In my last blogpost I showed you how to break out of the next on Twitter by using hashtags. This week I am going to show you how to build your following on Facebook without having to work up a sweat by employing plugins.
While many of you understand
the importance of using Facebook to build an audience, precious few realize
that there are a number of facilities built into the platform that can make the
endeavor more proactive. Below are a few
Plugins to help you feed your facebook.
Plugin#1: Adding the Like/Send Buttons
Facebook offers a set of
widgets called Social Plug-ins that you can drop into any web page. One of the first you will want to familiarize
yourself is the Like Button. Adding the button
isn’t all that difficult as long as you follow the instructions. First you need to go to http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/
and look for the dialog box under the heading Step 1 – Getting the Button
Code. By simply copying and pasting the
url of the page you wish to add the button and hitting the button that reads,
“Get Code,” facebook will return both the Java and html code you need. Simply paste the code where you want the
button to appear and then follow the instructions below.
Direct from Facebook
The Like/Send buttons lets a user
share your content with friends on Facebook. When the user clicks the Like
button on your site, a story appears in the user's friends' News Feed with a
link back to your website.
When your Web page represents a
real-world entity, things like movies, sports teams, celebrities, and
restaurants, use the Open Graph protocol
to specify information about the entity. If you include Open Graph tags on your
Web page, your page becomes equivalent to a Facebook page. This means when a
user clicks a Like button on your page, a connection is made between your page
and the user. Your page will appear in the "Likes and Interests"
section of the user's profile, and you have the ability to publish updates to
the user. Your page will show up in same places that Facebook pages show up
around the site (e.g. search), and you can target ads to people who like your
content.
I know what you’re thinking…“What the heck is the Open Graph Protocol?”
Don’t panic, it isn’t as complicated as you
might think.
Follow the steps below to
add the Like/Send Buttons it to your website.
To use Open Graph protocol, follow the following steps
Step1: Add following tag just before the <head>
tag on your web page:
<html
xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en”
xmlns:og=”http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/”
xmlns:fb=”http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml”>
Step2: Add following open graph protocol meta tags in the
head section (<head>…</head>) of your web page:
<meta
property=”og:title” content=”Enter title of your
web page here“/>
<meta
property=”og:type” content=”article”/>
<meta
property=”og:url” content=”Enter the URL of your
web page here“/>
<meta
property=”og:image” content=”Enter image URL which
represent your object here“/>
<meta
property=”fb:admins” content=”Enter your facebook
user ID here“/>
<meta
property=”og:site_name” content=”Enter the name of
your website here“/>
<meta
property=”og:description” content=”Enter one or two
sentence description of your web page here“/>
Step3: Once you have added your special meta tags, you can
now add the code of ‘like’ button into the body section (<body>..</body>)
of your web page. You’ll need to include the JavaScript SDK
on your page once, ideally right after the opening <body>
tag. (Copy this from the top box of the “Your Like Button plugin code:”)
It should look something like this:
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script>(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs =
d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id))
{return;}
js = d.createElement(s);
js.id = id;
js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1";
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script>
At first blush all this sounds like a lot of work, but once you have done it even once, it takes less
than 5 minutes. Just make sure you dot
all the I’s and cross all the t’s. You'll know right away if you have left something out of the equation, since the plugin will not display. If
you want to see what the finished product looks like, go to my blog at http://jacksonville-video-production.com/onlinetv.html By right
clicking and hitting “View Page Source” you can see what you need to include to
get the buttons up and running.
Why should you add the Like/Send Buttons?
This is a
great way to increase your distribution with the click of a mouse. Whenever a
Facebook user visits your site and clicks on the button, a link to your page will
automatically be added to their activity stream. This also means that all of
their friends can see and click on it which will send them to your page. Better
still, when the friend arrives, the Like button shows which of their friends have already clicked it, and
when they click on it, a link to your page gets added to their stream.
When someone Likes your page,
it does more than just pass the link around. For instance, if you are an author
touting a book and I go to your fanpage
and “Like” your book, Facebook will add a link to your book’s website in my
profile. If I keep a list of my favorite books in my Facebook profile, a link
to your website will be added there.
Now here’s the part you are really
going to like. Once you have the page
configured per the instructions above, it is a snap to drop other plugins onto
the page. Below are a couple more that I
use to increase readership.
Plugin2: Recommendations
The Recommendations plugin shows personalized recommendations to your users.
Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the plugin can display personalized
recommendations whether or not the user has logged into your site. To generate
the recommendations, the plugin considers all the social interactions with URLs
from your site. For a logged in Facebook user, the plugin will give preference
to and highlight objects her friends have interacted with.
You must specify a domain for which to show recommendations. The domain is
matched exactly, so a plugin with site=facebook.com would not include activity
from developers.facebook.com or www.facebook.com. You can specify multiple
domains and the results will be mixed together.
To add this plugin to a page, go to
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/recommendations/
Plugin3: The
Registration
This little beauty allows users to easily sign up for your website
with their Facebook account. The plugin is a simple iframe that you can drop
into your page. When logged into Facebook, users see a form that is pre-filled
with their Facebook information where appropriate. The registration plugin gives you the flexibility to ask for additional
information which is not available through the Facebook API (e.g. favorite
movie). The plugin also allows users who do not have a Facebook account, or do
not wish to sign up for your site using Facebook to use the same form as those
who are connecting with Facebook. This eliminates the need to provide two
separate login experiences.
Go to
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/registration/
to obtain the code needed to install this plugin.
Plug
This In
For a complete listing and description of available Facebook Plugins, go to
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
Carl Weiss has been plugged into the Internet professionally since 1995. He
owns and operates Access-JAX.com and Jacksonville-Video-Production.com among
other sites. If you want to turn your
website from an E-brochure to a lead generating, cash register ringing machine,
go to either of the above sites and click on the Free Web Presence Analysis
form to find out how plugged in your company is online.