Pure Protential Musings

Dependable professional writing services for feature articles, technical reports, websites, books, and reviews. Albert Einstein once stated, "If you can't explain it to a six year old you don't understand it yourself." I hope to be able someday to explain things that well. It is often said that "the only problem with history is that we are doomed to repeat it." Learning from history and each other is a way to gain our pure potential, not repeat history, and stay out of a new dark age.

Showing posts with label facebook tab. Show all posts

Saturday, October 8, 2011

111006 - Installing three Facebook content tabs, step-by-step - Part 3

Here is Part 3 of putting up a Facebook page, content tab install and content, step-by-step

Woe, oh woe, is me; I just put up a business page in Facebook. It may be easy for some, but it was an effort to me.

Part 1 was the easiest part. You just use the Facebook tools to create a business page. Part 2 was selecting content tabs. This is Part 3 of the account for the trials and tribulations of generating a Facebook business page. The discussion here is about installing special "tabs" and installing content in them for a business page in Facebook. While this section is highlighting business pages, much of the apps discussed will apply to any personal page too.

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

As described in the previous article, I had selected three content tab managers for the content I wanted to install. The reasons behind that selection are covered in Part 2 of this series. All but one of the solutions discussed here, require you to edit as the admin from a personal account. I will discuss that more later.

app link word of social

Word of Social app
The first tab to enter content I want to discuss is Word of Social. This is by far the easiest to use of the tab app products I tried for a person that does not coding. You do not have to go to the third party site to do your edits and updates. It includes an html editor, and allows you to edit the code. The editor leaves some to be desired, but it is pretty simple and does not confuse a less technical user with options they probably do not understand. It allows you to create a landing page for both the fan and non-fan. It loads pretty fast and is very popular. The app owners show a positive effort to maintain and assist their users.

Actual url of app I used to install app

I found it hard to find the correct app and its link from the Facebook app search. It appears to me that there are a lot of scams going on. Scammers often take a good name, and try to pretend they are that group. They trick the user into installing their app instead of the real one, then taking advantage of everyone. For that reason I included the current app link in this article. I covered some of the pitfalls of installing an app in part 2 of this series, so I will not repeat it again in this segment.

Non-fan welcome page option that appears

The word of social page offers to install the app when you first arrive in the app landing page on your first visit. If you install it, it is also operates as a "like" and the content will change to a support information content. This demonstrates how a person could properly use the non-fan and fan page very well.

app add tab options on left side

If you do not see this, or do not want to use it, you can use the add app on the left navigation tab area.

When you install, by the non-fan link or the "add to my page" link, it will check to make sure you are a Facebook user, and if you are not logged in, require that you log in so it can install it. It will then requie you accept the risk of installing an app and the fact it will need access to your data to function, and make you agree to any terms of service issues (TOS).

Next it will then ask you to select which business, product, community, or other type specialty page you administer that you want it to install the app. You can also share, get updates, contact the developer, and so on from these navigation tabs.

edit info appears under your page name

Now you need to return to the business page with your personal page option selected. You are now the admin for the app installed on your page. Go to the business page and click the edit info tab immediately under the name of your business page name. The snapshot to the left is what my edit info tab looks like.

Once you select this, you will be presented with a series of options tabs. When it first appears manage permissions will be highlighted. Click on apps to be tab to be presented with the apps loaded for this business page.

You will probably have to scroll near the end of the list of apps to find the appropriate app that you are going to work with. Facebook installs a number of apps that they think most people like and use by default. You will need to get display the ones you installed. The three I installed are shown in the screen shot below.

The list you see will undoubtedly be different. Perhaps because you have yet to install these, or perhaps due to different choices in app programs you want to use.

Click "use this tab." Answer any questions involved including security. Then click "edit settings." Change the tab name to what you want to display to inform your visitor what content will appear when they click the tab link.

Return to the page by clicking view page on the top right. If it does not appear, then click on your admin name at the top right. This will return to your personal page. You will then need to navigate back to the business page again. Some apps have a limit display option in the setup. Since this is a business page, you will probably want to select to display the page to everyone in the privacy selection.

When you are back on your business page, you will see a new tab for the app. Select that tab. You will then see the content for that tab with a box "edit page" hovering over the content. At this point, you probably do not have any content, so it will probably only have a white, blank background behind it.

Click edit page, and you will see the content entry page and its options. A non fan tab content is for people that have not subscribed in some way to your business page. They are people who have "liked" your business page yet.

The fan content is for your visitor that has subscribed. You can enter the same data, or have it be different. You saw an example of the different fan and non-fan operation when you installed the app.

Using only an image is a simple process. You just make an image and save it in jpg, gif, or png format no larger than 520 pixels in width. You can have a fan and a not a fan image, or a fan image and html or iframe content, or whatever. The combination you chose is up to you. You just change the content accordingly. The iframe gives more control over the content. However, it is more complicated and, as such, is not covered in this discussion.

The previous image is with html code visible and available for editing option. The app remembers your last settings and returns you to them. The last time I entered before taking this snapshot I was editing the html code, so it brought me back to that when I came back. You can tell because you can see html code displayed.

The app information "jumps around" the screen when you change between editor and source, and other options. This makes editing a little harder. If you are editing in html, it tries to help you, and it may get you in some trouble. It can make it hard to get the error out. It did it to me several times. When you have entered both your fan and non-fan page content, just click the save option at the bottom of the edit text box. You will return to the content behind the edit box option shown previous.

Next, you may want to make this tab your landing page for visitors. The landing page is the greeter for your business. It says hello to the established visitor differently than someone who has not said they want to come to the site. They must "like" the site to become a fan. You do this by selecting "edit info," and then manage permissions.

You can make some choices here. You can see the ones I made. I called my landing page website and have a medium profanity limit. At the time of this writing, I have yet to block anyone for bad comments, but I could add or remove them here. You specify the type of viewer allowed here as well.

At this point, your specialty tab should be fully operational. I suggest you have others come and visit the business page and see what they think.

Do not announce it yet, you have more to do.

url for tabfusion tabmaker

The Tab Fusion page
Now that you have seen the word of social, we will examine the next content tab option I selected. The link for tabmaker is shown on the right and you can just click it to go to that page. Tabmaker and its companion website option are free for up to ten different tabs as of the date of this writing.

Tab fusion is a process with two major steps. You need to generate the html code for both the fan and non-fan, and then select and install a tab related to that content. If you develop your code in a third party site or program, you need to process it on their website to make sure the code complies with how tabfusion uses the code.

url to application link

The html editor in tabmaker is more robust than word of social. You can see that by the number of options provided in the images provided. When you click an option, you get a very professional set of actions for that option. Again, you can edit both raw source or use the editor, nut the option is not two buttons here. It is either light blue or dark blue. If you see html code, you are in the code edit option. You may need to use a text editor to save the code for later use. Otherwise, you may find you have to generate it again. Some less technical users may get put off by the options because they do not know what to select. You can ignore most of the options. It will reduce the useful capacity of the content, but it will not hurt it.

When you have your code, in the tab fusion website, select the applications link. After that you select the website option. At the time of writing it was on the right side of the web page, just below the table title.

You will be presented with a tab series as shown on the left. When you first enter you will need to install to the selected page. You can install the app to any business page, or all of them. You select an icon. Select the website type, if needed. Then select the pages you want to apply the results of your selections. Don't forget to name the page tab to something you want the visitor to see and use as the tab link.

Next click pages. Two windows are given for the fan and non-fan code. If they are to be the same, just copy paste the same result from one to the other. You will probably need to use a text editor to save the html code for each option, and then copy and paste into this page for saving the content. Once you save it, you can visit your business page and see the result.

In tabfusion, you can do this for up to ten tab link and content options for each page. You just slect the icon indicated and insert the code requested.

FBML
The third app option I had selected was a simple Facebook Markup Language (FBML) tab app. It is very similar to the previous discusses except that it does not have a html editor, and expects you to do the edits through your own means. I used Dreamweaver and the copied the code into it for mine. The nice thing about this is that the edit is simple and overhead is low. No checking is done. It just tries to do it. If you break it, it is your problem. A professional would love it because it requires no real effort in a specialized editor that you have to learn. It also does not limit you in that you can edit the page as the admin, or in the the page selection display "use as Facebook page."More about that in Part 4.

Arrange the tabs and links
Now you can arrange the tabs and links so they are ordered more to your liking. On the left side under the tab links, click edit. Use the mouse to move a particular tab link to where you want it on the left. Do it again for the other links. Facebook will not let you put a special link above the info link. Once you like what you see, click the link done under the links and it will turn back into a edit link. The link locations are set until you decide to change it again.

It is still not time to announce it
There is still work to do before you announce your page. So I do not advise you to advertise or announce it until you go through Part 4.

In Part 4, I will discuss the announcing and linking options, and problems you may run into. I will also go through some of the step-by-step of some types of activities..

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Sam Martin
Website: http://www.purepotential.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PurePotentialMusings

Friday, October 7, 2011

111005 - Selecting Facebook welcome and other tabs- Part 2

Here is Part 2 of putting up a Facebook page, Generating special tabs - Selection

Woe, oh woe, is me; I just put up a business page in Facebook. It may be easy for some, but it was an effort to me.

Part 1 was the easiest part. You just use the Facebook tools to create a business page. This is Part 2 of the account for the trials and tribulations. The discussion here is about selecting special "tabs" and selecting content in them for a business page in Facebook. While this section is highlighting business pages, much of the apps discussed will apply to any personal page too.

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Having your page come up under the Facebook defaults does not allow you to tell people much about your business. If you do this, your visitors are pretty much limited to viewing your information tab, and seeing your news feed. That is not very satisfying. The local business info page has you put business hours and the physical location information, but that does not apply to many home based or other businesses, and is still very limited. What you need is content. People usually come to a site for content. Your news feed is pretty much a series of little teasers to that content, and your businesses activities that people may find interesting. When they come to your site and look at your news feed, it is like a party line voice mail. You have little control of what others actually peek in to listen to, if they visit it at all.

Entering content
To enter content beyond the basics, you will need to add some apps. These apps are Facebook oriented program bots that allow you to add content, and generate a "tab" to link the page navigation to the content. Facebook installs a few they think you may be interested in when they install the page. But I am looking for more.

The most commonly used app used is a welcome page. Everyone that enters a business should be greeted. The welcome page can serve as that greeter. The others tabs are dependent upon what else you want to do.

On the Internet, it is often said that "Content is king." I agree with this. I rarely go to a website to get a sales pitch. I go to find out information, and based upon that information I make choices. Those choices determine if I return for the sales pitch.

Marketing plan
Before going to this next step of content and enter it, it is time to determine what your business page objectives are.

The content will need to follow your marketing plan. Some questions for the page content include:

who are you making it for,
who do you expect to see it first,
who do you expect to make a follow up visit,
what do you want each of them to know about your business,
what will they do once they arrive,
how will you get them to keep in contact with you, and
converting the visits into business returns.

Below are some of the key thoughts for the content and its purposes for my site. Your issues will probably be similar, but different in some key ways.

I will not be trying to play a "numbers game" to just get "likes" (fans). I have worked with websites since about 1996. I have played the numbers game and seen the scams, issues, and problems related to going that direction. Thus, it is my opinion that the often declared objective to get large numbers of viewers is not particularly effective for most businesses. My main reasons for that are:

Having a large number of viewers in a day creates server traffic problems. This causes expense for the site owner. Your Facebook page is subject to the whims of that company and if they don't think the traffic is legitimate, and profitable to them, they will dump it. Their terms of service (TOS) tells you this, so you were warned when you signed up.
If it is not an interest related to genuine content interests in your business., having a million fans is not necessarily profitable to you, or anyone else. A fan base of less than 100 can be profitable, if they are active in your business endeavors. Facebook recognizes this displays a count for both these metrics.
People are turned off by sites that push just being "liked." When I go to a site that has a big graphic to like them, I usually jump off the page as it shows they are more interested in my adding to their count than getting to know my consumer needs, or feeding me some content that interests me. Worse yet is the one that you click like and once you do it, they shove you into a contest, sign up, or apparent scam. For most of us, that will get them "unliked" quick.
Facebook is a socialization site. Unless the company is large, a large number of likes means that the site owners are unlikely to be able to pay attention to my needs, should I decide to work with them. If I am not that big of a company, fan posts to me will get missed in the "chaff" that is occurring. That means I am missing on socializing opportunities. The obvious biggest downside is that my business will not grow, because I will not convert anyone to a client.
Thus, a small number of genuine clients, suppliers, and associates can be more valuable than a large number of people that just "liked" the page or follow it without interacting with your social efforts.

I will be attempting to show expertise and examples of work. That means:
- I need to understand the process involved in installing and using tab apps, in addition to obtaining their results. Thus I will need to go through the process step-by-step.
- While generating likes is not the mission, a large number of likes that are legitimate is beneficial. Someone who likes your page is considered a fan in Facebook. A fan can want to follow your page for many reasons. Examples are:
  - for a band- where are you playing,
  - for a consultant - what is your latest expertise sharing effort,
  - for a writer - where is your latest work located,
  - for a storefront, the weekly circular or coupon. Note that I do not want daily updates of offers for the day. I do not shop everyday and, with gas prices as high as they are I am not likely to start.
- As a consultant and writer, I have a blog showing some of my expertise, articles, and other activities related to the services of the business. This is one feature I will want to display in acontent tab.
- I also have an array of examples scattered on the web that could be viewed. Since some of these do not stay published or move around on a third party site, I will avoid the problem of continuous edits and potential broken links by pointing to stable locations (URLs) as much as possible.
I will be showing a brief statement of the available qualifications and expertise.
In time I may like to add more, so any plan needs to be flexible.

Looking over this list, it is apparent that I will need to create three content specific pages. I may add to it later, but that is a good number for a start. Three pages will allow me to learn from traffic to see if I should consider adding content or modifying it later.

The search for an app
The next issue is to find the apps to let me put that content on the site. This is where I had the most problems. A search of Facebook just gave me app names with no information of how well it worked. Facebook did not help me much in my search. It helped at the end point, but I determined that the beginning point needed to start elsewhere. In my review just before writing this I noticed Facebook was much more helpful. So they are changing all the time.

What the tab links can look like

"I don't have a clue"
My first thought was to find Facebook business pages that had an app that I thought worked well, and find out what app the page owner was using. After many attempts, including contacts with some of the page owners, I failed to obtain a single worthwhile recommendation. Most page owners had apparently hired someone to do it and had no clue what I was taking about. Once they had the page tab features completed, they ended the designer relationship. They did not know how to change the content, or how it actually got there. Apparently, most Facebook page owners are not highly technically knowledgeable. Most created their business page themselves and stopped when they ran out of Facebook supplied options. Some page owners did not reply at all. Either they were ignoring contacts, or refusing to take the time to share with another Facebook user who was not directly asking about their business products or services. It can be hard to find the link you used again, even after you have selected an app. I don't think Facebook makes it easy to do this, and the Facebook standards for the app my not be followed by the app maker you selected.

Networking sites
My next step was to try and gain feedback from Linkedin and other network sites where I have a presence. I got much more response and results from this. Some only wanted to sell me their service and would not share how to do it. I understand that, but one of my objectives was to learn how it worked. Having someone else do it would not do that. Plus, as I discussed in Part 1, programmers often put together a site that is what a programmer thinks is cool, but is not business friendly. I needed to learn enough to guide the programmer, or hire a consultant to do it for me. Since learning was a goal for me, buying these service were not an option.

Others were willing to share, but did not know enough of the answers to give best guidance. Since I only program as a part of my activities, and do not keep up with it like a programmer does, most of the network resources I had available to me did not tell me enough about the details of the programs involved, advantages and disadvantages of each option, and how to perform the tasks.

Google search to the rescue
Once my direct and networking knowledge attempts failed to meet my objectives, I turned to Google and made searches for articles about Facebook apps. A search of Google gave me ideas, but some of those recommendations were not optimal, and some others led me astray into bad problems. I decided that I would use a different app for each content tab I planned to make. This would let me determine the advantages and disadvantages for each one, give me some expertise, and would assure that if one tab failed the others would, hopefully, remain working.

The bad
When you install an app you open your Facebook information to the app developer. In my opinion, it generates the potential for a huge security breach. If they do not misuse it, great, but what if they are a scammer. You have to trust the app developer with all your information, including your friend list. This is a potentially bad bug which appears to have bitten a lot of users.

One such app I encountered was welcome tab. It had a high recommendation by a well established author. Perhaps I got a malware clone by mistake. Facebook reported that it had 11 million users. What it did for me was refuse my content and put its own like button, contests, and other content in. They made it very hard to get rid of them too. I thought that the 11 million user count reported by Facebook indicated it was popular. I think it showed how many people made the mistake and could not get rid of it. I should have looked at the reviews before making the choice. It was filled with curses and complaints and the ranking appeared to reverse your actual vote. If you voted 1, it counted it as 4 and so on. The effect of that is that it made it appear that they had a nice ranking. I will show how I got rid of bad apps in Part 3, technical aspects and how to's for the selected apps. Within a week of my finding it, I could not find it again to show what it looked like. Perhaps Facebook caught them and killed their app. Most of the other bad apps I tried had disappeared within the week span of performing the tab content install activity, and time it took to write about the effort.

The ugly
Some content editors required you know programming. I selected and used one of them. It allowed me to fully control the content. It also reminded me how much I appreciate that the web advanced enough that html and other editors that take care of coding and give you a spell checker were developed. After doing it once I used my Dreamweaver to create the code, and then copy and pasted the correct html portions.

One app I tried had a nice discussion page, testimonials, nice ratings results shown, and looked like they would be a good choice. I installed the app and received a notice that it used another app to work that was $9.99 per month with my first 30-days being free. My immediate response was, "Wow, that is an ugly practice," and I promptly went through the removal process. While removed their app, I left myself subscribed to their business page, as they do share information about what things mean, even if they do conduct a "bait and switch" when you make the mistake of trying it with their tools.


Even though they are a good service, word of social had some problems during install - it is all fixed now

The content for an app is hosted with the app provider. Thus your content is subject to their hosting restrictions and bandwidth. This can slow the display of the content and makes it hard to know if it is displaying in the way you think it is, and if it is displaying it all the time. For that reason, I think that every app has an ugly side to it. If they go down or out of business, change their policy, or whatever, your content will disappear. This is one reason why you must edit the app content using your personal account as page (more about that in Part 4).

You will usually need to maintain two versions for each page, the fan, and non-fan. The fan has visited and "liked" your page. The non-fan may have visited, but has not "liked" your business page. It seems inconsistent to me that Facebook tells you they do not want spam on their site and how they will kick you off if you do it, and then give you a programming flag for tools to do just that. However, I can see how it can work as a benefit. One of the apps I selected used the non-fan to tell you to install the app to make it work and why. Once you did it, the content changed to show how to obtain support for your installed app.

The good

URL of tabmaker

For the second tab, I selected the app tab fusion. They had ten tabs to select from and I selected the website tab. If I understand correctly, they will let you have up to 10 tabs at no cost. They have been doing that for a long time, but there is no guarantee that they will keep it that way. Remember, the web is all about change. You have to go to their site use their editor to make the pages. You edit the html with an html editor on one part of the site, copy both the fan and non-fan section into notepad or another program, and then go to the application location on the site and paste each part into the upload sections for non-fan and fan. Low technical skills are needed, but I think it is a bit more than many Facebook people possess. If you have the technical ability, you can edit the html directly- provided you know .html, css, or other languages. Alternatively, you can use an external html editor and drop the correct parts into their editors to get the code cleaned by their system to meet their restrictions, and then go through the upload process. On the plus side their html editor is very helpful for the less technical user.

Actual link to app

The third content tab app I selected was Word of Social. This is the least technical as the edit activity is on the page site you request, and you do not have to go to the third party site, that is actually keeping the content, to make the edit (such as tab fusion makes you do). You can edit the html and put other script languages in it. However, when you go back into the html mode it may change your source code to what they think it should look like. They also do what the old html editors used to do. They will sometimes add code for you that will cause your page to not appear as you expect. They mean well, as they are trying to help. However, if you use the option to enter the source html code to change it, it can be very hard to find the offending code. (Note scams are rampant in Facebook apps. During this writing someone tried to pretend they were word of social so they could scam off their good name.) The actual url of the app I used is shown below.

This is the actual link to the real app

url of word of social

Please keep in mind that the apps I used are not necessarily the best ones. They are the ones I selected that I thought met my criteria. There are many other very fine apps out there.

In review, putting up a tab for social content may be more than the typical business page owner would want to try on their own. I did not find it to be as easy as I thought I would. Considering I had an extensive history and knowledge about the Internet before I began, I can see how others might not want to make the attempt.

It is still not time to advertise it
There is still work to do before you announce your page. So I do not advise you to advertise or announce it until you read Part 4.

In Part 3, I will show the main steps to enter content into the three app tools I selected. If you are willing to make the attempt, I will try to show you how I did mine, and you can use the discussion to do it for your own.

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Sam Martin
Website: http://www.purepotential.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PurePotentialMusings