Do you host giveaways?  I’m sure by now you’ve noticed how many bloggers are putting all of the follow requests on one page to keep the Rafflecopter form shorter.  But, have you tried doing one yourself?  It can be very time consuming!

Take a look at the amazing spreadsheet Cute-Ecakes has put together for us and is offering to you for FREE!  I almost want to send her a little super hero cape or something for this!  All you have to do is copy the column from your Google Docs spreadsheet that contains your participant’s Facebook or Twitter info, paste it in to her spreadsheet and with just a few more clicks, voila – you have an entire page all set up with everyone’s links!  This makes it extremely easy on the entrants of your giveaway and also makes it more likely they’ll complete the task – gaining YOU more followers!

The directions she gives for Twitter worked flawlessly for me (see how it turned out HERE).  But, for some reason, (I’m not exactly Web or code-savvy), I needed an iframe code to use the spreadsheet to create my Facebook Follow page.  So, I set off to deconstruct her spreadsheet and figure out just how she pieced everything together and how I could rebuild it using an iframe code instead.

Now, here is what the iframe coding should look like when you’re ready to publish it:

<iframe allowtransparency=”true” src=”//www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=http://www.facebook.com/sidetrackedmom&width=292&height=62&
colorscheme=light&show_faces=false&border_color&stream=false&header
=true&appId=290657224318729″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” style=”border: none; height: 62px; overflow: hidden; width: 292px;”></iframe>

The yellow highlighted area is the only area you’ll need to change so everyone can have their own link.  But, really, who wants to copy and paste that and then copy and paste in the new URL fifty times?  Not me!

In my case there were over 100 Facebook links to create.  See my page HERE to view how it looks when it is completed.

So, following Cute-Ecakes’ spreadsheet as my guide, I figured it out.  If you’re following along and want to make your own, open a new spreadsheet in Google Docs.  Then type the purple text below exactly as is (the only exception is Column A1 where you will, of course, want to use your own URL).

Column A1 –> URL of the Facebook page you want to link

Column B1 –> <iframe style=ʺborder: currentColor; width: 292px; height: 62px; overflow: hidden;ʺ src=ʺ//www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=

Column C1 –> =A1

Column D1 –> &width=292&height=62&colorscheme=light&show_faces=false&border_color&stream=false&header=true&appId=290657224318729ʺ frameborder=ʺ0ʺ scrolling=ʺnoʺ width=ʺ320ʺ height=ʺ240ʺ></iframe>

Column E1 –> =CONCATENATE(B1,C1,D1)

Once you have those fields completed (image 1 below), you can select A1-E1 and copy and paste in to as many rows as you will need.  Next, either copy and paste the column of participating Facebook URLs from your giveaway form in Google or from wherever you happen to have your list of URLs.  Paste each URL in to its own row down Column A.  Doing so should cause the other columns to change accordingly.

After you have all of your URLs pasted or entered down Column A, select columns A-D and hide them (image 2 below), .  Finally, click File, Download As>HTML (image 3 below).  A new window should open with just your html code.  Cntl-A to select your code and paste it in to your HTML editor on your blog.  Publish! (image 4 below) Don’t forget to save your file so all you have to do next time is copy & paste your URLs, then copy & paste your HTML!

This is really such a time saver!  For both you and those entering your giveaways!  I’ll add some corresponding screenshots below for those of you who are more visual learners but once you try it out for yourself, you’ll realize it isn’t nearly as difficult as I probably have made it sound.

Huge, huge ‘Thank you’ to Cindy at Cute-Ecakes for giving me the idea and general code to start with!  Please visit her blog to see how to make a Twitter Follow page as well as an email Follow page (and/or her Facebook follow page that does not utilize iframes).

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