Facebook announced some major changes last week; in a nutshell, the changes facilitate and enhance how marketers and brands can exchange their own site visitors’ data with Facebook. There are a number of great resources out there, I’ve compiled several in the SwellPath Diigo account.
So, what exactly has changed, and what does it mean for you and you’re own digital marketing initiatives? 18 months ago it was considered forward-thinking to have a link to your Facebook page on your brand’s website; now what is forward-thinking, and what is standard best practices? I’m not sure I can entirely answer those questions in this post, but I can address what I think the key opportunities are, and how SwellPath will play in this space. First, a quick overview on the changes:
The Basics
First, the basic opportunities. The changes allow us to lay the social framework of Facebook into our own web properties. In the simplest form, this is made possible with 5 new social plugins. These plugins allow for integration of data into your site, but also the opportunity for authenticated Facebook users to modify their own profile via your site. For example, we can now put a Like button anywhere, and anyone authenticated on Facebook can click it and indicate that they like an object. Click the Like button below if you like this post (you can wait until you’re finished reading it):
Beyond Basics
In the more complicated forms, this “weaving” is enhanced with the Open Graph Protocol and the complimentary Facebook Graph API. This is where things get interesting, and possibly revolutionary, in terms of how you’ll be able to leverage the new features on your sites. Just as you raced to gather fans of your brand’s page on Facebook, and waited for those fans’ friends to come to your page, now you can gather “likes” of your content (your objects) throughout the web, and links to that content are syndicated through users’ feeds. Likewise, just as proper meta tag implementation for SEO purposes has become a necessity, proper Open Graph integration may also become a necessity to maintain adequate site visibility. It enables Facebook (and whomever else) to quickly “read” and sort the nature of your objects (i.e. content).
Open Graph & Your Site
So, how will this change your web site, or sites you’ll be building in the near future? Well, if you do things the right way, you’ll now be able to “borrow” the social experience we all have with Facebook, for your own site. You’ll at least want to carefully assess how if you can leverage Open Graph to socialize your site, or areas of your site. Once you’ve figured out there are opportunities, you’ll want to work with the appropriate stakeholders to decide the best way to integrate the various options Facebook has created, and ensure you’re optimizing the syndication potential for your content, and that you’re following best practices. While the opportunity that Facebook has created is way beyond the old days of slapping a Facebook icon on your footer, it also is way more complicated, and there are written and unwritten rules that need to be followed.
SwellPath & Open Graph
Here is the shameless plug for SwellPath: we will continue to help our clients navigate the social media marketing landscape, Open Graph now just increases the options we can present to our clients. There no longer is a massive gap between those who can afford to promote their brand through costly Facebook applications, and those who simply can afford to have a vibrant Facebook page for their brand. That gap is gone, and in it’s place are a fantastic variety of possibilities for web designers and developers to creatively loop in Facebook. We’re excited to see these possibilities come to life for our clients and the rest of the industry.
