Bill Erickson» facebook

Adding Facebook Like

Bill Erickson — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:00:47 +0000

Adding the Facebook Like button to your website is pretty easy when you’re running a standard template – you drop some code in the header.php and single.php files. But if you’re running Genesis or Thesis, you’ll have to use functions to add it.

For both of these themes there are plugins that let you add PHP code through the WordPress interface ( Thesis OpenHook and Genesis Simple Hooks). I would highly suggest not using these plugins, because if you type something wrong you might break your website and not be able to log back in to fix it.

For both of these themes I’ll be sticking the Facebook Like code right above the post content on the individual posts. If you would like it placed elsewhere, refer to a visual guide (Thesis Visual Hook Reference or Genesis Visual Hook Reference).

Facebook Like in Thesis

Paste this code in your custom_functions.php file:

The first part checks to see if it’s a single post (so not the homepage, category page…) and if it is it sticks the facebook code right before the post content.

The second part sticks some information that Facebook wants in the of the site. If it’s a single post (which it should always be since that’s only where the like code shows up) then it uses the title of the page. If it’s not a single post (if you changed the is_single() in the first code block to something else) it will show the site name followed by the site description. I then specify the image to use as the logo (location: /custom/images/logo.jpg). If you want to use a different image make sure to change this.

Facebook Like in Genesis

In your child theme, place this code in functions.php:

The first part checks to see if it’s a single post (so not the homepage, category page…) and if it is it sticks the facebook code right before the post content.

The second part sticks some information that Facebook wants in the of the site. If it’s a single post (which it should always be since that’s only where the like code shows up) then it uses the title of the page. If it’s not a single post (if you changed the is_single() in the first code block to something else) it will show the site name followed by the site description. I then specify the image to use as the logo (location: /images/logo.jpg). If you want to use a different image make sure to change this.

How does a young person get a job in advertising or PR in a recession?

Bill Erickson — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:11:49 +0000

(Posted as a comment here.)

Great post. This should be required reading for all graduates, not just marketing majors.

I think an important but overlooked topic in college is managing your personal brand. In this digital age, we’re all building our own brands through facebook, flickr, twitter, and personal blogs.

In our junior or senior year, we’re all told to clean up our online personas to make sure you’re hire-able. For some this means deleting drunken photos, but for many they simply remove all digital references to themselves by deleting their facebook profile.

In our increasingly digital economy, a lack of an online persona is comparable to a drunken photo – a reason for not hiring someone. In a time when English tailors have a blog, if you don’t show your digital competence by maintaining your personal brand online you’re much less valuable to a business than someone who does.

This doesn’t just apply to the tech and marketing sector. Many businesses are using their new hires to help them understand social media – if you have net natives inhouse, why hire a social media consultant?

Next time you’re up at A&M, you should give a talk on this subject.

Re: The Facebook Problem

Bill Erickson — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 15:33:19 +0000

I posted this as a comment on Brad Feld’s The Facebook Problem, but since Doug Williams is commenting on my comment, I thought I’d post it over here.

A change has happened at Facebook and not many have noticed it. As the VCâ€™s and entrepreneurs have become more connected to facebook, the average user (a college student) has become more disconnected.

Facebook as a replacement for TV? It was that 2 years ago, it isnâ€™t any more. As a college student and an entrepreneur (like everyone else in the world, I have a facebook app being released next week) Iâ€™ve seen the change happen. Last year, whenever we – and by we, I mean college students – were bored, weâ€™d get on facebook and browse around for a while. Check out some photos, browse friends profilesâ€¦just bounce around on facebook for an hour or so.

But now, facebook has added so much stuff that it isnâ€™t an exploring tool anymore – theyâ€™ve optimized it to a point where I donâ€™t need to explore. Instead of spending hours jumping around on friends profiles, i can take a quick look at hte news feed. I get text msgs and emails whenever I get a message, tagged in a photo, or any other â€œactionableâ€ item. Iâ€™ve found I only go to facebook now when I need to act on one of these â€œactionableâ€ items; e.g., receive a message, wall post, tagged in a photo.

And itâ€™s not just me. Iâ€™ve been talking to a lot of college students because I want my facebook app to succeed. It had almost been finished before they released the platform – it originally used the API – but rebuilt it using the platform, which delayed the launch.

Anyway, almost everyone Iâ€™ve talked to has said the facebook apps now are out of hand. One person even said â€œsomeone should build a facebook like it used to be, no one wants this new facebook anymore but thereâ€™s nothing else thatâ€™s better.â€ Facebook is becoming like digg – too much noise for exploring (ie, TV replacement), but it still works well as a communication platform. So, we are now using it as a replacement for email, IM and the like.

Iâ€™m not saying facebook is going anywhere – it is still the best communications platform out there. It has most of my social network already plugged in and I canâ€™t take that to another service (unless itâ€™s built into facebook). But those 250,000 users your application has, they are mostly the same 250,000 users all the other applications have. The vast majority of students arenâ€™t adding any applications. With the huge stream of options, they just blocked the whole thing out.

Itâ€™s going to be much harder for my application to get critical mass at my university because the majority of people just wonâ€™t look at the application – even if it would be extremely useful to them. People have told me they would have loved my service back before the facebook platform, but now itâ€™s just going to get lost in the noise.