If you’ve been online at all in the last 45 days, you’ve likely seen Facebook’s new Like (or Recommend) button on websites all over the internet. In April Facebook released Open Graph (check out ReadWriteWeb’s excellent summary here), which, in short, gives websites – large and small – the ability to integrate some of Facebook’s social features into their own sites.

One of the most useful bits of Open Graph is also among the easiest to implement on your website or blog. Facebook’s universal Like button can be added to your website with a single line of code and can dynamically added to your self-hosted WordPress blog with a simple plugin.

Facebook’s new universal Like button allows users to click that they like or recommend a website. That information is then sent through to your Facebook profile so your friends can see that you enjoyed the site you were visiting. By making it so easy to share things you enjoy with your friends, Facebook has helped increase the viral nature of sharing links.

Install the Facebook Like Button on your Website:

Facebook offers a host of social plugins that you can install on your website or blog, with varying degrees of programming knowledge, but the easiest option is checking out the Facebook Like Social Plugin page. You’ll want to use this method if you’re simply sticking the Facebook Like plugin on your static homepage. If you have a blog and would like the Like button to be on every post, see below.

On this page, simply fill in the website that the Like button will live on, choose your layout style, whether or not you want the plugin to show faces of people who like your site, the width, the verb you want to use (either Like or Recommend), the font you want to use and the color scheme. Then click the “Get Code” button and you can copy and paste the code into your website wherever you want the button to appear. This provides you with an easy way to include Facebook’s new Like feature on your website and can help your web traffic as people Liking your page.

Install the Facebook Like Button on your self-hosted WordPress blog:

If you’re self-hosting a WordPress blog, there are a number of plugins you can use to put the Facebook Like/Recommend button at the bottom of each post, but I use the SNV Facebook Like Button plugin. It’s simple, customizable and works like a charm! As you can see on the Social Mediarology main page and each of the posts, a simple Recommend button shows up below each post. Click it and a link to the post will be fed to your Facebook Profile for your friends to see.

Facebook has made it very easy to add some of their social features to your website or blog. Both the website code and the WordPress plugin include the number of people who clicked the like button, so you can see just how viral your content is becoming!

If you want to implement even more of Facebook’s Social Plugins, check out their Social Plugins Developers page. Have you implemented Facebook’s Like/Recommend button on your site yet?

This is the first in a new series of interviews with local leaders in the Social Media and Technology industry that will be featured on Social Mediarology. Today’s interview is with James Burnes of Mobiltopia, a mobile website and app company in Indianapolis.

James Burnes – Mobiltopia

James Burnes has been working in the digital space for more than 13 years at various companies, including publicly-traded newspaper and television companies as well as private firms specializing in digital communications and development.

James recently launched Project Brilliant – a strategy and business incubator focused in digital space. Project Brilliant assists organizations in developing and planning strategies for utilizing internet technology to grow their business. The goal is to work with companies who need help and assistance putting digital plans in place and, in some cases, help launch those initiatives.

Mobiltopia is a venture launched by Project Brilliant that focuses on Mobile technology, websites, and apps for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and other smartphones.

Why Mobile?

For the last two years I’ve been watching very carefully as the digital space has evolved. We’ve seen a major shift to social media and a focus of businesses of all types to[ward] look[ing] at social media as a core marketing strategy. I identified fairly early on in my career that things change too quickly to just be focused on what everybody’s talking about right now, and to always spend a lot of time looking to what’s next; and mobile has been on my radar for the past two years.

About a year and a half ago, the focus on mobile really started coming to my attention, because I realized it was where social media had to go to be effective. Within the past six months I’ve watched the sale of smartphones grow at a rate that show that we will soon live in a world of screens. There was a definite need within the marketplace for there to be a company focused on specializing in mobile devices.

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