Facebook has recently launched its “Send” button, this to replace the familiar “Email To A Friend” feature as well as improving the functionality of their Groups. The Facebook Send button on intention is similar to the Like button. Once you click on the Send tab, a pop-up will appear, which allows you to send that content piece or page, video or photos to your friends, Facebook Group or an email address. You can add a message, then send the page to someone’s inbox or post the content on a Group wall. There were initially 50+ sites who participated in the launch of Facebook’s Send button, including: The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post and The Washington Post just to name a few.
The Send button code is now also available directly from Facebook’s Developer Site. Similar to the “Like” button, all it takes is just a few lines of code that you’ll need to place the “Send” button on your site or blog.
Early indications seems to be that the “Send” feature will actually become the next Like button, the Like button is currently being placed on more than 10,000+ sites and blogs every week. Since the Send button includes the ability to be able to share content via email, some of the previous features of Facebook, such as the email to a friend feature will eventually become obsolete.
Using Facebook’s New “Send” Button
Facebook seems to forever be adding new features and improvements such as their recent launch of the “Send” button to improve interaction. This feature may have some provisions which may have an immediate direct impact to site owners and the content that they produce.
To begin with, the new “Send” button allows Facebook users the ability to send posts to Groups as well as to their friends. Similar to the “Like” button, publisher are also able to install the Send button directly on their sites, such as a blog post, their product or services page or any other content that they want to share. The most important part of the Send button is that it will allow for email sharing, even if you’re not logged on Facebook. This is so the users will be able to enter their email addresses, and then send that content anywhere they want.
So other than the obvious advantages of sending your content via Facebook and email simultaneously, all of these “Sends” are also added to the Page’s “Like” total as well. This is now calculated by adding together all of the Likes, the Shares, comments as well as the inbox messages containing an URL. Doing this will have an overall exponential impact on your brand or product’s Facebook presence. It should eventually become increasingly important to get all of your content “Sent” using Facebook’s Send button.
What Type Of Content To “Send”
Begin by writing accurate focused and strong headlines describing your article or content. This should not be the targeted keyword heavy type of headlines which are traditionally used for SEO purposes. Instead create headlines which will grab immediate almost “shock’ type of attention, engage the reader by making them think or by injecting humor. At the very least, compel the reader to share your content to others virally. The majority of the content management based systems should allow for customization of the content’s URL, this so that the target keywords can be used effectively without having to change the end consumer facing headline.
Make sure that you place the most important message or information that you want to project as near the top of your content or article as possible. Similar to the headline, you’ll be wanting to immediately grab interest to be able to induce a “Send” reaction by the reader. Like any content that you write, always keep in mind that your audience reads the first several lines of your piece, so make sure you grab them by speaking their style of language.
When sharing content through Facebook, the first few lines by default of the content immediately appears to the recipient before they are able to click through. So it is critical that you convey the content’s message and value immediately. Using Facebook’s “Open Graph” meta tags, publishers are able to specify what is shown as the title, the image, as well as the description.
Make sure that you embed the Send button at or near the top of every content posting, video, product page or any other piece that you post. It’s no secret to anyone that the majority of readers on the Internet has short attention spans. So because of that, make sure that the “Send” button is clearly visible before the user has a chance to scroll down, or reads just a part of your post then suddenly decides to abandon the page. It’s even better to place the button as some type of a sticky on your sidebar so that it will permanently remain on the page regardless if the user scrolls down or not.
Consider embedding the “Send” button into the content itself by using CSS. After the user reads a few paragraphs of content, watches a video or flips through a few of your photos, they may be compelled to sharing that content. So if you embed the Send button directly into the middle of the content can potentially act like a “reminder” for them to share.
Using Videos And Images
Videos as well as your photos, more than any other type of content, usually goes viral and gets shared and distributed a lot quicker and more often than written text. So make sure that you include all of the different types of content into the mix.
Site owners as well as users now have a new Facebook tool to use. The new Facebook “Send” button is focused more on driving user interaction, conversions and branding through the largest collection of social network connected Internet users on the Web.