Facebook Changes and the Impact on Content Marketing
Recently, Facebook made a series of simple, yet extremely powerful changes to their platform, impacting the open social graph. In a nutshell, the open graph is a combination of technologies and interlinked content that make up social networking as we know it today. With all the buzz about Facebook’s changes I wanted to break them down into a simplified list and discuss they effects they could have on content marketing in the long run. Let me make it clear that this is not intended to be another post on how Facebook is taking over the Web.
Facebook Plugins for Content Marketers
Login with Faces & Facepile
These plugins are designed specifically for content marketers and enhance Facebook Connect by making it both easy and compelling to sign into Facebook on another website. Once logged in, publishers now have the option of showing the pictures (faces) of Facebook friends who are already members of the website among other profile attributes.
Implications for Content Marketers:
This subtle change adds another compelling reason for a website visitor to use the Facebook login while browsing your website. Once a user is logged in, it opens the doors to extreme personalization of the user experience and the content you show them by allowing you to tap into the visitors Facebook profile data.
Like Button and Like Box
These plugins add the liking feature you see on Facebook.com to anyonline content. The very basic intent for these plugins is to get visitors to “like” your content on your site and post a link back to Facebook, which is then permanently stored on a user’s profile and points back to your website.
Implications for Content Marketers:
I personally think this is will have one of the largest impacts for content marketers. Imagine having a permanent link on thousands of peoples Facebook profiles (that are being exposed to hundreds of their closest friends) link directly back to your content. To fully understand the implications that these permanent links will have on your content marketing you must understand the importance of back links in your online marketing strategy.
Activity Feed and Live Stream
These plugins show activity from Facebook on a website. For example, the activity feed lists the most recent likes and comments from site visitors about the website and the Live Stream shows a real-time view of activity from Facebook about the content of your site.
Implications for Content Marketers:
For those who have an active or large Facebook following and a website that is community based, these plugins will empower publishers with the ability to take the power of commenting (think blog posts) from Facebook and directly leverage it in your community. These plugins could be particularly useful for events such as classes, presentations, and seminars where you want to share live activity at the event with others who can’t attend.
Recommendations Plugin
This plugin displays personalized recommendations for the website visitor based on what everyone is liking on the website. For example, if everyone is liking that great online quiz , video, and article on your website, this plugin can be used to display their popularity.
Implications for Content Marketers:
I personally think that the main benefit to marketers is its ability to drive visitors to other pages on your website. Think of it like as being able to expose the top content from your web analytics software directly to your website visitors and personalizing it by showing who likes it.
This post was not intended to be an exhaustive list of all the implications that the recent Facebook changes will have for content marketers. How do you think they will impact your marketing?
On Twitter? Follow me at @BrianBierbaum. Follow Priority at@PriorityResults.
