Saying goodbye to the best job in the world and more...

I want to take a moment here to wish Jon Washburn ALL the very best in his new and future endeavors. Jon Washburn and Bob Stewart brought me into the rain, gave me shelter during the storm, then encouraged and supported me while I helped them build and grow this great network.

I owe a great deal of my experience and success to these guys for giving me the chance, for supporting me through thick and thin, and for bringing me on board to the AR team and family.  I am forever grateful to them for letting me take deep root in the soil of this great community. 

Thank you Jon for a wonderful journey! May all things good and prosperous be yours and in abundance.  The direction and path you are taking today is exactly where you are suppose to be at this time in your life and during your adventure...

Stay true to your passion my friend... always! Do something "AMAZING!" Crush It!

 

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Integrating Facebook Into Your Site - It's Time To "Plug-in"

Today I'm sharing one of the more powerful ways I know of to drive traffic, increase growth, and encourage engagement on your site. Using Facebook's new social and personalized feature plug-ins can without a doubt be an asset to your social outreach and marketing efforts. 

When you see company's like The Wall Street Journal, Yelp, ABC, TIME, CNN, The Huffington Post, and the New York Times using this method, your motivation to adopt something like this will most likely increase. 

Why? Because it works!

Facebook offers some great plug-ins that can make your site more socially engaging and help you grow your existing traffic, returning visitors, and in no time at all, build more relationships and business. Look how some of these sites are using Facebook Plug-ins to not only grow and socially connect their sites and businesses, some of the creative ways in which they're being used are setting some new social trends.

I believe many companies are doing this in order to stay in business and to continue building, managing, and improving their client and potential client relationships. They can't rely on their previous marketing tactics any longer.

The Huffington Post uses - A "Facebook Plug-in" Instant Pop-up

Wall Street Journal  CNN

The New York Times    

Even Yelp is now personalizing their site using Facebook Plug-in options.

Let me show you a few of these plug-ins and how to add them to your site, but first you should take a moment to understand how they work so you'll be motivated enough to take the next steps to "plug-in."

1. When you land on any website and see that many of your social friends and connections have already been there before you and liked or participated on that site, there's a tendency for you to want to be a part of it too. 

2. Many will like and return to your site simply because others they are influenced by have been there. 

It's hard to resist investigating a site that has 46,021 likes and most the faces you see are friends you know.

3. Making your site more socially engaging to others without having to leave to interact is powerful. 

4. Knowing content and activity gets shared on others' Facebook walls will definitely create a viral advertising affect and opportunity that is almost guaranteed to drive more traffic and interest to your site. 

5. This theory and idea alone should make Facebook plug-ins pretty hard to resist. 

There are some great examples of this out there, here's a couple samples of what this looks like.

Inter-active Facebook Comment Box

Live Streaming Inter-active Facebook Plug-in

Activities will appear on Facebook walls

Facebook plug-ins are not widgets, they are "Social plug-ins letting you see what your friends have liked, commented on or shared on sites across the web."  One of the greatest recommendations I can give you is to follow what's happening on the Facebook developers Blog, these are the folks behind the scenes of the largest social network sharing information, tips, and tools for those interested. They've actually been blogging there since August of 2006.

How to Integrate Facebook Plug-ins?
I'll walk you through the steps:

1. Register your domain name and site with the Facebook:
   http://developers.facebook.com/setup/
2. Select the Social Plug-in you'd like to add to your site:
   http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
3. Customize your plug-in width, height, fonts, and colors.
4. Copy and paste the custom code to your website.
5. If you get stuck or need a step-by-step tutorial, use the Facebook Guide:
   http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web/

More Facebook Plug-ins:

Activity - "Displays most recent Interesting Activity on your site"

Comments - "Enables users to leave comments on your site"

Facepile - "Only Displays Friends Faces"

Like Box - "Attracts and gains "Likes" to your Facebook Pages"

Like Button
 

Live Stream - "Share activity and comments in real-time"

Login Button - "Users Login to your site with FB credentials"

Recommendations - "Personalized recommendations to users"

Since Facebook is the largest and most powerful Social Network on the planet right now (and doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon), how can YOU harness some of that power?  Making your site's experience a little more socially engaging could increase growth and connectivity. Going to Facebook.com to engage with others is great and I recommend it.  However, if Facebook developers are now providing Plug-in tools like this, why not take advantage of this opportunity to put your site on the forefront using their social media power?

Facebook has ALL the faces for sure, and now they're offering YOU a way to get "plugged-in!"

 

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