Facebook Share Button Tutorial for WordPress, Joomla, Blogger

Facebook, in its never ending quest to seek out and improve its marketing tools for businesses, has added another platform: the like button.

This represents a big opportunity for businesses, especially small companies that may have a limited marketing budget. Adding the Like Button to your Web site can increase traffic to your Web site, validate your brand and, and potentially help increase sales.

The marketing wheels are set in motion anytime a user clicks on the Like Button. First, your company’s page is added to the respective user’s Interest section of their Facebook profile page. That action is then shared on the news feed, which opens up the possibility that other Facebook users will see your page or company’s Web site. You can also send updates to the respective users through their news feeds.

Some tech-knowhow required

Adding the “like” button to your Web site takes a little technical know-how. In other words, there’s some code involved. Here are a few things to consider first:

* The code for adding the Like Button will either be an iframe or XFBML (which still uses an iframe). The iframe is easier to implement, but with XFBML, you can add comments, which improves the “like’s” position in a respective news feed.

* You need to fill in some required fields, or meta data, when installing your Like Button, including: site name, title, description, URL, image, type of object, admins/app ID (how you claim ownership of the object), location (optional), contact (optional).

Where can I find a quick tutorial for WordPress, Joomla or Blogger?

Assuming you don’t write code for a living, check out these Web sites for tutorials on how to install the Like Button to your Web site:

* WordPress
* Joomla
* Blogger: Two good how-to sites: All Blog Tips  and Simple Blogger Tools
* Facebook Marketing Solutions: They have a “how-to” video.

* You should also check out Facebook’s Terms and Conditions  before installing your Like Button.

* Facebook also has a tutorial under its Developers section.

The ‘share’ button has been phased out

Facebook recently faced out the “share” button, meaning they do not recommend using it in applications or external Web sites. It may still work in some applications, but eventually, Facebook will deprioritize the maintenance of it. So be careful when doing further research; there are a lot of outdated tutorials that still teach people how to install the “share” button.

Both buttons, though, function in very similar ways, aside from a few differences, including:

* The “Send as a Message instead” is no longer an option;

* The “like” item appears in your friends’ news feeds;

* Like appears where the button has been installed on Web sites, blogs, etc., in the form, “(Name) and (number) of others recommend this.”