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Custom Tabs on Facebook: A Quick How To…

Got your Twitter account and several thousand followers? CHECK.

Got your Facebook Fan Page with several thousand Fans? CHECK.

Great – you’re taking advantage of social media platforms to engage your fans. And now you have a presence that is EXACTLY the same as every other team in your league or market. You need to do something different for two important reasons:

• To monetize the space
• To differentiate

After establishing and earning your fans and followers, its time to take the next step and make this place your own. Custom tabs allow you to do this. Here’s how:

1. Use the search on Facebook to find “FBML”. This is an app that will allow you to add a custom tab and fill it with any HTML you like… FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language.  You will find the first result is “Static FBML” and has about 10M+ users.  Click on it.
2. Click on “Add to my Page” under the FBML logo.
3. It will ask what Page you want to add it to (as you may have more than 1 page), so simply choose the Page you want to add your custom tab to.
4. Go to your Fan Page.
5. Click on “Edit Page”.
6. Find the FBML app on your list – Click on “Edit”.
7. Give your new Tab a title – you can come back and change it any time/as often as you like.
8. In the FBML field, you can enter any HTML you want to make your custom tab.
9. Click on Save.
10. Add your new Tab by clicking on the “+” at the end of your Tab row from the Wall.

A couple of tips and things you should know:

• You’ve only got room for so many tabs, so Facebook will/may bump one to accommodate your new Tab. You can click on each Tab to delete (and bring it back later if you like with the “+”).
• You can change the order of your Tabs by dragging and dropping them.
• I suggest you build a dummy profile and a dummy Page to test things out before to start playing around with your real Fan Page. Get it right and then update/enhance your Page for real.

You can use your new Tab for sponsors, promotions, contests, you name it…

Want to see some examples? Click on the following…

• Here’s the Carolina Hurricane’s “Promotions” Tab
• Here’s the Vancouver Canucks “Contests” Tab
• And the NHL’s custom Tab
• And the Chicago Blackhawks “Mobile” Tab

Good luck! Got some other interesting or innovative custom Tabs? Please let me know…