Social Media Sharing Lets Customers Spread the Word
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
Early this morning, we released a new Social Media Sharing feature that lets you add "Share on Twitter" and Facebook "Like" options to your store’s product pages. Enabling this feature allows your customers to easily spread the word about your products to their social media networks. This boost to your marketing efforts can help you reach a wider audience, which in turn can help to generate more quality traffic for your store.
The Social Media Sharing feature is available for all merchants using Editor 3.0 templates, and can be installed by running the Design Wizard, or by using the Store Editor Variables page and adding CSS to your store’s css-edits file. If you’re using custom templates, you can install this feature by inserting a new RTML operator into your store templates, and adding CSS. (If you are not familiar with RTML, contacting your developer is strongly advised.)
What does the Social Media Sharing feature do?
Once you’ve enabled the Social Media Sharing feature and published your store, “Share on Twitter” and Facebook "Like" icons will be displayed on your product pages, like in the example below:
Share on Twitter
When a customer clicks the “Share on Twitter” icon, a default message that includes the product name and product URL will be provided for them to tweet to their followers. You are also given the option to enter a Twitter hashtag for your store using the new Twitter-hashtag variable on the Store Editor Variables page. When provided, this hashtag will also be included in the default message.
If you’re not familiar with Twitter hashtags, they are keywords, key phrases, or acronyms included in tweets that are prefixed with the “#” symbol, used as a way to categorize messages on Twitter. For example, the hashtag often used for Yahoo! Merchant Solutions and Yahoo! Store-related tweets is #yahoostore. When hashtags are used in tweets, other Twitter users can click on the hashtag to see a real-time feed of other tweets using that hashtag. Tweets using this hashtag will also be displayed in a real-time feed when someone searches for the term on Twitter.
When you provide a hashtag, you can then track its use for better insight into how many prospective customers information about your products may be reaching. Free real-time hashtag tracking is available using Twitter search, hashtags.org, and Twemes.
Facebook “Like”
When a customer clicks the Facebook "Like" icon on a product page, the product image, name, description, and product page link will be displayed on the customer’s Facebook feed.
When you enable the Social Media Sharing feature, you will be given the option to provide a Facebook Application ID to use with this feature. Providing a Facebook Application ID is recommended, but optional. When provided, you will be able to administer Facebook Pages for your products, where you can post product updates and engage with customers who have “Liked” your products.
A Facebook Application ID is required for enabling Facebook Insights, which lets you track products that have been “Liked,” user demographics, and other key metrics. You can view this information at the domain level, and for individual pages on your site. Find out more about Facebook Insights.
Using a Facebook Application ID will also help to ensure that the correct product image, product name, and product description are shared on Facebook. While the Social Media Sharing feature is designed for use with or without a Facebook Application ID, providing this ID can help to ensure that these items are shared with the correct images and information in the event of some Facebook “Like” feature changes. Learn how to create a Facebook Application ID.
Where can I learn more?
More information about Social Media Sharing, including instructions for installing the feature, creating a Facebook Application ID, administering Facebook Pages, and enabling Facebook Insights can be found in our online help center.
Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business
Follow @YSmallBusiness on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook
Comments
I love the new FB and Twitter Buttons. The CSS was so clean and it looks so much nicer than the one I had done on my own. Only question, is it possible that the button resets the count back to zero every once in a while?
Comment by jeremy — April 12, 2011 @ 3:47 am