“Facebook Social Plugins” is a Wordpress plugin that integrates the new Facebook Social API options. It allows you to include a Like button at the top/bottom of your posts for people to instantly connect to your blog while they are reading it. It also contains widgets where you can include the Activity Feed, Comments, the Like Box, and Recommendations. You can download Facebook Social Plugins from Wordpress.org or follow the instructions below if you have Wordpress 2.9.2 or greater.

For a demo on how it works, please see my other blog “Ballarat Marketing” where I’ve recently set it up (I’ll set it up on the rest of the blogs another day!) I was setting it up on this blog and then realized that I already have dozens of these types of plugins here, that it’s getting a little out of control :)

This blog post shows you how can you install/activate and setup the Facebook App in under 10 minutes.

First, login to your blog and click on Plugins, then Add New.

Type in Facebook Social Plugins and click on Search Plugins

The one I like the best is this one, be aware that the version number may be newer in future, but the name is still the same.

Click on Install to the right of the “Facebook Social Plugins” plugin, then click on Activate, which will popup in a new window.

Once installed & activated, you can configure the plugin by going to Settings > FB Social Plugins

In a new tab, login to Facebook by going to www.facebook.com and logging in.
This will make sure that this particular URL will be accessible from your Facebook account under Home > Developer dashboard area if you ever need to change any settings.
The next step may prompt you to login to Facebook anyway (I’m always logged in so test this)

Go back to the FB Social Plugins page on your Blog. Click on the link to setup a new Facebook Application ID.

The link will open in a new window and prompt you for the Site Name and Site URL.
1. Enter the Site Name as you want it to appear when people link to you
2. Enter the Site URL
3. Choose your language
4. Click on Create application

Facebook will give you a new page, with your App Name, URL, App ID, and App Secret. (For obvious reasons, I removed my details from the screenshot above).

Copy the App ID from Facebook into the Settings page of the Plugin.

I prefer the following setup. But you can mix around with it and see what looks good on your blog.

Setup Where to Show settings. I prefer the above setup, but you can play around with it to get your own preference for your own blog. Then click on Save Changes.

Some Pages may not be appropriate for the Facebook Share button to appear (your contact page for example). With this plugin, you can easily remove this plugin from showing up on any pages you choose.

To find the Page ID numbers, you need to click on Pages > Edit.

Hover your mouse over the page name that you want the ID for and it should show up in the Status Bar of your browser.
So in my case, my “Contact” page is post ID: 55
While I was there, I worked out that my Sitemap is post ID: 787
I want to remove both of those from the FB Plugin.

So to remove my Contact page (55) and my Sitemap (787), I would type in 55,787 into the “Where to Show” > Pages section. Then click on Save changes.

Once you’ve setup the “Like” button, you can check out the Widgets that this plugin has.
Go to Appearance > Widgets

Inside the Widgets section, you’ll see the options you can choose.
1. FB Activity Feed
2. FB Comments
3. FB Like Box
4. FB Like Button
5. FB Recommendations

To Install Widgets, simply drag the ones you want, into the Sidebar area you want it.
1. Pick the FB Widget you want to use.
2. Drag it to your Sidebar. And configure the options that come up.
All of them are pretty straight forward, the only one that might be a little tricky is the FB Like Box (shown above), which requires your Facebook Page ID.

The FB Like Box requires your Facebook Page ID to setup. The problem if you have a vanity URL is trying to work out what that is.

If you have a Vanity URL (such as http://www.facebook.com/webwooky), it makes it a bit tricky to discover your Page ID.
To find your page ID, simply go to your Fan Page and hover your mouse over “Edit Page” or go to Facebook.com/Pages/Manage and hover your mouse over Edit Page, and it will show you the URL in your status bar. In my case, the ID is: 56115870202

Have fun with this! Social buttons, although getting a bit controversal, has already been installed on over 100,000+ sites, and is an awesome method of getting more people to not only see your content but also to get more people virally sharing your content.

The WP Maintenance Mode Wordpress Plugin also supports the following languages:
* Turkey
* French
* Romanian
* Italian
* Albanian
* Spanish
* Russian
* Croatian
* Danish

Download WP Maintenance Mode Wordpress Plugin from the official Wordpress Plugin site.

Facebook Social plugins are hosted on Facebook and can be found on their facebook developers page here: http://developers.facebook.com/plugins. Thanks to Mari Smith who commented about this today on her profile, she had found the new Recommendations widget, which is quite cool. I added it immediately to my blog.

The Recommendations plugin shows personalized recommendations to your users. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the plugin can display personalized recommendations whether or not the user has logged into your site. To generate the recommendations, the plugin considers all the social interactions with URLs from your site. For a logged in Facebook user, the plugin will give preference to and highlight objects that his/her friends have interacted with.

I added pennybutler.com into the box, and it immediately comes up with the HTML code that you can use in a widget on your blog.

The Activity Feed plugin displays the most interesting recent activity taking place on your site. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the plugin can display personalized content whether or not the user has logged into your site. The activity feed displays stories both when users like content on your site and when users share content from your site back to Facebook. If a user is logged into Facebook, the plugin will be personalized to highlight content from their friends. If the user is logged out, the activity feed will show .everyone. content from your site, and give the user the option to log in to Facebook.

The plugin is filled with activity from the user’s friends. If there isn’t enough friend activity to fill the plugin, it is backfilled with .everyone. activity. If you set the recommendations param to true, the plugin is split in half, showing friends activity in the top half, and recommendations in the bottom half. If there is not enough friends activity to fill half of the plugin, it will include more recommendations.

The Like button enables users to make connections to your pages and share content back to their friends on Facebook with one click. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the button can display personalized content whether or not the user has logged into your site. For logged-in Facebook users, the button is personalized to highlight friends who have also liked the page.

The Like Box is a social plugin that enables Facebook Page owners to attract and gain Likes from their own website. The Like Box enables users to:

* See how many users already like this page, and which of their friends like it too
* Read recent posts from the page
* Like the page with one click, without needing to visit the page

The Live Stream plugin lets users visiting your site or application share activity and comments in real time. The Live Stream Box works best when you are running a real-time event, like live streaming video for concerts, speeches, or webcasts, live Web chats, webinars, massively multiplayer games.

The Comments Box easily enables your users to comment on your site’s content — whether it’s for a web page, article, photo, or other piece of content. Then the user can share the comment on Facebook on their Wall and in their friends’ streams.

The Login with Faces plugin shows profile pictures of the user’s friends who have already signed up for your site in addition to a login button.

The Facepile plugin shows profile pictures of the user’s friends who have already signed up for your site.

Your lens must be published first for this to work. So go create a lens on Squidoo, and then once it’s published, come back here.

Next, go to your published page, and copy the URL. For example, I would copy http://www.squidoo.com/automaticwordpressplugins and paste it into Notepad.

Click on the little orange & white RSS icon at the top of your lens. A new page will popup – copy the url, as per below image.

You’ll need this as well for Technorati. So I will copy http://www.squidoo.com/xml/syndicate_lens/automaticwordpressplugins to my notepad.

Next, we need to head over to Feedburner and “Burn our Feed”. So sign into http://feedburner.google.com with your gmail account and you will se the box “Burn a feed right this instant“. Paste in your Squidoo RSS feed into there. So I will type in http://www.squidoo.com/xml/syndicate_lens/automaticwordpressplugins and then click on Next.

You can change the Title and Address if you like, and once you are happy, click on Next.

Copy your new Feedburner RSS URL into Notepad, (so in my example, I would copy http://feeds.feedburner.com/Top10AutomaticWordpressPlugins into notepad) then keep clicking Next, Next, Next.. etc.. to setup your Feed. Once you reach the page that says “Your feed is ready for the world“, you are done with this section.

So in my notepad, I should now have.. 1.) Squidoo Public Lens URL, 2.) Squidoo RSS URL (which we no longer need) and 3.) Google Feedburner URL.

Head over to the Technorati website http://technorati.com and sign in.

Click on your username.

Once you see your profile, scroll down the bottom of the page, until you see MyClaimedBlogs.

Now paste in the public URL of your Squidoo Lens and then click on “Claim“. For example, I will type in http://www.squidoo.com/automaticwordpressplugins

Here it is asking you for the details of your blog – in this case, the details of your Squidoo lens.

1.) Type in your title of your lens

2.) Type in your public url of your lens

3.) Type in the FEEDBURNER url of your lens

4.) And any blog that links to your lens

Type in your lens description (in a human-friendly way), and pick up to 3 categories for your blog “lens” to be submitted to.

Add your site tags (keywords that match the content of your Squidoo lens), then click on Proceeed to the next step.

Next, you are put in a queue. Today, Technorati are running very fast, but sometimes they can take hours/days, however today, I can just click on “Return to Profile” to go to the next step.

Scroll back down to My claimed blogs, and then click on the Check Claim button.

Copy the code they have written on the claim status to your Notepad file. So in my example, I will copy the code “3T5VZEFBRP29″ to notepad.

Head back to Squidoo and go back into “Edit” mode of your lens.

Click on Edit to edit the first module of your lens (it must be the first, as the first paragraph is the only thing that shows up in Google’s Feedburner).

Paste the Technorati code (my example 3T5VZEFBRP29) into the start of the lens. Then click Save.

Publish your lens again.

Unfortunately, re-publishing your lens is not enough to update the feed, as Feedburner checks it’s feeds every 30mins. What you need to do next, is “Ping” Feedburner manually to update your lens. Head over to http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/ping and type in your “Public” Squidoo Lens URL. For example, I would type in http://www.squidoo.com/automaticwordpressplugins and if you get an error for whatever reason, the feedburner url works too (ie: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Top10AutomaticWordpressPlugins )

Now head back to Technorati and click on “Verify Claim Token”.

It will report that it’s evaluating your claim. In the next 10 minutes or so, you should receive an email from them saying that it’s successfully crawled. You can also check this on your profile.

Now that the lens has been successfully crawled, we can go back to our lens and remove the code.

Go back to your Squidoo Lens, delete the Claim Code from your first module, save, and then click Publish again to restore your lens.

Wait for Technorati to do their review. If you are successful, they will let you know via both the Profile page, and an email.

Email Subject: Technorati Claim Complete

This is an automatically-generated email.

Congratulations, your claim is now complete! Please allow 24 to 48 hours for Authority and recent posts to begin showing for your site now that it has been successfully claimed. Once they are there, we will update your site’s Authority once per day.

At first you may not see your site listed in the Technorati Blog Directory for all of the categories you’ve selected. As you write blog posts around those topics, you should see your Topical Authority in those categories begin to rise.

And now your Squidoo lens has some “Technorati Love”. What’s so good about that?

1.) Technorati allows you to find out who is linking to your blog

2.) Technorati is a blog Search Engine / Directory and is the # 1 Blog Indexing service.

3.) Technorati drives traffic to your blog (the higher your rank and authority is, the more chances of having your blog exposed in their searches)

To find out how to get higher rank and authority in Technorati, check out the following articles by people in the ‘know’ :)

• Technorati – What is Technorati Authority and how is it calculated
• Technorati – Top 100 Blogs as ranked by Technorati Authority – updated daily.
• BloggerTricks – How to Increase Technorati Authority
• LordMatt – Improve your Technorati Authority
• WidgetBox – Technorati Widgets
• BloggersBelt – 8 Surefire Tips that will send your Technorati Authority through the roof

Head over to http://www.facebook.com and login.

Once logged in, click on Ads and Pages. If you have any ads going, it will start on the “ads” page, and you’ll need to click on pages again from the menu, otherwise, it should now give you a list of pages where you are an admin.

Click on “Edit Page” under the Fan page where you wish to import your RSS feed.

Now scroll down to the Notes application and click on Edit

If you have not written any notes yet on your Fan page, then you will not see the option to Import a blog. I’m going to assume that you haven’t written any notes, as otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be seeking this information in the first place. Click on the “Write a New Note” button.

Click on the little Notes icon as per image above.

You will now see the Import a blog option. Click on the Import a Blog option.

Now type in your blog Feed URL (ie: http://www.yourdomain.com/feed) , agree to the terms, and click on Start Importing. If you have a self-hosted Wordpress blog, you can also import a specific category of your blog, as I have done in the image above. Click on Start Importing.

You should see a preview listing of all your blog posts – and if all looks well, click on Confirm Import.

You’ve now finished setting it up.

Visit your Fan Page and click on the Notes tab. This tab will now automatically contain all the posts that it imported and any future notes you write to your blog (or category if you chose category feed).

The home page (Wall tab) of your Fan Page will also get a copy of the new notes. Sweet hey! :)

I knew it was coming one day soon, but today was the first time I received this message while trying to ‘become a fan’ of a page "Sorry, you cannot add any more friends or fan more pages without removing some first.

Damnit. I really want to be a fan of this guy.

I thought that Facebook had a limit of 5,000 Friends but that it wouldn’t affect pages I wanted to be a fan of.

Guess I was wrong in that assumption.

Time to Cull.

No time to waste, I’ve got a million things I need to do, but I know I need to cull some friends and fan pages, so I chose to remove:

1. Friends with no photo, unless they were located in a custom-list.
ie: if they are a drupal programmer, or similar, and didn’t have a photo, I left them as a friend because I want to be friends with them and I understand why programmers don’t upload their photos ;)

2. Photos that were: "Business Logos, Flowers, Microsoft Clip-Art, Products, and US Dollars"

3. People who were still listed as "Friend Request Pending"
(I had at some stage requested to be their friend, but they must of clicked on ignore)

4. Groups/Fan pages that I haven’t visited in over a year

5. People who never introduced themselves via a message in their Friend Request or email/wall post, and have not had any contact with me since adding me – so I have no idea who they are (maybe just people wanting to build their list, or maybe they just hadn’t had any reason to make contact yet)

6. Photos of near-naked people who, to me, look like people who just want to use it to find a relationship or to spam their product.

I create lists for my main interests, clients, geographic locations, businesses, etc, and I also have lists by Year/Month.

The list spans all the way from A to Z.. but you get the idea from the image above.

Every person that I add on Facebook gets added to the "Year/Month", as well as another group if they have the same ‘interest’.

If I met them via the 30 Day Challenge, then they would go into my "A – 2010-Mar" list and also into "- Thirty Day Challenge"

If they indicate that they met me on Twitter, they would go into my "A – 2010-Mar" list and also into my "Twitter" list, etc)

If they are Australian, I’ll add them to my Australia list, and also my "A – 2010-Mar" list. One day I may also sort by state, but my business is global, it doesn’t particularly matter to me, but it’s something that you might want to think about if your business is local.

If I have no idea at all who they are, then they just go into the Year/Month list.

I haven’t always been this organised, so many are only listed under one list, but ever since I realized the benefits, I’ve become very strict with myself to do it right :)

The real benefit is being able to find people that share your interest quickly, and find news that interests ‘you’ much easier.

Also, if you have a joint-venture coming up about a certain subject, are marketing to a particular niche, or have a local event coming up – you already have a list of people categorized that might be interested.

Only inviting people who are Arabic and have interest in Studying in Australia to my "Arabic Speakers – Study in Australia" fan page.

… People who are into Wordpress, to my I love Wordpress Plugins fan page.

… People who are into "The Secret" to my "I love The Secret" group.

… People who are an "SGR Affiliate" to my "Leverage The Secret" group.

And for my "WebWooky" Fan page – to not annoy people with requests over and over again – basically, at the end of each month, I invite my new friends from the previous month to become a fan of my WebWooky Fan page (my main fan page).

Not a big benefit when you are just starting out on Facebook, but when you are starting to reach your 5,000 Friend limit, having your lists organized is a huge time-saver. I can make sure I never remove someone that I personally requested to add, see how long they have been a friend and if it’s over a year and I still don’t recognise who they are, then most likely we’ve never had any contact and I am safe to remove them.

Removed just over 400 friends today, and I hope that my pre-organizing will mean that noone will get offended because they will only be people who either never had any contact with me anyway, use it only for mlm/affiliate/spam marketing (so they wouldn’t notice me gone anyway) or doesn’t use Facebook much (people who still haven’t uploaded a real photo).