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How to Create a Facebook Landing Page (a guide for non-programmers)

By amankumra On June 21, 2011 In Social media With 1 Comment

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Ah, Facebook – that oh-so-pervasive marketing tool. There are tons of ways that your business can use Facebook as a way to attract and connect with potential customers. A very simple yet very effective way is through the use of a landing page. What is a landing page, you may ask? It’s very simple: a landing page is simply the page that people land on when they first browse your Facebook fan page.

A good landing page, as Thomas Sinfield notes in his article, is “a page that gives new visitors a quick overview of who you are and what you do, and then directs them what to do next.” So, as you can imagine, an interesting and attention-grabbing landing page can help you gain more fans and therefore push your product or service out to a wider array of potential customers. Here’s an example from the fan page of a well-known cosmetics company:

Many landing pages (including this one) offer some perk to liking the fan page – here, you can join their program after liking the page. These perks can sway consumers even more heavily to become a fan. For some other great examples of well-designed landing pages, check this out.

You may be saying to yourself, “That’s all well and good, but it sounds kinda technical. I don’t know about designing a web page for my business – that HTML stuff is way over my head….”

Never fear! Creating a landing page is not as difficult as you think; a few easy steps and even the computer-challenged among us can proudly display their new landing page, attracting fans and helping to generate profit.

Facebook used to require landing pages to use an FBML format, which was a little trickier and more labor intensive, but has recently switched to the simpler iFrame application. Since iFrame isn’t hosted on Facebook, it acts pretty much like any other standard web page.

This means that to create your landing page, you’ll need a Web-accessible server where you store the files for your application. You’ll need to go into your server platform and create a folder for all of your iFrame files, to help keep everything organized in one spot! Hyperarts has a good description of how to do this if you’re not sure.

After creating a place on your server, the next step to designing your new landing page is to add a Facebook App to your developer account. You do that by going to http://www.facebook.com/developers/ and clicking the “Set Up New App” button in the upper right corner.

After naming your app and completing the security question, you’ll be taken to the administrator (admin) screen. There, you need to upload 6 things:

1) a 16 x16 graphic that will be the icon on your page’s tab

2) canvas page – name used to access the app

3) canvas URL – path to your web server

4) canvas type – set to iFrame!!

5) tab name – what the tab will be called when added to your Facebook page

6) tab URL – filename of the HTML page on your web server where you store the iFrame.

For more on this step, as well as screen shots of what the admin screen looks like, check out Social Media Charity. Brag Interactive also has a nice step-by-step overview of this process, complete with screen shots. Make sure you save your changes!

A note here on the tab URL. To enter this, you’ll need to have the graphics part of your landing page done and saved to your web server. So, here’s how…

An easy way to make the actual landing page is with Photoshop. Landing pages are designed to be 520 pixels wide, so keep that in mind as you start playing around with images. Another helpful tip, courtesy of Mashable’s design guide (check it out for more information!) is to take a screenshot of the top of your page, like this:

Then, you can open the screenshot with Photoshop and design around it – that way, you’ll know how far over the “Like” button is, so you can have an arrow on the landing page pointing potential fans right to it!

If you haven’t used Photoshop much before, never fear – it requires no HTML and Thomas Sinfield has a great guide to making landing pages in Photoshop on his blog! Another option is to “Like” Brag Interactive on Facebook, which will then allow you to use their free template.

This step might actually be the most fun – Photoshop is where you get to exercise all your creative license. You can customize colors and fonts to the best reflection of your business: girly colors and cutesy fonts for a women’s clothing store, earth tones and bold fonts for a landscape business, sleek lines and muted colors for an engineering firm…the possibilities are limitless! Let your imagination have fun with this step.

Once you’re satisfied with what the landing page will look like, you’ll want to save your template into your web server as the index.html page: the address should be something like:

http://servername.com/facebook/myapp/index.php

The server name part is whatever your server is called, and myapp is the name of your particular app. Then, you put this URL into the page tabs section as you set up your application – the graphic below from Hyperarts shows this process.

Once you’ve got the URL added to the page tabs, we need to add the iFrame tab to your profile page. Go to your Application Profile Page, then find the link on the left that says “Add to my page”. Clicking on that link will pop up a window with all the pages that have you listed as an admin. Find the page that you want this new landing page for, and click the “Add to Page” button. For some great screenshots on this, check out Social Media Charity or Hyperarts.

Following these steps should enable you to create an interesting and attention-grabbing landing page for your business. Once the page is up, it’s time to sit back and let the fans start ‘liking’ away!

Future of Geo-locational media

By amankumra On March 8, 2011 In Social media With No Comments

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Geo-locational media has been hailed by some as ‘the next big thing’ in social networking. Alternately, its usefulness has been called into question. Its full impact remains to be seen, but it’s clear that this is a trend with legs.

Now, at this point, some of you might be wondering what geo-locational media is, or what all the fuss is about. Basically, geo-locational media is a platform that lets users use their smartphone to ‘check in’ to locations. These check-ins can be pushed to Facebook and Twitter so that the user’s friends know where to find them.

Foursquare, one of the more popular geo-locational services, makes checking in to places into a sort of game. Users can collect points and badges, and the user who checks into a place the most is made the ‘mayor’. Some businesses even offer incentives to the ‘mayor’, encouraging users to compete for the most check-ins.

Facebook also has its own geo-locational service, called Facebook Places. It does basically the same thing as Foursquare, allowing users to check-in and post their location, but without the badges and the incentives for checking in multiple times.

Alright. Now I’ve established what geo-location media is. So, really, what’s the fuss?

For one thing, geo-locational media has huge marketing potential. Foursquare allows users to leave ‘tips’ about whatever location they’ve just checked into. The real-world value is this: users’ friends see what businesses they are patronizing and how they feel about it.

So a business which offers incentives to Foursquare users not only attracts them as a customer, but also creates an opportunity to give their business some good publicity. Plus, since this kind of publicity comes from a trusted source (a friend) as opposed to a commercial or news brief, people are more likely to find the recommendation genuine.

It seems like currently, we’re just on the tip of the iceberg in terms of tapping into this kind of marketing potential. But more on that in just a bit – geo-locational media also has enormous potential benefits to consumers.

First and foremost, geo-locational media offers perks to loyal customers, like the above-mentioned incentives to Foursquare users, especially those who become ‘mayor’. The ‘mayor’ generally gets the best incentives (think a free coffee, free pastry, and the like) but other customers using Foursquare who can show that they’ve checked in often receive incentives as well (something like 10% off their purchase seems to be pretty typical).

As businesses start to see more traffic driven by users hoping to earn the most points and the best incentives, they in turn will have more incentive to offer those incentives. Keeping customers happy = giving them what they want, and you as a customer will reap those benefits.

Secondly, as Foursquare, Facebook Places, and other geo-locational services like Gowalla, SCVNGR, and Loopt become more and more popular, users will benefit from the reviews and tips left by other users. Looking for the best coffee in Seattle, or the tastiest bagel in New York? Simple – whip out your smartphone and see what other customers had to say when they checked in to nearby coffee shops and bakeries.

Ok. Now I’ve established the basic benefits of geo-locational media, both for businesses and consumers. Anastasia Kolobrodova details many of these benefits, as well as ways that geo-locational services impact large chain businesses vs. local mom-n-pop enterprises, in this interesting article. So – it’s time to tackle the question of what this all bodes for the future.

Remember the marketing potential that I mentioned earlier? Time to go back to that. Using geo-locational media as a marketing tool can hugely change the way businesses advertise.

Buying traditional ads (think newspapers, radio, TV, and the like) can get very expensive, very quickly. There’s also the chance that those ads won’t reach the target audience. Plus, for small businesses, competing against the large chains with all of their advertising muscle can seem futile.

But geo-locational media is cheap and spread from consumer to consumer. A long-time, dedicated customer using some kind of geo-locational service can check in, see the business’ information – and special incentives, if they offer any – and then spread that knowledge via word-of-mouth to their friends, relatives, and colleagues: the people who are also likely to patronize said business.

This kind of ‘viral advertising’ also has the benefit of spreading exponentially. One person might tell ten other people, who in turn tell ten other people, and so on. Businesses can potentially reach huge numbers of customers just by creating a Foursquare or Facebook places account.

Even if customers don’t actively go out and tell other people about the business, and the incentives they’re received, other geo-locational media users can still see where they’ve checked in. The more people that frequent a location, the more others will assume that it is a good place to go.

So, the more people who check in to your business, the greater the chance that others will be drawn in as well. Which means an increase in foot traffic and presumably also an increase in profit – all for a minimum of advertising cost. What’s not to like?

Additionally, the potential customer base to be reached via geo-location media is HUGE. Facebook Places has yet to catch on the way Facebook itself has, but the user base is enormous. Once Facebook Places finds a way to replicate Facebook’s overall popularity, it has the capability to spread like wildfire. Jeff Gibbard offers up some ways that Facebook Places may be able to attract more users in his January 10 article.

You may be wondering why, with all of these benefits, geo-locational media hasn’t exploded onto the scene. Unfortunately, like any technology, geo-locational media has its drawbacks too.

A first and foremost concern for many people is the potential loss of privacy. Checking in to places reveals a lot of personal information. Ari Herzog shares some stories on his blog of people who have had bad experiences because of this.

Secondly, giving people your location at all times might open you up to victimization. It makes a robber’s job a whole lot easier knowing you are across town at that hot new Italian restaurant instead of parked in front of the 50” flat screen TV he wants to steal.

While the chances of these occurrences are pretty remote, that possibility still does exist. So please, embrace the new technology of geo-locational media – but do so with caution. We all know to set our privacy settings on Facebook and limit the reach of our Tweets; what’s to stop us from doing the same with our favored geo-locational service?

Still, despite the potential drawbacks, geo-locational media has huge potential to grow. The benefits to both users and businesses far outweigh any drawbacks. Geo-locational media holds advantages for everyone; this is one kind of technology to watch.

Creating a digital movement

By amankumra On September 2, 2010 In Social media With No Comments

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You may have sensed that many organisation have been utilising social media recently to generate viral campaign with varied success. After all, it brings people from all over the world together in a way that is new, innovative and exciting – all the while maintaining it within a platform they know and are comfortable with. The entire campaign, or potential movement, is based on digital interactivity. It takes this interactivity and turns it into a definite and focused group action. You could even call this creating a “digital movement.”

Before we discuss how to bring such a movement about, let’s look a little more deeply into what characterises a digital movements and movements in general:

Characteristics of Digital and Other Social Movements

A digital movement has the quality of creating or encouraging passion and momentum. It not only touches/moves one person but a group of people passionate about something. They become galvanised and motivated to participate in a common purpose. That purpose might be political, social, artistic, or whatever. The point is that the passion goes from being individualised to being shared.

Once it is shared, this passion and momentum becomes activated. For instance, let us say that John Smith is trying to create a movement that will galvanise people to become more politically active about a certain issue. If he is successful the people that he networks with will begin to take related actions: going to rallies, writing to their congressmen, and so on.

A third quality here is that the changes that take place happen fairly quickly. A kind of tipping point or critical mass of people interested in the subject is reached and causes others to rapidly become interested when they realise it is an up and coming group issue. This in turn usually creates a change in the public perception concerning the issue. When people see that there is a lot of activity and communication occurring about the topic, it begins to be clear that it is important. Thus it begins to find a new place in the general social psyche.

Though this is in general a group phenomenon, there tends to be one or several individuals that are involved with the group movement in such a way as to act as catalysts. They may either be people who have started the movement or ones who have taken the lead later on. Others tend to follow their lead and their actions create the most change. In the digital case, these people may not even be in the same physical proximity, but may be connected digitally and recognise each other as being among the main players in the movement.

It can be difficult to plot the time frame of a movement, digital or otherwise. They may be fairly short lived or quite long lasting. This may have to do with the way they got started – if they were begun as superficial fads and fashion based movements, their duration may tend to be shorter. If they were begun with a more deep rooted need for change they may last for longer and even change the course of human history in a profound way.

Finally, we can see that passionate people tend to begin these movements. They feed the appetite for energy and change. These are people that have a keen sense of when change is necessary and due, and they have the spirit and sense of enterprise to act on it.

Three Important Structural Components of a Movement

Decentralization:

Though there are key players, movements, especially digital ones, aren’t usually led by a single person at a single location. The group nature of them means that they have a series of focal points around different individuals and/or places. These may increase as the movement gains momentum

Segmentation:

There may even be an apparent dissimilarity between these various locations or persons, but the common values they share are the important thing. They are what integrate these various segments into a coherent whole that can be called a movement.

Interconnection:

Interconnection, communication, networking – whatever you want to call it – takes place between the various focal points and segments of a movement. This is the real glue that holds a movement together and gives it increasing power in society. Society itself is nothing but an interconnected set of such connections, and the more of them that become involved in a particular movement, the more force the movement can generate.

Steps to Achieving a Movement

1 – You need to understand the community of people you are trying to bring together into a movement. This means you need to identify what they are passionate about and what the logic and the motivations of their reasoning are.

2 – If you’re forming a digital community you need to understand digital psychology. For instance, it helps to know how digital communities interact. This will help in finding the best way to give the group a sense of higher purpose. Digital groups may only be interested in discussion. After all that is what is easiest to do on the internet. They may however also be interested in taking real world action, and that is something of a different animal.

3 – It’s a good idea to locate those personality types that spread word of mouth easily. These may people who are themselves passionate about a cause or group aim or simply ones who are especially given to social interaction and creating social momentum.

4 – A connectivity strategy needs to be implemented. This is simply an easy way for those involved in the movement to connect. In the case of a digital movement/network, this would be a platform or forum where discussion and information exchange can take place.

5 – It helps to make the community quick and easy to join. If people see joining a digital movement as an arduous process, they are less likely to jump on board. In internet terms this means giving them short forms to fill out, getting the essential message of the movement across quickly, social media buttons on every blog article or company literature, ease of web navigation and so on.

6 – You need to ‘seed’ information – in a sense plant it in a wide variety of places, not just the main platform. Since these ‘seed points’ are not just ‘places’ but individuals, individuals may need to be coordinated, managed, or brought together to interact.

7 – You need to engage and welcome new users. They have to be not only allowed to join but encouraged and given one on one information that they can take back and share with their respective communities.

8 – Finally, you need to listen to the wishes, views, and criticisms of the group. Give the group a sense that their concerns are legitimate and are being met. A group that feels listened to will be much more likely to remain connected.

Creating a digital movement can be a lot of fun. The internet offers an unprecedented opportunity for creating social and ideological change of various sorts. But the mechanics of this change must be understood in order for the intention to create a group movement to have the greatest effect in the shortest period of time. To see a real life movement in action check out this video, and see if you can identify all the steps in the process and have a good laugh too.