals
You can take the following link to get our full presentation notes for The Facebook Formula for Funeral Homes.
Funeral Innovations was featured this week in Silicon Prairie News!
Read more about how FI got started and how we are helping funeral homes succeed on Facebook.
At the ICCFA Sales Conference, I went into detail about how Facebook EdgeRank determines who sees your posts on Facebook, and how funeral homes can use that information to ensure more people see their content.
While EdgeRank can be a complex topic, we put together a cheat sheet to provide you a quick overview and reference of how it works.
To download the EdgeRank cheat sheet as a full PDF, click here.
If you want to effortless increase your EdgeRank and get more engagement from Facebook, check out our Facebook Copilot software for funeral homes.
At the ICCFA Wide World of Sales conference in Las Vegas, we gave our most impactful and educational presentation yet!
We focused on how funeral homes can decode the Facebook Formula to grow their fan base and succeed on Facebook.
We were floored by the response to our talk, and decided to take the unprecedented step of adapting the entire presentation’s notes as a step by step tutorial below. So click the image below to see the slides and follow along with the written notes.
We’re confident every second you spend reviewing this information and strategy will be well worth your time!
Introduction to the Facebook Formula
The last couple years, I’ve come to the ICCFA conference preaching the importance of social media as part of your overall marketing strategy.
While this industry is notoriously slow to change, the good news is that I’ve seen a shift in thinking, as many of you have recognized the impact of social media, and have started embracing it in your business.
But, there’s still a lot of mystery about Facebook. Most of you see the value, but you’re still not sure:
So in this presentation, you’re going to learn following:
Importance of Facebook for Funeral Homes
Why is it so important that you are reading this material right now?
In this presentation, we focus on Facebook as a marketing channel. But why should you focus on Facebook over everything out there? It’s simple: Facebook now has over 1 billion active users.
And while you may only hope to get a small fraction of those users as fans of your Page, it’s not just about reaching those who are direct fans. It’s also about the friends and family of your fans.
Because even if you’re reaching a 25 year old just out of college, you are then exposing your message to her parents… or even her grandparents. If you’re sharing pre-planning education, wouldn’t you agree that those are important people to reach!?
Facebook for Funeral Homes 101
Before discussing strategy, let’s make sure you fully understand how Facebook Pages work.
Here’s one of our partners’ Facebook pages. When you look at it, what really stands out? It’s the big, beautiful cover photo – first thing your fans see, and often what they remember. Beneath that is the app listing, followed by the timeline of content and milestones.
You next want to set up admin roles if you will have multiple staff contribute to your page. That’s because you don’t want situation where a laid off or disgruntled employee from deleting page in retribution (trust me: we have seen this happen).
Once the page is created, how do people become fans? They can click “like” on the page itself, or you can even add the like button to your website.
Once someone is a fan, that’s when the magic happens! Because everything you post on your page is pushed to them. They see it in their news feed when they log in to FB. This builds an interactive & ongoing channel to your customers!
Introduction to Facebook EdgeRank
Now that you understand the basics of Facebook Pages, let’s start uncovering the mysteries.
Have you ever noticed when you visit FB, you see the posts of some people and brands more often than others?
And did you know that when you post something to Facebook Page, if you have 1000 fans, only a fraction of them will see it?
Why is that?
Answer = EdgeRank. That’s Facebook’s formula for determining who sees what, and how high in the newsfeed a post is shown. By understanding this formula, you can gain an advantage, and ensure more people see each of your posts!
EdgeRank is comprised of 3 main factors: affinity, weight, and time decay – I’ll explain each of them now.
1. Affinity – a measure of each fans’ interaction with your page
ex, suppose you have 2 fans: Bubbles & Giggles. Giggles interacts more with your content, by liking & commenting on your posts. What that does is increases affinity between your brand and Giggles and due to EdgeRank, Giggles is more likely to see your future posts than will Bubbles.
In other words, the more a fan interacts with your content, the more likely it is they’ll see your future posts.
How do you use that information? Craft your posts to be more engaging. For example, short posts get more engagement than longer ones, and photos/videos/questions get more engagement than simple statuses. Photo albums get the most engagement overall!
2. Weight – measure of how much effort involved in the engagement
Not all actions your fans take are created equal. If Bubbles comments or re-shares a post from your page, that carries more weight than a simple “like”.
Let me repeat: actions by your fans that take more effort are more valuable to your page.
As a result of the example above, Bubbles will see more of your stuff in the future, and it’ll give that post a bump up in the rankings for all your other fans.
To increase the weight of your interactions, find balance in what you post. If you vary the content, you’ll vary the engagement.
To do so, you can practice the Rule of Thirds.
3. Time Decay – the freshness factor
The older a post is, the less likely to be seen, or will be shown lower in the feed.
Advice: Post frequently. because of the Time Decay, you need to post often to make you have fresh content that will show up high in the feed
Funeral Industry Case Studies
Let’s look at some real life examples of how your funeral industry peers are succeeding on Facebook, and what can you learn from them. Pay closest attention to how their techniques are maximizing those 3 EdgeRank factors.
Toland-Herzig Funeral Homes & Crematory
They play a clever game: their fans try to guess the name the famous person who passed away on that day, based on clues they post to their page. Their fans submit guesses in the comments.
How does this increase their EdgeRank? They get high weight interactions through comments, and because they post often, there is always fresh content appearing in their fans’ feeds.
Last year they had a tragic fire. As they rebuild from this fire, they are involving their fans by posting images and updates on their Facebook Page showing their progress.
What makes these posts so effective? In addition to providing a human element to their brand, they are building affinity through engagement.
Peaceful Paws Pet Cremation post their Peaceful Paws Tour on their Facebook Page, which showcases different parts of their facilities and grounds. This increase their affinity and shows up their beautiful facilities.
This page provides a great example of speaking directly to fans. They post lots of questions directly to their fans, and as a result, they get increased weight of interactions.
This page is run by Don Carson of Carson & Son Funeral Homes and is separate from their funeral home’s Facebook Page.
Here they post obituaries in their community. But what makes this so clever? They post not just his own obituaries, but his competitors, essentially monopolizing the obituary market in Maquoketa!
7-Step Strategy
Now that you understand FB Pages and EdgeRank, and you’ve got some ideas from your peers, let’s pull it together into an advanced end-to-end strategy, to take your FB Page from zero to hero.
1. Create Page & cover photo
The cover photo is an important first impression. If you’re not artistically inclined, use free a free tool such as this one from Pagemodo.
2. Invite all your friends and family
Can’t emphasize importance of this enough! So many funeral homes skip this step and wonder why they can’t grow their page. You need a base of fans to start engaging community & grow virally. Best way to get base is through family & friends. You can do this from your Facebook Page by clicking “Build Audience” and inviting them via email, Facebook or by sharing your page to your profile.
3. Post engaging content
You need to organically increase affinity & get viral growth. Engaging content will do this. Include content such as photo boards, inspirational quotes, pics of your facilities and grounds, events your funeral home is holding, etc.
We can help you post engaging content with our Facebook Copilot.
4. Ads & sponsored posts
You can run Facebook Ads and sponsored stories to help grow your fan base.
5. Pre-planning content and marketing messages
Advice: keep in mind that people come to Facebook to be entertained and engaged, not to be sold to. So the most effective way of promoting your pre-planning is to keep it interesting by posting education, case studies, testimonials and stories.
Also, be sure to make it easy to get started. We have a preplanning app embedded right within the Facebook Page!
6. Measure Your Results
Facebook Insights shows you what works and what doesn’t. That way you can do more of what works and less of the rest.
With Insights, you can see how each post performs and what works for your audience, because every fan base is different.
You can also measure your results using our Facebook Power Rankings, which is a free tool that we developed at Funeral Innovations. The Power Rankings analyze your effectiveness and show you how your page compares against others in the industry. Best of all, it’s free and takes under 10 seconds to run!
7. Repeat continually
An effective strategy requires patience because the process is ongoing. You need to keep engaging, using ads to enhance your reach, continue your marketing & constantlyl analyze your results. Each time, you refine the process and get a little bit better, as your Facebook Page grows large and larger.
If you stay patient and refine your strategy, your effort will pay dividends now by helping your firm grow, while positioning you to win for years into future!
Conclusion
If you found this information useful, be sure to follow our Funeral Innovations Facebook Page for more!
If you want to engage your Facebook fans effectively and easily, our Facebook Copilot can help!
Finally, if you have any questions, comments or want to chat more, please contact us.
Facebook recently announced a big new feature called Graph Search. This is Facebook’s answer to Google Search, but it works differently than Google, and if utilized properly, provides an enormous opportunity for progressive funeral homes on Facebook to pull ahead of their competition.
Facebook Graph Search, while not yet open to the public, will allow you to search on Facebook and use the huge amount of structured data that Facebook has collected (think of the trillions of connections between people and other people, places, and things) to show customized results that are most relevant to you.
For instance, someone could search:
In other words, we are looking at a powerful new concept: social search.
For instance, a person who needs to find a funeral home can use Google to find a general listing, or they can use Facebook’s Graph Search to find funeral homes that their friends like or are connected to. This improves the results, because you trust your friend’s opinion more than you trust Google’s listing.
Why is this such a huge opportunity for your funeral home? As people start using Graph Search for finding businesses such as funeral homes, the ones that will show up most in the searches are the funeral homes that are already engaging their large fan bases. This will drive new customers and provide an additional sales channel similar to Google searches!
In other words, Facebook is now giving an enormous benefit to those businesses who are already making the most of their Facebook Pages!
To take advantage of the upcoming Graph Search rollout, continue to engage your audience. Make sure you get people to like or comment on your posts, to help continue your viral growth and make it more likely that your funeral home will show up highly in Graph Search results.
Want to really engage your fan base? Check out our turn-key Facebook solutions for funeral homes.
Is your business currently taking advantage of Facebook to engage and educate your community on the services you provide?
Over the past few years we have kept a close eye on the impact Facebook can have on our funeral home partners’ marketing strategy. Traditional marketing methods of direct mailings, newspaper and radio are continuing to become more expensive and less effective. Social media has continued to grow in popularity with both large cities and small towns. Our team at Funeral Innovations has worked hard over the past year in collaboration with our funeral home partners to deliver the FI Copilot – a turn-key Facebook marketing engine for your funeral home!
The Copilot will deliver engaging, hand picked content to your Facebook page with as much or little interaction from your staff as you’d like. Content that is proven to get results will be placed on your Facebook page on a schedule that works for you. Your staff has full control of monitoring what is posted through email notifications to ensure the message represents your brand. You can even customize the message and schedule your own, custom content to maximize your brand’s message!
Many of our partners are already witnessing the advantages of the Copilot, reaching hundreds and even thousands of people in their community every week!
If you are not currently using the Copilot, please contact us and we can arrange to activate it for your business.
We need your help! Please forward this email to any pre-need insurance companies or marketing companies you work with. We are in the process of expanding the Copilot to insert educational and engaging pre-need marketing content to your Facebook page. By getting your pre-need companies onboard, we can further increase the impact on your social marketing efforts!
We are proud to announce a partnership with Tukios to deliver the most seamlessly integrated memorial video solution in the industry. Our partnership allows you to build stunning memorial videos with no limit on the number of photos, plus access to a large library of royalty free music.
To maximize the value to your web strategy, the video and all photos used within it will automatically be added to the obituary in your website – with no expiration! The simplicity of this solution will save you significant time in building memorial videos for the families you serve.
One of the most valuable benefits to our partnership with Tukios is that the memorial video solution is entirely online. Therefore, you no longer need to be in the office to create the video. This flexibility allows you to create videos from your Funeral Innovation’s login anywhere, anytime. In just minutes you can upload your photos, build the video and have everything accessible within the online obituary on your website.
Monetizing your web presence is growing demand. With our new memorial videos solution, you can offer a unique Bookshelf Box keepsake for friends and family to purchase. No work is required to sell the product, since it functions automatically within your online obituary, and you will receive a monthly commission from Tukios.
Each Funeral Innovations account is being offered a free trial video to test out this amazing new solution. We are confident you will see an advantage in the time savings of your staff, and the value brought to the families you serve.
To try it, just click on the “Magic Videos” tab within the FI Case Manager. You’ll be wowed by just how easy it is to create beautiful memorial videos for your families online!
Many funeral homes take their online security for granted, assuming their website and obituary provider is taking their security seriously.
Unfortunately, not all funeral home technology companies understand online security or take it seriously enough. As a result, they are putting your website and obituaries at risk of being hacked!
We’ve discovered a major provider of funeral home technology has a programming flaw that puts thousands of obituaries at risk of being hacked! We will not name the company or describe the flaw because we do not want to put these websites at risk. Unfortunately, even though we’ve reached out to the company and have notified them of the security flaw, they have not responded to us and have not fixed the issue.
What can you do to ensure your website and obituaries are safe?
If you are still unsure whether your provider takes security seriously, or are wondering if this security flaw puts your website and obituaries at risk, contact us.
Security is a top priority for us, and we take it very seriously.
The focus of Funeral Innovations is to build a unique synergy between your website, mobile experience and social media. We were the first company in the funeral service to introduce QR Codes, through our Remembrance Codes offering. QR codes have proven to enhance the amount of mobile traffic to our partner websites. We are now proud to announce that we are offering this service free to all of our partners!
By placing the Remembrance Code on your stationary items, you allow visitors and family to easily scan the code with their mobile device and instantly be taken to the obituary in your website. Once on the obituary they may check in to the service, leave condolences and upload photos. Plus, the Remembrance Codes helps your funeral home differentiate in your community and stand out as a modern and progressive firm that people want to talk about!
Recently we’ve made a change to our Remembrance Codes product to be instantly generated when you create a case. The Remembrance Code can easily be saved to your computer and added to your stationary software like any photo. Once added, you create a permanent bond between the stationary and the permanent online memorial.
The key advantages of adding the Remembrance Code to your stationary are:
Just click on the Remembrance Codes tab within the Case Manager to get started!
Please contact us if you have any questions on how to use this free service to bring more value to the families you serve.
We have been floored by the success and excitement generated from the FI Copilot, which makes it easy to manage your funeral home’s Facebook Page by automatically sharing engaging posts that your fans will love.
Learn more about the FI Copilot
We wanted to share with you some examples of this success, by showing you several amazing funeral home Facebook Posts generated by the FI Copilot. Hopefully this will give you some ideas for how valuable and easy Facebook engagement can be using the Copilot!
Without further ado…
Pictures perform remarkably well on funeral home’s Facebook Pages, though it’s a delicate balance to find industry appopriate and uplifting photos fit for a funeral home’s Facebook Page. Fortunately, the Copilot has loads of pictures, like the one below, and as you can see by the engagement metrics, fans really love them!
2. Tips for Grief and Hard Times
Grief tips and advice for getting through difficult times are very important, both to help out the families you serve and also to brand your funeral home as being caring and knowledgeable. As demonstrated by the commentor below, this post was greatly appreciated!
Posting questions that directly address your Facebook fans helps them feel an emotional connection with your funeral home and builds brand loyalty. Here’s an example of a Copilot Post that engages fans through a direct question.
As mentioned above, pictures can generate huge amounts of engagement, as illustrated by the number of likes and shares for the picture below. This picture was re-shared 13 times, exposing Carson & Son’s Facebook Page to a tremendous number of people on Facebook!
5. Grief Quotes
Quotes can often get a large number of likes and other engagement, since they are easy to digest and contain a powerful message. In particular, this grief-related quote provides helpful insight and into the grief process, that many of your funeral home’s fans might be experiencing. As you can see from the 27+ likes, this quote was extremely popular!
What are you waiting for? The Copilot is so easy to use, it helps manage your Facebook Page even while you sleep! Contact us now to get started today: support@funeralinnovations.com.
