Facebook Changes You Need to Know

Michael Newman Consulting Newsletter

Internet & Social Media Marketing

May 15, 2010

In This Issue

Sweeping Changes to Facebook

Betty White on Facebook

New Twitter Features

Betty White
Facebook Page Drove
SNL Host Decision

NBC took a hint from the "Betty White to Host SNL (please)" Facebook page which quickly had half a million users. Click here for the story.

New Twitter
Features

Twitter announced new features at the South by Southwest Festival. Click here for details.

Ecommerce
On Facebook

Do you have a "Shop" tab in Facebook? Why make them go somewhere else to buy? Click here for more.

Google Ranks
Site Speed

Along with link popularity and keyword relevance (and many other factors), how quickly your site responds to web requests determines where you show up in a Google search. More here.

My Blog Links

Twitter's New @Anywhere Platform

Is Facebook a Waste of Time?

10 Ways to Kill Your Company with Internet Marketing

Contact Information

Click here

Greetings!

This newsletter series provides information and news regarding internet and social media marketing with a focus on the musical instrument and professional audio industries. You are receiving this because I have communicated with you previously. If you would like to unsubscribe please use the link at the bottom of the page.

Rapid Fire Changes

The field of internet marketing is constantly evolving at an incredible pace. That may be why I enjoy it. It's never boring! To emphasize that point this newsletter highlights important changes to Facebook and Twitter that you can utilize in your strategies.

The internet continues to grow in importance for marketers of all types. With the new Facebook API and plugins (see below) the social conversations will expand well beyond the bounds of any one web location on the internet.

It's not a preference anymore - it's a requirement to tap into these changes and understand them so you can incorporate this behavior into your marketing plans. If you don't, you will be left in the dust like the coyote versus the roadrunner in the Looney Tunes cartoons.

The good thing is it is never to late to start. If you need a push in the right direction or want some advice in tweaking your plans let me know. I would be glad to chat with you on the phone.

To visit my website click here.

Sweeping Changes to Facebook

by Michael Newman

At the Facebook F8 Conference several weeks ago there were some important announcements. If you are involved in a business that has an internet presence these announcements are important to you.

The bottom line is that you no longer need to be in Facebook to share data and information. Note that this has also caused some ferocious backlash from privacy advocates but that is an entirely different subject. Time will tell how this new strategy will affect Facebook and Facebook members.

Eight New Social Plugins

There are now eight new social plugins that are very easy to drop into a site or embed in a YouTube video. The Like button lets users share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click. Then of course their friends are exposed to your site and... you get the idea. The Recommendations plugin gives users personalized suggestions for pages on your sites they may like. The Comment plugin lets users comment on any piece of content on your site. Click here to view all of the new plugins.

New Programming Interface for Third Parties

The biggest news at the conference involves third party development for Facebook. If you are a web developer and you previously worked with the Facebook API (Application Programming Interface) you either spent lots of time with a martini shaker or your favorite hand gun at the local shooting range working off steam.

The Facebook API didn't follow conventions, had little documentation and was time consuming to test and debug. According to Facebook, they have designed a new API which will lower the barriers for open market development. Using the newly announced Open Graph protocol, developers have a wide array of possibilities to bring all kinds of external data back in to Facebook.

Internet Movie Database, owned by Amazon is using the new protocol. Clicking on the "like" button on a movie on their web site page will automatically add that movie to the "Favorite Movies" section of a user's profile on Facebook.

On CNN you can see which of your Facebook friends have "recommended" or "liked" an article in the Activity Feed or on the article itself. You can also recommend an article by publishing it to your Facebook page with comments.

You can incorporate the plugins in a variety of places including newsletters and blog posts - just don't overdo it or you will look like a swap meet for Facebook spam which is the equivalent of those TV commercials announcing "SALE, THIS FRIDAY ONLY...ONLY...ONLY.

The "Recommendations" plugin may link people to products they have been searching for - certainly something every marketer loves. Facebook's Bret Taylor, who is director of products stated: "400 million Facebook users share 25 billion things a month, and now thanks to a real-time search people will be able to search across those shared things."

Time will tell how adoption of the new Facebook API takes hold and whether it will be a powerful tool for marketing strategists in the future. One thing's for sure: it's a step in the right direction to create a more powerful social internet.

If you need help understanding how these changes can affect your internet marketing strategy, or you just want some social media marketing advice in general, contact me and I'll be glad to discuss the possibilities with you.