The Gospel According To Rhys - Colwyn Bay North Wales Web blog About Sport, Wrestling, PHP, SEO, Social Media & Networking

One of the best ways to get more visitors to your blog, as well as build repeat visitors, is to use facebook fan pages. There is one for this blog, and you can see it at The Gospel According To Rhys Facebook Fan Page. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be talking through how to create a facebook fan page, improve it with FBML, and add all sorts of wierd and wonderful things to it. As a result, I suggest you subscribe to this blog (if you haven’t already), to read all three parts to this guide.

In this guide, I will teach you how to create a page – which in itself isn’t as easy as you think – as well as things to add to the page.

Create The Page

To create a facebook fan page, you will need to first go into the Facebook Advert Manager. Within Facebook, head to the Ads and Pages section (which is accessible if you click on the icon you can see on the right within Facebook), and then click on “Pages” in the left hand column. You should see a screen similar to this on your site.

Click on Create page to create your page.

You will then go to a screen which will tell you the name & area of business, and fill this in and you are done. You then get a facebook profile based on your page, which if you are familiar with facebook, you should be able to fill in easily. However, the real beauty is in the “Edit This Page” link underneath the main photo.

Edit This Page – Default Applications & What They Do

The edit page is a treasure trove of goodies, here’s the ones that are pre installed, and what they do.

Settings Application

The settings Application give you basic restrictions, not allowing those under a certain age or from a certain country from seeing your page. Unless you are really cruel to Germans or have dodgy pictures on your blog, I wouldn’t worry about this.

Wall Application

Set the default landing page of your page (sounds confusing, but this will be explained next week), and whether fans can post updates, or just you.

Mobile Application

Allow you to text in updates.

Discussion Board Application

Allows a forum to be added to your facebook fan page, allowing fans to talk to one another. It’s upto you if you need it, I wouldn’t enable this if your site already has a forum.

Events Application

Allows you to post “events” on your site, so if you’re having a meetup, you can invite your friends and set up a forum for sharing to begin with. I don’t use this on the fan page for this blog, but do use this for other sites.

Notes Application

Very useful. Allow the writing of notes (like “25 questions about me”), but more importantly you can import in RSS feeds from your blogs. Good way to keep your Facebook fan page ticking over.

Photos Application

Allows you to share photos on your Facebook fan page.

Review Application

If you sell products on your site, it will allow fans to review them on your Facebook fan page.

Video Application

Allows you to share videos on your Facebook fan page.

The Application Marketplace

Right at the bottom, you should see a “More Applications”. This will be talked about in a later post, as there is a range of applications you can add to extend functionality of your Facebook fan page. But we will discuss this in the next of these series of posts.

Finally – Your Homework

Create a facebook fan page for your blog, and share it in the comments!

Part 2 and 3 Coming Shortly!

In the next two parts of this series, I will teach you how to integrate both HTML & facebook features into your Facebook Fan Page. To make sure you don’t miss it, please subscribe to my blog, or get a sneak peek of the post in my Free Blogging Newsletter.