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Getting Blog Traffic From Your Facebook Profile
As if MySpace and LinkedIn and all the 100s of other social networking sites weren’t enough, now you have Facebook. But this ones a bit different though, which is why they flourished in the first place when all other MySpace copycats are going bust..
Well I don’t want to make this a tutorial on signing up and using Facebook, so if you’re not on Facebook yet you may want to register and create a profile to see how it works. For all those already on Facebook, in this mini-tutorial I’m going to show you how to syndicate your latest blog posts to your Facebook profile and get traffic from it.
The good news is that, this entire Facebook thing is made easy with a Wordpress Facebook plugin called “Wordbook”. You can read about & download the plugin here. As with any Wordpress plugin, you’d want to upload the correct folder to wp-content/plugins and activate it in your Wordpress dashboard.
Once you’ve activated this Wordpress Facebook plugin, go to Options > Wordbook and you’ll need to click a link that goes to a specific Facebook page where you need to allow the plugin to access your Facebook data. You’ll then receive a “One Time Code” which you need to enter is your Wordbook application page
Once you’ve done that, you’ll be prompted to add a Facebook App (application) to your account
Once you’ve done that, your Facebook “mini-feed” will syndicate your latest blog posts. However, it will only add future (new) blog posts and not the old ones, so you may need to publish a post or two to see the results. In the end it will look like this, with a WordPress logo net to your latest posts:
You latest blog posts will be mixed with your latest Facebook profile activities, and the Wordbook WordPress plugin will also syndicate any images on your blog (resized) to your Facebook profile.
Some limitations of the plugin:
- You can only add ONE blog, not the 100 or so you have. I was torn between syndicating feeds From EasyWordpress.com or GobalaKrishnan.com but eventually went with the latter since it’s my prsonal blog
- Syndicates ALL posts even off topic ones. You cannot pick and choose which posts should appear in Facebook, so you may want to tidy up your Facebook profile by hiding (or removing) all the other not-so-useful stuff that clutters your page
So how do you get more traffic to your Facebook profile, who will in turn click on your blog links and subscribe to your RSS feed?
The answer is socialize! Add more friends to your Facebook profile, but please take note that this is not MySpace - if you add people you don’t know and start spamming them you’ll get banned very quickly. Plus, you have to use your real name, and if possible certify your Facebook account by verifying your phone number.
Get the plugin: Facebook Wordpress Plugin
Add Me as A Friend: Add me in Facebook
(Make sure you mention you’re a “reader of EasyWordpress” cos I don’t want to bulk up Facebook with people I don’t know. Facebook isn’t about how many thousand friends you have, and I’d like to have as little strangers in there as possible)
21 Comments »
Gobala Krisnan is a direct-response marketer turned blogger who makes over $10,000 a month from his blog empire. If you want to make money online from blogs, he is the only person who can reveal the secret of merging time-tested direct marketing strategies with web 2.0 traffic. Read more about him >>
[...] Wordpress has just released an article on how to drive traffic to your blog using your Facebook profile using the Wordbook plugin. This is [...]
Thanks for this great application. I will add you on facebook, and I’m a new subscriber to your blog!
Justin Dupre
I’ve just installed Workbook and I was going to ask if we can add more than one blog when I realized you have mentioned that it is limited to one blog only. That is a bummer but then again it is still a good plug-in.
Interesting Gobala.
Now with facebook, I have a chance to use my personal blog, rather than my product blogs.
And a way to funnel in my best content to Facebook.
Thanks for the tip.
Hi Gobala,
I am not sure if it is just me, but the link that brought me here has nothing with the post I am reading here. The link is about adding contact form to wordpress blogs as in the title here: Create Your Own Free Contact Form.
Thanks
Austin
[...] There is a nice write-up of what it does over here. [...]
Hello. I am the Wordbook author; thank you for the write-up.
You can install Wordbook on all of your 100 blogs. All blog posts will go to your Facebook mini-feed. However, the “Wordbook” box in your FB profile will only show a “mini-version” of the last blog to send a post to your Facebook account (”last one wins”).
It is on my “to do” list to provide more complete support for all of the deficiencies you mention: better multi-blog support, and being able to selectively decide which posts get sent to your Facebook mini-feed.
I would try this, but I don’t trust facebook. Otherwise it sounds like a good idea.
Hi Gobala, I don’t yet have a facebook account but am looking to start one and this guide is great as I have about 5 wordpress blogs. Thanks for the tips.
Thanx for head up, i’ll add you to my facebook friend list
hi,
newbie here i have down loaded a couple of plugins via my wp-content/plugins (including this facebook one)
but none of my plugins are appearing on my dashboard/plugins in order to activate them .
what have i done wrong?
thanks claire
Hi Claire,
It could be several reasons. First, it looks like you might have uploaded the Plugins into the wrong folder. If not, they might sit in a double folder like
wp-content/plugins/pluginname/pluginname.php
When uploading double check that you only have one main folder with the plugin name in your directory and within this folder are all the relevant files.
HI Monika,
I Will tell you the root of down loading my pluggins
public_html
blog
wp-content
pluggins
via file manager this is also where i see my uploaded plugins
I also wrote to hostgator and pasted the message from my word press, that read that I had a problem with my phpconfig or them.
they replied that I did enter the wrong user/passw info in my sql and that they have fixed it for me, and that I am now live (yesterday)
Yet when I go to my dashboard I do not see them there to activate them.
PLEASE HELP.
Thanks Claire
@ Claire: ok, it seems you uploaded correctly (I gather you double checked that you don’t have the Plugin in it’s own folder like I mentioned.)
So putting that aside one more problem could be that the actual Plugin isn’t compatible with the latest version of WordPress. You can check that here http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Plugin_Compatibility/2.3
If that doesn’t do the trick and you are still stuck, I’m happy to help you if you trust me with your login details. I can then check directly whether there is something wrong or not. It is up to you and you can email me on
info [at] thewritersmanifesto.com
[...] Gobala Krishnan from Easy World Press the article Getting Blog Traffic From Your Facebook Profile [...]
[...] Gobala Krishnan from Easy World Press wrote about Getting Blog Traffic From Your Facebook Profile [...]
[...] By the way, did you know you can add your WordPress latest posts to Facebook? [...]
Got this plugin installed successfully. Add you too Gobala
Hi,
Your blog is great and blogging excellent.
I am new to wordpress blog and don’t know
how to proceed.
How could you help me in this regard?
Thanks
RAWAT