Okay, you now have a website.  And on your site you are offering some type of product or service.  The content, products, details, payment arrangments, and even search engine optimization are all in place and ready for action.  Now what?

Now is where your interactions with networking through the social media platforms come into play.  Assuming that your website is also set up and coded with Facebook’s Open Graph Meta Tags (which it very well should be), let’s use them for example.  I consider Facebook’s Open Graph Meta Tags important for one main reason.  It allows you to effectively maneuver through what I refer to as the Social Mall.

What is the Social Mall?  I’m glad you asked.

First of all, let me explain to you what Open Graph Meta Tags are.  Facebook’s Open Graph is a protocol that allows you to turn your website into Facebook “graph” objects, hence allowing a certain level of customization over how information is carried over from a non-Facebook website to Facebook when a page is “recommended”, “liked”, or just generally shared.  The information is set via custom META tags on the source page.  In short, this is a method strategy allowing you to tell Facebook what images and content snippets to use when sharing information from your webpage.  (see example image below) Using these META tags could be the difference in attracting just a few visitors from Facebook or attracting loads of visitors because your shared links provide useful keywords and imagery!

Now that we have an understanding how it works, let’s talk about applying it in regards to the Social Mall.

When I use the term “social mall”, and am referring to the very large amount of constant activity that takes place on social networking platforms such as Facebook.

Okay, picture a mall.  What do you see?  Hundreds of stores inside of one large building.  You see clothing stores.  Stores that carry all sorts of electronics.  Shoes. Linen.   Stores that specialize in games.  Others in jewelry, accessories, health products, or books.  You name it. And they all place their most inviting objects and products in their show window.  All fighting for the same thing… to get your attention to come into their store.  And you know why?  Because once they have you inside of their store, they now have your undivided attention.  They’re not fighting the other stores any longer for it.  Once you are in that store, they can now present you with everything they have to offer.

Well, this is exactly the how I view social platforms such as Facebook.  When a person logs into Facebook, they are immediately bombarded with everything.  There are sponsored ads rotating to the right of them.  Directly in front of them is a newsfeed full of flyers, articles, status updates, invites, birthday reminders, event reminders,and just about any other type of ad than you can think of.   They may even be experiencing the unwanted pleasure of not only being tagged and added to specialized group or fan pages, but also inboxed.  Everybody is fighting each other for that person’s attention.

So the object is to use the Open Graph Meta Tags that’s applied on your website, and operate it in the same fashion as the stores in the malls.  Your Open Graph is your show window.  It’s just content a snippet of what’s inside of your website (your store).  And if it is interesting enough, and the person clicks on it, the Open Graph is coded to open another tab (or window).  This in turn pulls them away from Facebook… if even for a moment.  And what you have done there is obtained their undivided attention.  You are no longer fighting with hundreds of others for it.

Now, what you do with that undivided attention once you have it… is solely based on the content and products on your site.  Which no doubt matters as to Whether they stay there for 30 seconds or 5 minutes.