How To Create a Facebook Fan Page

You can use Facebook Fan pages to create a unique branded presence in Facebook. Here are two examples:

When you arrive at those pages, they don't look like Facebook. They use the look-and-feel of their sites. Victoria's Secret is probably the best example of Facebook fan pages. And of course, my page is the first one to explain how to do this.

What You Need:

A personal Facebook account
A place where you can place images and use a URL to point to that image, such as your website
A credit card
Advanced beginner's understanding of HTML. If you can create a table and place items in cells, that's enough.

How to Build Your Facebook Fan Page

Log into your Facebook account.
At upper right, select "Account | Help Center"
In the box, select "Pages for Businesses"
Select "Admins: Creating, administering, and editing your Page" (Note: this changes often, so the link may change. Look for a link to allow you to create a page).
Select the type of business: Local, Brand/Product/Organization, or Public Figure.
When you select a category, use the dropdown menu to select the sub-category.

Local: Other Business, Automotive, Automotive Dealer / Vehicle Service, Banking and Financial Service, Bar, Cafe, Club, Convention Center and Sports Complex, Education, Event Planning Service, Grocery, Health and Beauty, Home Service, Hotel / Lodging, Library / Public Building, Medical Service, Museum / Attraction, Park, Pets, Professional Service, Real Estate, Religious Center, Restaurant, Store, Technology and Telecommunications Service, Travel Service
Brand, Product, or Organization: Products, Airline / Ship / Train Station, Communications, Consumer Product, Fashion, Film, Financial Service, Food and Beverage, Game, Government, Home Living, Hotel / Lodging, Non-Profit, Online Store, Pharmaceutical, Professional Service, Religious Organization, Rental Cars, Retail, Sports / Athletics, TV Show, Technology Product / Service, Travel, Website
Artist, Band, or Public Figure: Other Public Figure, Actor, Athlete, Band, Comedian, Critic, Government Official, Model, Musician, Politician, Sports Team, Visual Artist, Writer

This is critical. Once you select, you can't change this. You'll have to take down the page, lose all of your fans, and create a new page. For reference, here the categories. Discuss this carefully with your marketing team and select the best choice.
Next, enter your Page Name. This too is important. The page name and subcategory appear in the dropdown menu when people search. For example, I appear in Facebook as "Andreas Ramos, Author." Choose the name of your company, brand, organization, etc., that most people will recognize. This can not be changed later.

That creates the page. You can fill out the Info, upload some photos, and so on. Let's edit the tabs.
The rest of this document explains how to create a landing page. This is the page that non-registered visitors see when they first visit your Fan page. After they register (they click "Like") and return to your site, they'll come to the Wall page.

The purpose of the landing page is simple: they know what the site is about and, if it matches their interests, they sign up as a fan. So you clearly state the purpose and you motivate them to sign up.
Click (at far left) Edit Page. Scroll to the bottom. Hopefully, under "More Applications", there is "Static FBML".

FBML (Facebook Markup Language) is a subset of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). Most of the elements of HTML are in FBML. As far as I know, there is no documentation about FBML. If you find that, let me know and I'll add it to this.

By clicking on "Static FBML", you add a bit of Facebook software to your Fan page.
Click "Static FBML."
This brings you to the page for Static FBML. At the upper right, click "Add to my Page." This shows you a list of the Fan Pages that you manage. Click the one that you just created. You're done. Wasn't that easy?
Go back to your Fan Page (usually, you can click the Backspace tab).
Scroll to the bottom. Wake up. Pay attention. This will be a convoluted process and it gets a bit tricky.
At the bottom, there is a new item "FBML - FBML". Click on Edit.
This opens an empty box. This is a Facebook Canvas. You can put whatever you like into this box.
First, give it a title. At Box Title, enter "Hello" (or enter your company name, your product's name, your cat's name, whatever. You can change this later.)
In the box marked FBML, you enter the HTML for your page. However, this is FBML, so it's less code.

- FBML doesn't use the <HEAD> section. Don't add that.
- FBML uses the content inside the <BODY> tabs, but it doesn't use <BODY> itself.
- All paths must be absolute, not relative. If you have an image, the image tag is:

Relative Path: <img src="/images/cat.jpg">
Absolute Path: <img src="http://www.mysite.com/images/cat.jpg">

See? You have to tell Facebook where the image is available. (For simplicity, I left out the image width and height, plus the alt parameter. You should include those.)

The same for URLs:
Relative Path: <a href="cat-story.html">My Cat</a>
Absolute Path: <a href="http://www.mysite.com/cat-story.html">My Cat</a>

The URL has to point to the file with the full URL.

You don't need to include a target="_blank" parameter; Facebook does that for all external links.

Other Items About FBML:
- Facebook won't use the Google Analytics tag. Facebook and Google are at war with each other, so Facebook blocks that code.
- FBML uses the <TABLE> tags, so you can use tables for layout.
- FBML and CSS: I've tested CSS in the HEAD and as an Internal Style Sheet. Those don't work. The only way to use CSS is as inline style. This means I don't think it's possible to use CSS for layout. (If you find out how, let me know and I'll update this.)

To use InLine CSS, add the CSS style commands into the HTML text format tags. Here is an example:

<h1 style="color:blue;font-size:40pt;text-align:center;background-color:yellow;">Hello, World</h1>
<p style="color:green;font-size:20pt;text-align:right;font-family:sans-serif;">Welcome to my <span style="color:red;">first</span> paragraph.</p>

You can copy this block of code and try it in your page.
Save your changes by clicking Save Changes.
To see the results, click your logo at the left-top of the page. If you click the Facebook logo, it'll take you to your personal page and you'll have to navigate back to the Fan page.

To see examples of fan pages, visit CustomFacebookPage.com and FacebookShowcast.net.

Tip #1: The easy solution: Make a screen shot of your website. Edit it (max width 760 pixels). Paste that image.
Tip #2: Don't just use your website's front page. Do something to get people to sign up: "Win a Free iPad!"
Find the tab that you just made. Generally, it's hidden. At the end of the tab row, click the plus mark. Select the tab. See? There's your text.
Let's turn off tabs. Click Edit Page. In the list of tabs, go to Discussion Board. Click "Application Settings" and click Remove (you can always add these again later). This turns off the tab from your fan page. Turn off the tabs that you're not using.
Add Administrators. You can give other people the ability to edit pages. Click on Edit Page and find the Admins section. Click there and add people. Any admin can add and remove other admins, but nobody can remove the original creator of the page.
Move the tab in the row: As the owner and administrator, you can move the tabs around. Grab the tab and move it in the row.
Make your new page into the landing page:
Click Edit Pages. From the list, select Wall Settings. Under the View Settings, at "Default Landing Page for Everyone Else", use the dropdown menu to select your new page.
You can also set permissions for your fans to post to the Wall.
Notify all of your friends to join your Fan page.

How to Promote Your Fan Page

Use Facebook's PPC. To get started, here's free $50 in credit. Use the code fb-adtech-sf. (Do this quickly, it will expire soon!)

More Notes

Fan pages can grow to several hundred thousand fans or more. We can help you with digital marketing. If you're spending $25,000 or more per month in online advertising, contact me.