Using Custom Facebook Tabs to Promote Your Business

Want to boost the impact your Facebook page has?  Add some custom tabs! What is a custom tab?  tabs are icons that link to additional pages on Facebook.  You can use them to display text, photos, images, links, forms, or redirect to a URL. You can see the custom tabs under the cover photo of your page, to the right – after the photos tab and like tab. These little boxes disappear if you have no content, or are displayed in 2 row of 4 if you have content in them all. You are allowed to have a total of 8 tabs, but one of them always has to be the photos tab. By using custom tabs, you can better brand your page by choosing your own icons for them, and making them coordinate with your brand or logo.  You can add content your fans want to see, including branding on each page.  You can move them around so they most important tabs are more prominent. These pages make your Facebook page more like a mini website, and the content on your additional pages is even picked up by Google! Since tabs can be set to be sharable, your fans can share your pages with their friends, which increases your visibility and potentially increases your likes as well. One great thing about custom tabs is that you can fan-gate them.  When a tab is fan-gated, it means you have different content for fans and non-fans.  For instance, your non-fan page may have a “be sure to like us” image and people have to “like” your page in order to see the content on that tab.  This helps build your page’s likes. In fact, the only down side to custom tabs I’ve seen is that they are not accessible from a mobile device.  SURELY that is something Facebook will address in the near future.

So what are some ways to use custom tabs to promote your business? 

1. Add additional information about your business.  For example, we have tabs on our facebook to information about different services we offer.  On the Tri-State Speedway page, we added tabs for the schedule, the results and the points.
2. Add an interactive form.  Think of something you can give your fans if they sign up for your newsletter or for some other promotion.  Maybe a gift card or coupon.
3. Utilize the URL method and redirect one of the tabs right to your online store, catalog, or website.
4. Highlight specific employees or fans.
5. Post links to important forms, documents or other information.