In yesterday's post, I've Got a Facebook Page! (Now What?), I mentioned that one way to add more compelling content to your Page is by installing additional applications. Today I'm going to talk about how to do that and describe one app in particular that I've found extremely useful.

Before that, however, there are some general things you should know about Pages and applications.

• Depending on what category you selected when you created your Page, some specific apps will have already been installed for you. For example, music-related Pages come with applications for playing music, discography, and tour dates.
• Some applications cannot be used at all on Pages. This is either because they don't really make sense in a Page context or because the developer chose not to make that option available.
• I mentioned this in my post, Setting Up Your Facebook Page, but it's worth repeating here. If you set up your Page so that it's not attached to any personal profile, you may find some applications don't have an option to add it to your Page. What you can do in that situation is to make your own personal profile an admin temporarily and then use that account to add the app to your Page. You can then remove yourself as an admin to avoid the problems I mentioned in that post if you want.
• To add yourself as an admin, click the Edit Page link at the top left.
• Scroll down the page and you'll see an Admin section in the right-hand panel. Click Add.
• A window will pop up. Add the e-mail you use for your personal account to the box at the bottom. (Pages have no "friends" to add...:( )
  

Now, when you log into your personal account and go to your Page, you'll see that you have administrator privileges.

Finding applications to add

When you click the Edit Page link at the top left, you're taken to a page with various settings and a list of the applications you currently have installed. At the bottom of that list is a box that says "More Applications." Click the pencil icon and then the Browse More link.

You'll be taken to the Application Directory where you can browse through all the available apps by category or search on a specific term to find related ones.

Tip: When you're visiting other Pages—especially ones that are similar to yours—click through the various tabs and see if they're using some apps that might be good for your Page as well. You can then come back to the Application Directory and search for it.

A great all-purpose application: Static FBML

This app was actually developed by Facebook and it's one of my favorite because it's so flexible. You can see two instances of it on my Tech for Luddites Page. The first one is the box in the left-hand panel on the Wall and Info pages that is titled, "Top 3 T4L Topics." The second is on my Boxes tab: "Links to Company Help Resources."

The reason I like this app is because it's basically just a box where you can add any type of info you want and use HTML formatting to make it look good. I also like the fact that you can have multiple instances of it on your Page and you can have it appear either on your Wall, your Boxes tab, or as its own tab.

This application is one of those I mentioned earlier that you won't be able to install directly if your Page isn't tied to a personal profile. So if you want to install it, follow the above steps to add your personal account as an admin.

If you search on FBML in the Application Directory, this app is the first one in the search results. You can also click here to go directly to it.

Installing and Using the Static FBML application

Note that even if you don't want to use this app, the steps for adding it will be the same as for any other one. However, each app will have its own configuration requirements. If you want to install a different one but are having trouble figuring out how to make it work, send me an e-mail with a link to the application's Page, and I'll get back to you with specific instructions.

• Click the Add to My Page link in the top left. A window will pop up that lets you select which Page to add it to (if you have multiple).
  
• Now go back to your own Page and click the Edit Page link. Scroll down to see that Static FBML has been added.
  
  An empty box will also have been added to your Boxes tab.
  
  Tip: It's not particularly easy getting back to your Page—there are several clicks involved—so you may want to bookmark the URL so you can return there quickly.
• From your settings page, click the pencil icon beside the FMBL box and click Edit. You'll be taken to this screen:
  
  Note: You can enter any type of HTML in the box. If you don't know HTML, you can still just write plain text but note that spaces between lines won't show up—it will be just one long paragraph.

  Also note the link at the bottom that says "Add another FBML box." You can come back to this page any time in the future to add more boxes to your Page.

  When you click Save Changes, the content will now appear on your Boxes tab.
  

If you want the info in the left-hand panel of your Wall and Info tabs, click the pencil icon and click "Move to Wall Tab." Note that you can only have it in one place or the other—not both. You can, however, make it its own tab by going to your Page's settings page, clicking the pencil icon beside the FBML application box, and clicking Application Settings.

Adding your Twitter stream to your Page.

Unfortunately, the Twitter app that you use to add your stream to your personal profile doesn't work for Pages at the moment. You can add the app, but then the tweets never show up anywhere.

Another application you can use is the Social RSS app. It lets you add up to five RSS feeds to your Page and you can use your Twitter feed as one of them. If you look at my Boxes tab, you'll see I have feeds from Mashable, ProBlogger, and my Twitter stream at the bottom. (You can add feeds in whatever order you like.)

You can add Social RSS to your Page the same way you did the FBML app. I'm going to write a separate post later on configuring Social RSS, because this one is already long enough! But you can always add it and play with it yourself to see how it works.

That's all I'm going to say about adding applications to Pages right now. If you discover any great apps that you think others might like, please let me know and I'll pass on the info. And, as usual, if you have any questions with any of the above, or anything else related to the topic, shoot me an e-mail and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Posted in Facebook,How To,Social Media