According to this article, nearly 65 million Facebook users “Like” things every day.
After Facebook turned that old “Become a fan” button into a simple “Like” button, then made it a social plugin that anybody could install on their website, well — everybody started installing it on their websites (and here’s a nice explanation for that). Christopher Heine reports on Clickz how this change from “fan” to “like” has helped at least one industry double or triple their fan base.
If you’re thinking “Sigh, whatever. I’ve already got the social sharing widgets plastered all over everything I do” that’s a great start. But this is different. Facebook is using all this Like activity to power their own semantic search engine, which some say should make Google worried (actually, they’re trying to say it’s an all out war). Did you get that? Facebook’s building a semantic search engine powered by Likes. If you’re not already thinking about adding that “Like” button to your website, blog posts, or email campaigns, you should be. This reminds me of the early days of web design, where everyone got an SEO for Dummies book, because we all wanted our websites ready for Google. Is your website ready for Facebook? Your blog? How about your emails?
In MailChimp v5.2, which is launching early next week, we’ll be introducing a new merge tag that integrates the Facebook Like button into your email campaigns (no iframe code to worry about breaking). You’ll plop in a simple merge tag, and it’ll just work. We’ll also track how many “Likes” your campaign got inside your MailChimp stats. Here’s a sneak-peek video. Stay tuned for more news about the launch, and all our other upcoming features.
well this is getting a serious LIKE from me. thanks, mailchimp!!
I totally agree, Tara!
Big furry thumbs up form me.
This is awesome. MailChimp keeps getting better and better.
I certainly like this.
Every time I try to explain to others why MailChimp rocks, they come out with something even more amazing like this and cause me to rework my pitch. Yeeesh! : )
What a great new feature addition! Keep up the great work MailChimp team.
By the way, who makes your videos? They are always entertaining, and informative.
Thanks, Mark. Josh, our video guy, makes all those videos. Some info about Josh:
http://blogs.telestream.net/screenflow/2010/01/meet-the-screenflow-er-the-man-behind-mailchimp-screencasts/
I am really liking this, Excellent work chimp.
This is a great feature to have. Thumbs up!
Keep it up, pro’s FTW
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!!
Please! Don’t forget us, unlucky MCAPI chimps, whom always runs behind the ambulance!
I know it has not being launched yet…
But I would also *like* to remember you to keep in mind non-English users so… a way to make it say “Me Gusta” instead of “like” is highly appreacited!
Can’t wait to see all the new features in 5.2 – it keeps getting better.
Okay, color me clueless. Does this mean I have to create a Facebook presence for my blog, so it can receive those “Like” clicks?
Jonathan: The likes won’t be connected to your Fan Page, they’ll actually be connected to the archived version of your email campaign. That means there’s no need to set up a fan page just to use the Like merge tag.
Just as a side note, we’re also launching a Facebook template (similar to our Twitter template: http://goo.gl/XTES ) that allows you to pull in some profile/fan page info, so that may be a good argument for setting up a page for your blog.
But what about sending a “like” in an email that lets people “like” our facebook page (rather than our mailchimp campaign)?
We really want to get people to “like” our facebook page, but currently, there is no way to send out a “like” button through email that I know of. Mailchimp–can you help? Thanks!
In order for people to Like your page as opposed to just the email campaign you send, you’ll likely need to hard code a Like button into your template with all the proper meta tags. This is essentially the same way you’d add the Like button to your website. Facebook provides more info/documentation about meta tags here: http://goo.gl/1hbV
Mailchimp just rock. Fullstop. The only thing that would make this news better is if you guys released that monkey thumbs up graphic as the like button.
Excellent news
y’all are the bomb. and you’re funny. can we get married?
Hi Kristin, I’m afraid FemailChimp would not “like” that.
hahaha. touche.
Great feature! On question though, how do we put the “like” button in spanish (translated: “Me gusta”?. KR, Alejandro
We’re using the like button provided by facebook. Will ask around to see if it’s possible to get a Spanish version though. Thanks for the suggestion!
Great. If you are using the one provided by facebook, then there shouldn’t be any problem with the language because it gets translated automatically.
I thought you were going to be using the one with Freddie’s hand :)
Just a comment the button doen’t get translated to spanish automatically. Tks
Out of curiosity, how exactly are you managing to get a Like button to work in an email message? Since the Like button just renders an iframe, and email clients don’t support iframes …
It involves prisms, magnets, lasers, and browser-based campaign archives.
Quality answer :)
Qudos to MailChimp for rolling with this so quickly, great work on getting so much publicity and buzz around it too.
For those for whatever reason are not with MailChimp and cannot move to you for one reason or another I have shared a small part of your secret on my site. I had been working on a post with instructions but you beat me to it and nicely done too.
For those without the luxury of MailChimp Facebook integration, help is available here:
http://emailexpert.org/adding-a-facebook-like-button-to-your-email-template/
Thanks Andrew. Another advantage to the MailChimp Facebook merge tag is the Like and re-like tracking that you get in your campaign reports. A detailed blog post is coming.
I have been testing the like button on one of our daily emails and while it is a great feature there is one important “tweak” that I think is really necessary.
When you “like” an email campaign it goes to the archive version of the email on a page like this:
http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=0e8fac217c541270c5fd9d236&id=8a815636dc&eo=4b0d89
The problem is that when facebook posts the “like” in the news stream it posts this URL as the title for the “like post” rather then the email subject. So when someone reads it on facebook they see this long cryptic web address as the title and then some text from the email which doesn’t really get much attention.
The archive/campaign website should default to the email subject. Right now there is no page title for these email campaigns that show up on the “http://us1.campaign-archive.com” sites.
Here is an example:
http://www.mrsikhnet.com/temp/fblike.jpg
I hope you consider this tweak….
Thanks for the note and thorough example, Gurumustuk. We have code in place to set the title on Facebook, but there is a bug when campaigns are pulled from external URLs. We’ll get it fixed up shortly.
-Eric
Speaking of SEO For Dummies, the latest edition will be rolling out later this year. I know because I’m the technical editor on it. :-)
Is it not possible with RSS campaigns for the Like button to be the actual RSS post rather than the campaign page?
Anything’s possible, but not right now.
Just showing up in Facebook searches are *outside* pages with likes associated with them. Appearing in some cases above groups, but certainly mixed in with the FB pages.
Of course FB has the option to move stuff around, but you know the basis of their ranking will heavily depend on the Likes.
So, get your pages Liked & direct FB search traffic to it.
Hello,
This sounds to me like a very usefull feature, but I can’t find it on your website…
Where is it?
Thanks and congrats if this is really working :-)
Ismaël
Here’s a tutorial: http://blog.mailchimp.com/track-who-liked-your-campaigns-on-facebook/
I love the like button feature for within my templates, but it breaks layout unless the icon is showing due to the long link formatted like so:
*|FACEBOOK:LIKE:URL|*
Is there anyway around this, using a shortened URL for when the image isn’t shown or are we stuck with the formatting due to the length of URL?
I’d like to know how to link mailchimp to a page, rather than a profile- for the moment I only link to my personal profile, rather than my company’s page – can anyone help?
Looking for the actual tags and found this site from a google search – go to this page for the “merge” tags and userguide
http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/facebook-merge-tag-cheatsheet/
Mailchimp Rock!