All that Businesses Need to Know about the New Facebook "Send" Button

Facebook has announced the release of a new open graph tool, the "Send" button, which joins the "Like" button as a social utility across the web. Right on the heels of the 1 year anniversary of the "Like" button, which has been integrated into over 2.5 million websites to date, the "Send" button will enable sharing content from the web with specific sets of people.




What is the "Send" button?

The Send button is a social plugin that, like the "Like" button, websites can use to let users broadcast information they're consuming on the web to their friends on Facebook. The "Send" button is different from the "Like" button in that "Send" enables private sharing. Where a user hitting the "Like" button within a website publishes a feed post of this activity to his entire list of friends via his public newsfeed, hitting "Send" will enable that user to instead choose the exact people he'd like to share the content with. This linked content can be sent via Facebook message, email, or posted right into a specific Facebook Group's wall. This addition to open graph sharing abilities will enable greater private sharing and more social sharing among groups of friends. Facebook is already calling it "the easiest way to privately share things with groups and individuals."

From Facebook:

The Send button is a social plugin that websites can use to let people send a link to a friend through Facebook Messages, post it to a Group, or email it to an individual. For example, if you see a Mother's Day gift idea on 1-800-Flowers.com, you can now send a message or email to your family members to discuss. Or say you're training for a marathon and you come across a great article about running shoes on The Huffington Post. Now you can share it with your entire running group in just one click.

 



How can Brands Use the "Send" Button?

We think that social media marketers will find the "Send" button a promising addition to the sharing functionalities of your brand website. Since visitors will now be able to target their sharing activity to specific people, instead of worrying about blasting their entire Facebook friends list each time they want to "Like" something on your site.

For our Wildfire social media software customers, we think this can be an especially handy function for promotions, deals, discounts, and sales that are run.  For example, if you're running a group giveaway sweepstakes, where a group of 5 friends can enter to win an all-expenses-paid Spring Break getaway, the "Send" button can serve as a quick and easy way for visitors to invite the specific group of friends they need to rally to register to your promotion without worrying about attracting too much competition to the promotion if they posted it publicly to their newsfeed. The "Send" button also allows for greater targeting for the user. Where before the user may not have considered "Liking" a quiz about engagement rings from a jeweler's website for fear of the impression it would create on her public newsfeed, she will be more likely to "Send" the amusing quiz to her close group of girlfriends instead.

Another important detail, from a Mashable post, is that the "Send" counts toward the total number of Likes a page has. The Like total is now calculated by adding the number of Likes, shares, comments and inbox messages containing a URL.

 



How will Wildfire integrate the new "Send" button?

Wildfire will be integrating the new "Send" button as a standard sharing feature in promotions powered by our platform. Then, users entering your sweepstakes, contests, group deals (and all our apps) will be able to share these promotions easily with their friends, with one click of the "Send" button without leaving your brand's promotion page.

Facebook is launching the "Send" button on 50 sites today, and promises to provide an easy way to share with small groups of people, giving marketers and business owners a new way to generate engagement and drive traffic to their websites.

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Wildfire site downtime yesterday – our next steps

Dear Wildfire Customer,

As you may know, yesterday Wildfire experienced unexpected downtime due to an unplanned outage of our infrastructure provider, Amazon Web services (EC2).

While the Amazon issue affected many internet companies, including Wildfire, Foursquare, Hootsuite, and Heroku (a Salesforce company) our site being down is certainly not acceptable for our customers, and it’s not acceptable to us. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that you may have experienced as a result of our site issues.

Please know that there was no data loss – any campaign data you had in Wildfire’s platform was unaffected by the site outage.

In addition to apologizing for the downtime itself, I also wanted to acknowledge that we could have done a better job getting the news out to our customers faster than we did.  For a variety of reasons, including the fact that we were overly optimistic that Amazon would resolve the issues far quicker than they did, we didn’t get the news out to our customers via email and our blog until several hours after the site issues began. For this we are sincerely sorry.

Rest assured that we will do everything we can to ensure that we do not experience a similar prolonged downtime in the future. To this end, we are working on implementing several changes in the coming weeks, including:

• Regional data center redundancies which would allow us to restore services dramatically faster than we achieved yesterday.


• Revamp our site error messaging so that it's less alarming and confusing to consumers trying to enter your Wildfire-powered campaigns


• A rapid communication and escalation plan for any future issues to make sure you have the information as fast as we do.

As a company that strives to provide our customers with a top-notch experience, yesterday's outage was a huge disappointment for us. We are very grateful that you've chosen to work with us and we will do everything we can to ensure that you have a good experience going forward. If you'd like to discuss the outage with us in more detail or if you have any other concerns, please don't hesitate to let me know.

Regards,

Victoria Ransom
CEO

 

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Top Tips for Maximizing the Entry Rate of your Social Media Campaigns

This month Wildfire hit a big milestone! We have now officially powered over 100,000 campaigns on our Promotion Builder platform! In honor of this milestone, we wanted to share our top tips for maximizing the entry rate of your social media campaigns. We’ve gathered these tips by analyzing data from thousands of campaigns running on our platform and by identifying common elements shared by the most and least successful campaigns. We’re breaking these tips into several posts - in this post we’ll focus on simple ways that you can optimize your campaign landing pages to ensure the maximum click-through rate. In future posts we’ll outline successful strategies for contest optimization, prizes, and more.

FIRST IMPRESSION IS EVERYTHING!

Tip #1: Don’t make your users scroll!
It’s extremely important that you put the most critical elements (e.g. the ‘Enter Now’ button, the prize details, eye catching images, your brand name) above the fold. If you require users to use their scroll bar to access your promotion’s enter button or to find out the contest prize you’ll see a dramatic reduction in your entry rate. Remember, users are lazy - if they visit your campaign’s landing page and it it is not immediately obvious why your campaign is interesting to them and what they need to do to get started, they will bounce.

Different consumers have their browsers set differently, therefore even if your main campaign elements display above the fold on your own computer, it doesn’t mean that this will be the case on all computers. As a general rule, however, if you ensure that your most important content is displayed in the the top 300 pixels of your promotion this should be optimized for the majority of viewers.

Tip #2: Don’t make your users think!
You should make your campaign as intuitive as possible. Within a glance users should be able to understand what your campaign is all about and why they should enter. This means that your title should be clear and self-explanatory - e.g. A title like “Cutest Baby Photo Contest’ is preferable to a seemingly more creative but obscure title like ‘Show us your little darling Contest’. Generally, simple and clear headlines lead to higher entry rates.

Example: Shopping.com’s Sweepstakes
The sweepstakes below exhibits many of the qualities that we find to be important to success:

• the most important elements (title, prize, ‘enter now’ button) are clearly presented above the fold


• the title “Fan-Tastic Sweepstakes!” clearly tells the viewer what the promotion type


• The prize (“We’re giving away 10 great prizes, valued at $5,000!”) is stated in large, eye-catching font and pictures of the prizes make it even more eye-catching and clear.


• The call to action (a large, bright ‘enter sweepstakes’ button) is clear and easy to find.


• There is a lot of space on the page - it is not cluttered with lots of text or calls to action.


• While this promotion does have more details in fine print, those are displayed below-the-fold.

Tip #3: Emphasize the Prize
People enter promotions for exclusive access to deals, discounts, content, news, and prizes. One of the best ways to increase your entry rate is to show off the cool prize, not hide it! The best promotions we’ve powered had the prize details and pictures front and center, making it crystal clear to the user what is at stake in the promotion.

Rather than providing a long, detailed description of your prize, you should capture the main elements of your prize in a short, catchy sentence. You can always provide more detailed information about the prize ‘below the fold’ but above the fold you should keep the description brief, but make it large and eye-catching.

Example: Fox 31 Photo Contest
In the example below, the contest is clearly labeled as “Colorado’s Cutest Kids Photo Contest” and great emphasis is placed on the prize using large font, a short, clear sentence and photos that capture the prize.


THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS BEING TOO CLEAR!

Tip #4: Make the ‘call to action’ completely obvious
One of the worst mistakes we see companies make is to make it confusing or hard for consumers to find the main call to action (e.g. the ‘enter now’ button) for your campaign. There are several ways that companies make this confusing: 1) they provide numerous buttons and links for the consumer to click on instead of providing one clear ‘call to action’, 2) they make the main ‘call to action’ too small, or bury it among a lot of text, or clutter the page with a lot of content so that it is hard to find and 3) they put the main ‘call to action’ below the fold. We see the greatest click through rates when campaigns have just one main call to action (i.e. just one button or, if there are other links/buttons on the landing page the main ‘call to action’ should be much larger and more obvious than all others) and when they are not cluttered with a lot of text or images that make it hard to find the main ‘call to action’. Additionally, ensure that your main button looks obviously clickable (by giving it rounded edges and some back lighting).

Example (what not to do): Fab-niversary Giveaway
In the example below it is very hard to find the ‘enter now’ link because it is buried in a paragraph of text and is a small link instead of a prominent button. Many users would bounce from this landing page rather than search for the ‘enter now’ link.



Tip #5: A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words
Use bright, attention-grabbing images in your promotion. Images are a great way to help your users understand at a glance what your promotion is all about. For a sweepstakes, use attractive images that highlight your prize - such as images of a tropical beach for a vacation sweepstakes or photos of an elated woman wearing a gorgeous necklace for a jewelery sweepstakes. For user generated contests use images to help the user understand what they need to do to enter the contest. For example, if you’re running a photo contest that asks users to submit a photo of their happiest moment, provide sample images in a photo contest, some great graphics to include would be pictures of sample photos one might find inside your own campaign. Doing this really helps to make clear exactly what the contest requires from the user, without him having to read a ton of description copy. (Remember, he’s lazy!)

Also consider the whitespace in your promotion. While an enticing design speaks volumes, sometimes white space around elements in your landing page can serve to draw attention to them with subtle emphasis. Next time you notice some white space around an element in a landing page, check out what it is surrounding— most of the time it will be surrounding the call-to-action and drawing eyes there.

Example: HomeAgain Happy Hug-a-Day Photo Sweepstakes
In the example below, the contest asks the user to submit a photo of them hugging their pets, and the contest graphics include several examples of just such photos, in the top right. This helps the user to clearly understand what type of picture the contest administrators are expecting.


HOW CAN YOU KNOW IF YOUR LANDING PAGE IS RIGHT?

6) Check yourself before you wreck yourself: Use the 10 second test
The below example does not exhibit many of the best practices we’ve discussed in this post. Give this page the 10 second test: if you only had 10 seconds to look at this promotion page, would its message be clear? Would you know what the campaign is about and what you could win? Is the call to action clear? Are the images clear and attractive; does the design reel you in? These are the kind of questions you should ask yourself every time you create a landing page. You can see in the below screenshot that the answer to almost all these questions is no. There is a lot of text but the main headline does not explain the nature of the promotion or the prize details. The call-to-action is not isolated in a clear and clickable button and there are many different links to choose from instead of one clear entry path. There are no images to help draw you in and give you a sense of what the promotion is about. Unless you, the user, were to read every word of the dense detailing paragraph, chances are you would have only a vague idea what the promotion is about, which would certainly lead to lowered entry rates.

 

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Case Study: Great Landing Pages for Fans and Non-Fans Alike!

One of the most powerful functions of your business’ Facebook Fan Page is the ability to display one view to fans, and another view to non-fans. When users land on your page, Facebook is immediately able to differentiate between fans and non-fans, and show each group different content. You can use this identification capability to convince non-fans to like your page by showing them what they’re missing by not being fans. Whereas before you had to know how to code landing pages with FBML, Wildfire recently released a free iFrames app that lets you easily create custom landing pages with “fan gates”: no coding necessary!

Here are six real life examples of Brand Pages that implemented Wildfire’s iFrames solution to create compelling landing pages with fan gates:

1) Provide access to special discounts.

Studies have consistently revealed that the number one reason that users will fan and follow brands is for access to exclusive deals, promotions, information, content, and advice. Dorm Room Movers promises the user that he will receive special discounts if he likes the page, and does so with a bright green illustration to attract attention. Click here to see the page live, and if you want the special discount code for yourself!



2) Be specific about the benefits fans receive.

A great approach to compelling users to like your page is to list the exact rewards or content they can expect if they become a fan. Fitness Expert Ary Nunez has a list of specific content items, advice, playlists, and challenges that the user can expect to have access to if he follows her page.



3) Provide illustrated call-outs.

Don’t be afraid to point out the like button with an illustrated call-out. This added emphasis helps to naturally draw the user’s eye to the like button. Check out how First and Main Sports Lounge effectively uses this technique on their fan page.



4) Quantify the advantage.

Instead of offering vague promises of discounts and benefits of being a fan, try actually throwing a number out. Tucker Blair promises that all fans of the clothing merchandiser’s fan page will get an exclusive 25% off discount, just for hitting the like button.


5) Make your fan gate visually appealing.

Optimize for the Facebook tab width by designing your images to be 520 pixels across. Additionally, use imagery that flatters and matches with your brand. The L’Evento Boutique fan page uses a simple but elegant image with their logo that draws attention to the contrasting color of the call-to-action statement at the top of the picture.


6) Make it interesting!

Your landing tab doesn’t have to stay the same all through the year! Test out different pages that change along with your marketing calendar: you can design pages that relate to annual holidays, or to the promotions you’re running for your fans. In the example below, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology created a landing tab that’s both timely to the popular sports event March Madness, and also relevant to their organization— it’s a bracket for March [Bird] Migration Madness!



Have you worked all of these best practices in with your landing tab? Have you found another great tip that works for you? Share with us in the comments below, and your page might be featured in an upcoming Wildfire Blog case study! We can’t wait to see what you guys came up with for your pages!

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