The Easy Way To Integrate The Viral Power Of Facebook Into Your Blog
This blog post will show you how you can integrate the viral power of Facebook Connect with your wordpress blog without touching a single bit of code. Its done by using a neat plugin created by Spanish blogger Javier Reyes
Most people get put off by mentions of API keys and messing with the code on their webpages. Luckily I stumbled upon this cool plugin that does all the work for you. If you follow each step carefully you will be up and running in no time
Even if you don’t have a wordpress blog, make sure you scroll to the bottom of this post where I will be explaining exactly how I will be using Facebook connect to initiate social activity and get immense viral exposure.
Click here to download the Facebook Connect WordPress plugin
http://www.sociable.es/facebook-connect/
Take a few minutes to watch the tutorial video that explains the features of this plugin
The next video gives an explanation of how to install this plugin and set up your API code
After you have downloaded the plugin to your computer you need to go to your blog and upload the file into your wp-content/plugins/ folder, you can do this by FTP or by going into the backend of your website if you have CPanel hosting.
Now login to the admin panel of your wordpress blog, I am using Wordpess 2.7 in this example, your screen might look slightly different if you are using earlier versions. Go to your plugins and activate the Facebook connector plugin
Now in your settings menu open Facebook connector you should have this screen visible
Get Your Facebook API Code
This plugin is an easy way for you to create your own Facebook application unique to your blog. In order for it to function you will need a Facebook developers account and obtain your Facebbook API key and Facebook API secret. These are just codes so Facebook can give you access to the user data that will be transferred to your blog. In a new browser window login to your Facebook account and scroll down to the very bottom of your profile page.
Now enter the name of your new application, agree to the terms of service and click save.
Now you have been given your API Key and API Secret, you need to copy and paste these numbers into your wordpress plugin settings
Now open the Connect tab and enter the URL of your blog.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click save
In another browser window, copy and paste your API key and API secret into your Facebook Connector Options; check the boxes to allow full functionality on your blog
Scroll down to create the message template; if you want to customize the messages you can edit the text in the boxes
After you have clicked create template the plugin should have two yellow boxes at the top indicating that everything is now functioning
You can now place a widget on your sidebar so your blog visitors can login and interact with your blog. Any comments they make will be posted directly to their Facebook profile
drag and drop the widget to your required position and adjust its settings
Your Facebook connect plugin should now be fully functioning. Go to your blogs homepage and check everything is working
The sidebar widget should look something like this
Click on the Connect with Facebook button and start interacting
Now you can invite all your friends to come and visit your blog and more importantly all your visitors can invite all their friends too
Social Interaction Goes Viral
What does all this social activity mean, and how is it going to help you? As an example I am going to see how much activity I can generate from this blog post using a variety of means. Immediately after I publish this post I am going to go to go and invite 16 of my friends to come and visit my blog post using the friend connect widget.
I am going to ask those 16 people to invite 16 of their friends to come and see this post too. I hope to start a viral chain reaction that will impact into Facebooks newsfeed.
Syndication
My blog is syndicated to my Twitter account and to my Facebook profile so as soon as it gets published a tweet will get sent and the full RSS feed will be imported as a Facebook note. The next day I am going to go to my Facebook note and tag a further 30 people in this note. I am going to ask people to give it a thumbs up or to press the share button
It’s a fine balance when doing this kind of thing, Only people who have wordpress blogs will be really interested in this post, but I hope other people will want to see the real viral power of Friend Connect in action
Using Groups
Once I have some impact in Facebooks newsfeed I am going to send a message to my Facebooks groups, inviting them to learn about Facebook Connect. I hope that some of my other friends who have big groups will do same.
Become An Early Adopter
There is a huge advantage to becoming an early adopter of the community building tools like Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect. You have the potential to take your friends with you wherever you go on the web. So if you see a great blog post you can leave a comment and it will go straight into your newsfeed for your friends to see. Bloggers can expect more traffic to be circulating back and forth from social sites like Facebook opening up a huge potential of viral social interaction.
How Viral Is Facebook?
With your help we can find out; only by testing new strategies can we discover what their limitations are and how much exposure they bring. I will be tracking the results and monitoring the newsfeed and comments on this blog. Of course I am taking a big risk because I might end up annoying some people, I am willing to do this because I see there is a huge potential available and I love sharing with my online community
What You Can Do Now
1. If you are on my blog http://www.iandavidchapman.com you can sign in to Facebook Connect and leave a comment
2. If you are on Facebook reading this you can leave a comment either in the newsfeed or at the bottom of this note. If you like the post click the share button at the top. or give it a thumbs up. You can visit my blog to see the plugin in action by
clicking on this link http://www.iandavidchapman.com
3. If you have a wordpress blog you can follow this tutorial and get started right away. For those who are technically challenged and don’t know how to add new plugins get your webmaster to do all this for you. Implementation is the key. Come back and leave a comment in this thread so other people reading this post can visit your blog and share it with their friends.
4. If you have any friends who have a wordpress blog or might be interested in Facebook Connect you can invite them to come and see this post, by clicking on the Invite Your Friends button on the Connect Widget
5. If you are Google Friend Connect user why not join my site at the same time. Feel free to leave a comment in the social bar at the bottom of the page.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article, I hope you got some benefit from it and choose to help me in my experiment to prove that Facebook Connect is worth taking seriously. If you experience any problems with this plugin please contact the developers and read all the comment threads carefully, making sure you have completed all the requires steps.
