I have been using Facebook to promote and manage several blogs for a while. I just launched a new blog at www.onebiginternet.com and added a fan page for it as well. There are a lot of benefits of using a Facebook fan page for your brand. But how do you set one up? Also, how do you create a custom “splash” or landing page for it? In this tutorial I will try to simplify this process and share how I setup my Facebook Fan Pages. As always if you find this useful, share it, tweet it, and subscribe!

1.Create a Facebook Account or login

The first thing we need to do is create a Facebook account (assuming you have not done this already). Once you have created a Facebook account you can setup as many pages as you would like. I manage 3 pages under one account. So head over to Facebook.com and register. If you already have an account, just login.

2. Click Ads and Pages

Look at your left column or sidebar once you login. Underneath your profile photo there are several links. Messages, events, photos, apps, games etc. At the bottom of this list, just above your friends list you should see a link titled “Ads and Pages”. Click it. See image below for details:

3. Create Page

This will take you to your page management section. Click the create Page Button at the top left.

4. Page Details

We want to create a page (not a community page). For a blog, product, or website you can choose the “brand, product, or organization” check box.
Choose a name for your page. Agree to the terms then click “create official page”.

5. Page Created!

Your page is created! Great…now what? You will need to add a custom logo or image by clicking on the question mark graphic to the left of your page. You might also want to write something about your brand as well. You can suggest friends to join your newly created fan page, promote it with facebook ads (I will touch on this later), and adjust any other settings as you wish.

6. How to create a static landing page or “splash page”.

At some point you will want to create a splash page for your visitors to land on. For example, if you go to onebiginternet’s fan page you will land on a splash page. Let me explain how to do this.

7. Setup the FBML App

Facebook has apps created by developers that add additional functions to your page. We need a very important app that will allow us to create our custom splash page. Its called Static FBML. You can get it here. Once there, click on “add to my page” and choose your page. Navigate back to your fan page (home > “ads and pages” > your page).

Now you need to Click on “edit page” in the left column of your page.

Scroll down until you see the FBML app and click “application settings”.

Make sure your box looks like this:

8. Make your splash page the first thing visitors see

Click the edit link next to “application settings”.

You will see a box with a Title Box, and a box titled FBML. You can place any HTML code inside this box. You will need to link an external CSS file in order to style this area. I will follow up on this post at a later point to explain how to code your static FBML page.

Finally, we need to go back to our home page, click edit page again, and click on edit under Wall Settings. Make sure your default landing page for everyone else is set to the title of your splash page you just created. This way when visitors come to your fan page, they will see the splash page first.

You are done!

And that’s it! A lot of steps but once you go through it a couple of times you will get the hang of it. It really is not that difficult. If you run into problems, leave a comment below and I will help you out. I will follow up on this post with a video and some other details in the future.

Tagged as: facebook fan page, facebook tutorial

Nate is a 24-year-old Internet Marketer & WordPress Guru who helps businesses and individuals understand how to market online with The Social Web. Find Nate on Google Plus

Subscribe to Nate's RSS feed or contact Nate Devore.