Using Facebook to move your yo ur business forward Recommendations and best practices to help drive traffic to your website, increase engagement, and gain valuable customer insights 9/27/2010
Facebook Platform
Table of Contents I.INTRODUCTION I.INTRODUCTIO N ........................ ..................................... ......................... ........................ ........................ ........................ ......................... ......................... ........................ .....................3 .........3 II.GETTINGSTARTED II.GETTINGSTARTED ........................ ..................................... ......................... ........................ ........................ ......................... ......................... ........................ ........................ .............. 3 III.GOAL:TRAFFIC III.GOAL:TRAFFIC ........................ ..................................... ......................... ........................ ........................ ......................... ......................... ........................ ........................ ...................3 .......3 IV.GOAL:ENGAGEME IV.GOAL:ENGAGEMENT.................. NT............................... ......................... ........................ ........................ ......................... ......................... ........................ ........................ ............... ... 9 V.GOAL:USERINSIGH V.GOAL:USERINSIGHTS TS ....................... .................................... ......................... ........................ ......................... ......................... ........................ ........................ .................. ...... 11 VI.TAKINGYOURINTEG VI.TAKINGYOURINTEGRATIONTOTH RATIONTOTHENEXTLE ENEXTLEVEL VEL ........................ .................................... ........................ ...................... .......... 11
2
Facebook Platform
I. I NTRODUCTION NTRODUCTION Today, Facebook has more than 50 0 million monthly monthly active users w ith 50% of those users returning returning daily. Each month, month, people people spend more than 70 0 billion minutes minutes and share more than 30 billion billion pieces of content with their their friends on Facebook. Addition Additionally, ally, each ea ch person on Facebook Face book has an an average av erage of 130 1 30 friends each, providing providing you y ou with powerful distribu distribution tion opport opportuni unities. ties.
On Facebook, experiences ex periences are customized for each user, based on their real friends, real identity, identity, and the connection connectionss they’ ve made. Through Through Facebook Platform, sites across the w eb are now bringing bringing that same sa me type ty pe of personalization to to their users. Already , Already , more than 1 million websites have integrated with Fa cebook through through registration and social plugins. plugins. Businesses often integrate Facebook into their websites to achieve three key objectives: (1) driving referral traffic from Face book, (2) increasing engagement, engage ment, and (3) ga ining ining valuable v aluable customer insights. This document document contains our recommendations recommenda tions and best practices on how to effectively use Facebook to achieve achieve these these objecti objectives. ves.
II. GETTING STARTED Determine key goals Understand what you want your integration to accomplish. Goal Traffic
Engagement
Insights
Recommended integration integrat ion Integrate Integrate the Like Lik e button or create a Facebook Page Publish Publish or advertise adve rtise to people that like objects on your site or Facebook Page Add the the Activity Fee d or Recommen Re commendations dations plugin Optimize your integration integra tion Personalize your site with Facebook Face book Login L ogin and Graph API* API*
Time to integrate integrat e 1-2 hours 1-2 hours
1-2 hours Ongoing 2-4 weeks
* Not covered in detail in this document
III. GOAL: TRAFFIC a) Integrate the Like button onto your website or creat create e a Facebook F acebook Page The Like Lik e button is a simpl s imple, e, one-click a ction that that lets people share content, make a connection, connection, and discover what friends like.
3
Facebook Platform
i) Key benefits -
-
Distribution on Facebook: When people click the Lik e button on your website or F acebook Page, a News Feed story is published to the person’s News Feed, and shared with friends on Facebook, Face book, as well we ll as your y our site. site. As more friends like it, the the story becomes more prominently prominently displayed to other friends. The published published story story w ill always alwa ys link back to the original content content on your website or Facebook Page. Publishing: Use our interface interface or API to publ publish ish updates updates directly into the News Ne ws Feed Fee d of users who have clicked a L ike button on on your site or on your Facebook Page. Pa ge.
ii) Proven results -
Businesses have seen significant increases in referral traffic from Facebook after integrati integrating ng Facebook Facebook (data from 5/11 /201 0): News Ne ws sites that implemented social plugins plugins to surface individualized individualized content content for o readers saw significant increases in daily referral traffic from Facebook. For instance, Facebook referral traffic increased by 190% for ABC News and 80% for The Globe and Mail, Canada's large st-circulation st-circulation national national newspaper. newspape r. The The Globe and Mail also found that that people who like their Facebook Page are more engaged engag ed on their their site — and a nd comment, comment, share, and read more. IMDb.com saw its daily referral refe rral traffic from Facebook double, and its users have o generated more than 350,000 likes. Dailymotion, one of the top 50 most-trafficked websites we bsites in the world, saw users click the Like Lik e button tens tens of thousands of times per day on their site. As an example, more than 250,000 users engaged with one of the most popular popular videos on Daily motion, motion, PIXEL PIXELS S by Patrick Jean, and a quarter of the views are from Facebook Facebook users. NHL.com saw an 80% increase in referral traffic from Facebook, as people o interacted with articles, articles, scores and a nd videos. Scribd, a site that helps authors publish publish their their writin w riting, g, saw their referral traffic from o Facebook Face book double double as authors authors gained followe rs among groups groups of Fa cebook friends.
iii. Facebook Page v s. Like L ike button/Open Graph tags on a Web page, or both? This This decision boils down to where you want w ant to connect connect with w ith users (on Facebook, on y our website, or both). both). There There are a few k ey differences differences between between a Facebook Page and a Web page with a Like button: -
-
-
Facebook Face book Pages have a built-in Wall that enables you to have a direct channel channel to your fans. If you have hav e the resourc res ources es to provide fresh f resh content content and participate participate in active discussions, discussions, we recommend that you create a Facebook Page. Facebook Face book Pages have a standard sta ndard layout (e.g., (e.g., Wall, tabs, profile profile photos, etc.) etc.) and can be created in the the place of a website. If you hav have e an existing website or want more design flexibilit flex ibility, y, the Like Lik e button button provides provides several sev eral flex ible layouts that can be integrated integrated into your site’s design. If you only w ant to drive drive traffic and manage connections connections on your Facebook Page, Page , but but have an existin ex isting g website, w ebsite, you have the option of changing changing the URL of the Like button button on your website we bsite to the the URL of the Facebook Face book Page, allowing users to connect connect with your Facebook Page from your website. 4
Facebook Platform
-
Facebook Face book Pages and Open Open Graph Pages are function functionally ally equi e quiva valent lent in terms terms how they show up across the site, can publish to to users that like them, etc. Open Open Graph Pages work better for segmenting users.
iv) How it w orks orks When a person clicks clicks the L ike button button on on your site or Facebook Page , a story appears in the user's friends’ Recent Activity Feed and profile with a link back to your website.
If the person adds a comment comment or as more friends like it, the the story s tory will be more prominently prominently displayed in the N ews ew s Feed F eed (URL, (UR L, image , title, and description description shown). shown). You can customize customize the display of the feed f eed story by addin a dding g the appropriate Open Graph tags (on your website) we bsite) or editing the settings on your your Facebook Page.
Open Graph tags are a re <meta> tags that you add to the the of your website to specify how your Web page is displayed on Face book. An Open Graph tag looks like lik e this: <meta property= “og:tag name” content = “tag value” />
If you use Open Graph tags, the following are required: required: • •
og:title og:title - The title of the e ntity. ntity. og:image - The URL to an image that represents the entity. Images must be at least 50 pixels by 50 pixels. Square images work best, but you are allowed to use images up to three times as wide as they are tall. 5
Facebook Platform
•
• •
og:url og:url - The canonical, canonical, permanent URL URL of the page representing the the entit e ntity. y. When you y ou use Open Graph tags, the Lik e button posts posts a link to the og:url instead instead of the URL in the the L ike button button code. code. og:site_name - A human-readable human-readable name f or your site (e.g., "IMDb"). fb:admins fb:admins or fb:app_id - A comma-se comma-separated parated list of either the Facebook ID s of page administrators or a Facebook Platform application ID. At a minimum, include only your own Facebook ID.
If your Web page pag e represents represe nts a real-world real- world entity, things things like movies, sports teams, products, products, and restaurants, resta urants, you’ll wa nt to to establish establis h a more more permanent permane nt connection connection with the user. To do this, add the object Open Graph tag (og:type). (og:type) . By adding og:type to the of your Web page , your page becomes e quivalent to a Facebook Page , , with the Page the abilit a bility y to publish updates updates to a person’s News Ne ws Feed. Fee d. Addit Additionally, ionally, when the person clicks a L ike button on on your Web page, your Web page w ill appear in the the "L ikes and Interests" Interests" section of the person' person'ss profile, as w ell as in search results on Facebook, and you can target Facebook ads to people who like your Web page. Use the article og:type for any a ny URL that represents transient content content - such as a news new s article, blog post, photo photo,, video, etc. Do D o not use website w ebsite for this purpose. purpose. The The w ebsite a nd blog blog og:type tags are designed to represent an entire site, an og:type tag with types w ebsite or blog should usually usually only appear on the root of a domain. If your object does not fit into into one of the specifie d types, you can specify your own type. This will be represented as ty pe other on Facebook. We will monitor monitor the most commonly commonly used types and graduate them to f ully supported supported og:types. The graphic below below summarizes summarizes the action a ctionss that take place when a user clicks the L ike button: button: 1
One-line story is published to user’s friends upon clicking “LIke”
Richer story is published when user adds a comment
2
Link is added to user’s profile under “Likes and Interests”
3
Site can now publish directly to a user’s feed
6
Facebook Platform
v. Best practices for implementing the Like button Facebook has worked closely with several partners across different verticals to understand their experiences expe riences and conducted conducted a few independent independent analyses to determine determine the following best practices: practices:
•
•
Use Like instead of Share The Like Lik e button offers offers a more lightweight w ay of making mak ing connections connections and sharing sharing content with friends. Users Users reported that clicking on Like is faster fas ter than clicking clicking on Share. On sev eral media sites, we’ ve seen see n that that the number number of likes is greater than the nu number mber of shares. For exa mple, on a media site that displayed both Like and old Share buttons over a given week, Like was clicked 3x more than Share. Ensure Ensure that t hat the t he Like button has commenting commenting enabled Verify that the width of the iFrame is at least 450 pixels or use the XFBML version (via our JavaScript Java Script library) for addition additional al flexibilit flex ibility. y. Over 70% 7 0% of the top-performing top-performing sites have commenting enabled.
If the user does a dd a comment, the story published published back to Facebook F acebook is given give n more prominence (includes image, title, website, description, and ability for friends to comment):
•
•
•
Use the Like button with friend photos Includi Including ng friend photos photos increases the click-through-rate click-through-rate (CTR). L ike buttons buttons with one face have around 8x the CTR of Like L ike buttons buttons with no faces. Consider Consider optimal optimal placement of t he Like butt on Our study study rev ealed eale d that over 7 5% of the top-performing top-performing sites used natural natural positioning positioning with respect to article copy and reading behav iors (like a t the clear beginning beginning or end point of the the article). Partner Partner sites also tended to place the Like L ike button button near near v isually appealing content (for example, ex ample, next to a v ideo or image). You can A/B test placement and layout of the Like button button to optimize referral referra l traffic. traff ic. Simply include the ref parameter on the Like button. Our insights tool will also a lso provide information on the the source of the click (e.g., on New sfeed, sfee d, Inbox, Inbox, etc.) Add the t he appropri appropriat ate e Open Graph tags Open Graph tags tags are <meta> tags that you add to the of y our website to specify how your Web page is displayed on Face book. Use Use Open Graph tags to specify an a n interesting interesting image, title, and description description to draw draw attention in the the N ews Feed. Fee d.
7
Facebook Platform
b. Publish Publish and advertise to connected users (people who have Liked) i) Publishing to connected users To publish publish to people people who w ho have liked your y our Facebook Page , simply simply use the composer composer to send a status update, photo, or link: link:
To publish publish to people people who w ho have liked your y our Web page, Open Graph tags must be added to the Web page. The required Open Graph tags for publishing can be found here here.. Once added, you can publish via our interface interface by clicking on the "Admin "Admin Page" link to the right of the the L ike button button (link (link only v isible to the admins admins defined v ia Open Graph tags on the Web page ).
ii. Best Be st practices for publishin publishing g In our analysis of stories published by top media sites, we found that (a) stories involving emotional topics, passionate debates, and important sports events have 2-3x the activity of other stories, (b) status updates which ask simple questions or encourage a user to Like the story have 2-3x the activity, and (c) stories published in the early morning or later evening have higher engagement. 8
Facebook Platform
For additional best practices on what content to publish, here are more resources. resources . iii. Advertising Adve rtising to connected users Once Once your y our users users like Web pages page s on your site or your Facebook Page via the Like button, button, you can begin to create Facebook Face book ads that help you gain a dditional dditional distribut distribution ion on Facebook: • • •
Target those who have engaged with your Web page or Facebook Page Exclude ex isting isting connections connections from f rom your target audience Target people who are friends with your connections connections
Use this opportunity to drive people back to your site, gain more connections, or promote special offers and a nd discoun discounts ts to releva nt connected connected users. For example, ex ample, if a person likes a particular particular product product on your Web page , advertise adve rtise a releva rele vant nt discoun discountt or offer to this user. Targeting ads to the friends of your connections will include social content about a friend’s interaction with your business, business, amplifying the relevancy relev ancy of your ad. More information and best practices can be found here here..
IV. GOAL: ENGAGEMENT a. Add the Activity Feed or Recommendations plugin The goal of the Activity Feed Fee d and Re commendation commendationss plugin is to serve the most interesting interesting friend activity and recommendations recommendations that that are tak ing place on your site. Similar to the the New s Fee d on Facebook, the Activity F eed w ill keep kee p people coming coming back to your site and clicking on content content to see what their friends have hav e been be en liking, commenting commenting on, and sharing. sharing. Recommendations, Recommendations, meanwhile, show an aggregate aggreg ate v iew of the popular popular activity about your site happening happening on Facebook. We recommen re commend d placing the Activity Fe ed prominently prominently on your home page and on content content pages to keep kee p users engaged througho throughout ut your your site. See examples exa mples below from CNN CNN and ABC ABC News. New s. Our team team rev iewed iewe d the top 100 10 0 domains domains using the Activity Activity Feed Fee d and/or Recommendations Recommendations plugins. Sites that placed the Activity Feed/R F eed/Recommendatio ecommendations ns plugin plugin above the fold and on multipl multiple e pages pag es receive more engage ment. For instance, instance, sites that placed the plugin plugin on the front and content content pages received 2-10x more clicks per user than sites that placed the Activity Feed/Recommendations plugin only on the front page.
9
Facebook Platform
Activity Feed shown on front page of CNN.com
Activity Feed shown on article page of ABC News
10
Facebook Platform
V. GOAL: USER INSIGHTS a. Optimize your integ integration ration Many successful companies buildin building g on Facebook Face book Platform take an analytical a pproach pproach to development – monitoring key performance indicators, testing product changes, and optimizing key drivers of growth. grow th. We are a re active ly adding and improving improving functionalit functionality y of Facebook Insights Insights to give you detailed analy tics to help you optimize optimize your integration integration.. Currently, Currently, Facebook Insights includes: •
•
•
Domain, Page , and Application Application Dashboards Da shboards (http://www (http://www.facebook.com .facebook.com/insight /insights)that s)that show the number and demographics of connected users sharing and liking content from your website and within Facebook. APIs so you can integrate Facebook F acebook Insights data with w ith your own, in-hou in-house se analytics a nalytics dashboards JavaScript i. Events so you can determine determine real-time rea l-time usage of Like Lik e buttons buttons on your site ii. Facebook Login Status so you can determine whether a use r is logged into Facebook
We typically ty pically ask partners partners the following questions when analyzing Insights data: • • • •
What are people pe ople liking the most/least on your site? Where do people like your content/pro content/produc ducts ts (on Facebook/on Fa cebook/on your site)? Is the user logged into Facebook? Where are these users most engaged? engage d? What type of users lik like e a specific item on your site? (e.g., Users Users who w ho click click “ like” or “recommend” on media sites are youn y ounger ger than traditional traditional newspaper subscribers) subscribers)
VI. TA KING YOUR YOUR I NTEGRATION TO THE NEXT LEVEL Personaliz Personalize e your y our site wit h Login and Graph API After optimizing your social plugins integration, you can give people the ability to log in to your site with their Facebook accoun accountt to make your site more peronalized and social to drive more engagement.
When a person logs in with his or her Facebook account, you obtain access to the person's public profile information , including name, profile picture, gender, networks, current location, and any information set to “everyone” privacy. You can also request ex extended tended permissions permissions to obtain additional additional pieces of data like a user’ s photos, e-mail address and check-in data to e nhance nhance the user’s experience on your site. After a person logs in or registers w ith your site site v ia their Facebook account, account, it’s important important that your site make it easy to discover friends’ activity and see a customized experience. 11
Facebook Platform
For example, ex ample, Rotten Tomatoes used public public information information to create the following ex perience: • • •
See your friends’ reviews first when you search for a movie to watch Share the movies that you want to see and your reviews back to friends on Facebook Browse recommendations based on the movies you’ve liked or reviewed from across the web we b
12
Facebook Platform
Another Another great ex ample of this Amazon. Amazon launched launched a personalized shopping shopping experience: expe rience: • •
See upcoming upcoming friends’ friends’ birthdays birthdays and a nd recommended recommended purch purchase asess based base d on what they like Browse product product recommendations recommendations based on the things things you’v e liked like d from across the we b
13
