Earlier this week, Facebook announced some significant updates which enable you to make your business website more social = more customer pass-around promotion.  And the great news is that it is very simply to add this to your small business website.

The best way to start is to add a Facebook “Like” button to each of your website pages.

You can see an example on a Facebook Like button right at the top of this article.  As visitors click “Like”, their name is added to the list of Facebook people who like your webpage!  Here is an example where 2 people have liked a webpage:

Now with one click (without having to login or anything on your website), a visitor (who is a Facebook member … there are only 500M of them now!) can indicate that they like your website.  This results in an item being posted on the user’s Facebook feed saying they like your business!  And with a link back to your business website!  Here’s an example of what is posted on a user’s Facebook page for liking a blog post and a website:

Here’s the snippet of HTML code you can add to any web page to instantly add a Facebook Like button:

<iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.mywebsite.com&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”true” style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:30px;”></iframe>

Notes on above:

• replace the red text with the URL of the page you want to be “liked”
• you can change the width and height if you’d like
• you may be able to remove the <div…> and </div> tags

If you’d like to add to a WordPress site and have the Like refer to a specific page (e.g. a specific blog post), then here is the HTML:

<div style=”margin-top:5px;”><iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php the_permalink() ?>&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”true” style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:30px;”></iframe></div>

Notes on the above:

• the <?php the_permalink() ?> is replaced with the actual link to the blog post by WordPress
• you may be able to remove the <div…> and </div> depending on your webpage
• you will need to go to the Appearance / Editor and add the above code to two template pages — single.php and main index.php (note: these might have different names in your theme)
• you can choose whether you want to have Like button appear at the top or bottom (or both!) of each post … I recommend that you paste in HTML code where you think it makes sense, Save and then reload your web page in another browser window to make sure it looks right.  If it doesn’t, then simply delete what you pasted and try again.
  

Here’s a good overview video:

Please leave comments on how this worked for you.