Are you ready to take your pet sitting Facebook fan page to the next level?
Do you want to make your fan page more interactive and gain more loyal fans?
FBML is the answer. I created a 2-part FBML series that walks you through the basics and the specifics.
Part 1 – FBML Basics (this page)
Part 2 – Getting FBML on your fan page
The content below transcribes much of what is covered in the video.
What is FBML?
In today’s tutorial video, you’re going to learn all about FBML and how to apply it to your pet sitting Facebook fan page.
Much like HTML is the code used to build webpages, FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language, and you guessed it, is the code used to build those neat little often interactive tabs you see on Fan Pages.
Part 1 of this video series covers:
- What exactly is FBML, anway?
- What code you can and can not use
- We’ll look at some creative ways to use FBML
(In Part 2, I’ll walk you through the entire process of getting the FBML application to work on your page, and provide you with working examples you can use for your pet sitting business fan page.)
Once you see the process of getting it to work , you’ll be relieved to see how easy it is, and also, how flexible it is.
As you’ll discover, you can within minutes add FBML tabs to your fan page that include:
- Youtube videos
- Contact forms
- Newsletter sign up boxes
- Images/Photo galleries
- or really anything else you can think of that would go on a normal web page
Some General Rules of FBML
To get the FBML box to work, you can input fbml style code OR you can use the same html code that you may already be using on your website.
I know some of you have had issues with this, so allow me to expand and clear things up.
While good ol’ html works, you have to know which html tags are not necessary (the ones that will get in the way and mess things up for you).
The html tags you do not use are most of the tags in the header. These include:
1 2 3 4 5 | <!DOCTYPE...> <html> <head> <title> <meta> |
So in other words, you can usually insert just the code that actually makes up the element you want to display.
Let’s say that on my FBML tab, I just wanted the contact form from my pet sitting website to appear…
Well, I’ll ignore all the code up top, and scroll down to where the html begins and ends for the contact form (usually everything between the <form> tag. And I’ll copy and paste this into my FBML box
Now the true strength of FBML is that it’s really robust – it can handle plenty of html code.
For example, if you are familiar with css stylesheets, I could include this line of code into the FBML box, which allow the output of my code to look the same as it does on my web page.
1 | <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" /> |
The only thing I’d need to adjust is making sure the full url to my website is there, so it can correctly locate the file from the Facebook page.
1 | <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.example.com/style.css" /> |
If your css code looks like this, you can even grab this block and insert it in your FBML box.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | <style type="text/css"> .body { background-color: #ccc; } p { font-size: 12px; color: blue; } </style> |
OK, most of this will make more sense as we get into it.
How Can You Use FBML?
Let’s take a quick look at some great examples of businesses using FBML so you can see the true power of it.
Ford Trucks shows a lot of the power behind FBML. They have videos, images, links and articles.
To help promote their McCafe, McDonalds chose to integrate a flash movie they made.
And Animal Planet went a simpler, more traditional route by highlighting text from their Wikipedia entry.
Really, anything is possible…
And there you go.
I hope you were able to get a basic and complete overview of exactly what FBML is, and the almost infinite ways you can implement it into your pet sitting Facebook fan page.
In Part 2 of this series, we’ll get the FBML application going on your fan page, and I’ll provide you with a few samples of actual code you can plug right into your pages.
If you enjoyed this tutorial, please share it with your fans, and leave a comment below…
[…] Part 1, we discussed the basics of FBML. Today, in Part 2, we are going to get you all up and running with […]
[…] can view a complete 2-part video tutorial going through the process at the Association of Pet Sitting […]
Hi Josh!
I think that is great! More pet sitters need to know how AMAZING FB can be for their business. It isn’t hard at all. Just takes guidance. Glad we all have you that we can refer to!!! FBML can really help make your page stand out… although – then you gotta be ACTIVE on your page too! ;) FBML is very cool!!!!
Bella