Posted 24 weeks ago (November 29, 2011 at 10:00 AM) in Social Media
Rise has quite a few tricks up its sleeve for improving your social presence and using Drupal to create a Facebook facelift is one of our favorites! We’re excited to show & tell how you can dramatically alter how friends interact with you on Facebook with one major change, achieved through our favorite CMS.
It sounds cheesy, but the best way to show you the difference is to start with a before and after:
Before
After
That’s right. Drupal allows you to insert the visual design you’ve built for your website into Facebook! Though you’ve been able to add to Facebook landing pages previously, doing so with Drupal is as exciting as it is useful and here’s why:
The power of visuals
The ability of an image to capture attention and influence mood is one of the most well-known associations in the world. American editor and politician William Randolph Hearst gave us the famous quote, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war,” and it’s as true in marketing as it is in everything else – stunning visuals capture the imagination and draw people in.
Branding
There is much to be said for using great words to represent an equally great organization but most internet users just aren’t interested in navigating large chunks of text. To help your social visitors determine who you are and grease the wheels behind earning their trust, presenting them with the strong visual branding you’ve created is a smart way to harness the touch point’s power using the branding you’ve already created for your website.
Ease of use
The major benefit of managing your Facebook landing page with Drupal is that you can so easily manipulate the content! To update the content on a Drupal-built site, you simply log in, click edit, make your changes and click save. It’s incredibly simple and means that you don’t have to learn another system to update your Facebook landing page.
A great example is how the changes we make for Sterling Finance Company automatically update their Facebook landing page. When we publish a blog, the link is automatically pulled into the Facebook page on Drupal, which we’ve set to automatically update the Facebook landing page with the link to the new article. Brilliant!
Increased goals and conversions
A very direct use for this kind of Facebook addition is that it’s a big, dynamic display that clearly exhibits the value of the company, increasing the possibility of winning Likes for the fan page. You can also use Drupal to insert a button that takes users to your Facebook wall so that they can pursue your social content, drawing them in to explore and increase the likelihood of winning their friendship, giving you a larger list of contacts to market to!
An opportunity to sing the blues
No matter what you insert on a welcome page, the well-known Facebook blue and white logo and bar will adorn the top of it. This doesn’t have to be a setback, though, it can actually be an interesting opportunity to play with color. We love what Victoria’s Secret did on their welcome page, for instance, by swapping out their trademark pink for shades of blue that coordinate with the Facebook header, taking control of the situation to display a unified front for their visitors. We talk more about the use of color on Facebook in this article on ColourLovers.
Here at Rise, we like to practice what we preach. With that in mind, we just updated our own Facebook page to this snazzy new look! Check out our recent changes, catch up on our latest work, and meet some of our favorite clients. If you haven’t already, “like” us while you’re in there!
Displaying a coordinated effort across platforms shows a level of expertise that builds trust, and trust is the foundation of all other growth. If you’d like to take the initiative to improve your social presence through Facebook, please get in touch with us - our expertise in Drupal, visual design, and branding can help your business succeed in the social sphere, where current and potential clients are just waiting to hear and see more from you!