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Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

When I logged into Facebook this morning, I was greeted with the picture to the left. I am sure that many of you have already seen this. I am also sure that many started out the same way I did; looking for the path to add the ‘like’ button to your website. With that said, I decided to write a post explaining how to install this little tool to your website.

Before I begin, I thought I would share what this button can and will do for you. If you look to the right, you will see this button in action on our real estate network. As you can see at this point (originally published 4-22-2010), not many have used it. Over time, the number will grow and people will be able to share our network with their facebook friends a lot easier. All one needs to do is to click the ‘Like’ button once, and it adds them. Below is an excerpt from the facebook page explaining this a little better:

The Like button enables users to make connections to your pages and share content back to their friends on Facebook with one click. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the button can display personalized content whether or not the user has logged into your site. For logged-in Facebook users, the button is personalized to highlight friends who have also liked the page.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take a look at how we add this neat little tool to our own websites. If you look to the immediate left, you will see the picture of the Like Button Generator. As you can see, I have filled out the necessary fields to create this button for Positive Real Estate Professionals’ main page. Now, in theory, I could do this for each and every page that I wanted to on PREP, but at some point, you run into overkill.

Once all the pertinent information is entered, all you need to do is click on ‘get code’. When that is done, it will generate 2 codes; the first is an iFrame code and the second is a JavaScript code. Once you have selected which code you want to use, all you need to do is add this as a ‘Text’ or ‘HTML’ widget in sidebar of your website. If you do not have access to do that, then contact your webmaster and they can instruct you more on this subject. In some cases this can require coding added to the theme itself or some adjustments to certain parameters that can only be done by an admin or webmaster.

OK, now that we have the why and how to out of the way, let’s get down to the where. I thought long and hard about how I could help you get this tool on your site in the easiest way. I decided that I would add the direct link to the Facebook Developers social media ‘Like Button’ plugin page; http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like I hope that you find this post useful.