The Canvas

  Facebook describes the Canvas as an immersive and expressive experience on Facebook. Getting past the marketing babble, it is an interactive post which businesses can use to build a story. You can combine video, text and images in one post.

People can swipe through a carousel of images, tilt to view panoramic images and zoom in to view images in detail. They can read blocks of text or watch short videos. The best part is the call to action.  After you have engaged a user with interesting content you can invite them to click to learn more or even to buy. This makes the Canvas the perfect post type for brands with stories to tell, and Facebook hopes you will use it as part of an interactive advertising campaign.  

In this example from Target, the prospective customer is presented with a series of blouses.  As they scroll through they eventually reach a screen with color alternatives and a buy now option. 

The downside? Well, as Sam found out, it only works on mobile devices so you want to be sure your audience spends a lot of their “Facebook Time” on mobile devices. In the mobile environment, it creates a fast-loading and seamless experience working equally well on Android and iOS devices. 

One last note on Canvas, building a good one requires really good graphics. It also takes a bit of time to work through the construction, but the increases in engagement make it definitely worth the effort.     

• Live doesn’t mean sloppy. Practice what you are going to say.  Film a few seconds to test sound and lighting before you “go live.”
• Make sure the video looks interesting.  Videos autoplay in the Facebook timeline but they are on mute. If you want to get someone to click and watch, the visual needs to draw them in!
• Don’t forget to encourage people to like and share the video.
• Promote it before and after. You will often get more interaction as the video reappears in the timeline long after the recording.  

More about the Facebook Toolkit

We’ve been writing about Facebook a lot lately. That’s because, right now, Facebook is hot. They are introducing so many exciting options so I thought it would be fun to sit down with Sam and Luke, our content team, to talk about what’s new.   This podcast has been added to our More than a Few Words library. You can always come back here to find the latest episode, or simply download it from iTunes.