Here at digITech Web Design we believe that knowledge is power, and oh how powerful the Facebook Open Graph Protocol is! There has been a lot of hype about the new Facebook Open Graph in the news and on the internet lately but what does it really do for you, and what does it look like in practical use? I am going to break down the way that this new protocol actually works when it is in use on your website and the amazing list of benefits that can be had by implementing this social media monster into your current site. Unlike the boring barrage of techno babel that comes up on Google when performing a search on the FB Open Graph Protocol, I am going to take a practical approach to what this thing really is without boring you with monotonous technical terms and coding languages.
Let’s be honest here, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are becoming a HUGE part of business marketing strategies. Just take a look at and local business or marketing classes in your area and you will discover that some classes are entirely devoted to this theme of social marketing. Well, the Open Graph Protocol takes this strategy to an entirely new level. The whole process starts off with you or your web developer implementing a few simple lines of code into your website, or if you are smart and WordPress savvy you can download some one the powerful new plug-in’s like the “like-button-for-WordPress” plug-in to automatically and dynamically integrate the code into every page on your site at the click of a button. Once this code is integrated it is time for the “Like” buttons to take on their role as marketing manager!
You can use the same type of plug-in’s to post social bookmark buttons like the “Like” and “Tweet” icons through out your site or you can do this manually by visiting the developer resources page, but I prefer the first option! Most plug-in’s have the dynamic like button generators that automatically change the URL to be “Liked” to whatever the current page your site visitor is on, and by being dynamic this means you will have an individual and separate amount of likes for every page and post on your site which in turn allows for more marketing and diversity over a variety of content. Once you integrate your “Like” buttons then you can really start to see the power of this protocol!
So I am browsing your website that is using the new Open Graph Protocol and I click one of your dynamic like buttons on lets say, the services page. A couple of new and very awesome things now happen inside of Facebook which I am going to illustrate. Remember I just clicked the like button on digITech Web Design’s Services page. Now lets go take a look at my profile feed in Facebook.
So wait, did I just post that as a status update?? Well there are two answers, Yes and No! Yes you just posted that and it looks like a status update but you didn’t manually post that link it was all done automatically thanks to the dynamic “Like” buttons and the new Open Graph Protocol. So you notice it didn’t just say Darryl likes digITech Web Design like Facebook used to do, it actually put my logo which I choose in the Open Graph Coding to appear on that page, a link to the page the “Like” button was clicked on, a full page description, and a direct link to my main website domain. So now, I didn’t just click a like button on your website, what I did was click the “Like” button and subconsciously if you will posted a Status update to all 800 of my friends that I like your website with your logo, a description of the page I like, a link to that page and a link to your website! Now that is TRUE social media marketing at its finest!
digITech offer’s the Facebook Open Graph Protocol to all of its customers who purchase the SEO Ultimate Website Design package and we offer it as an add-on to any existing websites. You can view more information on this package by clicking the following links.
