We like it, we love it, we want some more of it. Blog publishers are head over heals for Facebook’s “Like” button, a nifty tool you’ve probably seen at the bottom of articles on person blogs, CNN, and everything in between.
The like button allows users to instantly “Like” a blog post, thus creating a link to the post in their new feed, and sharing said link with all of these friends. That’s some good exposure.
And the numbers agree. According to Mashable.com, Typepad users that added a “Like” button to their blogs saw a 50% boost in referral traffic.
Some bloggers might be resistant to the idea of integrating a “Like” button — to them, the button comes off as desperate, allowing the want for traffic to undermine the content of their posts.
There is some validity to this point, but as the Facebook “Like” button becomes more widespread in social blogging, the tackiness will start to wear off. It’s already happened to a certain extent, with big-name blogs on CNN and NYT already taking the plunge. Besides, without traffic, blog posts are just trees falling in the forest — no one can hear them.
