Ghost

My Button Collection

Plugging into Facebook’s Social Plugin

There was a full article in WSJ plugging the social plugin that Facebook has been pitching to businesses and website owners. The sales pitch:

For e-commerce sites, adding a “Like” button lets shoppers quickly share a product or deal with their Facebook connections, potentially encouraging them to buy the product themselves.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703787904575403512335975240.html#ixzz13acRpgmE

But they don’t mention that Share buttons on most websites also enable customers to do this, and in my opinion, do it better. Share buttons allow users to populate an image before they share the link with friends. If you are in any industry where visualization matters (fashion, beauty), the like button is not serving you best. 

Facebook does have a solution for this, layering your Share plugin over the “like” social plugin, but other than slight tracking data, what are the benefits of doing that?

The flip side of the story is best told by “flip side stakeholder” Tim Schigel, CEO of ShareThis.

That is a change from when users share content through sharing buttons developed by other companies. Those companies, including ShareThis, which has buttons on 800,000 websites, can collect data to help sites understand their audience.

If online publishers lose data about user behavior, it could deprive them of revenue from selling advertising that is targeted to particular users, said Tim Schigel, chief executive of ShareThis. Advertisers are increasing their spending on such targeted ads faster than that for traditional ads that appear across an entire website at a given time, no matter who is visiting.

Knowing which customers share website information is valuable because it lets publishers see which users are influential, meaning they drive a lot of traffic back to their sites. “To the extent that any third party comes in and knows more and can extract more value than the publishers themselves, they can be worried,” Mr. Schigel said.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703787904575403512335975240.html#ixzz13adi9SQq

I love Facebook, but I don’t think the Like Social Plugin offers enough value. 

Get Face Time with Your Facebook Friends/Fans

During the Facebook Success Summit, speaker Jay Baer discussed how to be seen in Facebook’s “Top News” newsfeed. He elaborated that newsfeed standing is determined by the Edge Rank, an algorithm that reflects three components:

  • Affinity Score: The amount you have historically engaged with content by a person/page increases your affinity to the content creator.
  • Timing: The more recent the post, the higher it ranks.
  • Weight: As posts are commented on, liked and shared by other Facebook users and their networks, their overall weight increases.

SmartBlog covered the seminar and added that “only 35% of Facebook users log in during the workday.” This is often due to company internet restrictions. 

Using the Edge Rank, there are some clear goals for Facebook success (related to organic traffic). 

  • Bring repeat viewers and participants to your fanpage. The more they interact with you, the more they will see your posts. That means, when people interact with you, make sure to interact with them. They’ll get a notification and love you a little extra. :)
  • I wouldn’t encourage posting more frequently. Frequent posts may be cool on Twitter, but look like Spam on Facebook. Instead, I would encourage posting when other companies/orgs are not. Often businesses post during the day, that means you should throw in some evening posts. Taking into consideration that most users are not logging in during work, it is a win win situation.
  • Make your content GOOD! Find the formula that gets the highest interactions from your fans. I’ve seen that simple updates and interesting topics that focus on the individual (not the brand), yield the best results. 

Who are your favorite brands on Facebook?

Must Every Road Lead Back to Facebook?

As much as I love the community that Facebook provides, I secretly wish that someone would give them some serious competition.

Over the last three months, Facebook has created so many limitations for developers and businesses on Facebook that I am starting to feel under the rule of a Social Media tyrant.

Most recently, they disabled the hyperlinking function in their photo images. Now, if you want to upload a product you are selling to a photo album, the link the the caption will be dead.

Facebook is basically making sure that every road leads back to them, the only hyperlinks active are the ones to pages, albums, and other places within Facebook. And if you want people to go to your site or product? You better pay up with heavy advertising fees.

Google, why aren’t you doing something about this?