We've all seen the social sharing icons which appear at the bottom of many websites encouraging people to like and share your content, but what if you could have the message that your visitors are pushing out to their social streams become more interactive? Google+ has just introduced 'interactive Posts' which help your shared posts stand out from the crowd - this could be a real game changer for many websites and an interesting way to develop social interaction with your visitors' networks.
Imagine if you could have the ability for customers to share a product on your website to their social media networks encouraging their friends to buy it for them, with a clear 'call to action' button superimposed on the shared link taking their friends straight to your buy now page!
What about if you have a poll on your website, and you could allow people to share to their networks with a 'vote now' button, giving people a cue to provide their thoughts?
Google has recently announced the availability of 'Interactive Posts' which "provide an easy and prominent way to allow users to share your site or app with their connections and invite them to take action, for example RSVP for an event."
This new development should have marketing professionals dancing in the street, because I anticipate that with careful use, interactive posts could result in driving new users to your site, improving conversions, and increasing engagement.
As a user of social media, knowing the 'intention' behind the link that has been shared by my friends (for example, if they want me to RSVP to an event, or they are sharing a link to a product on a shop, or suggesting that I read an article) means that I already have an idea of what might be at the 'other end' of the link and therefore informs the decision of whether I want to click on the link or not - if I click through I know roughly what to expect.
Add to this a well optimised title, a graphic and a snippet of text from the page, and you have something that looks like the image above.
There are many ways that this kind of feature could be implemented on a Joomla! website - it's quite new technology so I haven't seen anything in use to date, but some of the 100 available call to action interactive post labels which may have relevance to Joomla! extensions include:
There are some fairly clear instructions on the Google+ API documentation page but basically you need to follow these steps:
<script type="text/javascript"> (function() {
var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true;
po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/client:plusone.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
})();
</script>
<!-- Place the tag where you want the button to render -->
<button class="g-interactivepost"
data-contenturl="https://plus.google.com/pages/"
data-contentdeeplinkid="/pages"
data-clientid="xxxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com"
data-cookiepolicy="single_host_origin"
data-prefilltext="Engage your users today, create a Google+ page for your business."
data-calltoactionlabel="CREATE"
data-calltoactionurl="http://plus.google.com/pages/create"
data-calltoactiondeeplinkid="/pages/create">
Tell your friends
</button>
The potential of this development is endless, and the range of areas in which it could be implemented to drive traffic to websites, generate user interaction and social sharing - I look forward to seeing it implemented by Joomla! developers soon!
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