Do you like? Yes, no, maybe… Facebook Social Marketing

July 17, 2010  

Back in April of this year, Facebook introduced more plugins that is proving to be a huge help with social media marketing. I especially like the new “Like” button that can be added to blogs (go ahead and like this article and give it a try ). With these plugins, you can bring the power of Facebook to your website and users will never have to leave your site to “Like” or “Recommend” your content to their friends via their wall! Neat, eh?

You can find these new plugins on the Facebook Developers site along with notes on how to add the code to your website.

However, I’ve found through my own research that there are several ways to add the plugins to your site. For instance, if you have WordPress, you can search for “Facebook Like” plugins and simply use it that way. I like the FBLike Plugin as it is working well for me.

Other options include:

• Hacking your WordPress code yourself by going to your single.php file. Look for the_content(). Paste the code you see below either before or after the_content().
  • <iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fmysite.com%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;show-faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:500px; height:60px"></iframe>
  • The above code will add the Like code on one page of your site. But what if you have a WordPress blog? That code won’t work. You’ll have to make the following adjustments:

Replace the following code
[…]like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fmysite.com%2F
with
[…]like.php?href=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>

• Optional Settings
  • If you don’t want to show the faces of your friends, change “show_faces=true” to “show_faces=false”
  • If you want to show the label of the button as “Recommend” instead of “Like”, change “action=like” to “action=recommend”

• In case you use some caching plugin, clear the cache, refresh your page, and watch the magic happen!

Pretty cool eh! Do you like this post? Yes, no, maybe?  Click on “Like” then

About Kesha Brown

Kesha is the Creative Director and Principal Web Designer at her company XD Web Solutions who specializes in helping small businesses and organizations maximize their online presence. Go ahead and follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.