18 replies to this topic

[bwelford]

Google's nightmare: Facebook 'Like' replaces links. This looks very big.

Has anyone used one of the WordPress Plugins to add a Facebook Like button to their blogs? If so, which plugin do you recommend?

[AbleReach]

How did you get a look at my to-do list?

Here's a how-to
and another
and another.

:-)

I don't think you need a plugin. Just figure out which code to copy, and where to put it.

[bwelford]

Thanks for the links, Elizabeth. It looks like a very worthwhile ToDo.

[EGOL]

Thank you for the links, Barry and Elizabeth.

I believe this is something that we should jump on.

There seem to be a lot of low-effort ways to get traffic from this - if you have content that people will "like".

[bwelford]

I jumped.

Given the minimal effort involved in clicking on the Like 'Thumbs Up', you would have thought anyone who has drawn any useful thoughts from a post would feel that was a small price to pay.

[EGOL]

Facebook is a data gold mine... they have "likes"... "links"... "friends"... content and much more. Perhaps there is an algo in there that would return better results than Google.

I just prospected where my traffic from FB is coming from and I was surprised to see that I am getting traffic from some competitor's FB pages, some industry association FB pages and from the FB pages of people in my topic area.

FB data reveals a "demographic" of the interest in your site and if they can cluster FB members into demographics the search results that could be produced from that might be very powerful.

An algo based upon demographics might be more powerful than an algo based upon links because it is more granular, more diverse, and less skewed by the types of people who are webmasters along with their often biased motivations.

[JVRudnick]

Hmm...thanks for the links there, Elizabeth...will look into this...lotsa buzz in the past few days on same, but I'm not "sure" it'll add value for my own blog readers....

<grin> okay, for those of us who use WordPress for a blog (which I do) then a quick search in Admin, shows about a dozen or more LIKE plugin widgets...

just installed one myownself and it's not only showing the LIKE button -- but a small display of everyone's avatar who clicks on same (if held by an avatar aggregator btw).

very easy to install and use...gosh, I like this millenium, eh!



Jim

Edited by JVRudnick, 30 April 2010 - 03:29 PM.

[EGOL]

Where did you put it JV? OK if we look?

Anybody seen some great ways to implement this? I am looking for some "models" and strategies.

Edited by EGOL, 30 April 2010 - 03:45 PM.

[DonnaFontenot]

Some places to see it in action: techcrunch.com, mashable.com, and cnn.com.

What I find interesting is that you can almost hide the thing, and if you have enough traffic and/or loyal readers, it'll still get clicked. Case in point?

http://www.cnn.com/2...dex.html?hpt=C1

Very long article. Like button (called Recommend here, but it's the same thing) is wayyyyyyyyyy down at the end. How many people clicked it? 565 at the moment. That's a whole lotta likes.

What if it's hidden in a mass of stuff? Case in point?
http://mashable.com/...uires-fastmail/

Hard to find. 7 clicks. (But that might be more indicative of traffic, but still, I probably wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't been searching for it).

Techcrunch places it in two places - once at the top of a post and once at the bottom. Example:
http://techcrunch.co...bo-encapulator/

Edited by dazzlindonna, 30 April 2010 - 03:59 PM.

[bwelford]

I've put the standard code at the bottom of all single blog posts (which is all I have - see LMNHP approach) in all my blogs, as per the first link that Elizabeth gave.

Did I miss this, but I'm now wondering how I will know in an aggregated way what blog posts are attracting Likes. Has anyone spotted a way?

[AbleReach]

Cafepress is using it on individual product pages, right by the "Add to Cart" button.

For doubt-driven link hoarders, that'd be the ideal place put a "like" link, to help them indicate things noticed but not *yet* ready to buy.

Edited by AbleReach, 30 April 2010 - 05:30 PM.

[EGOL]

Thanks for the links, Donna and Elizabeth.

It was great to see how some respected sites are using these widgets. I thought that Techmeme and Mashable were really slow websites. Maybe they have too many widgets on them???? The Anne Frank story on CNN was really high quality content. I was not surprised to see that it had a lot of "likes"... but didn't expect over 1000 on a relatively new story.

Its probably not a good idea to put some of these widgets high in your code or your page might really hang while they are loading.

[Pete]

Its probably not a good idea to put some of these widgets high in your code or your page might really hang while they are loading.

I have one or two of these on a site, and that aspect did worry me at first. You can get the iframe version and the javascript version though. I don't like iframes but I imagine it won't harm the page loading as the page loads as normal, it just takes time for the "like" to appear in the frame.

I tried the javascript one and it didn't work - they don't actually give very good instructions on how to implement it.

[Pete]

And I now have it working on my vBulletin forum, but not yet on the CMS or blog

[EGOL]

I really like these widgets... but I wonder how much traffic I will lose to FB?

They are a brilliant way to market FB.

[EGOL]

I tried the javascript one and it didn't work - they don't actually give very good instructions on how to implement it.

I just spent an hour trying to get it to work. This is an extremely valuable tool but their instructions are horrible.

[Pete]

I just spent an hour trying to get it to work. This is an extremely valuable tool but their instructions are horrible.

I know. Eventually I found out that you have to register your site to get an app id. But even after putting the app ID into the code it didn't work for me. And no explanation of what app id means.

You get:

App name (your site name)
App URL (site URL)
App ID - a number

fair enough so far, but why not just call it a site not an "App"

But then you get this:

App Secret. And a number that's twice as long as the App ID.

Then a sample code (which is an html template). including your App ID already in place, so foolproof.

"Great" you think,

But it still doesn't work.

[JVRudnick]

Sorry, been away a bit...but yes, I too found the 'instructions' for the jscript one a bit hard to fathom...so I did a quick search for WP plugins and decided on this one!

http://blog.gunnjerk...-for-wordpress/

is the link to same and you can either use the 'd/l the zip + then u/l into your WP' style or just search for the name of same in the Add a Plugin area of WP [the name is Wordpress-Facebook-Like]

;-)

works perfectly and I "like" same too, eh!

Jim

[FP_Guy]

Actually Dazzlindonna I have it in the beginning and ending of my SEO article as well.

At first the inline frame would show up in one browser but not the other. Then the Facebook javascript inclusion would show up in the other but not the first browser. (Internet Explorer and Firefox. I forgot which one showed up in one and not the other, but for some reason they show up in both now.) So I placed two of them so that at least one would show up in the browser, but it got me thinking that one should be at the top and one at the bottom anyway.

How did they name it 'Recommend' instead of 'Like'?