You may know that you can create what is known as a Facebook fan page. An example is the fan page for this site here. The benefits of a fan page are many. As Facebook is the largest social site online you have access to the biggest possible audience. Obviously it is easier to go where the people are then to attempt to bring them all to you.
Facebook Fan Page
Many people prefer to get their information through their favorite sites such as Facebook. Therefore take your site and information to them through a Facebook Fan Page. Other benefits are the features the Fan page provides such as a discussion area and more. Individuals find your page within Facebook, however what if they come to your site? Preferably you want to retain visitors and this is done by offering them your content via an RSS feed, email newsletter and why not have them join your Fan page. To do this placing a Fan widget on your site is an easy excellent way to accomplish it.
Facebook Fan Page Widget
To understand what a Fan Page Widget is, see the sidebar on the right of this site. You will see a square box with a small image, the name of the page in facebook “Online Business” and a group of 10 fans. Those images are individuals that have become fans of this site on Facebook and their Facebook images.
How to Add the Facebook Fan Page Widget
Once you have a Fan page and are logged into Facebook simply go to this link here. You will see two simple steps.
First you choose your Fan page name from the drop down box. If you only have one page you will only see one page. Next you can choose to include the stream which is the most recent information shared on the page and the fans which are the images of your fans. The widget on the right on this site has the fans only.
Second step, you choose they type of site you have to add the code to. Unless you have Blogger or Typepad you simply click the other button. There is code to copy and paste. You paste the code where you want the widget to appear. The default settings are just as you see on this site. It is a width of 300 pixels and it shows 10 people. If you use WordPress you can edit the sidebar.php file to add it to your sidebar or many simply use the widgets. If you use the widgets in WordPress then add a text widget and paste the code there.
Modifying the Fan Box Widget
The most popular items to modify are the width and the number of fans to show. The height will automatically be adjusted based on the number of fans you choose to show. To adjust the width you will see this in the code you paste width=”300″, if after you paste the code it does not fit in your sidebar you can change the width to be smaller or larger. You can also modify the number of fans to appear by modifying this connections=”10″. Play with the number to add more or less. There are additional options to modify such as the font size and you can find more modification details here on the Facebook wiki.