Category Archives: Facebook Social Plugins

by by Majestic Media

Facebook Plugins Entices Users To Stay On Sites 50% Longer

A new study done by Gigya shows that users who visit third party sites through Facebook Connect spend on average 50% longer on those sites.  Furthermore those users view twice as many pages.  The study also found that Facebook accounts for 62% of third party logins through social plugins.  The nearest competitor was Yahoo accounting for only 15%.  Gigya’s CEO Patrick Salyer offered the following explanation for the results.

“It seems that when a person logs into a site with social login, they’re doing so because they want to interact with the site and with their social graph, resulting in the same benefits of increased time spent and page views that social networks enjoy. In essence, social login is acting as a gateway for user engagement with plug-ins like comments, sharing, game mechanics, and activity feed.”

by by Majestic Media

Utilizing Social Plugins and Notifications

Social plugins let you see what your friends have liked, commented on or shared from sites across the web. Through the use of social plugins, Facebook does a phenomenal job at enabling users to interact not only within their platform, but also all over the web.

Facebook offers some great social plugins that encourage interaction within their platform. Some of the most useful plugins for referring friends are the Activity Feed and Recommendations. These plugins simply allow users to view their friend’s activity within your application. When paired with the Like button, this combination will ensure that users are more likely to explore your content.

Another and more personal way to increase traffic to your application or website would be to use Requests on Facebook. This allows users to inform their friends that they are interacting with your application, and displays a badge and message within their notifications.

The “Like” button enables users to share content with friends on Facebook. Once this button is clicked, content is posted to the user’s News Feed with the related content displayed. It also will include a link back to the site in which the user was viewing the content, therefore driving more traffic.

Comments Box is a social plugin that enables user commenting within a specific website. These comments are easily shared with friends or with people who like your Page on Facebook. If the user selects the “post to Facebook” opt-in, the comment they are posting will show up in their News Feed for all their friends to see.

The “Send” button will allow users to send the content they are viewing to specific friends on Facebook. Rather than posting to the newsfeed, like the commenting plugin and the “Like” button, this will be sent as a private message to the selected friends.

The Activity Feed social plugin displays the most recent interesting activity taking place within your site. This can display personalized content regardless of whether or not the Facebook user is logged into your site. This displays users who have “Liked”, “Commented”, or “Shared” content from your page.

The Recommendations plugin displays personalized content to your users based on their own activity. It considers social interactions in order to highlight and give preference to objects the user’s friends have interacted with.

The new era of social plugins provide deeper engagement for Facebook users.   Hope you enjoyed the post!

by by Majestic Media

Facebook Social Plugin Now on Mobile Devices

Facebook has just launched the comments social plugin for mobile.  Well, not really “launched”, rather, allowing the standard comments plugin to render specifically for mobile devices.

The way it’ll work is: when a mobile device is detected, the comment box will render accordingly.  It can be shut off quite easily and Facebook has made a nice implementation where the width will be fluid (depending on whether you’re browsing in portrait or landscape mode.

Installing it is quite easy: you simply enter the URL where the comment box will be shown and Facebook will give you the snippet of code.  More details can be found on the dedicated Social Comments page.

The comments plugin is a very useful tool that we’ve used in many of our Facebook applications. It’s a quick and easy way to provide a means of community and relevant engagement within a specific topic (hence why companies like TechCrunch use it exclusively for their comments).  The interesting part of the commenting tool is that it allows for moderation by an admin while also integrating an algorithm that will detect the most relevant comments and post those at the top.

Facebook has released a PDF that outlines best practices for implementing the Social Comments plugin.  Feel free to download Facebook’s best practices.

Enjoy!

 

 

by by Majestic Media

Ways to Optimize Interaction and Build Conversations: Part 2 of 2

Today, we’re going to start the second part of a two part series that will look at how brand managers and social media managers can optimize interactions and build conversations on Facebook.

There are 2 forms of communication we will explore:

  1. Listening
  2. Speaking and Sharing

Today, we’ll be looking at “Speaking and Sharing”.

Speaking and Sharing
Encouraging engagement throughout your application is one of the best ways to spread the word. Utilizing tools that will enable users to share, and communicate will help you to attract more users to your app. There are some key points to remember when communicating to your fans, and ways to control the conversation they have among themselves too.

i. Keep conversations focused: Ensure you create a specific topic for users to discuss.
ii. Reduce Sharing Friction: Utilize Facebook’s Like and Send button.
iii. Encourage Feedback: A great way to accomplish this is by implementing Facebook’s commenting plugin.
iv. Encourage Sharing: Allow users to share your application or content.
v. Share Outside Too: Incorporate Facebook’s Feed dialogue to encourage outside sharing.

When optimizing interactions and building conversations, brand managers must understand that it’s a two way communication between their brand and their fans.  You must listen to what they want, and give them what they want to hear/engage with.  Creating this type of community will ultimately lead to deeper conversations and a trusting relationship with the brand.

by by Majestic Media

Optimizing Your Facebook Community: Part 5 of 5

Yesterday, in part four of our series, we discussed displaying social information on Facebook. Today, we’re going to start the final part of a five part series that looks at how to optimize your Facebook community. Today we are going to learn about informing users and giving them control over your application.  This will help your users feel more comfortable interacting with the Facebook application.

Inform Users and Give Them Control
With the new Facebook Auth window, you have the ability to tell users what permissions you need from them and why. Never ask for more information than what is needed to successfully interact with your application or you may scare some users off. They will be less likely to grant your app permissions if you are asking them to divulge information that does not seem relevant to the overall experience.

It may not seem obvious or trivial on how this relates to Facebook community management, but it has everything to do with it.  Here’s why:

  • It results in authentic and real experiences
  • It will lead to better conversions
  • It will allow users to choose what items of their personal information you’ll be able to get access to
  • It will provide a deep and trusted relationship with your brand knowing that you’re not asking for information such as friends lists or location information to check-ins, if it’s not essentially to the experience
Thanks and we hope this 5 part series has helped you gain more insights on strategies that you can use in your Facebook application and fan page to optimize your community engagement levels.