Creating and Customizing a Facebook Page

Once you’ve chosen a Page name and category, it’s time to begin customizing your Page and pulling in or creating content. You don’t need to publish your Page right away, so you can keep it hidden while you play around with designs and applications.

Because there are so many options for customization, from Facebook apps to custom applications that you can design yourself  it’s helpful to create a wireframe or basic design of your Page layout before you begin. You should also develop a content strategy and posting schedule that includes automated feeds from external sites, like an RSS feed from your blog or Twitter page, as well as manual updates and responses you post to the Page in real time.

By searching the Application Directory on Facebook, you can find many free applications with which to begin customizing your Facebook Page. The official Facebook Page about Pages

Static FBML, Notes, and Social RSS are three great, free apps to get you started. With these you can quickly customize the look of your Page and start bringing in outside content and adding to your Page’s tab structure. Keep in mind, though, that a long-term Facebook Page strategy usually benefits from a custom application or more extensive customization with Facebook Markup Language (FBML).

Static FBML

Use Static FBML to create custom boxes or tabs using FBML (similar to HTML). Although doing so requires some coding ability, it’s worth the effort. This application will allow you to design a custom landing tab that tells users what you offer and why they should like the Page.

Notes

An official Facebook application, Notes allows you to pull in a blog feed and automatically post to your Wall. This helps you keep a steady stream of content from your website without always having to log in to Facebook. You can also post a manual note, which provides more formatting capabilities than a standard status update.

Social RSS

Social RSS is another good RSS feed app that you can use to create a full tab display of your blog or Twitter feed. If you are a frequent blogger, this app (or one like it) is a necessity. Social RSS enables you to display your blog in its own tab just as it looks on your site, as opposed to displaying a snippet on your Wall.

also offers many tips and resources for Facebook Page administrators, who are more commonly called admins.