2009 03/12

Use Involver.com to Customize Facebook Fan Pages

Facebook fan pages are quickly becoming a big deal for companies who wish to market socially. You’ve probably seen the branded pages with options for everything from signing up for a newsletter to grabbing a coupon. Facebook doesn’t provide these options themselves, or we’d all have figured it out by now. No, it’s companies like Involver who create amazing applications that can be added to fan pages and allow for customizations of all types.

After contacting an Involver Rep about their services I was pointed to the 30-Day Free Trial of their Pro Account so I could try a few more applications and see how it all works. I was really thrilled with how easy the applications are to set up!! You just press the Install button for an app and you’re taken to Facebook where you can choose which fan page you’d like to add the application to. Then you can enter your settings. After that, you’re given instructions on how to add the new tab to your fan page. In all, it takes about two minutes to set up one of these applications.

After trying these apps, I will never go back to any of the RSS tools found via the Facebook Application directory. And, when my free trial expires I’m going to be sad to have to lose two of the applications I love! If you want to see what I’ve done with my trial account, visit my Facebook Fan Page! Check out the News, Twitter, YouTube, and Other Pages tabs to see what I was able to do within a few minutes. Keep in mind, the free accounts do not allow you to put your own header in each tab…

Involver has three levels of membership: Free, Pro, and Premium.

Free: You sign up and get your pick of two applications from the Free/Basic applications. These include:

RSS Feed
YouTube Channel
Photo Gallery
Slides
Promotion Gallery
Twitter
Flickr
File Sharing
PDF’s

My favorites of the free applications are RSS Feed, which is better than any of the RSS applications I’ve found on Facebook, and Twitter. However, if you use YouTube a lot, I’d also highly recommend that one!! These applications bring in the posts, tweets, video, etc and create separate tabs for each one, as well as posting the updates to your wall, meaning all your fans see the updates in their live news feeds!

While the Free tools from Involver will excite small site owners like me, people with a larger following and a little more money to spend will really enjoy the Pro Account which allows the user to choose four applications. You can choose from the list above, plus some additional ones:

Signup
Coupons
Poll
Welcome Page

The last one, Welcome Page, is the most wonderful of all!! It allows a user to customize the look of the Welcome tab, as well as add their banner or logo, and their site colors to other pages. This is how brands are customizing their fan pages!! Even the free/basic apps get new functionality when you’re a Pro Account user. Some of these include customizing the pages, allowing people to subscribe to your Twitter stream or blog’s rss feed right from the fan page.Right now, you can sign up for a 30-day Free Trial of Involver Pro!!

And the Premium?? Well, that’s for the really big companies!! Applications include:

Facebook Connect Chat
Social Quiz
Social Flash Game
Flash Embed
Hybrid Applications
Custom Tab

These applications are licensed on a per app use and you’ll need to contact Involver for pricing.

How big is Involver? Well, they one of 7 finalists out of thousands for the Amazon Web Services start-up challenge and the final event where the winner is named is next Wednesday: Start-Up Challenge Final Event

Are you ready to take your Facebook fan page to the next level? Try out the Pro account, free for 30 days. Which applications will you choose? How will using Involver help to get your fans involved?

Disclaimer: I was not paid to tell you about Involver, and the only free product I received was a 30-day free trial that anyone can sign up for! I do not have affiliate links in this post and I don’t make money when you sign up.

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candlemonkey

Hi Erica,

I just set up my first ever fan page ... lol, and I have no idea what to do with it. These tools definitely look to be worth investigating. Thanks for sharing.

Todd

EricaMueller

I am glad you've found the information helpful! Let me know if you have any questions on how to set it all up. It's pretty simple and fun too. :-)

Thanks so much for stopping by. Hope you get lots of good feedback on your candle site, over at ProBlogger. I love that place!

Mike CJ

I've sort of ignored FB for too long - really need to get into it. Thanks for the post, some useful tools there.

Gordie

Questions: For the life of me I can't see how to create a fan page. Is it free and where do I start? Am I stupid?

EricaMueller

No, not stupid. They make it a little hard to find.

If there's not an Ads/Pages button in the bookmarks/toolbar section at the bottom of your Facebook page, you can go to any other fan page (http://www.facebook.com/EricaSays) and look in the left sidebar. It'll be the last thing on the sidebar and should say Create a Fan Page for My Business.

Have fun and let me know if you need any more help!

Patty Reiser

I am intrigued. I attempted once to create a Fan Page for my Photography business but found it complicated. I will be sure to bookmark this for when I am ready to try Fan Pages again.

EricaMueller

I've always like the Networked Blogs application, but I'm starting to think I could do away with it now that there are nice applications like this for fan pages.

Fan pages have gotten easier to use, and are more like profiles now than they once were. There's a settings page where you can tell it what you want to show, who can post what, etc. It's pretty cool!

Jimi Jones

Sounds quite nice, will have to check it out soon. I visited your Fan Page and like the look. That "Become a Fan" button works too. :-)

EricaMueller

Yea, I haven't done a whole lot with it, cause I can't afford the pro account once the free trial is over and I'd just be wasting my time to get fancy. :-)

But, I DO like the applications and having to pick just 2 is gonna be hard!

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