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Inside Facebook

How to Use Facebook Open Graph Apps for Marketing Through the Ticker and Timeline

Posted: 02 Nov 2011 03:30 PM PDT

Facebook Marketing Bible

At f8 in September 2011, Facebook introduced three major changes to the site: Open Graph applications, the home page Ticker, and the profile Timeline. These changes significantly impact marketers because they create new opportunities for gaining brand exposure and driving traffic to Facebook Pages, applications, and websites.

Here we’ll examine how Open Graph apps, the Ticker, and Timeline function and explain how marketers need to alter their strategies to take advantage of these apps and distribution channels.

The following is an excerpt of an entry in our Facebook Marketing Bible. The full version contains more complete explanations of how Open Graph apps, the Ticker, and the Timeline work. It also contains more strategies and examples for how to gain traffic and users by integrating the Open Graph into Page tab apps, canvas apps, and websites. 

Overview of Ticker, Timeline, and Open Graph Apps

Facebook has created two new viral channels to the site to which special kinds of Facebook applications and Facebook-integrated websites can publish content — the home page Ticker and the profile Timeline. A new priority for you as a marketer will be getting your brand’s content into these channels. We’ll now summarize the functionality of the Ticker, Timeline, and Open Graph apps but outlining strategies for using them to aid your business.

Open Graph Apps

Facebook allows developers to create “Open Graph applications” — Facebook.com apps and Facebook-integrated websites that can ask users for permission to publish activity to Facebook whenever they take an in-app action without having to prompt the user to share each time.

Once users grant and app or website persistent publishing permission, their activity is published to the Tickers of friends and their own Timeline. Developers choose a verb and a noun which are used in the published activity stories.

For example:

  • Spotify publishes whenever a user listens to a song, “Josh listened to [song] on Spotify”.
  • Dojo, a personal goal tracking website, publishes whenever a user visits the site and checks off that they’ve completed part of a goal such as doing 50 pushups or cleaning their kitchen, “Josh practiced [goal] with Dojo”.
  • A hypothetical branded photo contest app could publish when users submit a photo to a competition “Josh submitted a photo with Brand X’s Contest App”.

Along with publishing individual activity stories, Open Graph apps can publish “Reports” or summaries of a user’s activity. Developers can choose between different Report layouts and define what activity will be aggregated and how it will be sorted. Marketers can use Open Graph apps to gain more users for their apps by publishing user activity stories and compelling Reports that the friends of their users will want to click through.

Ticker

Ticker is a secondary news feed shown in the Facebook home page’s right sidebar that displays to users short, simple text activity stories about the people they’re friends with and the Pages they Like.

The Ticker’s main impact on marketers is that by creating applications with Open Graph functionality and getting users to interact with them, they gain exposure in the Ticker for activity stories that contain links to their applications. This helps their applications gain more users.

Timeline

Facebook has redesigned the profile into what it calls Timeline. Timeline lets users “feature” specific activity stories, expanding them to appear larger on their profile. Timeline also automatically displays “Recent Activity” sections for music apps, news reader apps, and video apps, as well as a general section of activity in other apps. By getting users to use your apps, you can gain viral exposure in these sections.

Getting your app into a user’s Timeline Views, Recent Activity, and Reports can give your application exposure that will help it gain new users.

Strategies for Marketing Through Open Graph Apps

The key to marketing through Open Graph Apps is getting users to complete actions you can publish to the Ticker and Timeline, rather than explicitly completing a Share dialog. People visiting your Facebook Page or website are probably already taking actions that you could publish. Your goal now should be to figure out what these actions are and build Open Graphs that let structure them into activity stories.

Turn Wall Posts into Activity Stories

What do people do when they visit your Facebook Page? A popular action is to write on your wall with messages of thanks, questions about your product, or customer service inquiries. You can turn these actions into activity stories by creating Page tab applications with Open Graph functionality.

Your app could provide different entry fields for the different common types of wall posts, and ask users for permission to publish an activity story whenever they enter text in one of these fields. For example, if a user entered “How much does your product cost?” you could publish an activity story that says “Josh asked a question with Brand X’s Feedback App”. ‘Asked’ is your verb and ‘a question’ is your noun.

Fundamentally, the introduction of Open Graph apps mean marketers need to get their users to give them persistent publishing permission and complete actions that can be automatically shared, rather than explicitly asking them to share individual actions.

By following these strategies for integrating Open Graph functionality into your Facebook Page tab apps, Facebook.com apps, and Facebook-integrated websites, you can turn user actions into activity stories that drive traffic to you Page, app, or site. Experiment to see what actions produce the most interesting activity stories and Reports, and redesign your apps and sites to encourage these types of actions.

Access the rest of our strategies and examples for integrating the Open Graph into Facebook Pages, apps, and websites in the full version of this article available in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to how all of Facebook’s features can be employed for marketing.

New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: BLiNQ, Lolapps, TinyCo and More

Posted: 02 Nov 2011 11:45 AM PDT

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week's highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at BLiNQ, Lolapps, Acquinity Interactive, TinyCo, Games Cafe Inc., King.com, Natural Motion Games, ngmoco :) and Check Point Studios.

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Hotel Marketing Platform Buuteeq Helps Travel Destinations Build Rich Facebook Presences

Posted: 02 Nov 2011 10:59 AM PDT

Buuteeq is a software platform that allows hotels to create engaging content for users across their web, mobile and Facebook sites. We spoke to co-founder and CEO Forest Key about how Buuteeq is working to convert Facebook visitors or fans into customers using research-fueled design.

First it's important to note that one huge incentive for hotels to have guests book directly — say through Buuteeq — is that they do not have to hand over a slice of their revenue as a commission to a travel agency or booking portal such as Orbitz. When hotels purchase software and service from Buuteeq they are also encouraged to continue to invest in traditional Facebook marketing to boost their Likes so as to better leverage the company's platform.

The software is set up so that each hotel must only upload content once and it then pushed across web, mobile and Facebook sites by Buuteeq, Key told us. The specific components of Buuteeq's design are meant to convert visitors into customers; the vast majority of visitors spend 90% of their time perusing photos, room information and interactive maps — all three are central to Buuteeq's design.

"Guests who look at 15 or more pictures are more likely to make a reservation," Key told us, noting that Buuteeq's design is photo-heavy.

Key told us that because Buuteeq is set up on Facebook to take advantage of social recommendation, the customer-facing side of Buuteeq’s Facebook app only show hotels in search results if a user’s friends have Liked that hotel’s Page. In other words, if hotels are not engaging in Page marketing to get their numbers up, the Buuteeq will not yield results for users who are not already connected through their networks. When it comes to booking, even if you find a hotel on Facebook, the actual reservation is made on the hotel's website.

As far as viral mechanics, Key noted that the future of Buuteeq is set to focus increasingly on its Facebook component. In the meantime, he told us that his clients' conversion rates are higher and there are Like buttons sown throughout the design, both on Facebook and on the web.

The Facebook Marketing Bible November 2011 Edition Is Now Available

Posted: 02 Nov 2011 09:00 AM PDT

Facebook Marketing Bible

The November 2011 edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible: The Comprehensive Guide to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook is now available.

The Facebook Marketing Bible has enabled thousands of marketers, social application developers, publishers, and entrepreneurs to navigate and get the most out of the increasingly sophisticated marketing opportunities on Facebook.

The web edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible is comprised of detailed resource pages, comprehensive how-to guides, and case studies analyzing today’s most successful marketing and advertising campaigns on Facebook.

Now that Facebook is nearing the 800 million monthly active user mark, there’s never been a better time to reach your target audience through marketing on Facebook.

The November 2011 edition includes updated coverage of the following topics:

  • Minimizing Your Facebook Ad CPC Bid Prices by Avoiding Bid Competition. When running ads on Facebook, advertisers must consider more than just creative and targeting to achieve optimal performance at the lowest cost. This guide shows you how to get the most from your Facebook advertising budget.
  • How to Use Facebook Hidden Wall and Other Page Moderation Tools to Protect Brand Reputation. Highly engaging Pages can quickly blossom into a valuable community that will raise awareness of the brand through positive word-of-mouth. This is our guide to managing your brand’s reputation on Facebook using the “Hidden Wall” and other Page moderation tools.
  • Increasing Virality of your Page’s News Feed Posts Via the Share Button. Making the posts you publish stand out in the Facebook news feed is crucial to maximizing primary key performance metrics such as brand lift, clicks, impressions, Likes, comments, and reposts. This guide provides a walk-through how the View Shares link works, and provide strategies for how you can attain Shares and the benefits they bring for your business.
  • Improving Your Facebook Page With Customized Tab Applications. We present a detailed breakdown of ten examples of brands doing innovative work with customized tab apps, and highlight what your business can learn from these top campaigns.
  • Gaining Fans with new Facebook features, “Merge Duplicate Pages” and “Invite Friends” to Gain Fans. Facebook has released new features that marketers should know about. These guides detail how to engage your Page’s most dedicated fans while growing your overall fan base.
  • How to Manage Critics, “Trolls,” and Spammers on your Facebook Page. How does Facebook change the rules of community management, and how can brands turn critics into positive opportunities for dialogue? We look at real examples and provide a step-by-step guide for Page admins.
  • How to Sync Your Facebook Page Updates With Your Twitter Profile — and Why You Shouldn’t. How do Facebook and Twitter differ, and when is customization needed? This guide compares and contrasts the unique strengths of each platform and shows you how to get the most from both.
  • Commenting for Facebook marketers, a guide that shows you how to make the most out of public, and highly visible, conversations with your fans on Facebook.
  • Bringing the storefront to your Facebook Page, a breakdown of key features for storefront applications that bring sales transactions directly to your Page.
  • Our guide to the Facebook Send button that details Facebook’s latest addition to its social plugins.
  • Facebook applications versus offsite integrations and what works best for marketing your business or brand.
  • Our detailed style and strategy guide to Facebook’s Like button that helps you identify the right design for your off-Facebook content site.
  • An overview of Graph API meta tags and how they enable you to maximize the value of your implemented Like buttons.
  • Facebook Applications, Social Plugins, Connect and Instant Personalization – details on how to use the wide variety of options available for engaging Facebook users.
  • Updates to Facebook Questions, and how recent changes to this user-facing feature will affect your approach to brand marketing through this ‘no-cost’ channel.
  • Strategies to help you navigate Facebook’s recent major Page redesign, whether you’re representing a major brand, small business, or public figure.
  • Facebook’s expanding options for advertisers, and how any advertiser can get more from new features like Sponsored Stories, self-specified landing tabs, and more.
  • The latest featured Facebook’s campaigns that show you how other brands are testing Facebook’s evolving marketing opportunities.
  • New frontiers in brand and performance marketing on Facebook, including opportunities within social games.
  • Facebook Places and Deals, the company’s evolving location-based feature that presents new marketing opportunities for businesses both on and offline.
  • Facebook Groups, a new way for users to connect and collaborate with others who share their interests and affiliations, and new ideas for marketing with Groups on Facebook.
  • Facebook's latest advertising guidelines updates and what they mean for advertisers throughout the ecosystem.
  • Audience growth and engagement, including best practices for holding on to fans, keeping marketing channels open, and re-engaging your audience on Facebook.
  • Plus, comprehensive walk-throughs of Facebook’s tools for advertisers, web content publishers, and Page administrators.

Learn more about the November 2011 edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible at FacebookMarketingBible.com.

Table of Contents excerpted from the full November 2011 Edition

Recent Featured Facebook Campaigns

  • Food Network, Pizza Hut, Coca-Cola and Cost Plus
  • Alamo Rent A Car, National Geographic Channel and Fox
  • Craftsman, Unilever and FarmVille Chinese, American Express and El Pollo Loco
  • Bucca di Beppo, Bissell, Bank of the West and the NBA
  • Coca-Cola, Qatar Ariways, Clearasil and Esurance
  • Marriott Resorts, The National Guard, Discover Boating, Bravo, and Nike

Building Your Brand through Facebook Pages

  • Facebook vs Twitter – What's Different, What's The Same And Why Smart Marketers Use Both
  • Page Destination Tab Ad Campaign Strategies
  • Facebook Pages and Public Profiles
  • The Profile Page – A Walk-Through

Designing Your Facebook Page

  • Improving Your Facebook Page With Customized Tab Applications: 10 Examples
  • Facebook Page Redesign 2011: Marketing Stategies and Best Practices
  • The Wall Tab for Making Pages Dynamic and Viral
  • How to Choose a Landing 'Tab' for your Facebook Page
  • Adding Custom Modules to Your Page

Communicating Through Your Facebook Page

  • How to Sync Your Facebook Page Updates With Your Twitter Profile — and Why You Shouldn’t
  • How to Get Facebook Users to Like Your Page: The First Step to Engagement
  • How Your Business Should Reply To Facebook Comments
  • Demographic Targeting for Status Updates
  • How to Avoid Having Your Page, Open Graph Object, or Application Unliked, Removed, Muted, or Blacklisted

Growing Your Fan Base and More Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page

  • Gaining More Fans With Facebook’s New “Merge Duplicate Pages” Feature
  • How Facebook Pages Can Use “Invite Friends” to Gain Fans
  • How Brands Can Advertise within Social Games
  • The Basics of Status Updates for Pages
  • Increase Engagement and Insight through Status Tagging
  • How to Grow Your Page's Audience through Page Invitations
  • SMS Subscription Service for Pages
  • Branded Virtual Gifts on Facebook Pages for Viral Advertising

Advanced Strategies for Facebook Pages

  • How Top Brands Conduct Ecommerce on Facebook: Best Practices
  • Facebook Ecommerce: What Features Are Important in a Page Storefront Application
  • The Best Facebook Page Strategies and the Pages That Use Them
  • Strategy: How to Promote Your Page in 6 Steps
  • Marketing Strategy: 4 Reasons Why Marketers Should Invest in Pages Before Groups
  • 10 Key SEO Strategies Every Facebook Page Owner Should Know
  • 8 Best Practices for Retailers on Facebook
  • Marketers Actively Bidding for Generic Facebook Pages

The Facebook Open Graph for Marketers and Content Publishers

  • The Like Button Style Guide: How to Pick the Design That's Right for Your Website
  • How to Choose Open Graph Tags That Maximize the Value of Your Like Buttons
  • Facebook Connect Integration Best Practices from the Platform Showcase
  • Implementation Options: Like Button
  • Facebook CTO Bret Taylor Discusses the Open Graph

More Ways to Market on Facebook: Questions, Places, and Deals

  • How Pages Can Use the Relaunched Facebook Questions Product
  • How to Create a Deal with Facebook Deals
  • The Places We’ll Go: How marketers can use Facebook’s new location features
  • Facebook Questions – A Walk-Through
  • How Marketers Can Get The Most Out Of Facebook Questions
  • Groups and SEO – a Quick Overview

Advertising on Facebook

  • Page Destination Tab Ad Campaign Strategies
  • Sponsored Stories Ads: Walk-Through and Marketing Campaign Strategies
  • Facebook Ads: Read Before You Get Started
  • Facebook Ads – A Walk-Through
  • The Facebook Ads Manager
  • Facebook Self-Serve Ad Types: Page Ads
  • Facebook Self-Serve Ad Types: Event Ads

Ads Targeting on Facebook

  • 10 Powerful Targeting Methods Facebook Ads Every Performance Advertiser Should Know
  • Friends of Connections Targeting
  • Facebook Ads: Language Targeting
  • 4 Connection Targeting Tests Every Advertiser Should Run
  • From Keyword Targeting to People Targeting: Understanding Performance Advertising with Facebook's Tim Kendall
  • Time Scheduling

Tools and How-Tos for Marketers

  • Facebook "Insights" Metrics Dashboard for Page Managers
  • Using Third Party Tools to Manage Your Facebook Page
  • How Page Owners Can Restrict Content for Underage Users
  • How to Export Your Facebook Page Updates to Twitter

Policies, Privacy, and Guidelines to Watch

  • Promotional/Sweepstakes Policies for Facebook Pages
  • The Future of Sharing on Facebook: A Hybrid Public/Private Model
  • Facebook’s Guidelines for Promoting Pages Outside Facebook

Join the Facebook Marketing Bible at FacebookMarketingBible.com

Yahoo, Snaptu, Grooveshark, Onedate, WhoIsNear? and Photos on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by DAU

Posted: 02 Nov 2011 08:15 AM PDT

Yahoo topped our list if applications growing by daily active users this week. In addition, there were several social or dating apps, photo apps, mobile, music and more. The titles below grew from between 100,000 and 3.2 million DAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Name DAU Gain Gain,%
1.  Yahoo! 5,700,000 +3,200,000 +128%
2.  Onedate 590,000 +530,000 +883%
3.  Social Statistics 750,000 +450,000 +150%
4.  Snaptu 1,000,000 +380,000 +61%
5.  Ravenskye City 1,200,000 +326,811 +1,409%
6.  Ninja Saga 930,000 +280,000 +43%
7.  Niik 340,000 +250,000 +278%
8.  My Photos+ 240,000 +233,000 +3,329%
9.  Luck Daily! 300,000 +230,000 +329%
10.  Bubble Witch Saga 1,900,000 +200,000 +12%
11.  21 questions 560,000 +180,000 +47%
12.  Grooveshark 540,000 +150,000 +38%
13.  Mis Fotos 370,000 +150,000 +68%
14.  PetVille 390,000 +120,000 +44%
15.  schoolFeed 450,000 +110,000 +32%
16.  المزرعة السعيدة 580,000 +110,000 +23%
17.  WhoIsNear? 380,000 +110,000 +41%
18.  Static HTML… [Second Tab] 330,000 +110,000 +50%
19.  Words With Friends 4,200,000 +104,528 +3%
20.  picplz 160,000 +100,000 +167%

Yahoo grew by 3.2 million DAU this week, the most out of any on our list.

Then there were social and dating apps. Onedate grew by 530,000 DAU. Social Statistics, which publishes a list of your "top friends" grew by 450,000 DAU. Niik grew by 250,000 DAU, it's a friend quiz app that publishes a feed story every time you answer a question about a friend. 21 questions, with 180,000 DAU this week, is similar. schoolFeed grew by 110,000 DAU and is a Connect app that creates a social network for your high school, synchronizing with your Facebook profile. Then there was WhoIsNear? with 110,000 DAU; the app allows users to check in geographically on Facebook and find new friends.

Photo apps included My Photos+ with 233,000 DAU, which along with Mis Fotos which grew by 150,000 DAU, and presents users with a photo gallery of their friends' photos, allowing them to Like or save them. Liking them publishes a feed story. Then the Connect app picplz grew by 100,000 DAU; it allows users to upload and ass effects to photos.

Elsewhere on the list was Snaptu with 380,000 DAU. Then the Luck Daily! app grew by 230,000 DAU; it publishes a luck score to your stream daily. Music app Grooveshark grew by 150,000 DAU and Static HTML… [Second Tab] grew by 110,000 DAU.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

torsdag den 3. november 2011 at 07.11