What is Facebook’s ‘Like’ Button?

By including a Facebook ‘Like’ button on your website, your site immediately interacts with Facebook so when a Facebook user clicks it there’s an instant connection between your page and that user’s Facebook page. Your page then appears in the ‘Likes and Interests’ section of their Facebook profile.

The ‘Like’ button was first introduced by Facebook just over a year ago. In that time, according to Facebook, every day 10,000 websites introduce the ‘Like’ feature to their site and millions of people have interacted with Facebook from external sites because of the ‘Like’ feature. The ‘Like’ button was, initially, most popular with media sites such as news and political websites but these days, all types of websites are utilizing the ‘Like’ button option.

If you’d like to have a Facebook ‘Like’ button on your website, or in certain areas of your website, it’s very simple to achieve. Facebook makes it easy by providing you with a small piece of code that you simply copy and paste into the relevant section of your site. The code is located here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web/

There’s also the option to allow readers to customize the look of your content to suit their own specific requirements.

Where should you place the ‘Like’ button?

You don’t necessarily have to put the ‘Like’ button on your home page. If there are particular articles that you’re proud of or sections of your site that you feel would appeal to readers and you’d like to promote them, place the ‘Like’ button there.

Advertising on the web is, of course, a whole different ballgame to traditional print advertising. Having said that, many of the basic rules remain the same. For example, in print advertising, it’s a commonly known fact that the human eye tends to go straight to the right side of a page rather than the left side. Therefore, it’s probably best if you position the ‘Like’ button on the right side of the page rather than the left.

Use the ‘Like’ feature sparingly

There’s no point in having a Facebook ‘Like’ button all over your website. Think carefully about the best places to put it. You should always be trying to promote your website and, therefore, you should ‘show off’ only the very best and most interesting content so that those people who’ve ‘liked’ it are likely to influence their Facebook friends to ‘like’ it too. Any content that portrays your business in a positive light is definitely worth promoting.

Facebook is not awesome just because it has that widely popular ‘like’ button. Facebook also allows you to find and reconnect with friends online.

 

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