Getting started with Facebook landing pages - welcome your visitors with a video!

When people who “like” your Facebook Page stop by for a visit, Facebook automatically brings them to the Wall. For new visitors, though, you can designate a specific tab for them to view. Why not use this feature to build a landing page that matches your branding, engages new potential clients, and encourages visitors to connect with you?

Until very recently, the standard method of making custom tabs for Facebook business Pages involved a Facebook version of HTML called FBML - Facebook Markup Language. There was an official app available called Static FBML, and you could use it to make a highly customized tabs to act as landing page for your business Page. Recently, Facebook has started to phase out support for FBML; iframes are the replacement. (If you’re curious about the technical details, check out Facebook’s official announcement to developers.)

New iframe-based apps are starting to pop up to replace Static FBML. I haven’t found an officially-sanctioned Facebook app yet, but one app that seems to work well is called iFrameWrapper. (Do you know of any other good apps for this purpose? Leave a comment!)

Ready to get started on your video landing page? Follow these steps:

1. Install the app to your Page
   • Go to your Page and click “Edit Page” (in the upper right corner).
   • Click “Apps” in the navigation on the left.
   • Click “Browse more applications >>” at the bottom of the page.
   • Search for “iFrameWrapper: best FBML alternative” (or another iFrame app if you prefer, but most of these directions will specifically apply to this app).
   • Click on the app and scroll down until you find “Add to My Page” on the left. Click this and choose your Page. (If you are the admin for multiple Pages, they’ll all show up here. Just pick one for now, and you can do the same thing for the other pages later.)
2. Name your landing tab
   • Go back to your Page. Your new landing tab will appear in the left navigation, and it’ll be titled “Welcome” by default.
   • Click on “Edit Page.”
   • Click on “Apps.”
   • Click on “iFrameWrapper.”
   • Click on “Edit Settings.”
   • Enter whatever you’d like in the “Custom Tab Name” field.
3. Build your landing tab
   • Click on the landing tab name in the left navigation (Welcome, or whatever you chose in Step 2).
   • Click on “Settings” at the bottom of the tab. You can choose between HTML, CMS, or iFrames, but for our purposes of building a simple landing page with video, let’s stick with HTML. (For advanced editing tips, click the Help button on the tab.)
   • Paste the embed code from your video! If your video is hosted on a public platform like YouTube, look for a button that says “Share” or “Embed” and copy the code. You’ll want to choose a width less than 510 pixels.

You can add more content to your landing page; it’s just like a website, so whatever you can think of to do with HTML, it’ll probably work! Text, photos, more videos...experiment and have fun!

Remember how I told you that Facebook, by default, only allows you to set a landing tab for non-fans, and that fans will always be taken directly to the wall? Well, a nice thing about iFrameWrapper is that it does let you display different content to fans and non-fans. Even though fans will be taken directly to the Wall when they arrive on your Page, they still might click on your landing tab, because it’s displayed in your menu on the left. They’ll see the content that you put in the “fan” box in the iFrameWrapper settings.

Do you have any tips for creating Facebook landing pages? Leave a comment and let us know!

Posted by Rachel Blumenthal
Friday, 13 May 2011