One easy way to customize your brand’s fan page is to add the Static FBML application. When added to a Facebook Page, the free app acts as a blank canvas for you to add images, copy and links using the FBML code. Then, whatever you design can be added as a tab on your page, and you can even make your customized tab the first thing new visitors see when they land on your page. The more proficient you are with designing and coding, the more elaborate and engaging your Facebook page can become!

Signal recently launched two custom Facebook pages for clients, Bald Head Island Limited and PictureThatSound.

Give New Visitors a Warm Welcome

For the Bald Head Island page, Signal created a custom “Welcome” tab that serves as the landing page for visitors who are not yet fans. The “Welcome” tab also provides links to the Bald Head Island website and blog, along with a the Discussions tab on their page.

Once you become a fan of the page, on subsequent visits you will automatically land on the Wall tab. Here we added a customized, elongated profile photo featuring Old Baldy lighthouse, a major attraction at the beach vacation destination. The size of the photo immediately draws a viewer’s attention. Scroll down the Wall a bit and you’ll see callouts along the left sidebar that serve as reminders to subscribe to the Island Times blog and search homes for sale on the island.

Since the addition of these custom features, Bald Head Island saw their Facebook fan base nearly double in only three months. In addition, referrals to their website from Facebook have jumped significantly, and conversion rates for traffic from Facebook have increased.

Show Off Your Goods

Signal also created custom Facebook elements for PictureThatSound, a recently introduced product that makes it easy to add sound to your scrapbooks. Since the product is so new and original, it’s important that viewers see exactly what it looks like as soon as they land on the page, rather than arriving on the wall and searching for information. That’s why Signal created a custom landing tab with embedded Flash animation that both shows the product’s appearance and takes viewers through a step by step process explaining how it works. The tab also has a “Buy Now” call to action that leads directly to the PictureThatSound website, as well as links back to the Discussions and Photos tabs on Facebook.

Signal also designed another elongated profile image for this page. It features both the company’s logo and an image of the actual product. Since the launch, PictureThatSound’s Facebook page has become an active community where memory keepers share ideas and post pictures of their finished projects.

Be more than a Face in the Crowd
Your audience is likely spending more and more time on Facebook. When they stumble upon your business page, will it catch their eye? Are the benefits to becoming a fan pretty clear? From better visitor-to-fan conversion ratios, to increased participation and referral traffic, it is obvious that putting a little extra planning and design into your Facebook page can really pay off and help you reach your goals!

Often when designing a site I find myself spending a good deal of time organizing content and thinking through how the end user can best absorb the information displayed on a page. Recently many companies are beginning to include social media as another method for viewers to become engaged with their site and their company. This becomes another level of content that needs to be well planned before the site moves to the design phase. Below are a few important considerations.

Level of Presence
The first step is to determine which forms of social media the client wants to be involved in. For instance, do they want or have a Facebook, Twitter or YouTube page? Then you need to find out the degree to which this media will feature on their main site. Would they like a simple link or something more attention-getting? You also need to determine whether this needs to be integrated into the landing page or located within a news page.

Adding Social Media Icons
The easiest and most understated approach to show that a company is involved with social media is to include a simple link or icon to the site. This can be placed easily within in a footer or strategically within the main content. Each social media has its own distinctive icon available as a download. Many sites also offer a wide variety of free icon styles from buttons to hand-sketched looks. One good source for finding unique social media icons is Smashing Magazine.

Using Social Media Widgets
As discussed in a previous blog post, social media widgets provide an easy way for a web site to display a few lines of recent news, drive more site traffic and generate a higher level of awareness of their social media involvement. When including a widget within a site design, it’s important to know how much you can customize these small applications. For instance, can you change the size, background color, text color, etc. to fit your design. Some widgets are more customizable than others, which can help determine which style of widget to use or whether to include one at all. Take the time to show the client how it will appear on the site and what the widget can do. Each method of social media offers its own type of widgets and there’s also opportunity to use third party widgets.

For example: a YouTube Video Bar widget allows users to watch the selected video channels without leaving the site.

Twitter offers a Profile widget that displays recent Twitter updates on the site.

And Facebook offers a Fan Box widget which invites site visitors to become the company’s Facebook fans.

One last thing to note as you begin the site design process is to be aware of and understand this growing form of communication. As designers we need to continually seek out fresh ways to incorporate this media into our layout and adapt our design to fit the customer’s social media needs.

Coming up next: Tips for Designing Twitter Pages

What are widgets? They’re cool, customizable mini-applications that can be embedded directly into to a web page, bringing live feeds, games and user specific information to your visitors. Popular social media sites offer simple chunks of code you can insert on your site to create instant widgets.

For example, by adding a Facebook widget to your company’s site, you immediately have a visually attractive and customized entry point readily available for visitors to connect with you. Via your Facebook widget, visitors can see up-to-the-minute wall postings and become your fan with a click. And of course the widget links directly to your Facebook page.

There is a vast and growing range of widgets available. Below is an example showing how Signal has combined three widgets (including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook) on one “connect with us” page. Visit the Alma Lasers Connect page and see the widgets in action!

Social media, on the other hand, is the more natural way to go about entering the party. You would meet people and engage in conversation, learning about them and telling them about yourself. Hopefully you find common ground and become friends. Then, maybe that person will tell their friends about you, and they’ll come up to you and start talking with you. Or maybe they’ll talk amongst themselves about you.

It all starts by building a relationship with a conversation.

So, don’t be the guy holding the big goofy sign. Act naturally and start the conversations with people.

- Jim Ellis

RSS Video

By the way this “In Plain English” video series is a fun and informative series that has segments on social media, blogs, wikis, etc. Enjoy.

First things first, and when it comes to social media, remember this acronym: P-O-S-T.

• People
• Objectives
• Strategy
• Technology

This acronym comes from an excellent book on social media entitled Groundswell, and I recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about social media (and you should be interested in it, because it’s not going anywhere). The book shares some very good strategies and case studies, and is a relatively quick read.

You see, just saying you want to be on Facebook or Twitter is jumping straight to the “T” (technology), but knowing your audience, your objectives and strategy to meet the objectives should truly dictate the technology.

So, start with PEOPLE. As in any marketing strategy, you need to have a clear picture of who your audience is. Is your target market even engaged in social media? Are they more likely to “talk” or “listen”? Will they write reviews? Do they even join groups like Facebook?

The book Groundswell is written by people who work for Forrester Research, and market research is their forte. You can view a presentation of how they break down people’s social media behavior.

What’s more, they give you a pretty cool tool that you can use to gauge what your target market is doing within social media.

Forrester Profile Tool

Check it out, and know your audience. Next time, we’ll talk about the “O”–Objectives. More to come.

As social media titan, Facebook, celebrates its fifth birthday, it seems that the members of the Facebook community are maturing as well. Currently, the fastest growing demographic of site users is women aged 55 and up. A recent tally counted over 717,000 members in this group, marking a 175% increase in number since 2008.

While the growth of this demographic is certainly noteworthy, members of Facebook who are over age 55 account for only 3% of total users. Those who believe that the site is dominated by a much younger crowd, however, might be surprised to learn that teenagers make up only 12% of total users.

To learn more about Facebook’s changing demographics, check out this article written by Helen Leggatt on BizReport.com.