4 reasons Facebook should be your next CMS

First Facebook pioneered the concept of a “news feed” for friends. Now, the social networking giant is about to strike again with its upcoming roll out of Facebook Credits, an online currency to purchase digital goods. 

Lately Facebook has been challenging the way we think about the web and throwing convention to the wind (just ask the 90-plus percentage of users that disagree with everything the company does, only to love it later).

From web applications to privacy issues the company has proved it can continuously innovate giving users tools to use the platform in new and interesting ways while making other business jealous. 

So that got us to thinking, why don’t more editorial websites envy Facebook? In fact, why couldn’t Facebook work as a content management system? 

Here are four reasons EMV thinks it can work:

No more “dual identities”

A dirty secret about social media: sometimes it's a waste of your time.

It takes a lot of investment to build a community through new platforms and most businesses don't have the resources or patience to dedicate.

It's wasteful to be managing communities of readers in different silos. Instead of trying to build a community on your website while simultaneously building “fans” on Facebook, why not make the job easier? After all, the audience is already there.

Detailed tracking

Publishers often spend a significant amount of resources acquiring information about readers. With Facebook, most of that information can be at your fingertips using Facebook’s Insights program that allows you to export demographic, interaction and country data as Excel spreadsheets.  

While Facebook fan pages do not make emails available, page owners can message readers en masse.

The analytics also apply to content, as Facebook allows page owners to view the impressions and interactions each post receives. Page admins can then easily surmise the kind of content that moves the needle.

Not as robust as, say, Google Analytics but serviceable.

More user participation

Check the amount of comments on your latest piece of content. Now, check the comment count of your latest status update on Facebook.

Chances are, your update of “Putting the kids to bed” got more “likes” and comments than that 750-word feature story on your site.

Facebook Credits

This one is big. Many are suspecting that Facebook’s upcoming online payment system will move to replace PayPal as the defacto standard on the web.

As Mark Cuban once wrote, publications should be doing everything in their power to have their readers profiles tied to a credit card number. In Facebook’s case, this is months away from becoming a reality.

Imagine selling tickets to an event through your Facebook fan page. A reader could purchase the ticket on the spot, automatically be signed up to the event page and have it pushed to the user’s newsfeed.

Not only does this result in revenue, it’s automatic promotion through the reader’s newsfeed and a savvy publisher could keep track of which users prefer certain kinds of events.

And that ever-elusive micropayments strategy that no one can pull off? Facebook has been experimenting with it for months.