Last week Vitrue completed a major upgrade to the Social Relationship Management 2.0 platform. This included a very powerful enhancement for marketers in our flagship product, the Vitrue Publisher. I’m excited to announce our enhanced support for Open Graph publishing and explain how marketers can take advantage of this new and exciting way to segment their fans.
The Facebook Open Graph protocol was announced back in April and allows marketers to create “Like” buttons for individual objects, and not just Facebook pages. You’ve probably seen the Like Button in use on blogs, like this one or even articles on CNN. And while this is a great way to surface content into Facebook, recent developments in the Graph API create so much more potential in the Open Graph than simply sharing articles!
By creating “Like” Buttons (the technical term is “Open Graph objects”) for your products, market segments, and individual store locations, you create a way for existing and prospective customers to Like those individual elements wherever they may appear in your web content—not just on your Facebook page.
How This Benefits Major Marketers
If this seems a little confusing, let’s take a real-world example. The Ford Motor Company could create “Like” Buttons for its different models (19 is my quick count). They also could create “Like” Buttons for different vehicle segments like Hybrid, Trucks, Crossovers, and SUVs; and even customer segments like Youth, Sports, and Racing.
As customers interact with the content and click the “Like” Buttons associated with their particular preferences, a powerful, segmented, “graph” emerges. But for that graph to be useful, Ford in this example would need to have:
- A clear definition of the graph objects it wishes to create;
- A system to manage the deployment and use of the various graph objects
- A way to manage and publish content to Facebook users who have Liked the different graph objects
Vitrue’s Publisher, enhanced to support the Open Graph, accomplishes all three of those things!
Marketers can log in to Vitrue’s easy-to-use Publisher to create and manage Open Graph objects, and publish content to people who Like those objects which will appear in the news feeds of the fans. They can do this with the same ease and power they have come to expect when using the Vitrue Publisher to manage their Facebook pages.
Marketers can create a message and target it to the people who “Like” a specific Object, or can broadcast it to those who”Like” many different Objects, all with a simple click.
In the example below, the Vitrue Publisher is managing 3 graph objects and a Facebook page.
Click Image to Enlarge
Extending to Local
Another incredible application of the Open Graph functionality is localization of content for major Quick-Serve Restaurants, Franchisers, and Retailers. As the industry leader in Facebook Tab localization (and the first to introduce Global) we are now helping brands extend/build local strategies around the Open Graph.
Creating Open Graph objects for retail locations, agents, branches, DMA, zip codes or regions creates a powerful network of “Likes”. Using Vitrue’s Publisher to manage these Objects takes the daunting task of managing hundreds or even thousands of items and makes it manageable for the marketer. Marketers can also surface “Likes” on existing Facebook pages using the Vitrue Tabs product and integrate their existing Facebook localization strategies.
Other Features
The enhancements we launched to our product platform go far beyond just Open Graph publishing and we’ll cover those additional features in a separate blog post.
One final thing I’d like to update you about, are changes to our product names. Our former Vitrue SRM and FMS products have now been renamed to Vitrue Publisher and Vitrue Tabs, respectively. The Publisher and Tab products join our Apps and Mobile products to make a holistic social media marketing toolkit known as Vitrue’s Social Relationship Management Platform (SRM).
Do you have plans to leverage the Open Graph for your market? How would you segment your fans to create conversation? Leave a comment below and join the conversation.
At this year’s WWDC Apple announced their new iAd Network would debut in July and major brands have already committed $60 million over the past 8 weeks. The list of brands, many whom Vitrue is familiar with include: AT&T, Best Buy, Campbell Soup Company, Chanel, Citi, DirecTV, GEICO, GE, JCPenney, Liberty Mutual Group, Nissan, Sears, State Farm, Target, Turner Broadcasting System, Unilever and The Walt Disney Studios.
Over a year ago Vitrue introduced a comprehensive Facebook wall management suite called the Vitrue Social Relationship Manager (SRM). Since its launch the Vitrue SRM has consistently brought first-to-market features for marketers, agencies and publishers. First to offer Facebook scheduling. First to offer custom landing pages for Twitter. First to publish video and audio posts in the Facebook Page stream. First to help brands moderate their Facebook Wall comments. First to leverage Facebook’s GEO-targeted wall posts. Now the Vitrue SRM is first to offer Fan Post moderation.
