Facebook Sunday: Iframe Apps (aka Landing Tabs) Part I

I must begin this post by saying I'm not a loser. I'm saying that to convince me, not you. The last time I did the handy little trick I'm about to show, FB pages were set up completely different. So I spent several hours (not exaggerating) learning how to do this again. I finally figured it out but it was a stressful process (ask my kidlets - I think I screamed at them way too many times throughout the process!) But on to the post...

One reason I set up The Write Advice on Facebook was so that I had a FB page to use for demonstrations on this blog. The trick I'm going to show you is probably my favorite FB page app, but has lots of steps to setting up so I hope I don't get too technical on y'all.  I promise it's worth it.

Have you ever gone to a Facebook page and seen a cool advertisement-ish pic or info instead of their wall? For example, if you are NOT a fan of Elana Johnson's Facebook page for Possession, then you will see this when you go to her page:

If you are a fan of her page already, then you will arrive at her wall:

You can also try looking at American Express, Coca-cola, or Pepsi.  All of them, if you have NOT "liked" their page, will take you to what is known as a landing tab. (If you already are a fan of every single example I have given you, then go to one of them, scroll down to the left hand side of the page and choose the option "unlike".  You can easily "like" the page again when you're done seeing what I'm talking about.)

Landing tabs are super cool because, think about it, do you really have the same message to share with your fans as you do with your non-fans? The marketing answer is no, you do not. People who are not yet your fans should see your sales pitch. The people who are already fans should not. If you have an author or a book page, I seriously recommend adding a landing tab.

Now, here's the how. It's lengthy so we will be doing this in 2 posts. 

First:  Create the images to use for your landing tab.  You will need 2 images: the first is your actual landing tab.  The second is the image will see immediately after liking your page.  If you are not a fan of The Write Advice, you can see what I'm talking about by going to that page. You see the image on the left.  If you "like" the page, you will immediately see the image to the right. The next time you come to this page, you will see the wall.

You can create your two images using any photo creator you desire.  Photoshop is, of course, excellent.  But if you are really not very graphically savvy, you can make your landing tab with simple graphics and text in Publisher or even PowerPoint.  

I did mine in PowerPoint just to show you how easy it is. I created one slide for each picture. To get the scale right, I only used half the slide. Here's what my first slide looked like in PowerPoint:

After you've made your slide you must save it as a PNG.  To do this, select "Save As".  Name your file. Then hit the button beneath the name and it will open up to a list of different files.  Select PNG Portable Networks Graphic.

Ok, that's your homework, folks. Folks with a Facebook page anyway.  Go create your two images and come back Monday. On Monday I will show you the next steps in place of Monday's FAMP.

Remember this can only work with a Facebook page. Not a Facebook personal profile.


Do you have a Facebook author or book page? Are you planning to have one? Did I just teach this to a whole bunch of readers who have no intentions at all of having a Facebook author or book page? Gee, maybe I truly am a loser!