I was always impressed with the fan page of Chris Guillebeau’s The Art of Nonconformity [his blog]. It was one of the first few fan pages that used the power of Custom tabs in Facebook Pages. What I loved about this fan page was that it first loads the Welcome Page for those users who aren’t fan at the moment. Check out the page (link mentioned above) and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Lets find out that how one can add Custom Tabs on Facebook Fan page.

1. Go to Static FBML application

This is the application that helps in creating the custom tabs. This application renders HTML & FBML (Facebook markup language), so pretty much gives enough control to the user to customize the page the way they want. We’ll learn about the customization in upcoming posts.

2. Click on Add to my Page

As soon as you click on this, it’ll give you the option of selecting the page where you would like to add this application. Just select the right page and click on Add to page. Nothing much will happen, click on Close.

3. Edit your tab page

At this point, you should continue editing your fan page. You’ll notice there will be a new application that you would need to edit. This application comes from “Static FBML” and once we click on “Edit” (as shown in screenshot) – we’ll get the ability to customize the tab page.

4. Customize the tab page

As you can see that I’ve used the HTML tags to create a “test” Welcome Page. Of course, you’d need to know HTML or FBML in order to publish anything on these pages. Either you can use a free WYSIWYG web page editor or if you are comfortable with WordPress editor, then simply write your message and then go to HTML editor section and use the code.

5. Adding the tab on the Fan Page

Once you are done with designing your custom facebook tab page. You would want to show it on your fan page. You will need to visit the page as administrator and click on the “+” icon at the right hand side of all the tabs. You’ll see your custom developed page in the list, just select it and you are good to go!

Note : You can always drag and drop the tab to change its position. For e.g. you may want to have this tab as the 3rd tab instead of 7th, then you just need to drag it on the left hand side till it comes to the third position.

6. Loading the custom tab at first

Again edit the page and in that edit the “Wall Settings”. This will give the option of selecting your custom tab page as the “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else“

Just save the settings and everything should work the way you always wanted. Custom Tabs on Facebook Fan pages is a wonderful feature as its a quick way to introduce about who you are and what services do you offer. If optimized properly, it can be a great resource in your “Social Media Marketing strategy“. I’ll come up with optimization tricks in the next post and to ensure that you don’t miss it – you can subscribe to our newsletter.

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2010. | Permalink

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Well, it plays approximately the same role in representing your blog to the world as looks do for women. A pretty woman will definitely be “right” at the moment she appears in front of the people. Later on, she may turn out to be stupid, boring, or even malicious, but she has won the first battle anyway. The same goes for your blog. You may have the best of the content however if you don’t have a good blog design, you’ll still lose a lot of readers just because the presentation of the blog isn’t that good.

Your blog’s design is very important to you. It reflects on you and how you’re perceived by other people. Believe it or not, first impressions do count. A good blog design will absolutely give you a better first impression. It encourages the people to click and read a bit further and get to the all-important content. In the wide world of blogging, the content might be the king, but the design is the queen. So use your first impression and give the content of your blog a better chance to be seen by the world.

In one of earlier poll (which unfortunately is still running, we’ll change it soon) results we found out that more than 80% of this blog’s readers think that blog design is really important in a blog’s success. Apart from that there are some of very renowned blogger/designers share there views about blog design -

1. How important is design to a blog’s success? – by Vandley Design.
2. Better keep a log on your blog (quoting Kiruba Shankar, one of the most prolific bloggers from India)
3. How important is blog design service? – Performancing

What makes a great blog design?

Again a lot has been already said on this particular topic, so I thought it would be best to share those wonderful links with you all -

1. 5 Characterstics of good blog design!
2. What makes a design good?
3. Ten important traits of a good blog design.

The design of your blog is just as important as any other aspect of your business and it will be wise to plan it in your budget. In blogging you can always change things, experiment, see what works and than use it. So take care of your blog design. Start with experimenting in a WordPress theme and if someday you decide to hire a blog designer to help you out, the Blog Design Studio is available and eager to help you any time.

© Igor for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink

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Marko Saric is right about the fact that -

The key concept of Twitter is the real-time search. Google generally works with old material while a search on Twitter gives you real-time information on topics people discuss. It is a real technological advance and it can be used for you to promote your services, show your quality, get customers and earn money on Twitter.

Twitter is one place where bloggers are present and are pretty active in sharing links and their views on various topics around the world. They actively ask questions and share their problems too. This is where I try to take benefit of the real-time search through TweetDeck by searching for the term ProBlogger & WordPress.

Why do I search for the terms Problogger & WordPress?

Darren’s twitter handle is “Problogger” so whenever some one replies to him or if they retweet his tweets, it all appears in my the search results. This way I get to know that who all are interested in reading Darren’s content and love to interact with him. As Darren’s followers are mostly bloggers and our client base are bloggers too, so it makes sense for me to follow them and interact with them too and with the help of real-time search, it just becomes easier for me to find all of them.

I also search for the term “WordPress” as that helps me keep track of latest happening around WordPress and if some blogger posts a problem around WordPress or if they are interested in custom wordpress theme, then I can easily interact with them.

So, isn’t this a nice way of attracting more clients and for building relationship with new bloggers? Do you know any other method through which you market your products or services through twitter?

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink

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Although, I think that Twitter actually deserves that kind of attention. The reason is simple – finally we have a simple (not really for the starters) that fits everybody’s needs – be it marketers, bloggers, be it business owners, enterprises, celebrities, developers, designers and just about everyone! So, if there is a tool that is attracting everyone, don’t you think it deserves the attention that it is getting?

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink

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It may sound like that we don’t have many subscribers however, I’ve really not done enough work on this blog to gain that many subscribers too. I’ve just stuck to basics that I’m putting here and will also put other practical tips that other bloggers have used to ensure that they get more and more number of subscribers.

Increase your blog subscriber base

1. Niche blogs enjoy more number of subscribers – It has been noticed that if you have a blog on one particular topic/subject then you’d definitely get more number of bloggers. Blog Design Studio focuses specifically on WordPress & Blogging related tips and that’s why we’ve got these many subscribers and that too without much efforts.

2. Write posts regularly – I’ve kept a low pace of posts on this blog and normally I post not more than 4-5 posts in a week. Although, I’ve got plans to post more and more posts on it as I’ve noticed that the more posts you publish, you’d attract more subscribers as most of the subscribers are interested in a particular topic and want more and more information about it.

3. Don’t forget to add the value in the posts – If you really want to increase the subscriber base, then you should ask these questions every time you decide to write a blog post -

1. Will this add value for my subscribers?
2. Will this post serve the purpose for the new visitor and will it make sense to them?
3. Am I bringing a new perspective to this news?

The moment you’ll take care of these questions in your blog post, you’ll definitely churn out a high quality post that’ll attract readers and in turn they’ll become the subscribers. If there is any blog that I’d consider

4. Good marketing is a must – I’ve seen many wonderful posts that deserve digg front page or retweets that Mashable attracts, however they don’t have good number of subscribers. Why is that? The answer is “they lack good marketing”! I’m working on it, so I won’t be the best person however, I’ll list out common stuff, quotes, links from other famous and popular bloggers -

4a) 30 web design seo tips for web masters (also true for bloggers).
4b) How to market your blog in 2007 (its true in 2009 and will be true in coming years as well)
4c) Hit Digg’s front page by writing killer headlines.

4d) It’s important to be in touch and network with bloggers. You’d see that most of the tips will be around latest and “IN” thing of the year. Be active on most of the social networks, however focus mainly on one of them (you’d have to find out which one is easy to use and the one which is working for you).

Remember these wonderful lines by Darren (my blogging guru) -

20 minutes onTwitter, 5 minutes on MySpace, 20 minutes reading other blogs on Google Reader, 30 minutes checking out photos of friends on Facebook, 20 minutes checking out the latest threads on our favorite forums, back to Twitter for 20 minutes, 15 minutes following links we found on Digg……..

It’s easy to get to the end of the day and wonder what it was that we really achieved. We aimlessly drift around the web and have very little to show for the time we spend.

5. Blog design plays an important role too – One of the key reasons due to which we’ve got a decent subscriber base is that we have a good blog design and we focused in ensuring that the readers should see the subscribing options at important places. Check out these posts to find out that the role of a blog design in increasing the subscriber base -

5a) “Who sees ads” trick increased email subscriber base by 180%.
5b) How to increase subscribers by 50% in 30 days.

By good blog design, I don’t mean visually appealing and jazzy graphics! By good blog design, I mean that it the navigation should be easy and important things should be placed well in the sidebar and should be above the fold. Any good blog designer will work on those elements for you if you’ll tell them about your blog strategy of increasing the subscriber base.

I think if you would follow what I’ve written above and what you’d read in the links that I’ve mentioned in this blog post, you’d really be able to increase the blog subscriber base to the level you want to see. There is no other rocket science involved and no computer algorithms are required! It’s pretty simple and yet complicated, so the choice is yours! Don’t lose your focus and keep blogging with a plan in mind and you’d be one of popular blogger on charts!

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink

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It was a hot afternoon (not really! just trying to give it a dramatic angle) and the jaljeera story starts from this tweet of mine. Sachin & I were having fun on Twitter and was later joined by Praval (he rather hijacked the conversation – Good work buddy!) and Ketan (also know as Keeda - he is responsible for the motivation behind making Jaljeera as trending topic & for the cartoon).

What started as fun little activity was taken sportingly by Indian Twitterati and with the help of my amazing friends on twitter, we were able to make JalJeera a trending topic on Twitter. Before I continue with the rest of the story, lets see what WikiPedia has to say about JalJeera -

Jal Jeera is an Indian beverage. In Hindi, “Jal” means water and “Jeera” means cumin. Jal Jeera is similar to lemonade and is a popular summer drink in India. It is generally served as an appetizer as it is intended to startle the taste buds.

I know that it sounds stupid, however after Ketan’s idea of making it trending topic, I thought that lets find out that after how many tweets, on a particular topic – we’d be able to make it trend. And I have to say that I came to know about few things that I would share with you in this blog post.

Some facts about making “Jaljeera” a trend

1. It took us nearly 500 tweets to make Jaljeera as a trending topic! WTHashtag was the first to tell us about this historic funny event. The first tweet about Jaljeera by me was found here (on page 80th as of now).

2. Our idea of making Jaljeera popular, didn’t really work properly. We all wanted that Jaljeera would become popular however, there weren’t many tweets from people, who wanted to know about this wonderful drink. I don’t think people were either interested in this drink or they got confused with all “hindi” tweets, or may be trending topics on twitter don’t really create the buzz that people expect!

3. All brands should be on twitter – There were many tweets which will easily light up the eyes of every marketer. There were many tweets where users replaced a particular product with Jaljeera and were tweeting their tag lines. For e.g. the tweet below is one of the tag lines of Cadbury’s Bournvita in India.

4. If you are part of it, you’ll definitely attract new followers. I found lots of new friends on twitter and it wouldn’t have been possible to make “jaljeera” a trend on twitter without them. I won’t say that I found lots and lots of followers, however I would say that now I know many of them and interact more than before and thus it will surely help me in future.

5. There is another thing that I noticed, however I would discuss it in the next post Don’t forget to subscribe to our rss feed or newsletter

In the end, I would like to thank everyone who helped us in making “jaljeera” a trending topic. It was indeed a fun friday!

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink

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Here are some of the reasons I could think of that made people to vote for that option -

1. Shows the seriousness of the blogger – A unique blog design costs decent enough that it’s chosen by only those bloggers who are very serious in blogging business. You can pick almost any successful blog and they mostly have custom blog designs as that helps them show their seriousness and love towards their blog.

2. Navigation and UI is in blogger’s hands – A custom blog design lets the owner of blog to be in the control of the blog. Various things like bread-crumbs and the placements of tags, custom comments, recent posts, related posts and just about everything one can think of. This helps in ensuring that the bounce rate can be reduced and thus helps in popularity of blogs.

3. On site optimization – As WordPress theme designers we ensure that the on-site optimization of the blogs are done and I’m sure that most of the WordPress theme designers take that in account as well. This surely is possible in free themes through various plugins however, there are various things that can be controlled through themes directly and thus saves one from staying away from plugins. You can take this point as an extra add-on.

What are the other reasons you think that make people believe in those blogs more than the one that are running on free themes ?

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink

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We’ll roll out more contests to ensure that Blog Design Studio community’s members (I guess, my marketing skills have improved as otherwise I would have referred all the readers as “you” ) will win various wonderful prizes like this one and the last prize that was a custom wordpress theme. You never know that you may be the winner of such prizes, so keep participating.

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink

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Since we got only two entries for the contest, I thought that it would be great if our readers will decide the winner of the contest. I would request you to please take some time and vote for these guys.

Poll will be open for next 24 hrs. and the winner will be decided on the basis of valid vote counts. Click on their names in the poll to see the entries.

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink

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The main day, Holi, also known as Dhulheti, Dhulandi or Dhulendi, is celebrated by people throwing coloured powder and coloured water at each other. Bonfires are lit the day before, also known as Holika Dahan (death of Holika) or Chhoti Holi (little Holi). The bonfires are lit in memory of the miraculous escape that young Prahlad had when Demoness Holika, sister of Hiranyakashipu, carried him into the fire.

On this happy festival’s occasion, we thought of running a small contest that is around colors and design. Lately, there have been many posts on business cards in the blogosphere and they all boast about unique business card designs and believe me or not, it definitely helps a lot in having a unique business card as it leaves a positive impression.

The idea is pretty simple. You’ll have to design your own business card, post it on your blog and submit the link in the comments or email it to me (me at mayank dot info). Here are some of the beautiful card design links that will surely motivate you to create some beautiful designs.

1. Cool business card designs.
2. The Coolest Business Cards – Beautiful & Unique Business Card Designs.
3. 70 Unique Business Cards.

You can always use free tools like Paint.NET, GIMP or even as simple as MS Paint to create the design and then blog about it. Here are some of the rules you’ll need to keep in mind. Oh! I just realized that I’ve not spoken about the prize!

This contest has been sponsored by Uprinting, leaders in Canvas prints and business card printing; they will be giving 1000 free business card prints and one 18×24 canvas print to two winners.

This is a lucrative offer and one good way of celebrating the festival of colors with some creativity. Coming back to the rules -

1. You just have to announce about this contest on your blog or twitter account once you are done with the design and describing what you would use the free business cards and/or canvas print for.
2. Try to be original.
3. Winners in the United States and Canada qualify for free shipping. Shipping fees will apply to winners outside these areas.
4. The contest closes on 17th March (according to your time zone).

Happy Holi once again!

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink

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