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Facebook is the second most visited site in the world, and people spend more time there than on any other site.
For many people, a Facebook page is the most important way a business or individual presents themselves to the public when trying to engage them on social media.
Studies show that the majority of people who visit a Facebook page from an ad click or share never return after their first visit, not unless it’s a really special page.
They may like it, but then they will only occasionally notice the updates to the page’s wall in their news feed, and only if that page has the right type of engagement with fans to rank highly in the feed based on the Edgerank algorithms.
Therefore, you need to present something engaging on the first page they see, so you can convert the traffic into customers, email opt-ins, or downloaders.
You can put absolutely anything on a Facebook page, on custom tabs, from Pay Pal buttons, to opt-in forms, video, photos, even an entire mini-site, or your actual site in the iFrame.
There are sites like Pagemodo which allow you to make one free page with an ad on it, but to remove the ad or make more pages with more features, you have to pay a monthly fee, so it’s better to design your own custom Facebook tab using HTML, (or hire me to do it).
I wouldn’t call myself an expert in HTML source code, but I’ve been learning how to do make basic HTML elements like links, photos, videos, button codes and squeeze pages for the last five years or so.
How To Make A Facebook Welcome Page Using HTML
To start with, you will need to know a bit about HTML, and have an HTML editor to do it on. I like Aptana, it’s a very basic free editing software where you can write out the code, and then save it as an HTML file, or copy and paste it into an app.
I like using Static HTML: iFrame Tabs, which is a good app you can search for on Facebook. It has options to do simple things without any knowledge of coding, but it helps a lot to know basic codes if you want to put links in the text.
You can also use the Developers section of Facebook to put an app on your page that is taken off a real web page, which would mean you would have to upload the HTML file to a folder on your server.
So let’s say you wanted to start your page off with a You Tube video. You get the You Tube video embed code, and you paste it into the HTML editor.
You should probably have a bit of code at the start like <HTML> then <HEAD> which is closed at the end with the corresponding tags.
You can add the header code if you want, but it’s not really necessary for this type of thing, although using the full standard coding is best to make sure it works on all browsers.
You have to make sure that the video, (or whatever you’re putting on the tab), is only 510 pixels wide, or it won’t fit inside the iFrame.
Then you might want to add a Photoshop image. First you have to upload the photo to your server, or a server, and get the URL.
Then, to put it on a page, you use this code: <img src=”photoURL” width=”500″ height=”350″</a>. It becomes a bit more complicated if you want to make that photo a clickable link, or if you want only one section of it to be linked.
This is called image mapping, and it’s not all that easy to do, if you want to find out, you can Google that. In order to move things around, you can use the code to simulate pressing the space bar or return key.
You get the codes for whatever you want on the page, and you move them around so they fit within the dimensions of the iFrame, and look good, and then you put it on your Facebook page using the app I mentioned, or by using the Developers section to take content from a canvas URL.
I can make a custom Facebook tab or welcome page using iFrame if you want, I offer that service here on my site, as well as many other services, (practically anything you want), but it’s not all that hard to do it yourself, if you are willing to take the time to learn how it works.
Different Things To Put On A Custom Tab
There are many different reasons to design a custom tab on your Facebook page, and you can make more than one.
You might want to have a contact form, and you can do that easily by using the app Contact Form, or there are many different apps or HTML generators that can make that happen easily.
If you have just one or a few different products which are easy to explain, you might want to have a Pay Pal button on one tab, with a photo and short description of each product.
This is easy to do with the Static HTML: iFrame Tabs app, or you can generate the codes through your Pay Pal account, and use the code that comes with that app to position them in the right way on the page.
There’s an option to add a subscriber form, or to have a You Tube video, or to have a page on your website show up in the iFrame.
What you might want to do is add a like gate, so that you can offer a promo code to people who like your page.
If you want to get them to share the page as well, you can ask them to send you an email with the code and the URL of their Facebook profile as proof of the share.
Depending on the popularity of the product, and how much people want the coupon, this can be an excellent way to encourage likes, and each share might possibly lead to more likes.
By using Facebook Ads to get targeted clicks, you can get targeted likes for less than a dollar, or even under ten cents, if you increase your targeting to different countries around the world.
Combining SEO, PPC & SMO
If you do SEO on your Facebook page at the same time, and try to get it to rank for a keyword phrase with good exact match search volume on Google, then you are doing everything at the same time.
Pay per click advertising through Facebook Ads, which in turn allows you to build a targeted fan base for good social media optimization, which is in turn one important part of the SEO of your page.
One thing helps the other, and Facebook already has huge authority, so you can easily rank for a phrase, or you have a better chance of ranking for any phrase with the ranking power of Facebook than on your own site.
All of this takes skill, and I’ve been doing this every day for the last five years or more. Get in touch with me through the contact form in the sidebar and tell me as much as you can about what you do.
Tell me about your site, the products you sell, or your goals, how long you’ve been doing internet marketing, and I’ll tell you what I can do for you, and give you an estimate of how much it will cost.
How Much Does It Cost?
I generally tell my clients that the optimum amount to spend is $300 a month or more, because part of that is for the management of a Facebook Ads campaign, and part is for doing SEO.
I have to write long articles like this, and submit them to different quality, authority sites with high standards.
The first month is about setting up the page, and that might involve starting from scratch, even if you have an existing page.
The reason for that is that you probably gave your page the title of your company or site name, when that keyword phrase probably has little to no exact match search volume per month.
I can probably rank you for a low competition phrase within six months, and while that’s happening, the ads are running as well, so you might start making a profit as soon as you start, or in the second month.
You can spend less, but spending lower than $200 a month barely makes it worthwhile, unless you’re only focusing on the ad campaign.
I have to get paid a certain amount to manage everything, like twenty a month to run the ads, thirty to set them up to start with.
I can make a basic page for fifty dollars with a cover photo, a profile picture, a custom tab and a photo for the tab button. The keyword research is the first thing, and that costs twenty dollars to do it properly.
Sometimes I will ask to get paid based on the time it takes me, if I’m asked to do a complicated job that takes longer, or if I have to multiple revisions.
Regardless, the results will speak for themselves, I’m one of the best in this business, and as the byline of the site says, I provide affordable social media marketing services.
I was searching around on Google for a way to resize my existing images into different sizes, and I found a couple of great tools that you might find helpful.
To start with, I was searching for a way to make a favicon, the little tiny photo that appears next to your site on the tabs on your browser.
I found Favicon.co.uk which makes little 16 x 16 .ico imgages, which are the best thing to use for a favicon on your site.
I also found a great WordPress plugin that makes it easy to add it to your website script called All In One Favicon, just search for that on the install plugins page, it was the first one I found in a search for favicon.
It may not seem important to have one of those on the tab, but it also comes up to the left of your URL on some browsers, and it’s just a little extra professional touch that makes you look like a proper website.
I made the photo to the right using a free text photo generator on interactimage.com. I might use it for the favicon of this site, but maybe not, it seems a bit blurry.
I actually decided it looked so blurry, that I needed to edit it in iPhoto, so I changed the contrast and saturation, and a few other things, and it looks a lot better now.
How To Convert Images Into Any Size For Social Media
I was making a Facebook page for a client, and I wanted to make photos for the custom tabs I had created using Static HTML: iFrame Tabs.
So, I took the photos I had already made using a free screenshot photo tool for Macs called Capture Me, and resized them using this handy tool from Internet Marketing Ninjas.
I had a bit of trouble downloading the image directly, I don’t know if that’s just a temporary glitch, but I found it was just as easy to right click on it, and press save image as.
Another way to do it would be to send it to yourself in an email. Anyway, you can take any photo in your library, and convert it into any size you want.
They have a bunch of different choices, but I choose the last one, that lets you set any parameters you want.
I have to make photos exactly 111 x 74 pixels in order to fit them as photos on the tabs, which can by the way have anything you want on them.
Having Trouble? Hire A Professional
This is just one of many things I’ve had to learn over the last five years of internet marketing.
There are literally thousands of other things like that that only come with experience, so if you want somebody to do all of this for you, I’m that guy.
Send me an email at [email protected] or use the contact form or contact page.
Tell me about what you do, and what you’ve done so far. Include links, and tell me what I can do for you, or ask me what you think you should do.
I can help with web design, content production, SEO, social media management, management of an advertising campaign, or anything you want to do with online marketing generally.
As I said, I have five years experience, and I can also give you internet marketing coaching, teaching you all the things I’ve taken years to learn through trial and error.
This article is all about SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, the art of getting your articles or sites to the top of the first page of a Google search, or any other search engine for that matter.
I cannot explain everything about SEO in this page, but I will give you the basic knowledge that I use everyday when I write articles.
URL and Title
The title is probably the most important thing in SEO, because Google looks for an exact match to a given search, or as close as possible, and the first place it looks is the title.
It is a good idea to do keyword research, if only just to Google your title before you start writing, to see what the competition is like.
You also have to be aware of the way people type in their searches. Your title must be something that lots of people would type into Google, in those exact words.
The URL also has a pretty big influence on the search results, and it is better if your main keywords are as close as possible to the start of the URL, that is why it is good to buy a relevant domain name, if you want to make a niche site about a particular topic.
Keyword Content
Most experts agree that the ideal amount of your main tagged keywords is somewhere around 3% of the text on the page.
That means 3% for each one, if possible. If you write a two hundred word article, that would mean you would mention the keywords six times each, although a little less would be alright too.
Complimentary keywords are almost as important. These are keywords that Google recognizes are relevant to the subject matter, like if it was an article about SEO, then keywords, title choice, back links and traffic are all complimentary keywords.
Back Links
I make back links to my posts and web pages from other relevant articles and sites, and from social bookmarking and social networking sites like Facebook, Google Plus, Digg, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Linked In, Delicious, etc.
My favorite tool for doing this is a free downloadable browser add-on called Add This. You can Google it. It just plugs into your Firefox browser, and has hundreds of buttons which lead to sites with good page ranks where you can make back links to your site.
Back links with do follow links give your site link weight, which are points that Google use to calculate your Google rating, among many other algorithms.
If you want to know which sites have do follow links, and which ones are no follow, I suggest getting another free Firefox plugin from SEO Book. Just google SEO Book toolbar, and you’ll find it, or there’s another one called SEO Quake that I like using.
Link weight is divided by the amount of links coming from a page, but you may not want to be too greedy with your links either.
Google have an algorithm for everything, and one of them is the hilltop algorithm which looks at the quality and authority of the other outbound links coming from a back link.
Traffic
Google likes to see a good amount of traffic on a site over time, but it doesn’t rate this algorithm too highly, or otherwise new sites would have a lot of trouble beating the competition in a Google search.
Google likes older over newer, except for the really new, and Google favors local content over foreign sites, and they actually have so many algorithms written into the search engine that even the top engineers at Google don’t really know how it works completely.
Basically, you just have to make quality, relevant content, make it seem popular, and important, and then you should get your articles to the first page of a Google search. That’s SEO for you.
Guest post by Danielle McCann
The great thing about social media is how easy it is to use and how many people are using it.
The less great thing about social media is that, because of these things, the quality of content is very low.
Don’t be part of the slush pile, or the stuff that gets hidden and un-followed. Here are some rules to keep your social media up to scratch.
Rules To Follow On Social Media
Don’t post for the sake of it! That will result in inferior posts that didn’t need to exist, and aren’t appreciated.
The rule on social media is always quality over quantity. You want to stay in people’s minds, but not for being annoying.
Develop a strategy, and a plan. It’s ok to change or deviate from this plan, but it’s important to have one.
Consider who you are trying to reach with your plan, and what you want to achieve.If you’re unsure, hire a social media advisor.
You want to consider keywords in the titles of your pages, and the search volume of those words, because your pages can rank on Google, as well as in a Facebook search.
Limit the control of your social media accounts. Only let one person do the updating. Centralising it will make your feed neater, cleaner, and will help develop your voice.
Deciding on this is part of your plan, and there’s no point in doing it if it looks like the posts were written by a robot, or in bad English, as it will turn people off.
Make A Plan And Stick To It
Commit to it. Doing your social media half-heartedly is worse than not doing it at all. That is the only way it’s going to be worthwhile or effective.
More than that, it can have the opposite of the desired effect, and make your business look terrible, if it’s not done properly.
Build a community. This is just as important as building an audience. Engage with the right people, businesses, and pages and you will make friends and gain attention.
Moreover, it will be the right sort of attention, because you will become visible to people who are potentially interested in what you offer. Create a database of information gathered from social media.
Drive Targeted Traffic To Your Site
Make sure that you direct everything back to your website. This is the point of your social media strategy.
Yes it’s about brand-building, but most of all it’s about building your customer base. You need your social media to boost your business.
A good strategy is to alternate between interesting posts that aren’t directly sales-related, and posts that are.
Give your followers some interesting stuff, but always remind them what you offer, and drive the traffic back to your site.
Remember, social media is not a replacement for advertising. It’s filling an entirely different space, and you have to treat them differently.
Take advantage of the direct impact of social media by getting feedback from your audience, ask them how they found your site.
Conclusion
The best way to run a social media marketing campaign is to consider all the different ways that people can find you, and combine them into one strategy.
You want to combine SEO, pay per click advertising, social engagement and email list building into the one plan, with the knowledge that one is directly related to the other.
If you can’t achieve any results by using all of these techniques at once, try focusing more on one than the other, try to get better rankings, or get a cheaper cost per click to more targeted people, if none of these things work, nothing will.
About The Author
Danielle McCann is a copywriter and social media expert working with whiteecho.com. When not developing social media strategies, she enjoys horse riding, spearfishing and base jumping.
