Today, there are over 60 million websites on the internet that use the WordPress content management system, a staggering 21% of the total number of websites out there. Undoubtedly, the WordPress platform is the most popular CMS, used by Fortune 500 companies, small enterprises, individuals, organizations, as well as official institutions. Behind its popularity resides one of the main driving force of the IT industry today – user interface. WordPress provides the web designer with a platform that is easy to manage, extensive knowledge or use of programming languages is not required. Furthermore, because of its popularity as an open-source platform, there is an immense community of users that bring contributions, pose questions and help each other in the attempt to enrich the experience of the people that use the WordPress platform.
Social media| The easiest and most used form of communication today
One of the easiest and most powerful ways of boosting traffic on your site is connecting it with social media websites such as Facebook. Advertising and creating links to your website will only provide you with so many unique visitors. The common user is continuously bombarded with flashy adds and all sort of information that is useless to him or her, reason for which close to half of them are simply disregarded. However, through social media, you get constant feedback on your content, as it interacts with other people. They respond to it and you can further roll the ball, engaging more individuals as your posts reply to theirs and your blogis adjusted in order to suit their needs.
In this article, we will present you with an easy way to include Facebook buttons on your WordPress site, therefore facilitating the growth of your traffic.To put it simply, with these buttons your users will be able to share your content all across the web, without much difficulty or implication from your side.
How to start…
To begin with, visit this link for the HTML code of the Facebook like, number of likes or share buttons. The rest is as simple as generating your code and copying it into your website.
Facebook button customization
This like button comes with an incredible amount of options – after all, it is the biggest social networking site out there. You’ll have to decide whether you want to go with standard, button count or word count and you can also include a “Send” e-mail button. Various options, such as the width of the box are also at your disposal, so that you can arrange it according to the other items on your pages. Other things the Facebook like button allows you to do is choose between the “Like” and “Recommend” labels, match the font that you use on the rest of your website, opt between a darker and a lighter colour scheme and even show the profile pictures of those who comment below the button.
Two pieces of code must be added to your site. The first one is the JavaScript SDK code, directly after the <body> tag in the header template, which does not require any further tampering with. If you’ve already added Facebook comments to your website, you can skip this step. The second piece of code must be placed exactly where you want the Like button to appear. You can take an extra precaution measure for this and add the following to the second code:
href=”<?php echo get_permalink($post->ID); ?>”
However, like any default-written plugin, you might have issues when using these on your homepage. For instance, by simply adding the default code to your page with copy paste, you’ll only be showing people how many likes your website has in total, not how many each individual post has received. In order to sort this issue out, you just have to make sure that when you add the button to a page, you make it use the permalink article, rather than the full URL.
What we’ve learned…
Given the speed at which information travels today, connecting your WordPress website with Facebook is a must. There are countless people out there, looking for informative, engaging and fresh content – if they don’t know about yours, you’ll just be stuck in anonymity. Take the time to familiarize yourself with social media sites such as Facebook, connect your content with it and allow individuals to interact with it. Most importantly, make sure to react to what is being said. You can do this both actively, through comments, and passively,by adding more content – it doesn’t matter if the feedback is good or bad, getting it out there is the first (and sometimes the last) step on your way of getting as many unique visitors as you desire.