Facebook fan pages work. From every movie releasing on the next Friday to Reality Show going on in the television, everyone wants a fan page. As my dear friend Saahil would say, it is all a part of the engagement plan 🙂 . However, these days fan pages tend to do a lot more than just send out their updates to the fans and let the users talk amongst themselves. People have gone up to the extent of creating a full micro-site within the fan-page. Check this Puma fan-page for instance.

Getting a very well branded fan page is a little bit of work (It is as good as getting a micro-site done) for sure, but getting a basic beautiful fan page with a landing tab other than the wall tab is not so difficult. I am not a master at making a super cool fan pages but here are some small tips which will help you make a fan page which won’t look the same as  other fan pages. Please try not to pay people for making some cool tabs for your fan page if it is not super intensive page. If you really wan’t to pay, try paying me 🙂 :).

Step#1 : Add the static FBML Application to your fan page. It is available here.

• Step#2 : When you click on the Add to my page link, you get a pop-up like the one shown below
  

  Choosing the page to add static FBML tab to

• Step#3 : Now that you have added the staic FBML , you can now create a custom tab in your facebook fan page.

• Step# 4 : Now that you have added the static FBML, go and edit your FBML tab.

Edit Facebook Fan Page

• Step # 5 : Now that you are editing the fan page, you need get to see the list of applications including the Static FBML application, you just added as shown below.

Editing Applications Facebook Fan Page

• Step#6 : Now click on editing the Static FBML page and you see the window shown below. Edit the Box title to what you want the tab to be named.

• Step#7: The problem now is how to write the FBML script. Actually, writing FBML is very similar to writing HTML and hence you need help. Okay, I admit you need to learn that. However, I will provide a couple of ready to go scripts which i wrote once i read a little bit of FBML today.(A 10 min reading will do.)

1. A small piece of code to open a tab to invite friends is here.

The small FBML required is:

<fb:request-form
method=”post”
action=”microreviewsorg?ref=ts”
type=”Microreviews.org”
invite=”true”
content=”Microreviews<fb:req-choice url=’PAGE URL’ ‘ label=’GO’ /> “>

<fb:multi-friend-selector actiontext=”Invite Your Friends to Microreviews” rows=”3″ showborder=”true” />
</fb:request-form>

• Make sure you replace the http://microreviews.org with your web page’s URL

To Change the default landing tab to your newly made Static FBML page, you just need to click on the settings link available on the fan page for an admin and change the default landing tab. This doesnot show up for admin and so ask your friend or logout and check if the default landing tab setting is working. Check the image below.

Changing the Default Landing Tab on a Facebook Fan page

In the next post, I will discuss how you can make some commonly used tabs like Flickr, Youtube Channel, Twitter etc.

I hope you like this post. Please let me know your suggestions.