Image by ZeroOne

A few weeks back, during our Facebook event, I outlined how to create a landing page for your Facebook Fan Page. I feel like at the time, we didn’t delve nearly far enough into exactly what a landing page is or what it can do for you, and today I’m here to rectify that problem. If you’ve ever wondered how a landing page might help you boost your online sales, or your number of Likes, or your newsletter membership numbers, you’ve come to the right place.

What Is a Landing Page?

There are many different methods you might use to direct traffic to your website: a Google Adwords or Facebook ad, a tweet, an item in your newsletter. If you’re using your calls to action, most of these links ask the viewer to take a specific action: “Buy my E-book,” “Sign up for my newsletter,” “Listen to my new single!” Your landing page is the page that link directs your visitor to; it’s your pitch for why your new visitor should take the action you are requesting.

But Why a Landing Page?

This may beg the question; why bother? If you’ve written a convincing enough ad/tweet/link that it garnered a click, why not just send the visitor to your home page? That way, they can see everything you have to offer, instead of just one little piece.

That’s fair enough, but I would counter-argue that if a brand-new, has-never-visited-you-before-and-may-never-again visitor taking a look at your website and maybe selecting one of the many, many options available there (signing up for your newsletter, subscribing to your RSS feed, reading your blog, viewing your About Us page, etc) is more valuable to you than if they accepted your call to action… You may want to rethink your call to action.

Your landing page is all about sending a focused message. It’s about reiterating and expanding upon your original request. Ultimately, it is about increasing the number of conversions (clicks that result in your desired action) who take the action you want them to take.

Designing a Successful Landing Page

Here are a few tips regarding the actual content of the page itself. Creating a successful landing page is a long, trial-and-error process (see below), but keeping these few things in mind will put you on the right track:

• Keep Your Focus- It’s really tempting to dump all your relevant links and information on the visitor now that you have her eyes, but stay focused.  Remember that your landing page has a purpose, and stick to that purpose. Any extraneous information or links is likely to decrease your conversions.

• A Relevant Header and Supporting Media- Your visitor was interested enough to click on your link, but you have a very short time to reward his click and re-capture his interest before he moves on. The text in your header should be very similar to the upstream text (where your visitor clicked), to reassure the visitor that this page is what he thought it was. Expand upon that idea with some supporting text. Ideally, anyone who glances at your page for just five seconds should be able to tell you what it’s about and what it wants the visitor to do.

• Clear, Repeated Calls to Action- Bookending your supporting text, include a link, or ideally a graphical button, to draw the customer’s attention. Don’t be obnoxious about it; fiery, blinking, red buttons will look cheap and make your page look like a scam. Pick a color that complements, but is not a part of the rest of your page design. For example, an orange button on a mostly black and blue page.

• Multimedia- A picture of your service or product being used is great. Pictures that include people are even better. If the gaze of those people is directed towards the button you want your viewer to push… better yet. For the trump card, include a video. Video is passive, much like watching TV, and will draw your viewer in. Keep it under three minutes to ensure the entire video is viewed, and your entire message is received.

Impriving Your Landing Page

When your landing page is launched, the work isn’t over yet. Entire books can and have been written about what makes a successful landing page, but there is only one way to know for sure what works for you: trial and error.

The best method for constantly improving your landing page is known as A/B testing, and it usually starts with one point of uncertainty. For instance, will my “subscribe now” button get more clicks if it’s blue or red? or would this shorter ad copy be more successful? The method is actually very simple: you don’t make the choice at all, but instead make two different versions of the landing page; one with the red button and one with the blue (this works best if you work on only one significant change at a time).

Once both pages are made, you direct half of your traffic to one version and half to the other, using a tool such as Google Website Optimizer. Then, you monitor the performance of each page with your analytics tool of choice until one significantly out-performs the other. If there isn’t a clear winner, it may simply be a change that doesn’t affect your traffic one way or the other.

Either way, you’re still not done. Pick the winner (or your favorite), and create a new variant. Constantly testing and improving your landing page in this way can have a huge impact on its success.

Coming in for a landing

Your new landing page will be a fantastic addition to your overall campaign, and I encourage you to use this method for each of the calls to action you plant in cyberspace. It’s a tough seed to grow, and it will need quite a bit of attention before it comes to full bloom, but the rewards you’ll reap will be well worth it.

Okay, time to shamelessly self promote! Give us your call to action and link to your landing page in the comments, but be sure to give us at least one tip about why your landing page is successful!

Bye-Bye MySpace?

At first glance, this seems like a MySpace killer. Easily the most powerful feature that MySpace retains, now that the largest portion of the social networking crowd has long since migrated to Facebook, is MySpace Music. Even though MySpace’s overall spotlight has considerably dimmed, MySpace Music is still one of the premiere places to build a social networking profile for your band, connect with your fans, and find more. It’s a place where I discovered a lot of my favorite bands and artists. If Apple were to build a more usable, more hip, more popular music tool, it could push MySpace even further into obscurity.

The good news is that isn’t likely to happen. Not yet, anyway.

A Rough First Impression

I downloaded Ping and set up an account just hours after iTunes 10 was released for download, but I was mostly disappointed with what I see so far. It must be said that Ping is somewhat of a wasteland just now. It’s understandable that the early adopter crowd should be small, but I’m not just talking about the user-base. There aren’t even that many artists to follow just yet.

Ping’s home page offers about a baker’s dozen of suggested artists for you to follow, ranging from Yo Yo Ma to Lady Gaga to U2. “You can do better than that,” I thought, and I started typing artists’ names into the search bar to see who I could find. Now, admittedly, I started searching for some of my favorite artists, who are not exactly huge in a mainstream way, but I also peppered in some Billboard Top 100 artists, and here were my results:

On Ping: Brittney Spears, Taylor Swift, Weezer, Seal, Justin Bieber

Not on Ping: Gnarles Barkley, Regina Spektor, Tom Waits, Sigur Ros, Silversun Pickups, Eminem, Christina Aguilera, Rihanna, Usher, the Black Eyed Peas, Ke$ha, Disturbed, Avenged Sevenfold, Rise Against, and Phoenix.

I could follow every last artist on this list on Twitter, and most of them on Facebook, both places I already go to for a number of other purposes. So, what’s the draw of Ping, exactly?

Socializing or Selling?

If your uncle Fat Dude were a cynic, he might tell you that the only current purpose of Ping seems to be to help you find things to spend your money on in the iTunes store. And of course, we all know that is the ultimate purpose. But it could be a useful tool, too. Where can I search artists who are on Ping by popularity? Or genre? Where can I pull contacts from my Gmail account, or my Facebook friends? Why can’t I choose to share my currently playing song? Are you serious that I can’t “like” the Beatles because they’re not available on the iTunes Store? And does the lack of any “create an artist account on Ping” option mean that little guys who don’t sell on iTunes aren’t welcome either?

Some potential, But Not a Great Start.

I’ll admit it, I loved Ping as a concept. I wasn’t sure that I needed another social network, but I was excited for a great music social network that I could use to find some new artists, share music with my friends, and help some of my clients find new fans. Ping, unfortunately isn’t that great for any of those things yet. This could definitely be the worst product release that Apple has had in recent memory, worse than all of the first-gen iPod battery complaints. Can Apple take some constructive criticism and create a new must-visit network? Time will tell…

Have you checked out Ping yet? Let me know what you think in the comments!

It’s happened to all of us. You are sitting in complete silence, maybe drinking your morning coffee, maybe checking email for the first time, when it first appears.

“Po- Po- Po- Poker Face, Po- Po- Poker Face…”

You do your best to ignore it, to think about other things, to distract yourself, but before long, it’s fully lodged in your brain.

“Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah-ah! Roma-roma-mamaa! Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!”

You, my friend, have an earworm, and a brand new website called Unhearit wants to help. You go to the site, and click a button, and the embedded player plays a random song. The new song is supposed to help you get your mind off the one you’ve been humming all day.

Unhearit is a dead-simple application. The songs are  already there, stored on parent site SoundCloud. The player seems to be basically the same as what is found on their site as well. I’m guessing this page took them no more than a day or two to throw up, most of that time spent on making sure it wouldn’t come crashing down under the load of viral traffic.

Oh… and they have 2,575 Tweets and over 16,000 Facebook Likes as of when I’m writing this.

This week’s inspiration: SoundCloud cleverly re-purposed existing content to create a viral success with Unhearit. How are you going to do the same?

Let me know in the comments.

Image by: Roberto Verzo

You’ve noticed it as one of those ubiquitous links that is always at the top of blogs and websites. You may have even clicked on it at some point. If you have one of your own, chances are you aren’t quite sure what to make of it or how to put it to use.

I’m talking of course, about the good old About Us page. Too often is the About Us page filled with some meaningless corporate-speak about how the site will “synergistically systemise excellent catalysts for change and simulate paradigms to improve value-added content”. Or, on the smaller individual-blogger level, a quick one-paragraph description of the author next to a generic silhouette picture that means the author never uploaded a picture of his or her own.

If either of these sounds a little familiar (or if you don’t have an About Us page at all), don’t fear. Today, we’re going to discuss how to create an About Us page that will be a valuable asset to your website or blog.

Our Model- The Dust Jacket Blurb

So, what exactly should an About Us page be used for? (And let me say just once that the page could be called “About Us”, “About Me”, “About This Site”, “About Fat Dude”, or any number of things). What exactly is the point of even having this page? And what should we put in there?

I want you to take a trip with me. Imagine getting in your car and driving to your favorite place to pick up a new book; your local library, Borders, that funky little second-hand bookshop downtown, whatever. We’re going to wander through the stacks until you find your favorite section, and then we’re going to pick a new book. And here’s the catch, you only get one; Uncle Fat Dude says so.

How exactly do you go about it? You might find an author you already know, or find titles and cover art that you find interesting. But you only get one, so you’d better be sure. How do you know what the book is really about, or whether the author is someone you might connect with? You crack the cover and check out the… dust jacket blurbs. Bingo.

Okay, time to come back. We found what we need. The dust jacket blurbs! Knowing what section of the store we’re in helps, and seeing the titles, the art, the authors’ names, it all helped us zero in on a few choices, but it was the blurbs inside the dust jacket that helped us pick our book.

And that’s our About Us page.

A good About Us page begins by taking the model of the typical dust jacket blurb. Well, blurbs, actually. You usually see two, right? In the front of the book, some text about the book itself; and in the back, about the author. This is where we’ll make our start as well.

About Your Site

The front flap of a book’s dust jacket is usually devoted to a blurb about the subject of the book, and we’re going to follow that model. Use the first section of your About Us page to tell your visitor exactly what your site is about.

Remember that less is more. Take a look at a dust jacket blurb and you’ll see it will usually run 2-4 short, descriptive paragraphs. Remember this is just a quick introduction to your site… if the visitor was interested in reading a large block of text, she would simply browse through your site to find out what it’s about.

Also remember that  you have the full potential of an interactive medium at your disposal. Include links to your most popular content. Issue a call to action and get the customer to sign up for your newsletter.  Provide a link to your site’s RSS feed. Include images of any relevant features that you’d like to point out. More than anything else, this is your elevator pitch for your site: sell your visitor on why she should stick around and check out your site… and why she should keep returning for more.

About You

Flip to the back dust jacket flap, and you’ll find a blurb about the author: afew notes about what makes him interesting, maybe a line about some other books he’s written or why he’s qualified to write this one. And… you guessed right, that’s what we’re going to do here too.

As you write a brief biography of yourself here’s a few questions you should answer:

• Why should I listen to this person? Just as you sold your blog’s content, so should you sell your own expertise. You don’t need to be an expert to write a blog or maintain a website, but you should give your reader some reason to listen to what you have to say. If you’re not experienced, maybe you’re inquisitive, or outgoing, or funny, or ready to make (and document) a bunch of mis-steps. Whatever it is, find your hook and let us know what it is.
• Why should I care about this person? While you’re selling yourself, don’t forget to be yourself. It’s okay to include your own personality and some information about yourself in your About Us page. In fact: I’d say it’s essential. A sometimes-reader is more likely to become a Constant Reader if they feel like they know (and like) not just your content, but you. Go ahead and let us know about your cats or your kayaking hobby, just keep this last question in mind…
• Why am I still reading this? If there is any chance whatsoever that your visitor may have occasion to think this thought, your bio has become a full fledged, capital-B, Biography. Don’t go crazy here. Keep this section short, but memorable, and personal
• What’s a good question about writing in the first person? Okay, I honestly couldn’t think of one, but this needs to be said: Write this section in the first person. “Sarah is an accountant at Earnst and Young who moonlights as a violin player…” has already put us to sleep because it sounds like a bad Playbill bio. “I’m an accountant, but what I really love to do is play the violin,” is the beginning of an engaging personal story that you are telling to your audience.

You, Beautiful You

That personal connection I mentioned for your bio section can be strengthened tenfold by including a warm, personable photograph of yourself. Don’t be shy about this. Yes, it’s the internet and we all love our anonymity, but if you want to be anonymous, you shouldn’t be reaching out to an online audience. Being able to see your face is huge in strengthening your reader’s feeling of familiarity with you and will go a long way towards drawing in your audience.

Bells and Whistles

Once you’ve accomplished all the above (no small feat in and of itself, I know!), you have a very respectable About Us page that is certainly better than 70% of what you’ll find out there, but why not spiff it up a little more? Here’s some ideas:

• Video/Audio: A picture goes a long way but multimedia, especially video, is an almost unfair advantage. Consider filming a brief introduction to yourself and post it along with, or instead of, your headshot.
• A Social Media Hub: I’ve gotten this far without linking to my own About Us page, but there you go. The three-column layout I set up gave me a lot of empty space beneath my picture, the perfect place to drop all my relevant social media links, as well as links to my other websites. You might want to even consider adding your blog or Twitter feed if your site is not already content-heavy.

It is really easy to just slap up an About Us page that is filled with nothing but so much filler, so you can get on to the more interesting parts of blogging or website development. But, if you can take some time to follow these tips and build a useful About Us page, it will be a true asset to your site.

What other opportunities are commonly wasted? Give me some ideas in the comments!

Image by foundphotoslj

I often get a lot of resistance from my on-the-rise friends and colleagues when I tell them they should be blogging. The perception seems to be that if you’re not a top expert in your field, or a celebrity, or have huge financial success, nobody wants to read your blog. Hogwash, I say (that’s right, I said hogwash!). I thought I’d try out a new format, so we’re going to discuss this today as a question and answer.

Okay, I get it, you’re the social media guy and you think everyone else should be promoting that way too, but why should anyone want to hear anything I have to say?

Chances are no matter how early you are in your career, and no matter what that career is, you still have something to teach your audience.

Sure, but there are also probably dozens of people with more experience blogging on the same topic.

Maybe. But they don’t have the same perspective you do. You’re just getting started, hurdling over pitfalls that the experts have long forgotten about. You have your own unique personality and background to bring to the table too, which will make for interesting reading.

No, really. I’m at the bottom rung of the food chain. I’m just getting started as a [comedian/artist/actor/musician/totem pole carver]. It can’t be that interesting for anyone to read about my [failed Sears commercial audition/agonizing over  if "cumquat" or "rutabaga" is funnier/insert random newbie trouble here].

It’s as interesting as you make it. Even if you’re no Hemmingway, you can still serve your audience by giving them a glimpse into your field, and serve yourself by creating a sounding board you can use to bounce ideas or just vent.

So I get some people reading my blog posts on a regular basis. This is supposed to do what for me, again?

That really depends on what you would want to get out of it, and what your particular field is.  A blog can be a way to get your name out there, even without going viral on sites like Digg. There is definitely a value to becoming part of a community of like-minded individuals from within your own field. Nothing beats being able to put out a tweet at 1 am asking for help on a technical issue and getting four responses before you get out of bed in the morning.

What else?

A blog can be a way to sort of pre-build credibility, but only if you stick to it. Even if nobody is currently reading your blog, posting regularly is like putting pennies in your credibility piggy bank for when you do join your field’s online community. It’s tough to be noticed in a large online community, or gain a following, when you have three posts to your name; there just isn’t enough content there for someone to get to know who you are and what you’re about. But if you start writing your blog like the audience is already there, and go looking for them after, say 150 to 200 posts, you’ve got quite a calling card.

So, writing a blog is just a way to gain some street cred with other bloggers?

Not quite.  The whole world has gone social. You never know who may be researching you; potential employers, potential customers, potential collaborators. Your blog is a 150-page resume, a 50,000 word playbill bio, a 500-foot tall billboard for your art. It’s up to you to either fill it with everything you want potential contacts to see, or to leave it blank.

That’s quite a sales pitch.

Why thank you.

Any last words of motivation?

Just a few. If none of the above points seem particularly persuasive to you, I’ve got one more reason why you should be blogging, even if you’re not a powerful celebrity who is going to rake in a fortune on selling advertising space: paying back your online community. If you’re anything like me, you’ve leaned pretty heavily on Google Search while doing any number of different research projects: “How do I get into the Belly Room at the Comedy Store?” “How do I get an agent?” “How do I sell my first painting?” “How do I get my first web design client?” “How do I get more exposure for my band?”

The fact is that you don’t have all the answers to all the questions in your given field. You probably don’t even have most of them. Or even a respectable percentage. But, you still have more than you think. No matter how inexperienced you think you are, there is someone in your community who will look up to you, if you give them the chance. Someone who could really benefit from the experience you do have, or simply from learning from your mistakes and mis-steps.

Is this the part where you summarize the information in this post?

Wow, you’re absolutely right. To sum up; you should have a blog.

To elaborate on that just a little bit, you should have a blog, even if you’re just learning your field, because it will allow you to network with others in your field, build your personal brand online, and lend a helping hand to those less experienced than yourself.

Keep an eye out here on FatBlog for a special series on blogging in the near future. For now, leave some comments and let me know what you’ll be doing with your blog!

Image by: Duchamp

Your mother always told you to ask for things nicely, and it turns out she may have been right after all.

You’ve honed all of your product descriptions. You’ve posted a sparkling resume. You’ve put together an extremely attractive homepage for your demo tape. Your portfolio is spotless.

But did you tell your visitor to do what you want them to do?

Believe it or not, it works.

Browsing through the web, combing through Facebook, scanning our Twitter feeds, we all consume so much information online that we’ve become unaware of how much of it we don’t consume. For every line of text we actually concentrate on and read, we probably skim past another ten. Friend feeds, RSS feeds, Twitter feeds, comment feeds, we have to get full eventually! Any advertisement or request or other promotional text you post online is just as likely to get skimmed over unless you present your visitor with a clear call-to-action:

Our new single is on You Tube. To listen now Click Here.

Request a Free Quote Today.

Contact Me for Availability.

Don’t get me wrong, you’re not hypnotizing your site visitor with this text; this isn’t the magic answer to getting every new visitor to buy your e-book or subscribe to your newsletter. What it does do is grab your visitor’s attention with a short, simple request. They may not heed your request, but you can make sure they see it.

What easy text changes can you make on your site to increase visitor response? This is especially easy with link text. Here’s a few examples of changes you might be able to make:

Jason’s Resume —> View Jason’s Resume

Kelly’s Paper Roses —> Buy One Of Kelly’s Paper Roses

Download Link —> Download Now

Pricing Information —> Get a Free Quote

Demo Tape —> Listen to Our Demo

Book Excerpt —> Read An Excerpt from my Book!

Another great use for a call-to-action is to elicit a response from your blog readers. Ending each of your blog posts with a call to action instead of just a high-school-lit-class-style conclusory paragraph* is a great way to get your readers participating in your comments section.

*(Anyone else remember “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em what ya told ‘em”?)

How will you get your viewers to respond to your content better with a call-to-action? Tell us in the comments!**

**(See what I did there? )

Image by Austinevan

It’s been a long, strange trip, and I hate to see it go, but our 2-week long Facebook extravaganza has finally come to a close.

We’re going to close out with some resources to keep you inspired and learning about building your empire on Facebook. I hope we’ve motivated you to work hard at utilizing Facebook’s marketing and social networking potential to its fullest, and I can’t wait for you to start seeing the results!

Official Facebook Resources:

It’s hard to go wrong when you’re getting  advice right from the Mothership itself. Here’s some great resources from Facebook.com:

Facebook Pages - Facebook’s Facebook Page for Facebook Pages. Very Meta. Also Facebook’s main resource for tips, best practices, examples, and additional resources.

Guide to Facebook Ads - Tips, instructions, and best practices for creating, maintaining, and optimizing your Facebook Ads campaign.

Promotion Guidelines- Facebook’s official guidelines for promoting your Page on your own website.

Facebook Developers - Facebook’s homepage for everything related to integrating Facebook with your website.

 Tips and Tutorials

There’s so much to do with your Facebook page, we could cover only a portion of it during the past two weeks. Check out these resources for more tips and ideas.

Creating a Facebook Application -  a beginner’s guide by blogger Emanuele Feronato. If you’re html-savvy and ready to add even more interactivity than your Static FBML page offers, this is  a great place to start.

HyperArts -  HyperArts has a great, intensive FAQ page regarding FBML. A must-have if you are just getting started and need some technical know-how to get the job done.

Mashable - Mashable’s blog is a great resource for everything social-media related.

Galleries

Facebook Showcase - This is a (fairly) regularly updated gallery that shows examples of great Facebook pages,divided into categories (Brand,Business, Celebrity, Entertainment, Other, Web Firm)

Platform Showcase - Facebook’s official Showcase shows how some big brands integrate Facebook with their websites.

Outstanding Facebook Pages

These are some of the Fat Dude’s personal favorite Pages. Check them out for some inspiration!

Victoria’s Secret Pink 

Red Bull

Ashton Kutcher

Old Spice

Gary Vaynerchuk

Toyota

Adidas

There you have it. This is really still just the tip of the mammoth Facebook iceberg, and we’ll return to Facebook here on FatBlog from time to time with new tips, tricks, tutorials, and resources.

Until then, good luck, fellow Facebookers… don’t forget to chime in in the comments and let me know what I’ve left out!

The ease with which a someone can click a “Like” button on Facebook is an unspeakably useful tool. There is so much to be said for word-of-mouth; no matter how fantastic your ads and marketing material might be, a recommendation from a friend or colleague will always be ten times more effective to a potential customer or audience member.

Now, with very minimal effort,you can add that ease of sharing to your website or blog.

The SDK Code
You can find Facebook’s page for the SDK Code here. On a completely non-technical level, this code is what will enable your website or blog to understand and utilize Facebook’s applications for your site.

Here is the code you will need:

<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script>
window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
FB.init({appId: 'your app id', status: true, cookie: true,
xfbml: true});
};
(function() {
var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true;
e.src = document.location.protocol +
'//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js';
document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e);
}());
</script>

Essentially, this code will just need to be added before the closing body tag of your site or template. If you’re unsure about how to do that, I bet your friendly neighborhood web developer could be bribed with tasty treats (Mmmm, tasty treats…)

With the SDK code entered, you have easy access to the supercharged Java versions of Facebook's Social Plugins.

Social Plugins?

That’s right, Social Plugins. You may be familiar with Facebook’s Instant Personalization if you use the awesome Yelp, the more awesome Pandora, or the pretty-okay Microsoft Docs. These three sites partnered with Facebook earlier this year. Pandora, for example, will display which of your friends have Liked the artist you are listening to, and allow you to post your own likes on your Wall with a single click.

While not quite as intensive, (or some would say, intrusive) as Instant Personalization, Facebook’s Social Plugins toolset offers a similar set of features that can be included in any website.

Your Supercharged Like Button

Here is a quick example of the simplest, easiest, and one of the best features of the Social Plugins toolset: the Like button.
This like button actually packs quite a punch. It will allow your visitor to add a comment to their “like”, which will appear on their Facebook status…

… and will display the portrait picture of any friends who also like the item.

Adding the button to your page is dead easy. Remember, at this point, you should have already added the SDK code above, or this won’t work. Ready? let’s mosey on over to the Social Plugins homepage.

There’s a lot of exciting stuff here, but for now we’ll go straight to the Like button. Go ahead and click on it.

Just a few easy options to choose here and we’re nearly done.

Put the web address you want the Like to lead back to in the “URL to Like” box (later we’ll cover how to set this up so that each of your Blogger or WordPress posts will automatically have a like box leading back to that post, but for now, let’s try a single URL).

The rest is mostly cosmetic, there are a standard and smaller layout available, you can choose to include fans’ profile pictures or not, you can change the color (light or dark), font, and verb (“like” or “recommend”) as well. One thing you’ll want to pay attention to is width. Don’t make it too wide for the box you intend to put it in!

When you’re done here, click “Get Code.”

See that big long chunk of code under iframe? … Ignore it. Because we’ve entered the SDK code, we can use the much shorted XFBML code to create our button.

Here’s where uncle Fat Dude makes a small confession… you actually could have skipped the SDK altogether and used the iframe code instead, so we have sort of done this the hard way. Except, we get some extra bells and whistles with the XFBML version, not the least of which is the option to add comments. See? Put in the extra work and reap the rewards.

From here, you will simply need to insert the code where your button belongs. If both the button code and the SDK code are inserted successfully… congratulations on your new Like button!

Beyond the Like Button

Now that you’ve added your SDK code and successfully implemented your first Social plugin, you might want to head back to the Social plugins page and see what else there is that might add some value to your page. Some are just a tad more complicated to implement than the Like button, but not much.

Please do let me know in the comments if you have any trouble, and I’d love to see links to your successful implementation of your own Like button!

Or, “Stay on target…”
(A cookie to any geek who gets the reference)

Once your Facebook Fan page is up and running and you’ve had some activity from Fans and visitors, you’ll begin collecting some precious data that will be a huge help in deciding just what content is connecting with your visitors, and just who those visitors are.

What’s an Insight?

If you are familiar at all with Google Analytics, you have a good idea what to expect from Insights. If not, think of Insights as your own private data analyst for your Facebook Page. Through Insights, you can view a huge amount of data about page visits, likes, comments, and demographics.

You can find Insights either through the box under your profile picture on your Wall, or by browsing to http://www.facebook.com/insights/.

Using  Insights Data to Improve Your Content

When you first visit Insights, you’ll be provided with a general overview of your Users (people who like and visit your page), and Interactions (likes and comments on your content) over roughly the past two weeks.For both, you can drill down into deeper detail, as well as mousing over the line graph to get data from any one day.

Let’s take a look at our Interactions.

Interactions describe how your users are… well, interacting with your page and its content. The first graph shows feedback on your daily posts; how many likes and comments you got, and how many people unsubscribed from your feed. On the second graph, you see a readout of your other page activity: wall, video and discussion posts; reviews; and mentions of your page on other Facebook feeds (profile walls, etc).

All this is a great tool to show you what interactions your customers had with your page, and when. It’s a nice warm, fuzzy feeling to see those lines start to rise, which can be a great motivator, but the data is more use than just that.

By comparing spikes in activity to the actual content you released on your page at peak interaction times, you can start to determine which content is working, and which isn’t. Did you have several unsubscribes after your eight-post series on your cats’ sleeping habits? You may be disengaging some of your audience with that content or worse, spamming up their feeds. If, on the other hand, you had a huge spike after a two-week long series about Facebook Fan Pages (wink wink), that sort of content may be serving your Page very well.

This sort of trending, if performed regularly (say, once a month) can lead to a big boost in Fan engagement and retention.

Using  Insights Data to Find Your Niche, Improve Your Ads

Let’s head over to your Users details. here, You’ll find some bar graphs that reiterate the information you found in your Interactions data: Users active on a daily basis and the number of Likes and Unlikes your page is receiving. We’re going to scroll past that to the Demographics.

Here, loyal reader, we have hit the Insights jackpot. The demographics graph gives you a lot of great data about who your visitors are: where they’re from, how old they are, their gender. This lets you know at a glance what demographics you are reaching most.

Your plan of attack based on this data can go one of two ways: Catering your next ad campaign to your key demographic can certainly get you some page views and Likes, but you may also want to consider those demographics you are not yet reaching as thoroughly. The chart pictured above shows a very heavily young, female audience. If this was your chart, what new contents and what sort of targeted ad copy could bring in the male audience? What about readers 55+?

Your Insights are your Facebook Fan Page’s report card. It shows you just how well your content is performing, and who is consuming it the most. Your content and ads can only benefit from you keeping a vigilant eye on your Insights.

How are your charts and graphs looking? What are you doing to get those numbers up? Let us know in the comments!

Image by mistress_f

Or, Phoning it In

Now that you’ve implemented your Facebook Fan Page, added Static FBML, and maybe even placed a Facebook Ad to bring in new traffic, the number one thing you can do to maintain and improve the health of your Page is to keep it updated with new content.

But, for the love of social networking, don’t stay cooped up in front of your Facebook page all day! Here are three ways you can update your Facebook Page’s wall without needing to log in to the Mothership:

Mobile Updates

Facebook offers a number of great ways to change your Wall status and even add pictures and video from your mobile phone.  Cruise on over to your administration page by clicking the Edit Page link beneath your profile photo, and click ‘edit” on the Mobile menu item to view these options.

Here, you’ll find a unique email address you can use to upload photos and videos to your page. This is a great addition to interact with your fans even when you’re at, say, a trade show or a performance. A quick and dirty backstage, behind the scenes, or from-the-trade-display videocast can be very interesting and drive some traffic on your page.

If you’re a little too busy on-the-go for that kind of interaction, you can follow the Send Text Messages link for a quick and easy setup that will give you a number you can text message to change your Wall status. Now you can update from everywhere, but be sure to practice safe texting… your Uncle Fat Dude can’t be responsible for what might happen if you hold up the Starbucks line tapping away at your phone…

Selective Tweets

In an earlier post, we covered adding applications to your Facebook Page. A Fat Dude favorite is Selective Tweets, which allows you to change your Facebook Status by tweeting. The great thing about Selective Tweets is that you don’t have to send every tweet to your Facebook Page, but only the ones you choose by adding #FB to the end of the tweet.

You can view and set up Selective Tweets from their Facebook Page.

Tweetdeck

If you are social networking on several different fronts, Tweetdeck can be a lifesaver. Available for your desktop, iPhone, or iPad, Tweetdeck gives you one place to update Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, and Foursquare all from one user interface. On the Facebook front, you can share photos, links, wall posts, comments and status updates directly from the TweetDeck interface.

Tweetdeck is hugely customizable, allowing you to add columns to track multiple accounts from each supported service as well as searches, trending topics, and more.  As your social networking train really gets rolling, it’s a huge help to have one place to keep track of and update multiple networks.

As you become more and more successful building your online network, you’ll find that it becomes more and more work to maintain. Any tool or trick you can find to make keeping connected easier and quicker will help you focus more on your business and less on pulling out your hair.. And if you’re anything like your uncle Fat Dude, you may not have that much left to spare.

What have I missed? Chime in in the comments and let me know what other tools you use to ensure a simplfied, streamlined Facebook experience.