maine web development, web design, internet marketing

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!

Welcome to our new weekly Facebook Fanpage Blog Series! Every Friday, we will discuss strategies, technical development and layout of your company Facebook Fanpage.

It is 2010 and by now, surely you have a website for your business! If not, you should definitely consider it. Your online marketing strategy doesn’t begin and end with just a website. Generating inbound links to your site using social media and networking sites can be a beneficial way to increase traffic, generate sales leads, build your network etc.

Facebook, in its recent popularity, has developed a platform for companies to produce a Fan Page. A Fan page is a business oriented profile, much like a user profile, but with some specific features. It utilizes a special language called FBML, similar to HTML to interact with modules and applications.

There’s a vast amount of interactivity between other social networking sites (YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter) to connect your networking profiles. There are also some cool visual capabilities such as; adding graphics to your profile, navigation structure, landing pages and video implementation (most of these we will talk about later on in the series).

Let’s get to the good stuff, you must have a personal profile on Facebook to have a company profile, you will be the administrator (you can also designate others as an admin, more on that later).

First, sign up to Facebook and said hello to your family and friends

Next, you can goto Facebook’s Pages section and begin your journey to a new fan page (click “Click Here!”).

Create New Facebook Page Category section :

1. Select from 3 different types of business categories. Whether you are a local company or a small to large brand/product/organization there are a wide variety of industries to choose from.
2. Name your company page – This is a little more important than you think. In terms of SEO, these pages are index-able (meaning they are able to be found through search) Definitely have your company title!
3. You have the option to make the page publicly visible, whether or not you want people or fans to see this work in progress before we turn it into a masterpiece is up to you.
4. Click the Create Page button

Now you’ll be taken to something that resembles an empty profile. Congratulations, this is your company’s new Fan Page!

Filling out Company information

1. Click on the Info Tab
2. Enter text for “Founded” under the Basic Information section
3. Next, Fill out information under the Detailed Information section
   • Website Address
   • Your Company Overview (What do you do?!)
   • A Mission Statement (Why do you do what you do?!)
   • Whatever Products you may sell

When you’ve completed your basic and detailed information, save your changes and click “Done Editing”

Changing Your Profile Picture

1. Hover your mouse over the default profile picture
2. Click Change picture… it comes with options
   • you now have the option to upload a picture
   • take a picture
   • choose from album (even though you don’t have one yet!)

If you already have a photo on your hard drive, you can browse for it and it will upload

You now have an identity on your Facebook page! Tune in next week as we talk about adding content to your Facebook Profile with Boxes and Photos!

Your strategy is geared up for your business’ next promotional event and you’re ready to start inviting your friends and fans to participate and RSVP. Pump the brakes a bit!  This week, Facebook made a major change to their promotions guidelines. If your promotion consists of an offering, sweepstakes, contest or competition you must check with an account representative at Facebook by filling out a contact form before continuing with your promotion advertising on FB.

This could be considered to be a smart business move by Facebook given the liability issues attached to a botched promotion or a potential scam on users. As you know, policy is important. Being responsible for the actions of millions of users and companies is time consuming and resource-intensive – Facebook would rather spend time innovating and developing, not policing its users.

But this isn’t about Facebook, this is about YOU, the one with the ideas! Although this may seem like one extra step slowing your social media goal, don’t let it deter you from achieving results! Just like the rest of your social media plan, it is important to listen, think then act upon these important changes.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are posting contests and promotions on my Facebook page valuable to my clients/customers/users in the first place?
• Is it worth my time to take that extra step for my promotion?
• How is this going to effect my long term goal?
• Are there other tools that I can use to distribute my promotions?

If you STILL have concerns about these changes there are other alternatives to distribute your campaigns:

- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Eventbrite
- Ning
- Your website
- Your Blog

If you need to, invite fans of your FB page to participate on these other platforms as well.

Athletes don’t quit playing sports because their league has changed a couple of rules every season (or sometimes during the season) – they adapt by training smarter and harder.  Do the same for your business!

Whether Facebook is copying Twitter or not, this week Facebook added the capability to tag your connections in your status updates.

What is it? How do I do it?

When you update your Facebook status (personal status or fan/group pages) you can now ‘tag’ or ‘mention’ people, businesses, groups by name and link to their profile or fan pages. All you need to do when updating your status is add ‘@’ and start typing the name of the person you want to mention. Facebook will then produce a drop down menu for you to choose from and you select the person of group you are mentioning (see below).  The only requirement is that the person you are selecting needs to be in your Facebook network (either a friend or a page that you are a fan of).

What does this mean for my business?

Facebook is the largest social network but it is one I have a hard time telling our customers will show their business a lot of return, especially in the B2B market. Of course there are exceptions, but generally Facebook isn’t my go-to when suggesting inbound marketing business strategies.

What I DO see with the mentions is an easier way for people to talk about and send Facebook traffic to your fan or group page. Finding new company pages or fan pages will be more organic as people continue to use Facebook for EVERYTHING. Users update their status on absolutely everything under the sun so it will be nice to see some traffic be pushed to our business page as people comment on you company.

Facebook continues to tinker with search and real time search but generally users find new pages and people only through their network and feeds to their “wall.” Adding mentions is a step in the right direction to integrate the personal and professional side of Facebook.

For more on Facebook mentions you can read the post on Facebook’s blog.