maine web development, web design, internet marketing

I have gotten asked this question a few times and I think the easiest way to explain how to add a Facebook Like Box (or Fan Box) to your website is to show you. Below is a video explaining the steps to customizing and adding your Facebook Like Box to your website.

Adding a Facebook Box to your site is a great way to promote your Facebook presence on your business website. Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world and people are not only using the site to connect with family and friends but to show their support and interest in businesses too. The Facebook Box is interactive and users can click to connect with your company on Facebook right from your website. With Facebook’s easy customization you can style the Box how you would like and Facebook will generate the HTML code for you.

For you non video folks:

1. First things first: you need to be an administrator to the Facebook page you would like to promote
2. Go to Edit Page of your Facebook Business Page
3. Then on the right hand side, click on Promote with a Like Box
4. Customize your Like Box – choose the width and the information you want to include
5. Hit Get Code
6. Copy code
7. Plug the HTML code into your website files where you want your Facebook Like Box
8. Publish your web page update

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Want more information?

Watch our prerecorded webinar: Creating and Optimizing a Facebook Fan Page for Your Business Facebook is becoming a force on the internet. Most of your clients and potential clients are using Facebook. Should you consider using a Facebook Company Page to reach your target audience? In this webinar we will discuss if your business should consider creating a Facebook Fan Page and show you how to optimize the profile to be found easily. We will also show some shortcuts to regularly adding content to your Facebook Fan Page, the difference between a Fan Page and a Facebook Group and show you some examples of what other businesses are doing and if they are getting any value from this popular social network.

This was a question I got in one of my last webinars and I wanted to expand on it a bit here because I actually get this question frequently.

Should I have a Facebook Fan Page if my website is outdated?

As with most questions about social media, my answer is – it depends. You need to look at your specific situation and determine what is best for you. Most social media solutions for businesses need to be discovered on a case by case basis.

Here are a few scenarios and how a Faceboook Fan Page could hurt or help the situation:

Business XYZ is waiting for a website redesign but the process will not be completed for a long time. The old site is static, updating content takes months through a developer or in-house team and the content is outdated.

Situations like this unfortunately do happen. Having a Facebook Fan Page could help you generate content in a more time sensitive manner. By using the notes section you could post blog like entries about your industry. The easy to use photo upload tool makes creating photo albums a snap. You could update products in a photo album on Facebook and give each product a person to contact if someone was interested in buying it. If you are waiting for a website redesign, testing some things like blog-like entries or photos on Facebook could be a great way to see what types of content people are looking for from your business. Once you figure out what content resonates with your audience you could add it to your newly designed website.

Business ABC has found a solid success in marketing events. They attend tradeshows, networking events and even host their own events in their store. Their website is clunky and doesn’t have a functional calendar option to let their community know about all their upcoming events.

Having a Facebook fan page to organize and promote your events is an easy solution. Your attendees can also be given the opportunity to invite other people to your events on your behalf.

Acme Inc. is a small business with an outdated website. No one has any time to do anything about it. Everyone is so busy each day. They could really use another staff member to help with their marketing but they just don’t have the resources.

A Facebook page would be easier to update and add images to BUT who would update it? What content would you have time to add? You don’t want to have a stale website AND a stale Facebook page. Only use Facebook as an extension of your website if you have time to update it regularly with valuable information.

Medical Advice Inc. has a stuffy website. They do not have a blog and the only way to get more information is to call a representative. Employees are not allowed to create content to add onto the website. With Facebook they could give out advice to anyone who needed it. They could get lots of Fans and have them all talking amongst themselves to solve their problems.

Well… what are the legal implications of people reading content on your website and using that as medical advice over contacting a professional? What if something bad happened to them because of advice they read from someone on your Facebook fan page? What if their matter was personal or could affect their employment and another Facebook fan read about their problem and reported it to their boss? Sometimes websites need to just be a place for information on how to contact someone.

A few more things to consider if you are going to focus on Facebook to be your home base:

• What happens on Facebook belongs to Facebook. This is not a secure method to build your company database. Your page could be shut down at any time and you would lose it all. Your notes, photos and event listings are property of Facebook. Make sure they are backed up somewhere else.
• You should try to have your message consistent on all of your marketing mediums (website, print, social media sites, et al.). If you can promote your website on Facebook you should and if you can promote your Facebook fan page on your website, you should also do that.
• If you are using Facebook for business, keep it professional.

Good luck and just try to remember that having a Facebook fan page should be an extension of your corporate communication structure and is not a standalone endeavor. If you know of a business you think is using Facebook well, feel free to leave it in the comments… people love learning from their peers.

Whether you’re sick or not, most people go to the doctor for an annual check up. Your doctor will check your eyes, ears, heartbeat, lungs, and discuss anything else you may have concerns about. Even though your website is not a living, breathing, organism, it does need to be an evolving, expanding, entity online to reach its full potential. Every now and then, it’s good to give your site a check up. Here is a five-point check up you can complete on your own website to make sure it has a clean bill of health.

1. Blog Posts
   Check to see how recently you have updated your blog. If your blog hasn’t been updated since 2009, you need to add a new post. Consistent weekly posts are suggested to create a steady stream of new content growth on your website. This is helpful to optimizing your site for search as you’re expanding and validating keywords on your site. Consistency is also important; it helps search engines build trust in your website.
2. Social Network Connections
   If you are marketing your business on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you should ensure that your web traffic can connect to those outlets and vice versa. You can even connect events to Facebook using Facebook Connect. When people sign up for your events it posts a notification on Facebook’s News Feed. Attendees’ friends are then able to see the event and are more likely to attend.
3. Title Tags and H1 Tags
   First, check and make sure you have them (these are tags that tell search engines what your website is about and can be found in the source code of your site). Second, make sure they are unique to each page. These are the most important tags to search engines, they tell the search engine what your site and each page are about so users can find the information they are seeking. The tags should be keyword rich and in harmony with the content on the page.
4. Calls to Action
   Are there clear calls to action on your site? You need to ensure the visitors to your site recognize what you’d like them to do on each page. Whether it’s signing up for a newsletter or downloading a whitepaper, each page should include a call to action that stands apart from the other content on that page and draws attention from the user.
5. Website Analytics
   Make sure you are measuring your calls to action and that you have conversion goals that you are working towards. Gathering website data is so incredibly important; it helps you find out what pages your users visit most and least and what they do while they are on your site. It gives insight to what kind of content your users are looking for and helps you make informed decisions about updates to your website.>

There, that was painless right? How did your website fare? If the results of your site check up passed – that’s great! Be sure to schedule your next regular check up -  if you miss an appointment problems can arise and will get worse the longer it takes you to get them checked. Those of you that found you may be missing some of these elements, no need to worry, the doctor can prescribe a remedy for that (what I mean is, talk to your web developers and they should be able to help you out).

Regular check ups are important and taking a step back to review your site as a whole every once in a while helps you assess where you are in accordance to the goals you’ve set out for your site.

Facebook keeps getting bigger and if your target audience is using it, now’s a good time to get involved in the discussions about your company and industry! We’ve learned how to setup a profile, now we need something to look at – something to allure users. Let’s add some boxes to your Fan page, shall we?

Wait, what’s a box?

A box is an user developed application where you can display image galleries, twitter feeds, blog feeds, videos and many other useful marketing materials to better engage your fans or potential fans. These boxes require the use of FBML. FBML is a coding language that lets you custom build these Facebook Platform apps. An evolved version of HTML, Facebook Developers community has listed allowed FBML and HTML tags to use. So if you know HTML, FBML is not too far off.

1. Access your edit dashboard by clicking “Edit Page” below your profile photo.
2. Scroll all the way down and click on “Browse More” under “More applications”
3. This will take you to the Applications landing page, in the top left corner in the search bar type “Static FBML”
4. Click on the logo on the right and when you get to the “Static FBML” Fan page click “add to my page” below the logo
5. There will be a dialog box of all of your fan pages (maybe you have only one!) Click “Add To Page” for whatever page you would like to display

Here it is visually:

Editing your new Static FBML box

Now we actually have the “Boxes” tab added to your Fan page profile, we can see it in the tab navigation if you go back to it. Now we want to put actual content within the box! Go back to your Fan page dashboard under “Edit Page” and notice that there is a new box that says “FBML – FBML” This is your first Box.

There are 4 options for this box;

• Edit (This is where you can change the name of your box and develop inside of it using HTML and FBML)
• Application settings (You can remove the box, add a new tab to your navigation or create additional permissions to publish all of your recent activity to your wall feed)
• Link To This Tab (Clicking this will display the direct URL to your tab *Remember this for later in the blog series!*)
• Remove Application (not much to say here)

If you click the Edit link, It will take you to a page with inputs where you can implement application development. Displayed is a Box Title, the title that will be displayed on that particular box on the boxes page, as well as the input for “FBML” or the code of what will display in that particular box.

We are going to display a video within a box. Within your FBML input text box, input the following


<strong>"Fancy Title Goes Here" </strong><br><br><center><fb:swf swfbgcolor="ffffff" imgstyle="border-width:3px; border-color:white;" imgsrc="url of your image to display" swfsrc='url of your video' width='numeric value of what your width is' height='numeric value of what your height is' /><br />click image to start video</center>

This is going to display one video of your choice…notice the similarities between FBML and HTML!

When you are finished, you can click “Save Changes” at the bottom and return back to your fan page and go to the “Boxes” tab to view your new page application.

Congratulations! This is now something you can promote on your wall or other social media outlets/blog!