Facebook describes the “Like” button as a tool that lets a user share your content with friends on Facebook. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user’s friends’ News Feed with a link back to your website.
When you add a Like button to the pages of your website, you can control several display and content options when the user shares your content with their Facebook friends by utilizing the Open Graph protocol. If you include Open Graph tags on your Web page, your page becomes equivalent to a Facebook page.
This means when a user clicks a Like button on your page, a connection is made between your page and the user. Your page will appear in the “Likes and Interests” section of the user’s profile, and you have the ability to publish updates to the user. Your page will show up in same places that Facebook pages show up around the site (e.g. search), and you can target ads to people who like your content.
If you want to use the Open Graph protocol to gain further control over the shared content, you will have to use XFBML language integration option rather than the basic iFrame option. When using the XFBML way, there’s several features you can control like displaying your company name, phone number and address when the a user shares your content. This is significantly more powerful than simply using the framed Like button.
Tools like the Open Graph protocol and the Facebook sharing utilities are becoming an important part of successful web design and internet marketing.
If you would like to learn more about Facebook marketing and how it can help your website and internet marketing efforts, please contact us today.