A few months back I began experimenting with Facebook Fan Pages.

I’ll share some interesting things I’ve uncovered so far, including why you may need a Facebook Page, and the tricks to setting up a Facebook page that people want to “like”. I’ll also share how to get fans and how not to get fans.
Why you may need a Facebook Page

Anyway, here’s why I’m experimenting with fan pages now…

As a email newsletter publisher going on 4 years now, I can attest to the difficulty of getting email through to subscribers. No, I’m not going to declare email marketing dead, however it has become increasingly difficult year after year, getting email through overactive spam filters. So I figured it’s time to give my readers another option other than losing touch with me forever. (Gosh no, how could they ever live with that?)

Of all the options out there, Facebook fan pages are, in my humble opinion, the best choice. 500 million people have embraced facebook and a whopping half of those people log into their facebook account every single day. Need I say more?

A fan page has advantages over growing a facebook friend’s list, as it is not limited to 5,000 friends. That makes it a solid long term solution to keeping in touch with people. Plus, getting fans seems to be easier and more streamlined than getting friends. A simple click of a like button is all it takes to gain a fan.

So lets get started with Facebook Pages, commonly referred to as fan pages…

How to set up a Facebook page that people want to “like”

There are a few tricks to setting up a facebook fan page for quick growth. Before I get to those tricks, let me show you quickly how to get started setting up a fan page.

First, you go facebook.com/pages/create.php? and this is what you’ll see…

At that page you choose a name for your fan page and select the type of page it is, then click “Create Official Page”. Your page is then created.

Incidentally, the name you choose at that page above is simply the title of your page. It has nothing to do with the actual URL of your page. Facebook will automatically assign a LONG URL to your page, such as this…

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jackie-Tulos/127869738303?ref=ts

If you want a shorter URL such as www.facebook.com/jackietulos you have to wait until you get 25 fans.

Once you get to 25 fans you will be able to go to facebook.com/usernames and select a shorter, more personalized username.

(It took be a while to figure that out!)

Now that you have a fan page, it is time to get down to customizing it…

After all, you’re going to be sending people to your fan page by linking to it from your websites and blogs. But you do not want people just landing on your fan page wall. (That’s right, your fan page has a wall all of it’s own. And in the beginning, it’s going to be a bit barren.)

What you want to do is have non-fans land on a customized page — a page that encourages them to “Like” you by clicking a like button that shows up there automatically. Then, and only then — after they have clicked your like button to become your fan, you reward them for their loyalty by giving them an instant gift.

So, how in the heck does one customize a landing page to do something like this? Well, the first step is to install something called a “Static FBML” application. (Don’t worry, this is easier than it sounds.)

This Static FBML application allows you to make your fan page look however you want, by inserting HTML code. Installing the application itself is easy. Simply head over to the free Static FBML application then click “Add to page”. It looks like this when you get there…

That’s it. Once you’ve added this application you can now customize your fan page.

You do that by clicking Edit in your FBML settings.

Note: If you don’t see FBML listed in your account, you did not do the previous step of installing FBML. See the step highlighted in yellow above.

When you click Edit in the FBML section you’ll see a box where you can enter a title and the FBML code.

The title you enter will be what appears on the TAB at the top of you page. Keep it short.

The FMBL code you enter can simply be html code from most any html editor you use. In my case I put together a quick page in my Frontpage editor then copy/pasted the html code from my Frontpage editor into that box. I may do something fancier in the future, but you can see what it looks like here:

www.facebook.com/jackietulos

And here’s the next important trick you need to know about…

Remember how I mentioned that you want to show different content to non-fans in an effort to get them to like your page? Then you want to reward them with a gift after they join?

(So that you fully understand exactly what I’m talking about, take a minute and come to www.facebook.com/jackietulos — you’ll see my message asking you to “Like” me. Immediately after you click “Like” at the top of the page, you see a link where you can get immediate access your Free SWOT ANALYSIS (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)

Well you need to put special html code in your FBML box, in order to set that two step process up. Here’s the code…

<div id=”wrapper”>
<fb:visible-to-connection>
CONTENT FOR FANS GOES HERE
<fb:else>
<div id=”non-fans”>CONTENT FOR NON FANS GOES HERE</div>
</fb:else>
<fb:visible-to-connection>
</div>

Simply put, the content you want to show when non-fans arrive, goes in the area that says CONTENT FOR NON FANS GOES HERE.

The content you want to show after fans like your page, goes in the area that say CONTENT FOR FANS GOES HERE.

Here’s what my code looked like after I included those tags…

<div id=”wrapper”>
<fb:visible-to-connection>
<p><b><font face=”Tahoma” size=”5″>
<a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.jackietulos.com/noworries.pdf”>Thanks! Click
Here For Your Free SWOT ANALYSIS (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).…</a></font></b></p>
<fb:else>
<div id=”non-fans”><center>
<img border=”0″ src=”http://www.jackietulos.com/lgfbbanner.gif” width=”544″ height=”574″></p>
</center></div>
</fb:else>
<fb:visible-to-connection>
</div>

Note: Testing your end result is a bit tricky and is best done from another computer or browser via a different facebook account. You’ll see what I mean when you start testing.

Once you’ve customized your page with that special code, you need to take one last very important step.

Go to your Wall and click on the “settings” tab. At the dropdown menu labeled “Default Landing Tab for Everyone else”, select your new page name from the list.

Now NON-members of your Fan page will see your welcome page when arriving, and they will be urged to Like your page. Again, you don’t want them landing on your wall, you want them to “like” you before they go anywhere else.

---

How to start getting fans…

The first thing you need to do to start getting fans is put a like button onto your existing websites or blogs. You can use a simple like button such as the one at the bottom of this page, or you can use something more elaborate, such as the box I have at the top right of this page.

Either way, it’s easy. Just go back into your fan page admin area and click the link called add a like button.

A new box will appear that allows you to customize a “Like box” to display on your website or blog. Change the Facebook Page ID code at the very top, to the unique page URL they assigned to your Fanfare. It will look something like this…

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jackie-Tulos/127869738303?ref=ts

Then you can select the other options and generate the code. A new box will then appear with the code that you can paste into any web page or blog you have control over.

If it does not fit right, you can customize the code a bit at your page. For instance, I changed the height of the box so it could accommodate space for 15 fans. Most of it is easily customized in the html code of your page.

Adding like boxes to your sites or blogs is just one way to start growing your fan base. There are many more ways to start adding to your fan base, including announcing it to any email subscribers or friends you may have, advertising your page on facebook, etc.. I’ll cover more of these strategies in an upcoming issue.

How not to get fans…

Once strategy people use to get lots of fans quickly is to basically, buy them. That’s right, there are a growing number of sites on the web where you can find facebook users renting out status updates and even guaranteeing a specific numbers of fans. The cost is as little as $5 for hundreds and even thousands of fans.

While I was intrigued by this idea at first, I did a little digging and discovered it’s not worth even the tiny price you pay. Here’s why…

For starters, it is against Facebook’s policies. But perhaps even more importantly, the fans you’ll gain in almost every case will be junk fans. Sure, they’ll show up on your site as “12,232 people like this. And to some people that sounds like instant credibility.

But the fact is, your fan base won’t really be following what you’re doing. It’s sort of like buying 100,000 junk email addresses that will never read your emails. So why bother.

Personally, I think I’ll just try to build a solid fan base of real people who care about what I’m writing. Here’s hoping you’re one of them!

I’ll be reporting more on my fan page results and techniques in a future gazette (and posting it to my fan page) so make sure to use the “like” button below and stay in the loop!

See ya in a few weeks…

Jackie

P.S. “Like” Jackie Tulos on Facebook and get your Free SWOT ANALYSIS (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)….