Iframe Apps (aka Landing Tabs) Part 2

Monday's From a Marketing Perspective will not be brought to you today.  Instead I bring you part 2 of creating landing tabs on your Facebook Page.  If you missed it, here's part one.

(From a marketing perspective - having a landing tab is an ideal choice for your Facebook author page or book page. So technically, I could still call this FAMP.)

By now you should have created two images for your Facebook page: one for non-fans and one for fans. Now let's go install the app itself.

1. From your Facebook page, click on your profile image. 
2. Click on the button that says "Add Profile Picture"
3. Click on select image and upload the image you want your fans to see (the second image). You can change this back later.
4. The picture you want your fans to see should,  now be your profile picture. Click "View Page". 
5. Click on your profile picture again. And then again so you are looking at your image like the image on the right.
6. From here, right click on your picture and select "properties".  This doesn't work in Google Chrome, by the way. I did it in Internet Explorer. You should get a box that looks like this:

7.  Do you see that long bunch of mumbo jumbo after the word "Address" in the picture above? You need to copy that address and paste it somewhere until later.  Make sure you copy the whole thing. It should start with http and end in jpg.  Mine looks like this: http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/312554_181606861909148_165666926836475_364009_726800_n.jpg

You can now put your Facebook profile picture back to what you had it as before if you would like.

8. From Facebook, search for Iframe Apps or click on the link here. There are many apps that will make a landing tab, but this is the easiest as far as I'm concerned.

9. Select to add the app to your page.  If you have several pages, you'll need to choose which page to add it to. Your page should look like this:

10. In that big white box, copy and paste the code that follows in red:

<style type='text/css'>

#wrapper {

width:520px;

height:500px;

margin:0 auto; border:0; padding:0;

position:relative;

}

</style>

<div id="wrapper">

 <div style='width:520px;'>

 <img src='COPY YOUR PICTURE ADDRESS IN PLACE OF THESE GREEN WORDS' /> 

 </div>

</div>

11. In place of the green font you should paste that address I told you to get earlier from your profile picture.

12. Almost done! Click on fan gate.

13. Upload your non-fan picture.  This is the image you want people to see if they have not liked your page yet.  

14. Click the box "Enable fan gate".

15. Go back to your Facebook page and click "Edit Page".

16. About a third down on this page you should see the words "Default Landing Tab".  Select "Welcome".

17. Hit save and you're done!

You won't be able to test your page yourself because you are an Admin to your Facebook Page. You can log out of Facebook entirely and then search for your page and you should see your non-fan page image. 

Whew, that was a lot of steps. I promise I won't get this technical on Facebook again. But now you have a great Facebook app that authors usually only get when they have a publisher designing their FB page. Aren't you super cool now?

Did I lose you? Please ask any questions in the comments below. 

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!