By Damien Cross
Have you visited a Facebook business page and wondered how some companies are creating such cool custom graphics? The answer is IFrames.
If you are asking yourself, “what are iFrames and why do I need to know about them to build a customized graphic?”, then keep reading. This post it for you!
On a practical level iFrames are the customized pages on business Facebook accounts that can offer specific information about your business with text and graphics. They can also include links that drive visitors from your Facebook page to specific pages on your website or anywhere you want to point a URL. On the technical level iFrames define an inline frame that contains another document.
A landing page in Facebook can be set up to be the first page a new visitor sees when they view your Facebook account. This landing page can increase conversions (clicks to your website, other social media accounts or additional pages in Facebook) and explode your Facebook fan count because you can visually direct visitors to click on the ‘like button’ at the top with a graphic or text.
IFrames recently replaced FBML, a scripting language that Facebook provided that utilized their markup language. Whereas HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language and although it’s similar to HTML it has some differences, making it a less than perfect way to design pages. Now that Facebook has moved away from FBML and implemented the use of iFrames graphic, web designers have more freedom to create these custom landing pages.
IFrames open the door to all kinds of possibilities with in Facebook allowing developers to build a webpage on their own server and then call it through an application to display it inside a Facebook Page.
The use of iFrames give the designer of the page the ability to use their own CSS and Javascript which means the code used to determine the design of a webpage will be more consistent with brand guidelines and design. This change has removed any design limitations that were present in FBML.
It is also now easier to track content within an iFrame because this content actually resides on your own site, but is displayed on your Facebook Page. This is a real plus because you can now use you’re own web analytics and lead tracking software to determine the most effective tactics for your business.
Every kind of company can benefit by adding a customized iFrames page to their Facebook account. You can promote products and services, offer specials and discounts, create calls-to-action to drive more sales and awareness about your business directly within Facebook.
It may sound complicated, but this is where web designers can really demonstrate value to clients and offer them a better, more flexible, welcome page. Facebook has been a major revolution for online marketers and this update has given companies another great reason to use Facebook as a social media marketing platform.
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