How to Make a Custom Facebook Landing Page

Last week I attended a very informative panel at BlogWorld Expo New York by Webtrends’ Product Manager of Social, Justin Kistner. Justin walked the audience through the apparently simple creation of custom landing tabs that work with iFrames for Facebook, making us all wonder why we waited so long to dive in! This is how you can take/copy any page or post from your website and make it a tab on your Facebook page:

Here’s a few simple steps -

• Go to https://www.facebook.com/developers/ and click on “Set Up New App” in the top right corner
• Create a name for your app and you best agree to Facebook’s TOS!
• It will default to the About page, leave as is and click on the Facebook Integration tab
• Choose your Tab Name (how it will appear on your Facebook page to visitors)
• Enter in the URL that you wish the tab to display
• Save your changes and it’s done!

Once you do this you will notice that you have a large web page in a small space – and visitors will have to use the scroll bars left and right to see the whole page. This is where working with WordPress plays in your favor. You’ll now need to download this WP Plugin: Facebook Tab Manager. Once installed you’ll have a menu option that you are very familiar with – it’s just like creating a new page for your website/blog or a new post. You can take/copy content from your existing pages or create an entirely new one and it will live on your site – just not visible to the public. From your WP dashboard you can manage these Facebook Tab Pages, add, edit, and delete as needed and it will update right on your Facebook page. The other advantage here is that this plugin will format your page to fit within the frame of the Facebook page without any need for scrolling, making it a much prettier sight!

Don’t forget to set this tab as your default landing page if you want it to be the first thing new visitors (who are not yet fans) see when you find your page on Facebook. This is as simple as going to Edit Page > Manage Permissions > Changing Default Landing Tab to choose the name of your new custom tab.

The difference with this method and some other is firstly it’s very simple, but also it keeps the visitor within your Facebook page and not off to a different URL as some other apps do. Keeping them within the frame of your Facebook page will hopefully keep visitors engaged for longer and perhaps Like it too.

Et viola! If you run into any problem or have additional questions feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you promptly.