Creating a fan page in Facebook is relatively easy. As I wrote about in a post yesterday, creating the actual page is very straightforward. You just follow the step-by-step instructions from the Facebook site. It’s when you want to customize the page and create your own tab page that things become tricky.
Back in March of 20011, Facebook changed the way that fan pages work. Now if you want to add a landing page, you will need to host it offsite with secure hosting using a web design called iFrame. While there are tools that will help you with the iFrame design, it was the secure hosting that got me. This requires a special setup with your webhost and an ongoing monthly fee. While this may be something that I go with in the future, I decided to go with a third party company to create and host my page.
There are quite a few companies that have come into this new Facebook market with a variety of packages and fees. At first, I looked at the free options. There are numerous sites offering this, but they all have a header or footer or both branded with the companies name. While this may be a solution for many people, I wanted a page free from distractions.
After a lot of searching, I decided to go with TabSite and their Gold option. This gives you all of their features, including video, social media, interactive pages, Google maps, and a drag and drop interface for creativity. This particular package runs $15/month, but it has all of their bells and whistles.
Once you sign up with Tabsite, their editor works directly in your browser. The main interface looks like this…
You simply create a new tab name to get started or choose one of the existing ones that you already created. Using Tabsite’s editor allows you to give your tabs custom names that will show up on the side menu of your Facebook page.
You then choose from a list of available widgets to add content to your page. As you can see from the list below, the full package offers a lot of tools.
- Content Widget
- Image Widget
- Video Widget
- Twitter Widget
- RSS Feed Widget
- Flash Widget (SWF)
- Photoshow Widget
- Product Show Widget
- Contact Form Widget
- HTML Code Widget
The content pages show up on your screen as menu items
Here are some pages I created on my Facebook Page using these tools.
Main Page, with Splash Screen, Video Introduction, and Tool Buttons
**************************************************************************
Video Book Review, Book Link, and Process Video
***************************************************************************
Resource Page with Graphic Links and Descriptions
***************************************************************************
As you can see from the pictures above, Tabsite allow you to create interactive and visual content quickly and easily on your Facebook page. The items automatically show up on your left hand menu and allow you to take your FB site to the next level. With Tabsite’s flexible pricing you only pay for the features that you need.
To get an idea how this works why not create a FREE Tabsite page first, use the editors and widgets and see if this is right for your needs. Give us a link back here with your creations.
Question: What kind of page would you create with Tabsite?
