How to Create A Custom Facebook Welcome Tab

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With Facebook increasingly evolving into a social marketing hub for brands and organisations, the need to differentiate your page from others in order to gain that valuable click of the ‘like’ button is becoming ever-greater. And one of the best, easiest and quickest ways of creating immediate impact is to employ an inviting, graphic-rich, customised welcome page that directs visitors to sign up. It makes your page (and your brand) stand out from the crowd, it generates interest and it makes your page memorable. And the best part is, you need minimal knowledge of HTML coding to create one. 

Add Static FBML 

The starting point is to add Facebook’s own Static FBML application to your page. Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language) is a version of the standard web programming code HTML that enables you to create custom tabs on your Facebook page. To do this, go to the Static FBML application page, click the ‘Add to my Page’ link directly underneath the logo and select the page for which you are an administrator from the box. This will add a tab entitled ‘FBML1’ to your page. 

Create Your Content

There are lots of things you can do with custom Facebook tabs, from embedding video to email signup forms to creating fan-only content that appears only once a visitor has clicked the ‘like’ button. I’ll blog about some of these methods in future, but for now let’s concentrate on the simplest and, arguably, most striking use – adding a clickable image, such as this one.

The first thing you need to do is to create your graphic. This should be no more than 520 pixels wide but can be as tall as you wish. However, try and keep scrolling to a minimum. Once your image has been created, it must be hosted somewhere on the web. I use Photobucket as I have found it more reliable than either the Facebook photos function or Flickr. Whatever you choice, upload your image and copy its direct URL.

Add the Content to Your New Tab

Next, on the Facebook page you are working on, click on ‘Edit Page’ under the logo, scroll down until you see ‘FMBL1’ and click on ‘Edit’. You are now able to rename and create the design of your custom welcome tab. In the blank FBML panel, copy and paste this code:

< a href="click_url">< img src="image_url" />

Replace ‘click_url ‘ with the URL that you wish to link to. This could be your website, but it makes more sense in the context of a welcome page to be the URL of your page’s Wall. Then replace ‘image_url’ with the direct URL of the image that you uploaded to Photobucket (or other picture hosting website). Then click ‘Save Changes’ and you’re done!

Set Your Welcome Page as the Default Landing Page

Once your new page is live, the final step is to adjust the settings so that new visitors land on the welcome page rather than the Wall. From your new tab, click ‘Edit Page’ under the logo and then click ‘Edit’ under ‘Wall Settings’. Next to ‘Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else’, select the name of the tab from the dropdown menu.

That’s it. One shiny, new, welcoming, graphic-laden, message-heavy tab that will encourage your visitors to hang around!

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