Although Facebook has decreased newsfeed exposure (reach) for Facebook Pages, they have increased newsfeed exposure for links people share with their Facebook friends.

Right now, take a look at your own News Feed and look at the number of links from friends versus links from Pages. My News Feed has 1 link (or less) from a Page for every 10 links from friends. Clearly, Facebook puts my friends first in the News Feed.

All this link-sharing has made Facebook the number one source of social referral traffic. In fact, a recent study from Shareaholic shows that Facebook now drives more than 25% of all website traffic (see below).

An excellent example of a nonprofit using a blog for content marketing is To Write Love on Her Arms, an organization that gives hope and help to people struggling with depression, addiction and suicide. They publish posts every day that are bothinspiring and useful. Check out the most recent posts:

How Does Blogging Increase Website Traffic?

When people read TWLOHA’s posts, quite naturally some click “like” if they like what they’re reading.

Each time this happens, an update is posted in Facebook’s news feed, driving Facebook visitors back to the website (as shown below).

But these are not just any website visitor. They are friends that your community invited to your website when they clicked a like button!  They are birds of a similar feather, which you want.

Three Ways to Increase Website Traffic From Facebook

So where do you start? After you’re confident that your website has content worth sharing, begin by adding like buttons, sharing prompts, and Facebook comments.

1. Add Like Buttons to Your Website Content

Putting a like button on all of your website content is probably the number one way to drive website traffic from Facebook, in the long run.

You can add Facebook like buttons to your content by generating code on Facebook’s developer site (shown below). If you use WordPress, you can choose from a variety of plugins that automatically add like buttons to your content (I like JetPack).

2. Add Facebook Sharing Popups to Your Website Content

Let’s say you have a big event coming up, and you want to drive your community (and their friends) to a landing page about the campaign. You have many ways that you’ll be doing this, including making it easy for people to share that landing page with their friends.

You can do this easily and strategically by embedding sharing links in various webpages and blog post on your website.

To create Facebook sharing links, follow these instructions:

1. Type the following link in a plain text document: https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=
2. Enter your landing page URL after “?u=“. For example, https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://blogs.bestfriends.org/post-name/ creates a news feed post (as shown below).
3. Embed URL into text or image
4. Test sharing

3. Add Facebook Commenting to your Website Content

Another way you can drive more traffic to your website is by adding Facebook commenting two webpages on your website. Like the like button, each time someone leaves a comment using the Facebook comment plug-in, a link to your website is shared on Facebook.

You can create code using Facebook’s comments plugin, or if you use WordPress, you can use a WordPress plugin.

What do you think?

Comment below with your brilliant idea, question, or cool example of a nonprofit website.

John Haydon delivers social web strategy solutions for “the quick, the smart, and the slightly manic.” Curious? Then visit the John Haydon blog, follow him on Twitter or leave a comment.