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

One way to grow your blog’s readership is with a facebook fan page, we talked about how to create a Facebook Fan Page a last week on this very blog, it’s all very well and good, but the problem with it is that they don’t naturally convert well. In that you want people to become fans, or sign up for auxillary services offered through your blog. There is a way however to improve your Facebook Fan Page from this:-

To this:-

As there is a way of putting HTML into Facebook pages. How? Well I’ll show you now.

Install the FBML Application

On any page you own, you will first of all need to install the application. Visit your page whilst logged in, and click on “Edit This Page”, located in the left hand column. Scroll down to the bottom and you should see “More Applications”, with hopefully a link to the Static FBML (you can see the icon to the right). Click on the link and then click on the “Add to Page” link which should be under the programme’s icon. Choose which page you want to install it on, and then you should be all set.

Code Your HTML

Nice and simple step next, code your HTML. If you are familiar with HTML, FBML is exactly the same (but with a few added features, which will be covered in the next piece). If you struggle with this, check out the W3Schools website for a code reference, or use a WYSIWYG editor such as Dreamweaver (or the back end of Wordpress!) to write out your Facebook Fan Page.

When it’s ready to be placed into the Facebook Fan Page, click on the “Edit Page” link, and then the “Edit” link by the FBML box. A box will appear allowing you to paste your HTML code. Click save and then check your Facebook Fan Page. If a box with a title appears along the top, you are ready to go.

Set Your Created Page as the Landing Page

Finally, you want to make sure new visitors to your facebook fan page see your new page first. It’s really simple to do this as well. All you do is click on the “Settings” link underneat the “Share” box on the main Facebook Fan Page. Make sure the default landing tab for everything else is the same as the name you gave your tab in the previous step. Being AJAX based, the page should automatically saved. Log out of facebook to make sure that it actually works.

Then you are all set! A lot more effective fan page, that can hopefully drive visitors to your blog. In the last part, I will describe how you can really push your Facebook Fan Page by adding some of Facebook’s inbuilt features to it.

Questions? Comments? Show off your fan page? Leave them in the comments below!

Get The Final Part Next Week!

In the final part of this series, I will teach you how to integrate 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.