Using Facebook to move

your 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 ...................................................................................................................................3  
II.  GETTING  STARTED ...........................................................................................................................3  
III.  GOAL:  TRAFFIC .................................................................................................................................3  
IV.  GOAL:  ENGAGEMENT.......................................................................................................................9  
V.  GOAL:  USER  INSIGHTS................................................................................................................... 11  
VI.  TAKING  YOUR  INTEGRATION  TO  THE  NEXT  LEVEL .......................................................... 11  
 

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I. INTRODUCTION

Today, Facebook has more than 500 million monthly active users with 50% of those users returning
daily. Each month, people spend more than 700 billion minutes and share more than 30 billion
pieces of content with their friends on Facebook. Additionally, each person on Facebook has an
average of 130 friends each, providing you with powerful distribution opportunities.

On Facebook, experiences are customized for each user, based on their real friends, real identity,
and the connections they’ve made. Through Facebook Platform, sites across the web are now
bringing that same type of personalization to their users. Already, more than 1 million websites
have integrated with Facebook through registration and social plugins.

Businesses often integrate Facebook into their websites to achieve three key objectives: (1)
driving referral traffic from Facebook, (2) increasing engagement, and (3) gaining valuable
customer insights. This document contains our recommendations and best practices on how to
effectively use Facebook to achieve these objectives.

II. GETTING STARTED

Determine key goals

Understand what you want your integration to accomplish.

Goal Recommended integration Time to integrate

Traffic  Integrate the Like button or 1-2 hours
create a Facebook Page
 Publish or advertise to people that 1-2 hours
like objects on your site or
Facebook Page
Engagement  Add the Activity Feed or 1-2 hours
Recommendations plugin
Insights  Optimize your integration Ongoing
 Personalize your site with 2-4 weeks
Facebook Login and Graph API*
* Not covered in detail in this document

III. GOAL: TRAFFIC

a) Integrate the Like button onto your website or create a Facebook Page

The Like button is a simple, one-click action that lets people share content, make a connection, and
discover what friends like.

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i) Key benefits

-­‐ Distribution on Facebook: When people click the Like button on your website or Facebook
Page, a News Feed story is published to the person’s News Feed, and shared with friends on
Facebook, as well as your site. As more friends like it, the story becomes more prominently
displayed to other friends. The published story will always link back to the original content
on your website or Facebook Page.
-­‐ Publishing: Use our interface or API to publish updates directly into the News Feed of users
who have clicked a Like button on your site or on your Facebook Page.

ii) Proven results

-­‐ Businesses have seen significant increases in referral traffic from Facebook after
integrating Facebook (data from 5/11/2010):  
o News sites that implemented social plugins to surface individualized content for
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 largest-circulation national newspaper. The Globe and Mail
also found that people who like their Facebook Page are more engaged on their site
— and comment, share, and read more.
o IMDb.com saw its daily referral traffic from Facebook double, and its users have
generated more than 350,000 likes. Dailymotion, one of the top 50 most-trafficked
websites in the world, saw users click the Like button 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 videos on Dailymotion, PIXELS by Patrick Jean, and a quarter of the
views are from Facebook users.
o NHL.com saw an 80% increase in referral traffic from Facebook, as people
interacted with articles, scores and videos.
o Scribd, a site that helps authors publish their writing, saw their referral traffic from
Facebook double as authors gained followers among groups of Facebook friends.

iii. Facebook Page vs. Like button/Open Graph tags on a Web page, or both?

This decision boils down to where you want to connect with users (on Facebook, on your website, or
both). There are a few key differences between a Facebook Page and a Web page with a Like
button:

-­‐ Facebook Pages have a built-in Wall that enables you to have a direct channel to your fans.
If you have the resources to provide fresh content and participate in active discussions, we
recommend that you create a Facebook Page.
-­‐ Facebook Pages have a standard layout (e.g., Wall, tabs, profile photos, etc.) and can be
created in the place of a website. If you have an existing website or want more design
flexibility, the Like button provides several flexible layouts that can be integrated into your
site’s design.
-­‐ If you only want to drive traffic and manage connections on your Facebook Page, but have
an existing website, you have the option of changing the URL of the Like button on your
website to the URL of the Facebook Page, allowing users to connect with your Facebook
Page from your website.

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-­‐ Facebook Pages and Open Graph Pages are functionally equivalent in terms how they show
up across the site, can publish to users that like them, etc. Open Graph Pages work better for
segmenting users.

iv) How it works

When a person clicks the Like button 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 or as more friends like it, the story will be more prominently
displayed in the News Feed (URL, image, title, and description shown). You can customize the
display of the feed story by adding the appropriate Open Graph tags  (on your website) or editing
the settings on your Facebook Page.

Open Graph tags are <meta> tags that you add to the <head> of your website to specify how your
Web page is displayed on Facebook. An Open Graph tag looks like this:

<meta property= “og:tag name” content = “tag value” />

If you use Open Graph tags, the following are required:

• og:title - The title of the entity.

• 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.
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• og:url - The canonical, permanent URL of the page representing the entity. When you use Open
Graph tags, the Like button posts a link to the og:url instead of the URL in the Like button code.

• og:site_name - A human-readable name for your site (e.g., "IMDb").

• fb:admins or fb:app_id - A comma-separated list of either the Facebook IDs of page
administrators or a Facebook Platform application ID. At a minimum, include only your own
Facebook ID.

If your Web page represents a real-world entity, things like movies, sports teams, products, and
restaurants, you’ll want to establish a more permanent connection with the user. To do this, add
the object Open Graph tag (og:type).

By adding og:type to the <head> of your Web page, your page becomes equivalent to a Facebook
Page, with the ability to publish updates to a person’s News Feed. Additionally, when the person
clicks a Like button on your Web page, your Web page will appear in the "Likes and Interests"
section of the person's profile, as well 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 URL that represents transient content - such as a news article, blog
post, photo, video, etc. Do not use website for this purpose. The website and blog og:type tags are
designed to represent an entire site, an og:type tag with types website or blog should usually only
appear on the root of a domain.

If your object does not fit into one of the specified types, you can specify your own type. This will be
represented as type other on Facebook. We will monitor the most commonly used types and
graduate them to fully supported og:types.

The graphic below summarizes the actions that take place when a user clicks the Like 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

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v. Best practices for implementing the Like button

Facebook has worked closely with several partners across different verticals to understand their
experiences and conducted a few independent analyses to determine the following best practices:

• Use Like instead of Share

The Like button offers a more lightweight way of making connections and sharing content with
friends. Users reported that clicking on Like is faster than clicking on Share. On several media
sites, we’ve seen that the number of likes is greater than the number of shares. For example, on
a media site that displayed both Like and old Share buttons over a given week, Like was
clicked 3x more than Share.  
• Ensure that the Like button has commenting enabled
Verify that the width of the iFrame is at least 450 pixels or use the XFBML version (via our
JavaScript library) for additional flexibility. Over 70% of the top-performing sites have
commenting enabled.

If the user does add a comment, the story published back to Facebook is given more
prominence (includes image, title, website, description, and ability for friends to comment):

• Use the Like button with friend photos

Including friend photos increases the click-through-rate (CTR). Like buttons with one face have
around 8x the CTR of Like buttons with no faces.
• Consider optimal placement of the Like button
Our study revealed that over 75% of the top-performing sites used natural positioning with
respect to article copy and reading behaviors (like at the clear beginning or end point of the
article). Partner sites also tended to place the Like button near visually appealing content (for
example, next to a video or image). You can A/B test placement and layout of the Like button to
optimize referral traffic. Simply include the ref parameter on the Like button. Our insights tool
will also provide information on the source of the click (e.g., on Newsfeed, Inbox, etc.)

• Add the appropriate Open Graph tags

Open Graph tags are <meta> tags that you add to the <head> of your website to specify how your
Web page is displayed on Facebook. Use Open Graph tags to specify an interesting image, title,
and description to draw attention in the News Feed.

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b. Publish and advertise to connected users (people who have Liked)

i) Publishing to connected users

To publish to people who have liked your Facebook Page, simply use the composer to send a status
update, photo, or link:

To publish to people who have liked your Web page, Open Graph tags must be added to the Web
page. The required Open Graph tags for publishing can be found here. Once added, you can publish
via our interface by clicking on the "Admin Page" link to the right of the Like button (link only visible
to the admins defined via Open Graph tags on the Web page).

ii. Best practices for publishing

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.

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For additional best practices on what content to publish, here are more resources.

iii. Advertising to connected users

Once your users like Web pages on your site or your Facebook Page via the Like button, you can
begin to create Facebook ads that help you gain additional distribution on Facebook:

• Target those who have engaged with your Web page or Facebook Page
• Exclude existing connections from your target audience
• Target people who are friends with your connections

Use this opportunity to drive people back to your site, gain more connections, or promote special
offers and discounts to relevant connected users. For example, if a person likes a particular
product on your Web page, advertise a relevant discount 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, amplifying the relevancy of
your ad.

More information and best practices can be found here.

IV. GOAL: ENGAGEMENT

a. Add the Activity Feed or Recommendations plugin

The goal of the Activity Feed and Recommendations plugin is to serve the most interesting friend
activity and recommendations that are taking place on your site. Similar to the News Feed on
Facebook, the Activity Feed will keep people coming back to your site and clicking on content to
see what their friends have been liking, commenting on, and sharing. Recommendations,
meanwhile, show an aggregate view of the popular activity about your site happening on
Facebook.

We recommend placing the Activity Feed prominently on your home page and on content pages to
keep users engaged throughout your site. See examples below from CNN and ABC News.

Our team reviewed the top 100 domains using the Activity Feed and/or Recommendations plugins.
Sites that placed the Activity Feed/Recommendations plugin above the fold and on multiple pages
receive more engagement. For instance, sites that placed the plugin on the front and content pages
received 2-10x more clicks per user than sites that placed the Activity Feed/Recommendations
plugin only on the front page.

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Activity Feed shown on front page of CNN.com

Activity Feed shown on article page of ABC News

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V. GOAL: USER INSIGHTS

a. Optimize your integration

Many successful companies building on Facebook Platform take an analytical approach to

development – monitoring key performance indicators, testing product changes, and optimizing
key drivers of growth. We are actively adding and improving functionality of Facebook Insights to
give you detailed analytics to help you optimize your integration. Currently, Facebook Insights
includes:

• Domain, Page, and Application Dashboards (http://www.facebook.com/insights)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 Insights data with your own, in-house analytics
dashboards
• JavaScript
i. Events so you can determine real-time usage of Like buttons on your site
ii. Facebook Login Status so you can determine whether a user is logged into
Facebook

We typically ask partners the following questions when analyzing Insights data:

• What are people liking the most/least on your site?

• Where do people like your content/products (on Facebook/on your site)?
• Is the user logged into Facebook? Where are these users most engaged?
• What type of users like a specific item on your site? (e.g., Users who click “like” or
“recommend” on media sites are younger than traditional newspaper subscribers)

VI. TAKING YOUR INTEGRATION TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Personalize your site with 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 account 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 extended permissions to obtain
additional pieces of data like a user’s photos, e-mail address and check-in data to enhance the
user’s experience on your site.

After a person logs in or registers with your site via their Facebook account, it’s important that your
site make it easy to discover friends’ activity and see a customized experience.
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For example, Rotten Tomatoes used public information to create the following experience:

• 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

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Another great example of this Amazon. Amazon launched a personalized shopping experience:

• See upcoming friends’ birthdays and recommended purchases based on what they like
• Browse product recommendations based on the things you’ve liked from across the web

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