Sprucing Up My Facebook Fan Page | Add an Offer Page

Last Saturday, I added an “Offer” Tab and a “Welcome” Tab to my Facebook “Fan Page.”  I’ll let you decide if you think the results are pleasing and/or whether you think they will help to get results. (You can let me know in the comments to this post.)

This Part 1 of  ”Sprucing Up My Facebook Fan Page.”

I had kept putting off these Facebook improvements because I could not figure out how to add a new Tab (or blank page) to the “Fan Page” – and because it was not a priority. Still, every once in a while I would poke around to see if I could figure it out. So here’s my story of how I stumbled into some interesting stuff and figured out how to do a few things that puzzled me.

Enter Jim Yaghi and David Schwind

Talk about an amazing launch sequence! Yaghi and Schwind have been putting out some outrageously high value content for the promotion of their launch of Operation PPC Supremacy on August 31. “The Google Switch” eBook has had everyone talking about it. But as a testament to my determination to stick to my own business projects, I can say I resisted numerous emails and didn’t even download it. Then they put out the “Facebook Bushwack” video and I bookmarked it. Friday night I gave in and watched it. What I saw got me rolling. First, here is a summary of the video message:

Yaghi-Schwind Sample Click-Click Page

• You can double the results of Facebook ads if you apply the psychological principle of consistency. In this case, the consistent action is Click-Click-Click. 1-2-3.
• Click #1 – A Facebook visitor sees a Facebook ad and clicks on it.  The click takes them to your “click-click page.” [By the way that's my name for it. You could call it your "Offer" page or even name it the same as the offer itself. Yaghi and Schwind call their page "Google Switch" because their offer on that page was for that eBook.]
• Click #2 – Visitors to the “click-click page” see a bright red arrow that encourages them to click the Fan Page “Like” button. That’s two clicks. Visitors are on a roll! Click-click….
• Click #3 – Visitors on the “click-click page” see another bright red arrow pointing to the same offer alluded to in the ad. They must click again to obtain the offer… CLICK!… and they are on your lead capture page.  The odds that the visitor will proceed to obtain the free offer by entering their email address has been increased.

Well, as interesting as that was, the really cool thing was that Yaghi and Schwind actually give away the “click-click page.” In a link under the Bushwack video, a “generator” tool allows you to create your own customized version of the page, and the relevant mark up language script that you can just paste into your own blank Tab. I don’t know how long the link for their tool will be live, but here it is. Naturally, it was tempting to plug in my own offer text and my own link to the image of my free product… you know just to see what it would look like.  Now I really really wanted to put it on my Facebook Fan Page!

The Challenge and Solution to Creating a Blank Tab in Facebook

Schwind’s video did not help me understand how to create the blank page.  But now that I had the actual mark up script, all ready to paste in, I was driven to find the answer. There are a lot of out of date how-to videos floating around. But here is what I finally figured out. Like everything else – not really that complicated. One thing that threw me off a bit, is that Facebook uses what they call FBML, which is not always the same as HTML. As best as I can remember, this was how I did it:

Step	Action	Pictures
1	The following assumes that you are logged in to your Facebook account, and on your Facebook Fan Page. Install FBML application as follows: Type “Static FBML” into the Facebook search box. Click on “Static FBML Application” – see red arrow at right.	Locate the FBML Application
2	Click on “Add to my Page” (located in left menu).	Click- Add to My Page
3	Navigate back to your own Fan Page. (There don’t seem to be any easy buttons to make that happen.) After you are on your own Fan Page, Click on “Edit Page” (located in the left menu, under your picture or logo).	Click "Edit Page."
4	Scan the list of settings and applications. Find your newly created “FBML” Tab (located under the list of “Applications.”) See the red arrow at right.  (It may or may not have a number after the title “FBML.”) Click “Edit” (located under the title “FBML.”)	Find FBML App and Click Edit
5	On this new page, notice: “Box Title” (Red Arrow) – Change the existing “FBML” to the title of your new Tab. For example, “Welcome” or “Offer.” For purposes of this illustration, we will change the title to “Example.” “FBML” (Green Arrow) – Add your FBML script here. Specifically, if you have created a “click-click page” script from Yaghi’s tool, you copy-paste it here. Later you can tinker with it if you are a learn-by-doing guy like me.  Or if you are already good with FBML, … what are you reading this for??!! Click “Save” at the bottom of the editing box!	Change Tab Name and Add in the FBML Script
6	Once again, navigate back to your own Fan Page. You should see your “Example” Tab at some point after the “Wall” and “Info” Tabs. If not, it is because you have more than 5 or 6 Tabs already and it is hidden. So… Click the little “>>” button (Red Arrow). Click the new “Example” selection. You can change the sequence of the Tabs by the click-and-drag method.  For example, you could move your new “Example” Tab up next to your “Info” Tab.	Locating a New, But Hidden Tab

By the way you can determine what Tab your visitors will see FIRST in several ways:

1) Do nothing. Default is the “wall” Tab.

2) Make your new “Welcome” Tab (or any other Tab) to be the new default.

• Go to “Wall” Tab
• Click “Options” link under the Blue “Share” button.
• Now Click “Settings” link (now visible under the “Share” button.)
• Select your default Tab here.

3) Use one of your own domain names [purchase a specially created one?] and forward it to the Tab of your choice. You can then use different domain names to refer different audiences to different start points on your Fan Page.

A Couple of Issues I Had with Yaghi’s Script

Although it does a fast job of creating a suitable “Offer” (click-click page) Tab, I had a couple of things I wanted to change on his script.

1. I noticed that the two supplied images were stored on a server Yaghi owned. I wondered how long those images would be there. Could they suddenly disappear and leave my site hanging, without my not even knowing it?  It was easy enough to create my own red arrow graphics using Photoshop.  I then uploaded them into a special directory (folder) on one of my own website servers. They could also be uploaded into a blog site – WordPress assigns every graphic in the media library its own URL. Anyway, I substituted my own URL for the one in Yaghi’s script.
2. My other issue is the arrow that points straight UP, supposedly to the “Like” button next to the name of your Fan Page. It probably works for the vast majority of users.  In my case, my Fan Page name is sooooo long, that the arrow needs to angle off to the far right to make any sense. So the graphic of my #1 red arrow does just that.

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I hope that my discovery process will give you some ideas too!  To be continued….  I will discuss how I added a “Welcome” page in Part 2.

You might also want to see these related posts:

1. Where to Network for Collaboration Partners
2. Does Google “Suck” and Is Facebook the Greatest Kept Secret?
3. Sprucing Up My Facebook Page | Add a Welcome Page
4. The Facebook Ads Controversy | Collaboration – An Alternate View
5. Friend Requests on Facebook | Strangers Can’t Collaborate