The button allows users to like the content without being redirected to Facebook, making it ideal for both brand and user. Brands keep the users on the site and the user’s browsing isn’t interrupted. Since Facebook hosts the content of the widget itself, the button can display personalized content (like how many of the user’s friends also liked the article) whether or not the user has logged into the brands site.

How can it help brands?

The design of the Like button enables brands to harness the viral power of Facebook more effortlessly. The open graph means that brands no longer need to just heap all their content on to fan pages, and can instead allow fans to connect direct to their own websites.  Brands, especially those who don’t feel they have content engaging enough for Facebook users, will often be unsure as to how to connect their product with the user. They often feel it necessary to put all of their corporate information onto a fan page, even though most of the information may be fairly irrelevant for the user.

To be social, brands need to be engaging. Posting a load of corporate information on to Facebook isn’t engaging; but in the same way, leaving that on a corporate website and putting in a Like button won’t help much either! People will engage with interesting content, and this needs to be the focus of social. If you naturally have this, like IMDB below, it makes sense to use the Like buttons to allow users to connect directly to your content. If you’re a more traditional brand with an otherwise staid web presence and corporate website, it may make more sense to leave that where it is, and set up a separate fan page on Facebook to focus just on interesting and engaging content you can produce especially for social platforms.

One key feature of the widget is that it allows users to Like individual content, not just brands or pages. If brands have specific information, for example articles on how they are developing or changing, users can Like and share the specific content. When a user clicks on Like a one-line clickable news story is published to the users newsfeed. This link will then in turn also show on the user’s friends’ homepages.

IMDB utilising the Like button so users can like individual films

A lot of websites have already adopted the button and seen good results. Mashable reported that TypePad users who installed the Facebook Like button on their blog sidebars experienced a 50% increase in referral traffic from Facebook collectively http://mashable.com/2010/06/13/facebook-like-increases-blog-referral-traffic/.

The study, by Rice University, examined the dollar value of Facebook fans on the sales of the cafe chain Dessert Gallery (DG), by setting up a Facebook fan page and measuring the effect on customer behaviour between fans and non-fans. The page was updated regularly with pictures, news and promotions.

Over the three months of the study, the research found that customers who became a fan of Dessert Gallery on Facebook became more loyal throughout the period. Although they spent the same average amount of money in each visit as non-fans, they visited the cafe 20% more often and were more likely to recommend the cafe to friends, and showed a stronger emotional attachment to the company.

It’s possible that simply the act of publicly declaring themselves a fan created a positive feedback loop with how they felt about the company, and this had a real affect on sales and recommendations. This shows the potential for all brands in increasing their fan page activity, even on a most basic and simple level.

The iPlatform delivers marketing campaigns and competitions in Facebook and other social platforms. If you are interested in finding out how we can help, get in touch now.

Funny for Money!

A few weeks ago the Facebook Developer Garage organised a charity hackathon for Comic Relief. You can see more information at www.comicrelief-hackathon.com. It was kindly sponsored by Everycity, Microsoft and Adknowledge.

iPlatform teamed up with Wakari and Mo.Jo to produce the ‘Funny for Money’ application, which ended up winning the judges vote. The app has a simple mechanism for users to upload jokes, and encourage their friends to vote for their jokes by buying digital red noses, donating money to Comic Relief as they go.

See the app here.

The winning team - Sam, Mat, Dan and Josh

Facebook Home Page in 2005

Facebook has posted a photo album showing the evolution of the home page from its humble beginnings through to today’s site with 150 million active users.

Josh March, the iPlatform CEO, will be appearing on Sky News at 7pm today in a discussion about Facebook’s history and where it will take the web and society at large in the future.

Meanwhile, rumours encircle the tech world that AOL are looking to sell off Facebook’s rival Bebo at a price much lower than the $850 million they paid for it just a year ago. We believe that Bebo may have found the wrong parent in AOL, but that Bebo is thriving as a social community and will continue in importance as a social media destination. Myspace was caught out a little by Facebook’s rise, but is slowly starting to innovate more and more. This is why at iPlatform we’re enabling brands to join the party on all the leading social networks, not just birthday boy Facebook…