This should really be a post by Mat Weir as he alerted me to how important and cool Facebook Open Graph Protocol is and the possibilities. But the enviable job falls to me to stick it into some sort of plain language.

At it’s most simple it is a method of telling Facebook more about what your web page is about so that it can be better represented on Facebook. This will improve the matching of users to your page when they search and it will vastly improve the quality of the content that is shown on a users wall when they like your page.

It involves someone (your web company or web administrator – or even yourself if you have access to your web page such that you can edit your meta data) inserting Facebook specific descriptive meta-tags into the head of your pages. Tags such as “type” allow you to define if the page is about say a hostel or a wine tour (Facebook only supports a number of page types which you do need to get from developer documentation though). The “og:image” tag allows you to specify an image URL such that when someone is liking your page that image will be selected as a thumbnail. The relationship between the information you provide to Facebook through Open Graph protocol and the information that is subsequently used when a person likes you page is an important part of the protocol in terms of business marketing on Facebook. It is your opportunity to dramatically improve the way your business information is displayed throughout Facebook.

Something that I think will be really good is that you can add Facebook user IDs for those that administer a page so that if someone likes a page you administer they can easily find you and potentially make contact with you further. This could be perfect for businesses.

The potential is endless such as adding a location to your business which can be then passed through when someone likes your page. In the first place though you need to be optimising your pages for Facebook using the Facebook Open Graph protocol meta tags.

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