WINTER 2014

10 THE DISTRIBUTOR’S

10 THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK Joe Dysart Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Thousand Oaks, California. A journalist for 20 years, his articles have appeared in more than 40 publications, including The New York Times and The Financial Times of London. During the past decade, his work has focused exclusively on ecommerce. Voice: (631) 256-6602; web: www.joedysart.com; email: joe@joedysart.com. SCOOPING UP FACEBOOK CONTENT: NEW FEATURE ALLOWS REPOSTING OF FASTENER TESTIMONIALS Marketers are jazzed about a new feature from Facebook, which allows any fastener distributor to scoop up flattering content about itself from public posts on Facebook, and then repost it virtually anywhere on the Web – including Web sites, blogs and other social networks. Dubbed as Facebook ‘embedded posts,’ the new capability is being eyed by marketers as an easy way to quickly collect a number of glowing testimonials about their products and services, and then repost that content in as many other Web environments and social networks as possible. Embedded posts “make it possible for people to bring the most compelling, timely public posts from Facebook to the rest of the Web,” says Dave Capra, a software engineer at Facebook. The new feature will also enable fastener marketers to scoop up and repost positive reports about their companies appearing on the Facebook pages of major news organizations like CNN, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Each embedded post a company uses retains the look-and-feel of Facebook, which many marketers believe will imbue added credibility to any Above: Much of Facebook’s content – including valuable testimonials -- stored in company servers like these can now be scooped and re-posted by marketers across the Web. Below: Biz Stone, co-founder, Twitter, encourages users to repost Twitter content across the Web. testimonial, since the embed will most likely be seen as a spontaneous endorsement from the original poster – rather than a coaxed shill. Plus, embedded posts also include any images and video that were featured in the original post -- a boon to fasteners marketers who are looking to spice up their Web sites with free multimedia. All that newly available public content on Facebook is also expected to show up on company blogs. Instead of searching for a stock photo or video to support a company blog topic, for example, a fastener distributor marketer can instead make a quick stop at Facebook, scoop up an appropriate image or video, and then embed that content on the company blog with just a few mouse-clicks. The new capability will also make it easier for fastener distributors to update their Web sites every day without paying stiff fees to Web designers. Essentially, a company marketer can initially post new marketing content –or any other content – to the company Facebook page, and then scoop it as an embedded post for use on the company Web site, blog and anywhere else on the Web the company has a presence. please turn to page 166