The Art of Sharing on Facebook

Facebook has been working hard for the past year to enhance its sharing functionality and to encourage members to actively share web content within the network. Various new features (“Like” functionality, tagging people, etc) have been developed and changed.

With the functionality growing in features and popularity, few people are still aware of how everything actually works. A lot of marketers out there are using old sharing techniques, or sending their fans to internal Facebook notes, instead of sending that traffic over to their website.

Search Engine Journal currently receives over 7,500 unique referrals per month from Facebook sharing techniques. This is about 1,000 users more than we receive from Bing. Learning the Art of Facebook Sharing will help build traffic to your site too.

Here are some answers to the most frequently asked questions related to Facebook sharing features and options:

1. Who sees my wall shares?

By default:

Since recently Facebook has been allowing to set who sees what you share globally via Privacy Settings (accessed via Account tab in the top right-hand corner). The very top line there defines who sees your wall updates and shares:

Individual settings:

Additionally you can change the settings for each update on case-to-case basis. When creating an update, notice a small lock icon that allows to set the sharing privacy:

Note: as a marketer you are most likely to welcome everyone to see your updates. As a person, you should be aware of various privacy debates. The one thing you should know is that updates “shared with everyone” are indexed by any search service that takes advantage of Facebook database. One example of such a search engine is a scandalously known Openbook.

2. What happens when I “attach” a link?

Facebook does the following:

• It pulls in the title (linked to the original page: the link is direct but has a “nofollow” attribute),
• Shows the destination domain;
• Generates the text snippet,
• Suggests a thumbnail image which it places adjacent to your Page’s link.

Important tip: you can change the linked text by clicking on it (this option is known by surprisingly few people):

3. What happens when I “Like” something on Facebook?

When you use a “Like” button embed on a web page (and do nothing else), you get a new update to your wall that contains:

• The linked page title
• The linked domain name:

4. What’s the difference between “Share” and “Like”?

These used to be different but it was confirmed in May 2010 that the two features have been merged. They now both go to the person’s wall and become visible to the person’s friends (or whoever he has in his privacy settings).

The only difference is that if you “Share” something (i.e. using the “Share” button embed to a web page), a web page image thumbnail and snippet are automatically generated. If you “Like” something, an image thumbnail will only be created if you copy-paste the current URL in the button comment box.

Thus, this one:

… results in a thumbnail on your wall:

This all may sound a bit overwhelming. Hopefully, this tiny table will clear out the confusion:

There’s still a difference if you “like” someone other’s update (within Facebook). In this case, your friends are going to see your update ONLY if they are friends with the original poster as well (or are fans to the page you liked):

5. How do I tag a person in a share?

To tag anyone in your share just add @ and start typing – Facebook will suggest friends matching the characters you are typing:

What happens when I tag a person on my share?

If someone tags you in an update, Facebook sends you an email alert – which means you are almost sure to see an update:

6. What happens when I share an RSS feed via notes?

A built-in Facebook application called “Notes” allow to add an RSS feed – all the updates from this RSS are going to be shared on Facebook automatically. (To add a new feed, click the Import a blog link and enter the URL of your blog (RSS) into the text box).

Once the blog is updated, the note will be automatically created and shared on your wall:

Warning: that would be a great feature if it there were a link back to the original post for the Facebook friends to go to the actual article to comment, share, etc. Currently, there’s no way for the users to do that which is weird:

Conclusions:

As a marketer, there are a few things you need to remember about Facebook sharing functionality:

• Sharing with everyone means that people outside Facebook might see your update;
• “Sharing” and “Liking” have been merged in one functionality;
• Manual sharing is preferable (automatic sharing is flawed; if you, for example, choose to share your feed automatically via notes, the users won’t be able to go the the original article).