tools & techniques

How To Add a Facebook Like Box To Your Website

by Tim Elliott on August 5, 2011

Cartograph Wines Like BoxA Facebook page has become one of the most engaging social media tools for wineries so driving more people to “like” your page is a priority. Facebook has rolled out several social tools over the past few months and my current favorite is the Facebook Like Box. This tool brings your Facebook page wall to your website or blog but also allows visitors to “like” your page without going to Facebook. And it’s a very easy 3 step process to add your own Facebook Like Box to your site:

  1. Visit your Facebook page and get your Facebook Page URL. Hopefully this is a vanity URL you have set after your first 25 likes but a standard URL will work.
  2. Visit the Facebook Like Box page and fill in the form. You can make the widget the same size as your website or blog sidebar. Once you are done, click on the “Get Code” button and copy the iframe code at the top or XFBML code on the bottom (that’s what’s in my sidebar right now).
  3. Paste this code into your site where you want it. For WordPress sites, just paste into a plan text widget on your sidebar.

You can see this in action at the Cartograph blog. The only downside is the widget takes a moment to load since it’s coming from Facebook. I think this slight loading delay is very much worth it given the benefits the widget brings to your site.

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Grab Your Social Username

by Tim Elliott on September 30, 2008

Even if you are not quite ready to dive into the social media waters it’s a good idea to get your username at the services you will be using. Usually this is the name of your winery or brand.

A good tool to use to see if your username is available is at usernamecheck.com Just enter your username and it will generate a list of numerous social media sites and if your username is still available. So take a few minutes and at least sign up for the Big 5 sites: Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Delicious and Friendfeed. You’ll be glad you did next year when you need them.

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How To Track Twitter Conversations

September 9, 2008

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown As I start wineries on the social media path, one of the most common questions is how to use Twitter. It’s probably because the micro-blogging service is sort of like a lot of things that came before — blogs, instant messaging, SMS, social networks — but how it’s being used is not like anything that came before. Since Twitter has a bare-bones feature set, there is not an easy way to track ongoing conversations in the standard web interface. But [...]

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Build A Website With WordPress, Part 4

July 11, 2008

Last week we completed our discussion of plugins and we are nearly ready to start to create great content and launch our WordPress website. But there is one major consideration left to deal with; look and feel. Luckily, there are plenty of free themes available for download that can be further modified to meet your needs. The best place to start is at the WordPress themes directory. Another alternative is to start with blank theme templates and match the look and feel to an existing [...]

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Build A Website With WordPress, Part 3

July 3, 2008

When I left off last week, we had just covered my “must-have” WordPress plugins and I promised a list of favorites for adding more functionality to your website. The following are presented in alphabetical order as I look at what is installed on this site but I’ll add a few niche plugins at the end for special circumstances. Easy Gravatars – Ever wonder how you get those little avatars by your blog comments? They are Gravatars and this plug-in is the easiest way to add [...]

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Listening, The Essence of Social Media

June 30, 2008

Since I’ll be on a panel about Wine 2.0 next month at the Wine Industry Technology Symposium (WITS) my antennae were raised by this post about what questions not to ask panelists about social media. Since much of Wine 2.0 is based on social marketing, I expect several of these questions to be raised, such as the one about measurement. But what stood out to me in this somewhat tongue-in-cheek list was near the end: 8 ) What’s the best thing about social media? Listening. [...]

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