How to be Liked

In her acceptance speech for the Best Actress Oscar in 1984, Sally Field famously said “You like me, right now, you like me!”. We want to be liked, it’s nice to be liked but, until now, there hasn’t been a way to quantify all that liked-ness.

The Facebook ‘Like’ widget is a simple tool that can help you gauge how popular your website/blog/products are. The concept is simple, somewhere on your webpage you include the widget which consists of a small button and some text saying how many people (with a Facebook account) have clicked on the button to indicate they like the page. You can then visit the page and see how many people like you, giving you a nice, warm feeling inside.

While that all sounds OK, it doesn’t seem earth shattering, does it? What if it could increase your website traffic by a factor of 4? Well, as it turns out, the most powerful part of this little widget is the bit that you don’t see, but lots of people do.

If I visited your site and clicked on the ‘Like’ button a message would immediately be sent to all of my Facebook friends, telling them them that I liked your site, and would include a link back to your site! I could also include a comment that goes with the link. What’s more, that message will stay on their Facebook Wall forever, gradually making it’s way down the page as other messages are added. How’s that for word of mouth? Can you think of a more efficient and instant way of spreading the word?

The ‘Like’ widget is just one of many that Facebook provides to website developers and owners. Adding it to your website is as simple as cut-and-paste and you don’t even need to have a Facebook account to use it on your site. Although there’s no magic bullet to ensure social media success, the ‘Like’ widget is yet another powerful tool that you should consider in your social media strategy.

Incidentally, more than 3,400 people like Sally Field’s Facebook page. I guess she was right.