It’s no mystery that I’m a big fan of enabling sharing on your websites and all of your other content. Let’s get that on the table right now. I’ve recently written about why sharing is a great “baby step” into the social media maelstrom. Our company even worked with ShareThis, one of the leading sharing platforms, to develop new functionality for their sharing tools that allows companies in regulated industries to better control what is shared from their sites.

So, today I want to show you why sharing, specifically sharing on Facebook, is so important and I’ll also show you the best ways to utilize the Facebook sharing tools on your site. They are simple to implement, but there some finer points that will make them work even harder for you. We’ll look at the reasons why you should be doing this, the reasons why you shouldn’t (along with my rebuttal), and finally, things you probably didn’t know (about the Like button). Here goes.

The Reasons Why

In summary:

1. People expect to be able to share
2. Exposure to potentially 500 million people (for free)
3. A new way to connect with potential customers

There’s a good reason why I think you need to enable sharing…actually, there are a few reasons. First and foremost, people expect you to make sharing simple for them. And by simple, I mean including sharing buttons on your site. They shouldn’t have to rely on an extension in their browser or worse, copying and pasting your URL. Sharing buttons are very familiar to people now, they expect them to be there, and they know how to use them. ShareThis, for example, has its buttons placed on more than 900,000 sites, which are seen by 400 million people a month. Sharing is common practice, so get with it.

The next big reason is pretty obvious…exposure. It’s no secret that there are 500 million Facebook users out there (plenty more stats here). And, yes, you have the potential to reach every single one of them…for free. Of course, chances are that your content won’t get shared with everyone on Facebook (in fact I’ll guarantee it won’t), but you don’t need everyone. In fact, here’s a different way to look at it. By adding Facebook sharing tools to your site, it has cost you exactly $0. Even if only one person shares one thing, it’s probably still worth the effort. But likely many more than one will share something and a number of people will see what they share. Cost? Still $0.

But now you’re saying something like, “Yes. That’s wonderful, but I really am not trying to reach a bunch of teenage girls. Isn’t that who’s using Facebook?” I thought we moved past this, but apparently not because I still hear it. Again, your cost is $0 to do what I’m recommending, so it almost doesn’t matter how many of your target audience uses Facebook, but let’s play it out. Let’s focus on age for a second. Did you know that there are currently 18,560,740 women between the ages of 50-64 who live in the United States that use Facebook? Cool stat, eh? Pretty precise too. Well, go and see for yourself. Facebook has a handy tool that’s part of their ad creation platform that lets you target your ads and see how many people you’ll reach. You can find it here. So, enough about that. Your audience is on Facebook.

Finally, by using the Facebook Like button, you’re creating a new way to connect with some of the biggest advocates for your brand and content. Did you know that if someone Likes your page besides showing up on that person’s Wall and in their friends’ News Feeds, that you can publish updates to their Facebook News Feed? You probably didn’t…most people don’t. Good news, I’m going to show you how to do this in a minute. This becomes a way to send messages to people who are likely your biggest advocates. If they shared something of yours once, they might just do it again…and again. “Likers” turn out to be some of the most engaged people on Facebook. A recent study done by Facebook showed the following:

“People who click the Facebook Like button are more engaged, active and connected than the average Facebook user. The average “liker” has 2.4x the amount of friends than that of a typical Facebook user. They are also more interested in exploring content they discover on Facebook — they click on 5.3x more links to external sites than the typical Facebook user.”

And, adding the Like button seems to have a big impact on some sites. Facebook cited the following stats:

“Many publishers are reporting increases in traffic since adding social plugins, including ABC News (+190%), Gawker (+200%), TypePad (+200%), Sporting News (+500%), and  NBA.com (#2 referral source). Publishers have also told us that people on their sites are more engaged and stay longer when their real identity and real friends are driving the experience through social plugins. For example, on NHL.com, Facebook visitors are reading 92% more articles, spending 85% more time on-site, viewing 86% more videos, and generating 36% more visits than visitors other sites.”

I bet you’d like these kinds of numbers.

The Reasons Why Not

In summary:

1. Regulatory concerns and issues
2. A lack of shareable content
3. No expertise to implement or manage

Let me start by saying that I don’t accept any of these reasons, so here’s why.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit, it’s not all roses with this Facebook sharing. If done incorrectly, it can open you to legal and regulatory issues especially in regulated industries like healthcare and pharma. The simple rule to remember is that the content that you are enabling people to share must be compliant with regulatory rules if you also are providing the means for sharing. That is, if you put the sharing buttons on your site, then make sure what gets shared when someone pushes the button follows the rules. What’s legal depends on the industry, but for pharma, that means that you can’t have together the drug name and the indication (what it does) or any claims of how the product works. If you did, you would need to provide all that “mouse type” fair balance information, which you can’t fit into a piece of shared Facebook content.

With the Like button you can easily control this by using what are called Open Graph tags. These tags are added to the coding of your site and are specific to every piece of content that will have a button associated with it. You can set the title, URL, description, image, and many other parameters all to ensure that you’re in compliance with whatever rules you have to follow. You can download my white paper on sharing tools in regulated industries to read more about Open Graph tags and how they work. It’s in the context of ShareThis, but it’s the same idea for the Facebook Like button (Download here: Digital Alert-Bridge Worldwide-Social Sharing in Regulated Industries [PDF]).

Bottom line, since you can control what of your content is shared, you don’t have to worry about regulatory issues. And, no, you are not responsible for the comments people might add to the content that is shared. In summary:

The next issue you might have is worrying whether or not you have any content that is shareable. This is two different issues in my mind. First, you are correct. Some of the content you have isn’t going to be readily shared or Liked by people. For instance, as I’ve said many times, you’re going to have a problem if you’re asking people to have something like this show up on their Facebook Wall.

However, they might want to share a part of the page or maybe they do want to announce that they really like their erectile dysfunction medication. Don’t judge. In other words, let them decide if it’s shareable or not. Put the button there and let people figure it out for themselves. For the record, Viagra.com has been shared as a Wall post or status update on Facebook 779 times, plus 590 comments have been made on those shares  plus 199 Likes on these posts or updates. Grand total: 1,567.  Bet you didn’t know that one, Pfizer. Stay tuned for where I got those numbers.

You likely do have a lot of content that could be shared. Maybe a compelling video or a really good bit of informative text that educates people about a condition. Perhaps a really solid patient success story. If you look through your site and see nothing that is shareable, then you know your first job. Start making more and better content.

The last of the Why Not objections is all about not having the expertise to implement the Like button. Sure, the full implementation instructions look pretty complicated, but for anyone with even cursory programming knowledge, it’s extremely easy. It’s supposed to be. If you already have added a sharing platform like ShareThis to your site, then you have the capability to add the Like button as well. Your web developer (or you) should be able to do it in minutes. Just remember to add the Open Graph tags if you want to control what is shared. If you don’t, the buttons will still work, but Facebook will pick which content is shared from by using your page data. If you want to see what from a page will be shared, just try out this link.

Things You Probably Didn’t Know

There are quite a few things, so here’s a list of what you’ll find in this section. You can skim through to find the explanation for the particular “did you know” that you’re interested in.

Did you know…

• …what happens when you press “Like”?
• …what including a comment with a Like means?
• …that there is an alternative for the word “Like”?
• …there are three different types of Like buttons and that you can have multiple Like buttons on one page?
• …every piece of content that is Liked has a Page on Facebook?
• …that you can publish to the News Feeds of people who like your content?
• …that the number shown next to the Like button isn’t actually the number of people who have liked that item?
• …that you can create a Like button for a Facebook Page (like your brand Fan page) that you can use anywhere?

Okay, let’s get down to business. How do you use the Like button and what can it do for you? For starters, there are actually two different Facebook sharing buttons: Like and Share. Like is newer and is supposed to replace the Share button. They basically serve the same function, but have some slight differences that aren’t critical for the purpose of this post. The differences and how to use them could be a post in of itself, but I’m not going to go into that much detail. Let’s focus on the Like button as a great place to start.

What happens when you “Like” and why comments matter

The Like button allows people to “casually” show their affinity to something at different levels. That is, when you press the Like button on a site, you could simply leave it at that. However, you also have the option to add a comment. Try it out for yourself (this is to Like this post, which you can unlike right away and it won’t show up on Facebook if you don’t really Like this). [NOTE: If you don't see the button, you need to view the post in your browser. Click to do this.]

You’ll notice that after you press the Like button, after a second or so, another box pops up that allows you to leave a comment (or Unlike). Like this:

If someone only presses the Like button and doesn’t leave a comment, what shows up in their feed looks like this:

Chances are that this will go unnoticed if it finds its way into my friends’ New Feeds. However, if I leave a comment (look right next to my name), the content becomes much more prominent:

That will get noticed.

Facebook’s rationale for doing it this way is simple. By just clicking Like and doing nothing more, you’re simply indicating that you like/approve/have some interest in/connect with/enjoy/etc. the bit of content. It’s not really important to you, but of interest for sure, so it doesn’t get much prominence on Facebook. However, if you take the time to leave a comment, then that must mean that you are a bit more passionate about the item, so therefore, the prominence on Facebook matches this.

Pick your favorite button

For the record, there are three different versions of the Like button (click any of them to Like this post).

A few things you should notice. First, yes, you can have multiple Like buttons on a single page. And, yes, you can even have them for different pieces of content. For example, click the Like on this one to Like the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki.

Don’t like “Like”?

For those paying attention, you notice that in the above example “Like” has been replaced by “Recommend.” This is one of your options with the Like button. You can pick whichever verb works for you. Recommend might be more appropriate for some content (like healthcare), but it is less familar to people, which might make them less likely to click on it. The good news is that you can test it. You can add both or use Recommend one week and Like the following and see which did better. Alternatively, you can add a “ref” attribute to the code for the button so that you can track which works best it in your website analytics program (here’s how). For example, I added unique “ref” attributes to the three different versions of the Like button above to see which will perform the best (I’ll let you know).

The secret pages of Facebook

So, as you can see, you have a lot of different options for the Like button. You know what happens when someone does click it, but you might not know what you can do as the content owner. I mentioned earlier that you can publish updates to the News Feeds of anyone who has like a piece of your content. Theoretically, your update could be about anything and not necessarily about the content they liked. I wouldn’t recommend this. Stick with what the content was about. Perhaps share when you update the page or if you have other related content that these people might like. In other words, don’t abuse it. Here’s how it works:

Every piece of content that has even a single Like also has a page on Facebook. That’s right. There are hundreds of millions of pages out there that correspond to a single piece of content. For example, every blog post on this site has its own page on Facebook. These are created automatically when someone clicks your Like button for the first time. You can add some administrator information to the Open Graph tags for each piece of content with a Like button, so that you can be the admin of these pages in the same way that you admin any other page you create on Facebook.

Bet you didn’t know that. After you have the button installed, the admin needs to Like the page and then you’ll see something new next to the button.

If you click that Admin Page link, then you’ll be taken to the page that was created for the piece of content [click to enlarge].

You’ll notice the message on top:

“This is the administration interface for your webpage at http://www.doseofdigital.com/healthcare-pharma-social-media-wiki/. You can see Insights and publish to the users that have liked your webpage. Only the administrators of the webpage can view this interface, other users are sent to the webpage.”

In other words, no need to panic, this page doesn’t exist to the world. No one can see it except for the admin. Think of it like a backend publishing tool. What this allows me to do is publish an update that appears in the News Feeds of anyone who has Liked this page from my blog. You can see one of the updates I published that explained that I was updating the page soon and looking for more entries for the wiki. It’s completely relevant to the page that people Liked and makes sense as an update. Again, don’t take advantage of this by spamming people.

This works the same as if you published something to your brand’s Facebook Wall. It would also go to the News Feed of anyone who Liked your page (previously known as being a Fan). Whether or not your Fans see it in their feeds is another story (read about it here: “Why Your Facebook Page Doesn’t Exist“).

The Like count dirty little secret

A few more things about the Like button that you probably didn’t know. First, the number you see with the button, isn’t actually the number of people who have Liked that piece of content (even though that’s what it says next to the button). It’s actually a combination of the number of Likes, shares, and comments on those Likes and shares, and Likes of the Likes, shares or comments. In other words, any activity related to that piece of content. It inflates the number of Likes quite a bit. Earlier I mentioned, Viagra.com has been shared as a Wall post or status update on Facebook 779 times, plus 590 comments have been made on those shares  and 199 Likes on these posts or updates. Grand total: 1,567. Keep in mind, Viagra.com has never been “Liked” before since there’s no Like button their site. Of course, anyone could put a Like button for Viagra on their site, which is what this one is (CLICK AT YOUR OWN RISK…I’m not kidding. You will announce to the social media world that you like Viagra.com):

As you can see, the number of people who Like Viagra.com, which actually should be zero (unless some of you clicked this), is far from it because Facebook adds up all those interactions and comes up with 1,567. It makes your numbers look a bit higher than what they really are. How did I figure this out? Well, you can use the Facebook Insights API (if you’re really smart) or you can cheat (like I did) and use this handy tool from Inside Facebook that calculates it all for you.

Like my page too

Like buttons aren’t reserved only for pieces of content. Recent changes to Facebook allow you to create a like button for a Facebook Page (like your brand “Fan” page), which can be used anywhere.

Click away to Like the Dose of Digital Page on Facebook.

All you need is the right code. You can get it here. For the URL, just put in the URL for your Facebook page (in my example: http://www.facebook.com/doseofdigital). Again, your developer should know how to do this, but if you’re stuck, contact me and I’ll try to help you out. Of course, you can also contact me if you’d like our agency, Bridge Worldwide, to do it all for you. It’s what we do.

Now you know everything about making the Like button work for you. You probably really like Like right now, so go ahead and Like it officially:

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