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In our earlier post we discussed that how we can add a custom tab on a facebook page and in this post we’d discuss that how can we popularize that facebook page to ensure that our brand name spreads and we can find targeted users. Of course, there have been many blogs that have already spoken about it and we’d like to ensure that this blog post will feature the best of techniques to ensure that you’d be able to promote your facebook page in the best of ways.

Lets start with the basics

best-friends-2.jpg 1. Invite your amigo : There will always be friends who’d be close and will be always ready to help you. If you have few friends like that in your list, why aren’t you inviting them? Invite them, ask them to spread the word, ask them to further invite their friends. This should help in spreading the name pretty quickly.

2. Updates are must – In order to ensure that your facebook page becomes a Rock Star, you’d need to keep it up to date. More over, if anyone would interact on your facebook page, its activity may appear in their timeline and thus will help in attracting more eye-balls. You can always use following applications for automating various tasks -

  • TwitterFeed – Using this service you can setup your blog feed and publish the updates on Twitter & Facebook. So whenever you’ll write a blog post, its link will automatically be published on these networks. This will ensure that you’ll get more traffic on your blog plus it’ll engage the fans as well. Since its the feeds that you can setup – you can easily setup feed from YouTube, Digg, Flickr or other services that you use.
  • Twitter Application – This little application displays your tweets on facebook and also lets you publish all your tweets on facebook. So even if you are posting updates on Twitter, they will be pushed on Facebook too. Thus keeps your pages active with fresh content.
  • HootSuite – I think it’s one of the best applications around as far as pushing the content on multiple networks. This wonderful service lets you schedule your tweets and with least amount of efforts you can easily manage Facebook pages, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts. So to ensure that fresh content is posted at all the times, you can schedule the updates easily using this.

Some Free Viral Marketing is on your way

Now that we’ve ensured that the content on your Facebook account is all up to date, its time to ensure that we can try and increase the fans for your business page. There are manual and tiring methods as you need to engage in conversation with new fans. Lets check them out -


viral-marketing.jpg 3. Search New Users – Facebook’s search displays results from updates across facebook. So if you have a business page about Custom WordPress Themes then do a search for “WordPress” and you’ll surely find lots of users that you can target. Engage in conversation with them and try to add them on your network.

4. Add friends of friends – You can also try to engage in conversation with friends of your friends and then add them on your network. This is a slow process however a darn effective one.

5. Add Facebook fan widget on your blog – Its not that you can only visitors from Facebook to your blog. You can also add Facebook fans from your blog. There will always be many visitors who’d come on your blog from search engines and they can become the fan if you give them the option of becoming one. Simply add a widget on your blog and see it in action.

Spend money and market your page quickly

Above activities would require decent amount of hours and efforts, however not everyone is blessed with that much amount of time. So if you can shell out some money, you’d be able to attract thousands of users for your business page. Here are some of the ways -


pay-per-click.jpg 6. Giveaways attracts new visitors – Even small giveaways like e-books, books can help in generating lots of visitors to your account. If you have a product that you can afford to give away, then go ahead and do it. Just ask your current fans to share your specific update and the luck winner can win. This can get pretty viral depending on how excited the fans are about that particular giveaway.

7. Social Ads – Facebook gives great advertising options. You can run various ad campaigns and attract users on your facebook page. Facebook’s social ads are pretty effective and you get to decide that how much money you want to spend. It’s quick and effective for sure!

8. Impress the visitors with custom landing pages – Well, if you can spend some money then get a custom tab designed and coded. An impressive landing tab page will always attract users and they would love to spread it as well.

Engaging with fans is important

Once you’ve added lots of fans, its important that they don’t forget you. We’ve already discussed that how you can keep fresh content coming on your pages, however if you won’t engage in conversation with your fans, all the efforts will go in vein. To avoid that here are few things you should keep on doing -

9. Comments and messages – Make sure that if a user comes and posts updates on your page, then you should thank them by sending messages. Leave comments on their updates regularly, this would keep them active.

10. Help them and they’ll help you – If your fans have blog around same industry then promote it on your pages. This will build a stronger relationship. After all thats what social networking is all about, isn’t it?

Caution – Don’t try to spam. Its good that you want to promote your business, however you shouldn’t forget that there may be many friends of yours who won’t be that much interested in knowing about your business every single hour. Make sure that your idea is to have the positive PR and not to be in the bad books of your close network.

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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


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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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Around six month back, I wrote a blog post “What you need to learn from Valleywag’s blogger?” and I guess, history has repeated itself. This time, Andrew Keen has replaced Paul Boutin but the theory remains the same i.e. “blogs are dead“. Yawn!! Yawn!!

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When the world is talking about leaked iPhone 3.0 beta 2 and praising it all over, I’ve been pretty unfortunate enough to not own it till this time and probably I should blame Indian mobile telcos for the same. I understand that iPhone’s pricing is pretty ridiculous in India, however I would go for it if Indian Telcos provide an unlimited 3g facility (we can expect that they’ll launch 3G soon in India) with it. My craving for having an iPhone increased when Abhishek bought it and was flaunting it in WordCamp India, that Blog Design Studio co-organized in Feburary.

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I noticed that there are many bloggers out there, who make small mistakes every now and then. So thought that it’ll be a great idea to run a series that’ll point out the mistake that can be fixed. Not only this will ensure that, people will get aware of those small problems, they’ll be on their toes to fix it as well.

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In my earlier post (SEO tips for WordPress), I’ve mentioned that it’s good to be controversial (although, it can help in downgrading your image over a period of time) however, sometimes it can help you in showing that you are stupid as well. In the example which I’m going to show you, you’ll see both the aspects of being controversial! Not only the guy helps the company get lot of linkbacks and stirs up conversation, it also shows that he’s nothing but another stupid fellow, who just wrote the article without thinking that how stupid he’ll look in front of everyone and that it could hurt his profile in any way.

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