Cindy Ratzlaff

Brand strategy includes maximizing the visibility of your product in all of your consumer touch points. You can promote your book or speaking events on Facebook by creating a custom tab right on your Facebook Fan page. It’s easy with an application called Static FBML. Here are step by step instructions for adding a customized tab to your fan page.

1. On your fan page, click “Edit Page” under your picture.
2. Next scroll down to the very bottom left hand side of your page and find the word “Applications” next to the Facebook logo. Click that.
3. You’ll get a pop-up menu. From that menu choose “Browse more applications.”
4. That will take you to the “All Applications” page.
5. In the search box on the upper left hand side of this page, enter “Static FBML.”
6. When you see the Static FBML icon appear, click on it and go to the Static FBML page. I recommend becoming a fan so you have access to the questions from others (and the answers).
7. Under the Static FBML icon is “Add to my Page.” Click that. A box will pop up and you’ll see the words “Add to my page” next to your page name. Click “Add to my Page.”
8. Then close the box.
9. Go back to your page, click “Edit Page.” Now your in a screen that shows you all of the applications you have on this page and you can create your tab. Find the Static FBML application and click on the blue pencil in the upper right hand corner of this application box. Select “Edit” from the drop down menu.
10. A blank FBML box will appear. The letters FBML will be in the “Box Title” and you can now change that to either MY BOOK or the name of your book or whatever you want to choose. This will be the name of your tab.
11. Now in the main body of the box you’ll need some HTML code in order to add an attractive cover of your book and perhaps some information about the book. There are many graphic designers who can do this for you inexpensively if you don’t know how to do it yourself. I used a wonderful designer, Jackie Kincaid, to do my welcome tab. Take a look at my Facebook Fan Page and you’ll see I have two custom tabs; one is my welcome tab and the other is my social connections tab.
12. Once you’ve added your graphics via HTML coding, you’re all set. Just click the “Save Changes” button.
13. Go back to your page. The FBML Box will be in your boxes tab. You can click the blue pencil in the upper right hand corner of the box and a drop down menu will appear. Click “Move to Wall Tab.”
14. Now click on the + sign at the end of your tabs. This will now say “Add a new tab.” Click on your “My Book” icon and it will become a tab on your wall. That’s it. Making the tab is easy. Getting the HTML code for your designed page is a little trickier and may require professional help. I used a professional graphic designer to create the layout look and code this for me.

Here are a couple of other examples of folks doing a bang up job of using the customized tab on their Facebook Fan Page. By the way, all of these people give great advice about a wide variety of social media topics and becoming a fan of their page is a good idea.

Adam Urbanski

Gary Vaynerchuk

Mari Smith

Karmen Reed

Debbie Ford

Good luck. When you’ve created your custom tab and information, please come back here and post the link so we can all see you page!

Tagged with: Adam Urbanski, Books, brand strategy, Customizing your Facebook Fan Page, debbie ford, Facebook Fan Page, Gary Vaynerchuk, Karmen Reed, Mari Smith, Publishing

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.