In today’s quick screen cast I’ll show you how to add a custom landing tab to your Facebook fan page.
Additional Note: Sometimes Facebook will automatically add your FMBL as a tab. If you are NOT seeing your fbml as a tab or as an option in when you click the plus sign, go to edit page > scroll to your fbml > under the fbml title click “Application Settings” > make sure the tab is set to “added”.
Stay tuned for more screen casts for Facebook and Twitter. Please comment below, we’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for what you’d like to see!
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also become a fan of Vestor Logic on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Today’s quick screen cast will discuss FBML and how to use it to create a custom Facebook fan page for your business.
Additional Note: Sometimes Facebook will automatically add your FMBL as a tab. If you are NOT seeing your fbml as a tab or as an option in when you click the plus sign, go to edit page > scroll to your fbml > under the fbml title click “Application Settings” > make sure the tab is set to “added”.
Stay tuned for more screen casts for Facebook and Twitter. Please comment below, we’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for what you’d like to see!
In this brief screen cast I’ll cover what you need to create your own Facebook fan page for your business.
Additional Note: If you want to create a test page to experiment with building your own fan page, when you are done you can delete the page by going to the page you created>edit page>delete page (link in sub nav near the thumbnail)
Stay tuned for more screen casts for Facebook and Twitter. Please comment below, we’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for what you’d like to see!
While in the process of writing the new Twitter training lab documentation (coming soon!), I’ve been playing around with some of the more advanced components of Twitter. Here are a few of my favorites: Twitter Advanced Search
This easy-to-use web based form allows you to really hone your search. You can search within specific date ranges, search tweets by or references to specific people, search retweets, etc. One interesting feature is the ability to filter by location. This piece is bound to grow more powerful as users see the value in geo-targeting themselves and their tweets, and as location-based services like Gowala and Foursquare continue to gain traction.
One of my favorite features is the ability to filter based on “attitude”, tweets that use smiley faces, frowns or question marks. This is nowhere near as thorough a view as offered by products like Consumer Base that really study and interpret the language of tweets, but it’s a pretty decent tools for the average user.
If you prefer to write your search queries yourself in the twitter search box, the Twitter Advanced Search Operators are for you. These operators reflect the same filters as the advanced search interface, but without all that annoying ease-of-use. If you write queries regularly, this may actually be faster for you. It’s syntax-tic! Moving on…
Search Widget
I love this one. Use the interface to define your search query, title and caption, test it right there, then finish and grab code. Voila! You can a display a custom stream of tweets related to whatever you choose right on your page or blog.
For example, say you run a blog called SchnauzersRock.com, because you love Schnauzers. (No, I don’t love Schnauzers, we’re talking about YOU). You could search for Schnauzers, love, I love Schnauzers. Then add a title and caption and…
Paste the code right on your site for non-stop Schnauzer love.
Or course these tools offer compelling listening tools for your business, even if it is not Schnauzer-related. Use advanced search to find people worth following, use the search widget to create a real time view into conversations that are, and aren’t, happening around your industry right now and share with your readers.
How are you using these tools to gain insight into your business?
Last week while reading The Key to Social Media Success is Just 2 Letters, by Jay Baer, I was struck by his notion of helping vs. selling. His basic concept is that by giving, developing those initially trust-based relationships through sharing and being helpful, clients will come to you when they move beyond DIY mode. This makes a lot of sense to me because I am not a sales person. At all. It takes a very specific skill-set to walk into a room and walk out with a signed contract, and I don’t have it.
However, I am a helper (some might say enabler; tomato, tomahto). It’s easy to forget about these opportunities to help in the midst of maintaining clients, creating proposals and day to day business tasks.
Jay refers to several good examples of companies creating something helpful that leads not directly to sales, but indirectly. Nationwide Insurance’s iPhone app for on-site accident reporting, Geek Squad’s YouTube channel, I won’t go through all the details here since he’s already done such a beautiful job in the article (you can read it here). They position themselves to become your go-to in those instances where you need that next level of help.
He recommends doing a “helpfulness audit” of your company. So we did. We realized that in the process of creating our new Training Lab series (currently in development) there were several opportunities to create screencasts of some of the core elements involved in setting up various social media initiatives.
Currently I am deep into developing our Facebook Training Lab. Some of our clients already use Facebook on a personal level, but there are many out there who don’t, and even more who don’t use it for business. As I began outlining the structure of the Facebook Training Lab, I immediately identified four topics about which we could create free screencasts. These topics may seem simple to some, for others these will be akin to a foreign language. They represent the core building blocks for creating a Facebook “fan” page. Here is my list so far:
How to create a Facebook Page for your business
Intro to fbml for Facebook
Creating a custom landing page for your Facebook Page
Adding admins to your Facebook Page
By offering these out to the world, we can help people create their own Facebook Page (for the uninitiated, “pages” are for businesses, brands and interests, “profiles” are for individuals). If they stumble or want to go to the next level, we’ll be there. By opening the door we open the conversation.
Now it’s your turn. Consider doing a about a helpfulness audit. How do you rate? Where could you and your company be more helpful in your space?
We’d love to hear about your progress, and will keep you up to date on ours.
