Once upon a time, there was Google Authorship. Then there wasn’t. The end.
Many bloggers, myself included, were pretty sad when Google ended Authorship. It felt like a great way to attract new blog followers.
Well, now Facebook has come out with its own version of Authorship.
You can now publish stories to your newsfeed (or anyone else can publish your story to their newsfeed), and you’ll see a clickable link at the bottom that attributes the post to you or your blog.
Here’s how to do it on WordPress (self hosted):
1. Login to your site
2. If you haven’t already, download the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin, install it, and activate it.
3. In your dashboard, scroll down to the Yoast SEO section, and select “social.”
4. Click on the tab for “Facebook,” and make sure the button for “Add Open Graph meta data” is checked. Now, click the box that says “add Facebook admin.”
5. It will take you to Facebook, and ask you to click “okay.”
6. Scroll down to the bottom and upload your photo, then save.
7. Next, you need to put in your Facebook User ID. Click here to find it, then copy the number.
8. In your WordPress Dashboard, go to Users–> Your Profile. Select “edit” under your name.
9. Scroll down until you see “Facebook profile URL,” and then paste your Facebook User ID number in there. Scroll down to the bottom and save.
If you want for Facebook to show a “Follow” button on any posts that are attributed to you, you need to open up your Facebook profile to subscriptions. Here’s how.
By the way, you can attribute your posts either to yourself (personal FB) or to your FB Page (business).
Interesting new development! I’ve enabled authorship on both my personal FB account, and on my business page, will report back in a bit and let you know if I see any positive results. Just FYI, since I installed it a couple of days ago, I have gotten a few new followers on my FB profile–but I am unsure if those two things are related.
Have you enabled Facebook Authorship yet? Let me know in the comments below if you’ve noticed any changes.