Website owners are starting to realise the impact that social media has on their traffic and site interaction but for some it can be a thankless task. Webmasters need to identify the best social networks to submit their content to but they also need to supply the tools so that their website visitors can submit also.

In one of our recent articles we mentioned how Facebook was making inroads into traditional social media sharing sites, standing out as a large traffic referrer on it’s own. Whilst, there are quite a few tools that enable you to share your content with friends on Facebook, one really simple and easy to setup button stands out for me, so much so it now sits pretty on this very site. This article details how to install a Tweetmeme-like Facebook share button onto your website or blog, giving your website visitors the opportunity to distribute your articles amongst their friends.

There are two ways to install the button onto your blog if you use Wordpress as your blogging platform. The first way however, can be employed on any website and can be easily configured.

Manual Button Embed

The button revolves around a service provided by fbShare.me who wanted to roll out a button similar to the Tweetmeme button (also employed on this website). To install it on your webpage simply embed the following code:

<script src="http://widgets.fbshare.me/files/fbshare.js"></script>

This is the very basic code, it will embed the button and you will be able to start using it immediately.

There is also the option to include advanced variables, these have been copied from the fbShare website:

• size – The size of the button: ‘large’ OR ’small’ (if not specified, defaults to ‘large’)
• url – The URL of the page you want shared on Facebook (if not specified, defaults to that of the page on which the button is displayed)
• title – The name of the page you want shared on Facebook (if not specified, defaults to that of the page on which the button is displayed)
• google_analytics – If no awesm_api_key specified, sets whether fbshare.me links have Google Analytics parameters added: true OR false (if not specified, defaults to false)
• awesm_api_key – For existing awe.sm customers only (if not specified, will use fbshare.me links)

Here’s the code for an example using some of these configuration variables:

<script>var fbShare = {
url: 'http://jonathanhstrauss.com/',
size: 'small',
google_analytics: 'true'
}</script>
<script src="http://widgets.fbshare.me/files/fbshare.js"></script>

Embedding Via Wordpress Plugin

The easiest way to embed the button on a Wordpress blog is to use the Wordpress Plugin. All you need to do is click the link below, activate it and then confiure how you wish the button to look on your blog.

Link: fbShare Wordpress Plugin

And thats it. You can style the button using your custom CSS, but I’ll leave that to you!