I'm writing this for Campaign Tech and the Emerging Technology and Activism groups. I would like to lend my experience with Facebook in how activists and campaign aides can best use Facebook as a social networking platform to advance a progressive agenda. Consider this the first in a series about how to effectively use a Facebook fan page for your organization:
What Are Facebook Fan Pages?
Facebook fan pages are special profile pages that are set up to promote a local business, a public figure, an organization, brand or product, and causes. Say, if you wanted to set up a Facebook fan page as an extension of your organization's website, it would be best to set it up as a brand or product with the subcategory for website selected. You can also set it up as a cause or non-profit organization, although I would argue against setting it up as a cause because if you do, then you can't have a default landing tab for visitors to your page to visit.
Here's an example of what I mean below if you set up your Facebook fan page as a cause. You don't see "Default Landing Tab" between "Wall Tab Shows" and "Posting
Ability" as you do in the second image below:
And if you do not set up your fan page as a cause, but as an non-profit organization or community and other options, you get the option to have a default landing tab for visitors to first see when they visit your fan page:
As you can see, the default landing tab is selected for the "Wall" which is what your Facebook visitors will see when they land on your Facebook fan page.
The default landing tab is a very valuable marketing tool for your organization. For instance, if you started online advertising that was designed to drive visitors to a custom tab you made for your Facebook fan page, such as this custom tab here, that would be what your visitors would see if you changed your default landing tab from "Wall" to "Twitter."
What Are Custom Tabs?
Custom tabs are iFrame applications that you can design with Shortstack, North Social, and other programs. I prefer Shortstack because they have various widgets that you can embed within one iFrame app. You can embed Youtube, RSS feeds, Twitter feeds, Rich Text/HTML code, Javascript, Flash, Images, and so on to a custom tab that looks like this:
I added just two widgets to the custom iFrame app, which was the rich text/html, and the twitter feed. I could've added a background image such as a textured background if I had wanted to.
You can put petitions, e-mail sign-ups, comment threads, and a "reveal" action item for people to "like" your Facebook fan page in order to see the action item. The potential is pretty much unlimited with a custom tab that you can create with an iFrame application. Say, if you wanted to run a petition for your organization on Facebook, you could create a custom tab for your Facebook fan page, select the Default Landing Tab and change it from "Wall" to your custom tab once you've installed that tab to your fan page.
And you can do online advertising on Facebook that would drive new Facebook visitors to your Facebook fan page to use that petition custom tab. You would have to select "external URL" when creating an online ad for your custom tab so you can write the title of the ad and the ad copy that you want. All you have to do is copy/paste the URL of the Facebook custom tab into the external URL field, and you're good to go.
Let me know if you found this diary helpful, and there'll be more like this one. :-)