By now, most of us have heard that the Web is social, but are you taking action to encourage social actions on your blog or website? Of course we can socialize with our fans and followers on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like, but now even our websites and blogs can become places where social actions can bring big benefits.
Three Steps to Earning Tweets and Likes
Step 1: Create great content, stuff that gets people excited, interested and enthused about the content you create. Think beyond basic website information, think about providing something that your fans will want to tell others about.
Step 2: Ask for the action you want people to take. Be straightforward – instead of leaving it up to your website visitor to decide how to share, ask them to Tweet about it or Like it. I like to call this action “a small yes” vs a “big yes”, like opening their wallet to get out a credit card!
Step 3: Make it easier to take that step by providing buttons that make it easy! Grab the new Twitter Tweet code http://twitter.com/tweetbutton and make a customized Facebook Like button http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like. Then just paste the html code into your blog or website.
Benefits of Buttons
The nicest thing about using Facebook and Twitter buttons is they are interactive and easy for the users. It is a very small request to ask a visitor to Like or Tweet about you when all they need to do is click a button on your webpage. If a visitor likes what they see, engaging with it, brings some sense of personal satisfaction.
A big benefit is that this action is social, letting the website visitors spread word about your offer to all of their friends and followers. Actions produce results that are instantly visible to the clicker. As the button is pressed, the counter updates, showing number of times the page has been Liked or Tweeted. It’s a small bit of feedback that encourages users who are social to take action on your page.
Sharing can be viral: When visitors see others have tweeted or liked your content, it encourages others to share it too! 
Tweet Button is very well designed
Tweet Buttons Well Designed
The Twitter button is well thought out and features text you can define (default is the page title), a shortened URL and a link to your preferred Twitter account. Users of the code can also recommend a second twitter account to follow once the user confirms their tweet. Twitter users can also edit the tweet to their desire.
Using the Code
Twitter Tweet Button code is super user friendly, because wherever the code is used, the tweet that is generated automatically creates a shortened URL to the page that was liked. Once you’ve decided on the design of the button you want for your site, you can use the same code over and over again on any page that you would like tweeted.
The Facebook Like button is highly customizable. Website editors can even choose to show the Facebook avatar (photo) of the last person who liked your stuff.
Facebook Like button could be better
One of the downfalls of the Facebook Like button code generator, is that the Url to Like must be updated for each page the code is placed on so that when people Like your content, the link in the Facebook status update links directly to the content that was liked.
Think about your site users and fans before determining how social to make your button. Adding a counter encourages action, but I think most users might be hesitant to see their face show up on the webpage of a tourism business. My preference is for a simplified counter to save page space.
Get Social on your Webpage or Blog with Facebook Like and Twitter Tweet buttons
If you are in the tourism business, there are big benefits to be had by creating content that engages your audience, just make sure you are making it easy for webpage visitors to share your content with their fans and followers by using Facebook Like buttons and Twitter Tweet buttons.
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