After visiting 5 or 6 different sites online to find instructions to do this for myself, each of them holding a piece of the information hostage for a fee, I decided to write my own post and include a video of how I finally managed to get this done.  I’m still working on the video which I’ll add in the coming week but here are the instructions.

First, you will need this tool from Facebook-click this link.  This takes you to the Facebook Markup Language Application (FBML) and you are going to add this to your page. This is accomplished by clicking the link directly beneath the image in the upper left corner of the page. Do this for every page you want to have “customize tabs” ability.

Select the page to which you want to add the application (only one choice unless you manage more than one page and in this case you will have a drop down list of choices).  Now go back to your Facebook page and click the edit page button that appears just under your page logo in the upper left corner.

This takes you to the page management dashboard where you can scroll down the page to add the FBML application to your page.  It will appear at the bottom, under “More Applications”.  Just click on it and it will give you the option of selecting the page to which you want to add it (if you have more than one, otherwise, just one choice will appear).

Click the the FBML Application Logo

You will arrive back on the FBML app page (NOTE: I found in adding this to multiple pages the steps here behave a little differently in repeating them but I could see what I needed – usually it eliminated a few steps from this list I’m giving here).

Once you’re on the FBML app page, click the “add to my page” link directly underneath the FBML page image / logo for this second time.  This will open a new box where you’ll see a list of all the pages that you admin. Just select the appropriate page (there will be only one if you only have one Facebook page on your account).

Back to your Facebook page, again on the dashboard (get here by clicking the edit page link once again beneath your page logo  just as before).  Scrolling down the page this time will take you to the FBML app in your list of applications.

The next step is to customize the FBML app to create a landing tab for new visitors to your page.

Click the  “Applications Settings” links.

…which will take you to this box…

All you need to do here is click the “okay” button, the settings should be just as they are shown here.

You should again be back to your page dashboard, scrolling down again to the FBML application where you will now edit the application by clicking the “edit” link…

This opens up a box that will allow you to set a name for your new customized tab.  In this example, I’ve created a landing page that will encourage visitors who are not already members of the page (fans in the past but since the recent change to “like” I’m calling them members).  I have named mine “Join My Page” and I created it simply by overtyping this text into this section:

Once you have your custom “call to action” message and the box title established, click “Save Changes”.  You can type a message in the box labeled “FBML” as your call to action, but I recommend that you have a custom graphic created (you’re welcome to use the one I made if you like), and store it somewhere online where you can retrieve a link to this graphic.  I have mine stored on my blog in the media library. Here is what it looks like:

To use the graphic option as I have done, just paste this bit of code (provided below the line of red text) in the box as shown below, replacing the highlighted portions with your own web addresses that are storing the image.

Simply copy and edit this line of text, editing the portion highlighted in yellow below with your links:

<a href=”http://www.how2marketingadvice.com”><img src=”http://how2marketingadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/FanButton.png” width=”453″ height=”131″ border=”" alt=”How 2 Marketing Advice”></a>

Here is how it should look on your screen, the yellow highlighted portions should be replaced with the links to the domain where the graphic is hosted and then the specific link to the graphic:

Now, click the save changes box at the lower left on this same screen.

Back on your Facebook page, you can view the tab you just created, *** If you don’t see the tab immediately when you go back to your page, click the right pointing arrows at the far right of your tabs.  This will display a drop down of any additional page tabs you have and you should see it there, just click it to add it to the displayed tabs.*** Just click and drag it into whatever position you want it within the set of displayed tabs for your page.

The very last step is to direct all visitors who are not already members of your page to this tab whenever they click the link to your Facebook page so that this is the tab they automatically land on – a landing page.  Just go back to the dashboard for your page (remember, the “edit page” link, beneath your page’s logo), scroll down to Wall Settings and then click edit:

This opens up another window like the one you see here below, simply click the drop down arrows on the the right ( I have noted them here with red arrows), make the selections as I have done here – of course yours may be different- and click save:

If you want to test your work, log out of Facebook, go to a site that displays a link to your Facebook page or just type it in the browser – it will look just a bit different here since it is going to ask you to join Facebook but a user who is a member of Facebook will have the desired experience, seeing the “like” option displayed which they are being asked to click.  The next time they visit, they will just come to your page, since they are now members of the page and excluded from the criteria established in this step.  Done!

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