Adding a Custom Facebook Tab

May 20, 2010 8 Comments by Michael

Customizing Facebook pages is the bane of many social marketers’ existence. The interface is buggy, there’s a general lack of quality ready-made applications for business use, and help is hard to find. Luckily Facebook offers “FBML”, which is an application that allows you to “add a box to your Page in which you can render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for enhanced Page customization”.

In other words, this handy little tool can enable you to add a custom tab to any profile or fan page (among other uses) and place whatever content there that you wish. Brands of all sizes are using Static FBML to customize their fan pages in ways that make visitors forget they’re on Facebook. Check out Pepsi’s “Refresh Everything” tab or our post on Papa John’s “Specialty Pizza Challenge” for good examples of this. Both do an excellent job of using FBML to create a unique Facebook experience for fans and page visitors.

If you want to dress things up any more than using simple HTML tags, you’ll probably need the help of a web programmer. There are, however, a multitude of user-friendly embeddable applications that novice Facebook marketers can use with little difficulty. If you’re interested in anything in particular be sure to let us know by leaving a comment below. In any case, this short video tutorial walks you through the setup process of installing a custom tab on your Facebook fan page using Static FBML.

Facebook Tutorials

Arjun Vasudeva says:

June 5, 2010 at 6:25 pm

Thanks dude, this was quite helpful!

buy twink gear says:

June 20, 2010 at 6:19 pm

Searching for this for some time now – i guess luck is more advanced than search engines

Raynagrl says:

June 23, 2010 at 10:03 am

This was great for a fan page, but for the regular user…..how do I get the “add a page” option?

Michael says:

June 23, 2010 at 10:50 am

@Raynagrl do you mean adding a custom tab to your personal facebook page? Unfortunately, this isn’t available! The only time you can add new tabs to a personal profile is when it’s part of another application. For example, there’s a LinkedIn facebook app that let’s you place your LinkedIn profile on a dedicated tab: http://apps.facebook.com/linkedinprofile/

Name says:

September 27, 2010 at 2:30 pm

Thanks a million! Thanks for starting with the basics as i notice a lot of people just jump in at the deep end, and completely overlook the initial step. Thanks again bro!