As I mentioned in my last blog post, I’m trying to be active in Facebook once more, not with my personal account but with the blog’s fan page. So far it’s been good, slowly but surely I’m getting people to communicate with me through that medium.
Anyways, I set the fan page last year and even up to now, I am constantly getting asked on how I do it. I’d love to point to amazing and definitive guides like the one from Pat Flynn and some others. Pat has absolutely helped me set up mine by writing a Facebook Guide for Bloggers which is an extremely popular article.
Now the reason I’m doing this post is that I want my readers to have a place too, or just a reference just in case they want to set up a Facebook Fan Page for their blogs. Another is that Facebook has made some changes with the custom box and I believe most of the articles haven’t updated their guides yet so it’s good to have the latest one right? 😉
Setting Up a Facebook Fan Page
First things first
I’ll go straight into the topic. To start creating a page, head on to the Create a Page page. You have three options there, you could create a fan page, a community page, or a Facebook group. In this what we’d like to do is create a fan page so click on the Fan Page section. Don’t worry creating a page is FREE to anyone.
Make sure you name your page carefully because it’s something that you can never change later on. So take your time in naming your page (usually it’s just the name of the blog as well), and double check if you typed it correctly.
You may also want to put in some status messages first. People don’t subscribe to a fan page that has empty interaction. I know its odd to put a status message when there’s no one following you yet but trust me this is what is needed. Plus, everyone does that initially.
Personalization
Now make sure you don’t become one of those millions of fan pages that create just a generic page for their brand. Facebook fan pages almost look the same but you can customize it by personalizing the way it looks. And you can do that by simply uploading images.
Upload your photo, make sure it’s something that would represent the brand of your blog. You could either place a custom logo image of your blog or simply just a pic of you. Do not also forget to write details like the tagline (the one that appears under the logo) and the info tab which would contain all the basic information about your fan page. Again take time to write those information.
Lastly, create a custom box! A custom box is just basically a box that is outside the default “Wall” and “Info” boxes. The main use of this is you can create a custom landing page for your fan page. Here’s how mine looks:
You could easily do that clicking on the + sign on tabs and adding a custom box. You can then name it and put content inside the box. The “in thing” however is the use of images. As you can see above, my landing page just consists of an image and a simple html text. Make sure to get your message clearly across your target audience. Do not also forget to ask them to LIKE your fan page.
To create an HTML, simply add the application Facebook Markup Language and you’re ready to go. Using it is as easy as using an HTML editor.
Little update that I’d like to emphasize is that Facebook has updated their terms when it comes to custom boxes. Before the maximum width for an image is 760px but Facebook has reduced it now to 520px. Make sure you comply with the settings or else the custom box would look ugly.
Finishing Touch
Now maybe you’re wondering, where is the custom box for? As I’ve written a lot in the past few months, I’ve always emphasized the importance of landing pages. With landing page, you can actually “convince” your potential readers more to do something that you want.
Now head on to the settings of your fan page and change the “Default Landing Tab” to your specific custom box. Now every visitor that goes into your fan page will land to that custom page where they will be more enticed to “like” your page as opposed to just landing to the default wall tab.
As you can also notice, your url is pretty not personalized. That’s normal. As soon as you hit 25 fans, Facebook will give you the ability to change the vanity url of your page. Again, make sure you are sure with what you input as this is pretty much unchangeable.
Conclusion
Now you have a Facebook Fan Page for your blog. Utilizing a Fan page is like using Twitter except that there’s almost no limit. And since anyone uses Facebook more than Twitter, you could literally build a powerful community behind that communication medium which in turn can translate as traffic to your blog or vice versa.
But how do I get people to like my page? There are thousands of ways but the most clever way first and foremost is to initially contact your friends in Facebook and tell them politely to fan your fan page. It’s easy, if you have 50 friends, Im sure almost all of them wouldn’t mind “liking” your page.
Did I miss anything here? If you would like to add something or ask anything, feel free to write in the comment form.
Set up one last month and although I only have 81 fans I think it was worth taking the time to set it up. 🙂
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Melvin Reply:
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:41 pm
wow that’s quick. I mean mine has been for a while yet its still not over 100 fans. 🙁
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another cool thing that you can add to your page is the “invite tool thingy” which lets your fans invite their friends to join your facebook page.
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Great tutorial, something I really needed, I find it so difficult and mind draining to deal with a lot of these social sites that guides like this are really helpful.
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Melvin Reply:
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Hey JR, thanks that you find this guide helpful. 😉
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What I like about setting up FB fanpage is i learn about my readers. Gawd, I didn’t even know that i have viewers from Germany.
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Hello Melvin,
My name is Jo Barnes and after recently researching how to get a fan page built and promoted, I was bowled over by the extortionate prices people are charging. I presume due to the air of ‘mystery’ still hanging over fan pages.
So over the last few weeks I have been using and testing facebook and fan pages to what works and what doesn’t and decided to record some FREE training videos on, Creating a Fan Page, Adding a List Building Landing Page including Video and Graphics, Promoting the Page and eventually Monetizing it. I also built a template to automate the creation of the landing page to get over the FBML coding complications for all us normal non-techie types!!
I’m in the middle of this series, and have released Videos 1 & 2, Video 3 should be available by the end of this week.
Anyway, if you’d like to have a look, it’s all Free, no sales pitches or catches – (I’m just trying to build a reputation), then please go over to my fan page and check them out.
Regards
Jo
Jo Barnes´s last blog post ..FREE Create a LIst Building Fan Page Webinar Starts in 3 Hours!!!
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Melvin Reply:
September 12th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Sure Jo, I’ll check it out and if I like I’ll suggest them to my readers as well. 🙂
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Nice write-up. I think that creating a unique landing page is something that a lot of bloggers either don’t know how to do or don’t recognize the benefits. You definitely make a good point here. I’ve had a decent amount of my friends “like” my page and I’m starting to get a few people click the “like” box from my blog as well.
I think it’s also very important to plan out a content strategy for your page. If all you do is post your own link every day with no other engagement, people will very quickly tune you out. It’s the same thing with twitter: you have to give to get.
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yeah your definitely right melvin, this was actually the thing i did and it’s very effective. I am not only asking my friends to like the fan page but also to share the page on their walls so that their friends might see… perhaps might like and share it too…
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Hey Melvin 🙂
Nice tips.. about that FBML Box, i had made a little more advanced one for my page..
I can give you tips for that.. By adding some div tags, you can make those static “Let’s connect” buttons to be active so that visitors can directly click at it..
Take a look at my fan page: http://www.facebook.com/TechnoTweaks
There are many buttons right above the box image..
If you want out, i can help you 😉
Good luck!
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Thanks for the guide. Setting up the fan page is the essential step, next step is getting friends to like the page – this is the most important. Without fans, fan page worth nothing. And to get more fans, essentially, we should get considerable traffic to the page. 🙂
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Communication is absolutely KEY! Most of us use our computers daily to talk to our contacts. I’m so thankful we have tools like these available.
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ah so these are the things that i do to make my fan page alive and interactive. i always update it whenever i have new posts but still it has only few followers.
thanks for the tips!
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All good points. I’d drop Facebook in a second if it weren’t bringing more traffic that Twitter and Google+. I actually enjoy Twitter and Google+, which is more than I can say for Facebook. It does sound like you might be investing too much time in the various social media services.
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