Facebook marketing is a huge business and recently there have been massive changes taking place in the way pages for businesses are handled. You can promote your page using Facebook ads and sponsored stories. Apart from these paid campaigns, you can also enhance your Facebook business page by adding a few good apps. Previously on Facebook Pages, you could make a tab as the landing page to promote your business. After the timeline changes which present Facebook data to its users in a new format, you cannot set a tab as a landing page. But with a little customization, you can go even further than that.
Before talking about some useful apps for Facebook Business Pages, let me briefly explain how business owners can enhance their Facebook Pages with new timeline features.
Cover images for your Facebook Page – There is no doubt that cover images are the most noticeable aspect when people land on your Page. Use this space to represent your brand and welcome users to your Page. The minimum size for the cover image is 851×315 pixels. You can even use this space to encourage likes and announce new products, though be mindful of Facebook’s restrictions.
Use this resource – 5 Websites to Find Facebook timeline cover images
Profile picture – Square shaped profile pictures fit exactly and this image will be shown at the top of your page slightly overlapping your cover shot and also will be used as thumbnail when interacting with Facebook as your page. You can either choose your brand logo or a brand icon as your profile picture so that you can be easily recognized.
5 Essential apps for your brand’s Facebook page
If you’ve already been using Facebook for your business there is a good chance that you will have noticed big brands and companies using a landing page on their Facebook business page when people visits a page for the first time. You may have even set one up for yourself. But with the new timeline changes, you cannot setup landing pages. They’re dead.
This doesn’t mean you cannot create custom landing pages, but you cannot redirect when a user arrives to your page for the first time. You can still add custom content, opt in boxes and much more. You can also add apps in a new tab to your Facebook Business Page.
How can you direct the user to a specific app tab page? You can use Cover pictures in your page to direct users to click on the app tab page. For example: You can show arrows pointing the specific app tab page for promotional activities. By default the tabs on Facebook Business Pages come with Photos and Like Count. When you install an app, you can move them to last. Each business page can have up to 12 applications installed and 4 showing without any distraction.
All the apps can be re-arranged apart from the very first slot, which will always hold your Page’s Photos. For everything else, you can simply re-arrange or edit the app settings by clicking on the pencil that appears in the top right of the image. You can even create custom images for these tabs. You need to create app images at 111 x 74 pixels. The images are used to represent your app and can also be used to add subtle directional hints towards the like button.
Static HTML is the largest provider of custom tabs on Facebook. You can create custom HTML pages containing anything. Just install the app and you will find welcome tab added to your Facebook page. Click the welcome tab and start editing.
Once you’ve installed the app, you have 5 core apps inside it to get started right away. HTML app to create HTML content, Image app to upload an image each for your public and fan content, you can use a page from your website to display includes resizing functionality. Business apps include a contact form where people can directly email you from the page. You can even add tabs inside the app.
As you all know Aweber is an excellent email subscription service with beautiful opt in forms. Use the Aweber web form tool app inside your Facebook page to collect email lists. It’s a simple way to add your Aweber optin forms. If you’re announcing a giveaway for your Facebook fans, redirect them here to enter an email address to participate in the giveaway. This way all the email lists are collected within your Aweber account, one of the best ways to convert social media audiences into email subscribers. Follow this tutorial on Aweber to install the app smoothly.
The YouTube for Pages app shows all of your videos from your YouTube channel. If you are video blogging (vlogging) or helping people with content through videos, then this is a must have app for your Facebook Page. This is how it looks when installed on a Facebook Page: Sample page.
Once installed, fill in the name of a YouTube user or channel. You can display a set of videos by selecting a playlist of videos that you’ve created in your YouTube account or feature a video to be placed at the top of the page when the page initially loads.
If you use the Networked Blogs app to push your blog feeds to Facebook page automatically, you can use the app in your page tabs to display all your blog posts. I have been using RSS Grafiti to display all my blog posts on my own Facebook Page.
By adding the Sweepstakes app you can run contests within your Facebook Pages to capture likes and engage followers.
What other suggestions or questions do you have? Please comment below, and good luck improving your Facebook Page!