Facebook is still kicking butt. Everyone and their mother is on there and fortune 500 companies have caught on with contests, fan photo uploads and so many other promotional ideas that Facebook marketing strategies is an entire science of its own. Even still, its just as easy for the little guy to own some facebook real estate and run great promotions.

I’ll show you the right links and how set up a page, but learning how to make a facebook fan page goes beyond filling out basic information. So I’ll include a few tricks to make your fan page really shine.

First let’s understand the rules. Facebook makes a clear distinction: Profiles are for personal accounts. Facebook Fan Pages are for business. Even the new timeline layout states that cover images (the large image on top) should not be of a promotional nature. So fan page it is for business – but you will need a personal profile to create those nifty sidebar tabs on a page. I’ve tried setting up a business page outside of my personal account, it just doesnt work.

Now that were up to speed, sign in to your personal facebook account and get started.

How to Make a Facebook Fan Page

Finding your way in facebooks everchanging landscape can be difficult. At the time of this writing, the correct link to create a fan page is here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Click on your business type, choose a category, then name your business. The ‘name’ will show up as the name of your fan page. Create your fan page and verify your email.

Go through the steps of including your business information. Your basic fan page looks like the image below. Click on Edit Info and go through the settings links to get a feel for whats there.

Make a Facebook Fan Page Image

The first suggestion is to upload an image. This is your first opportunity make an impression. You can use it to introduce your ‘call to action’, showcase a product or define your brand. Think about what your fans NEED to know and include it in the image.

Because its an important first step, lets learn from the big boys. CSI Miami keeps it short, simple and to the point. A defining image of the show, their logo and where to find them offline. Simple, yet effective. Motorola takes it a step further by featuring products in their image. Dallas Cowyboys go all the way by running a contest, then pointing to that contest in their fan page image. Thats truly interactive and brilliant marketing from the start.

My fan page is a little different, intended to brand my website which promotes my individual products services. Because I like to keep things more personal, I incorporated my photo, so people can see who I am. In this way, I can edit the thumbnail that shows when I comment, to show my photo. I also include my name because the page is named after my business and not myself.

Creating the Fan Page Image

Create an image 180 pixels wide. Image height is not fixed, but dont make it too tall because your tabs are located directly underneath. Add your photo, logo or other pertinent info. When your image is just right, click on the ‘Upload an Image’ link in facebook and make it live!

To control the icon that shows when you post and comment, go to ‘edit page’ > ‘profile picture’ then click ‘Edit Thumbnail’ and move the image to the desired spot.

Note: Every time you upload, facebook throws the image into your ‘profile pictures’ gallery. If you’d like to delete the mishaps, go to your page > photos > profile pictures. Inside each image, there’s a delete link.

Fan Page Tabs

‘Facebook Fan Page Tabs’ are the icon links in the left sidebar under the fan page image. When you click on each of these tabs, it loads different information. Facebook gives you power to customize the information you display with the ability to create custom tabs.You can also set your welcome page, or ‘default landing tab’ to load one of your custom tabs instead of your ‘wall’, so it will be the first thing visitors see when they come to your page. Featured content can be very powerful for your business.

The goal of a featured fan page tab is to create content that works for your business and is also useful to your fans. You might like to simply introduce your company by featuring what you do. I’ve also seen free giveaways, sign up forms, videos, and in the previous example, a contest. The sky is the limit in a custom tab. Facebook pulls this information from a real web page elsewhere on the internet, so whatever you can do on a regular webpage, you can do in a facebook tab. As long as the width of the page is confined to 520 pixels wide, you’re golden.

Creating Tabs on your Facebook Fan Page

To create the content that will appear inside your custom fan page tab, you’ll need the ability to either write an html page or customize a template, and be able to upload it to your web sites server. Your server must have at least a shared secure server (SSL) or you can purchase a private one.

Create your content in html format max 520 pixels wide and upload it to your server. You’ll need to copy the url where the content is located so we can plug it into facebook by creating an application.

Creating the Facebook App to install a Fan Page Tab

Creating the app is a whole new ballgame for 2012. So much that I rewrote this post and made a full video tutorial in a separate post dedicated to tab creation and installation, right down to setting up a secure site. You can check it out here.

Facebook Landing Pages for 2012

While there are services that will build a facebook landing page for you, you might be a do it yourself kinda person or not have the cash to have a landing page made professionally. This video is for you. I’ll guide you through 11 steps to get it done. Plus I’ve created a stripped down WordPress theme to use for your Facebook Landing Pages and included a text version of the steps. Enjoy!

Create Your Own Facebook Landing Page

Download: FanTabs WordPress Theme
Download: 11 Step Text File right click to save

Does a matching website/facebook theme sound awesome? Like a little mini version of your website right in facebook where visitors can shop, sign up, read about you – anything you can do in WordPress. I thought so! So I created one especially for my visitors for a very low price of $14 until the end of January. Snag it today before the deal is gone!
Check it out Here!

I completely understand why starting a web design business sounds so killer, the benefits are incredible…

Work your own hours doing something you love. Make your own money on your own terms. Fire your boss! Create your life according to your own standards? I can hear you all the way from here… heck yeah, where do I sign up?

You Lucky dog… These days, you dont have to go to school to start a web design business. In fact, there isnt a whole lot of technical knowledge that goes into building web sites anymore, just a few tools that help web designers be more productive. Even expert control of these tools isnt the key to knocking your own web design business out of the park!

What Ive noticed about successful people, in all forms of business, is that they have boatloads of confidence. Confidence, the ability to get things done, and a passion to put themselves and their company OUT there. If you’re worried that you’ll nosedive on your first few web design jobs… you JUST MIGHT. You’ll probably mess up quite a few jobs starting out, but it doesn’t mean a horrible death for your web design company. Just know that everyone makes mistakes, own it, make proper adjustments – and DONT let it stop you. (clients LOVE you when you offer “my bad” discounts and freebies… and they do  come back!)

I know it’s easy to tell you to be bold, but if fear is still stopping you, I’ll tell you a story. When I began cold calling for clients, I was TERRIFIED. I felt like I didnt know what I was talking about, that everyone would hate me and I’d end up just as broke with a side of humiliation. You already know the outcome. I didnt suck. People didn’t even notice that I was nervous and I even got a few jobs!!! Though I drastically underpriced these first jobs and well, they didnt turn out as gorgeous as I’d imagined, I didnt stop. I kept fighting the good fight, without a minute of down time so the fear wouldn’t seep back in. And it got easier. Soon I was selling my own professional web design services,  chatting away with clients, pulling out their best information to help them become more successful online. When I turned my intention on helping others, it became quite enjoyable.

Lucky again! Cold calling is not a requirement. Most communication is done by email. So even if you’re not a born talker, YOU CAN DO This! You’ll build confidence and jobs will come. Just remember to keep it simple and always do your best.

In the weeks to come, I’ll expand on each of these topics that go along with how to start a web design business. For now… the basics.

What Does it Cost to Become a Web Designer?

Im happy to say, not much.  Sure, there’s a ton of art, templates, tools and programs you can buy to get a head start in the business, but if you have very little money to get started, you can still make a great run.

There’s one thing you’ll need to pay for upfront to get started – web hosting. You’ll need a place online to host websites for yourself and your clients. I use HostGator because in my opinion, they run the fastest most dependable servers Ive worked on.

If you already have web hosting, great! If not, I created this video to show you quickly how to get set up. I was able to get you a 25% discount. Plus, I’ll give you my premium wordpress theme for free!

Go to HostGator.com
Use Coupon Code: digitalrenewal for 25% off
Email me with your proof of purchase and I’ll send the theme right away.

In your web design career, if you only use ONE program, it WILL be Adobe Photoshop I use this program every single day in my business and though its quite expensive, its the industry standard for this simple fact. Its the best out there.

You can learn photoshop for free with adobe’s built in guides and tutorials. Youtube is a great place to learn for free. If you need a formal start to finish learning experience, without the expense and hassle of going to school, sign up for Photoshop training at lynda.com. Actually, every software or language you’d ever need to learn for a career as a web designer is right there. Imagine going to college for $25 a month! Its virtually the same education. Lynda wrote many of the textbooks we used in college for print design and her video training is basically everything we learned, at a fraction of the price.

One other expense may be marketing for your business, but if you’re resourceful, getting referrals from current clients and friends, pounding the pavement and using online social networking, you can get quite a few clients just by networking.

Free Web Page Design Software

For professional web designers, diy business owners and bloggers alike,WordPress is where its at. It is the most popular and easy to work with content management system alive. Its free in your web hosting cpanel, and you can install as many websites as you like. Because of its popularity and documentation, any question that you might run into is one google search away from being answered. Clients find it very easy to maintain their websites as well. WordPress is the definition of win/win for a professional web designer.

How To Set Up A Website

The best advice to quickly set up a website is to install a copy of wordpress on your web hosting server and build a site of your very own! Choose a topic you like writing about and go for it. Then do one for a friend, neighbor, your church, a local business and so on!

When you get to a professional web designer level, your work has to look professional, serve a function and be organized. You dont have to be a skilled artist or a programmer in the beginning, in fact, spending too much time learning these things will just slow you down in the real world. Art and programming can be purchased, and you’ll turn your jobs faster, bringing in more cash flow to buy better art, cooler programs and start an advertising budget if you so choose.

Once you have wordpress installed, there are thousands of free themes and plugins to choose from, and for very professional jobs, you can purchase premium wordpress themes with high level functionality built straight into the theme (paid for by the client of course).

Though themes do all the design work for you, problems may arise when simple customizations need to be done to make a website unique. Adding a logo is easy in a premium wordpress theme, most allow you to upload a custom logo. In many other cases, this is where HTML and CSS come in handy. You may need to know how to switch out art, adjust spacing and change background colors. Moving things around in a wordpress theme may look complicated at first, but with practice, it gets easier.

Ive created a WordPress Business Theme specifically for people with limited experience with html and css code. After using other premium themes on client projects, I thought ‘how in the world would someone with little programming skill every be able to set this up?’ So I built something unique, utilizing all of the features of a premium theme, and put it into a format that is dead simple to use. Its something that I would sell to a client for $500. Use it to charge YOUR clients $500 
Plus if you do, Im available to answer questions through my contact form, or email me atdigitalrenewal@gmail.com

If you’ve been tooling around web design and developer sites lately, you may have noticed a strange phenomenon. Nice fonts. Much nicer than the default web fonts, and no, they’re not images. I know from the 100 times I’ve selected the text muttering ‘wow thats cool’. We’re no longer stuck in what I’ve heard humorously termed as ‘arial hell’.

Until now, this was about it for web safe font usage:

Enter @font-face

@font-face is an actual css rule created years ago to embed fonts on a web page. It wasn’t supported by browsers until recently. Now Mozilla and IE support font embedding. I’ve tested in FireFox 3.5 and IE7. It works in both, though I feel IE’s a tad sluggish.

This is a huge step for online typography. Now when clients ask ‘Can we do something about those ugly fonts?” you can say, YES! yes we CAN! It’s a bright day in the web design world. To embed beautiful fonts, all you need is the right font formats and the CSS to get it done.

I’m all about handy tools to make life easier, so let’s head over to FontSquirrel where they have prebuilt ALOT of @font-face kits. This way we know the fonts are legal for your site (check the license for other uses) and the code is already written.

A peek at just a few of fontSquirrels font-face kits.

Since they provide little how-to, I’ll give you a quick walkthrough.
(W3 Documentation for @font-face)

The files.

-Your kit comes with all the fonts needed, in the following extensions:

• .woff  Web Open Font Format (mozilla)
• .eot Embedded Open Type (microsoft)
• .svg Scalable Vector Graphics (XML web graphics iphone)
• .ttf   standard TrueType font

-It comes with an external style sheet which defines your fonts for the browser. (stylesheet.css)

-And it comes with on-page example classes to control the size and line height. (in demo.html)

Lets plug it in.

1. Extract the files into a folder and upload them to your server. I called my new folder ‘fonts’ and put it inside my wordpress themes folder. I kept it simple and left stylesheet.css in the same directory as the fonts.
2. Open the file that contains your websites <head></head> tags (index.html in most cases… header.php in your wordpress themes folder)
3. Include the following code inside the head tag (given in demo.html – make sure to use the correct path to the file)
   <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://yourdomain.com/correct-path-to/stylesheet.css" type="text/css" charset="utf-8">
4. Style your new font with CSS. (example classes given in demo.html)
   its a simple switch.
   say my h1 style was written this way…
   h1 {font-family: Arial, sans-serif;}
   Add the font-family defined in stylesheet.css like this:
   h1 {font-family: 'DroidSansRegular', Arial, sans-serif;}

Thats all there is to it. Do it once and you’ll be a pro! And you can download them all, they’re free!

Other options and some history:
Replacing fonts for the web used to require much code. sIFR has been around for a while and I give them serious props for making it work. Looking into the code, I had to pass because frankly, its complicated. It uses javascript to call flash to redraw the fonts. And with all that code, page load time suffers. If the visitor doesnt have javascript or flash? They see the default.

Cufon is much easier to understand and implement and does a nice job. Their generator converts fonts to the correct format and there’s a nifty wordpress plugin. Less code means faster page loads but be aware of where your fonts are coming from and if you’re allowed usage on your website. Wouldn’t want license violations. You might even want to do some of your own comparison testing to see which loads faster, cufon or @font-face

Happy TypeFacing!

watch the high quality, full screen version on vimeo.

Here are the plugins:
All In One SEO Pack
Google XML Sitemaps
Related Posts by Category
UPDATE: heres another related posts that might work better
Contextual Related Posts
WP Easy Archives is no longer available. If it is, i cant find it.

Comment with questions and I’ll explain in more detail

Happy SEOing!

Ok, so people have been asking about web design services. I figured I’d take a shot at writing a sales page. Im no writer and thats fine, but a little help getting my point across would be helpful…  I started looking into it.

If you want to learn something, you try to learn from the best,  right?

Copyblogger.com tipped me off to John Carlton who is proclaimed to be the best in copywriting. I’m following his  material now. So far it looks like winning stuff.  He’s teaching his 17 step system that one of his students says is  “freaky” how well it works.  Id like to see more and try it out before I recommend anything to spend real money on.

In the meantime, I found you guys some free videos.   Not as much finesse as John Carlton’s, but the basics are there.  It’s Copywriting for Promotional Emails, but it translates easily to salespage copy.  The site requires a sign up (sorry), but i think its worth it. they’re pretty good videos.

you know they say just a little copywriting know-how can make a big difference!

best of luck
and happy writing!

And my answer to that question, especially when I think back to when I started is… write down all the ways to get traffic, and go through that list every single day.

These days there are so many more methods to get traffic than there was when I started, but the idea is the same. Promote like crazy! Every single day do as many tasks from your list as you possibly can. Once you’re done building, promote and drive traffic. Thats it. Use your stats to see where people are going and how long they’re hangin around, and of course, measure your success in click-throughs and sales. Then make your changes (ONE AT A TIME! or split test) and keep promoting. So what are the  21 ways???

I think a repost of Steven Pierce’s 21 ways to drive traffic to your website is called for here. Looking at his list, I believe he hasn’t missed a thing…

1. Blog Traffic
2. Directory Traffic
3. Forum Traffic
4. Article Traffic
5. Joint Venture Traffic
6. MySpace Traffic
7. eZine Traffic
8. Pay-Per-Click Traffic
9. Classified Traffic
10. Squidoo Traffic
11. Search Engine Traffic
12. Banner Traffic
13. Craigslist Traffic
14. eBay Traffic
15. Facebook Traffic
16. Social Network Traffic
17. Podcasting Traffic
18. Social Shopping Traffic
19. YouTube Traffic
20. Link Traffic
21. Press Release Traffic

Of course you don’t have to do ALL of these to get good traffic. That would take forever. ugh. Pick a few that sound the most appealing to you, at least 4 and do them every single day and watch your stats grow!

Best of Luck and
Happy Promoting!

P.S. How to use ALL 21 of these traffic methods listed by Steven Pierce!

As a wordress user, youve probably said, ok, here are my signups, but where’s the email button? All these controls, it should be here somewhere.

Unfortunately there isnt one.

Be it a security risk or a programming oversight, WordPress doesnt go all the way here. It allows registration and stores subscribers, but doesnt offer a built in way to stay in touch!

We know that mailing lists have been a magic bullet for website owners for years, but for some reason WordPress hasnt put the two together.

Its aggravating and slowing down production. Instead of working on our site or connecting with people, were searching for a way to get the job done. AND, theres no one simple answer for every website…

But there are options.

How to Email WordPress Subscribers

If you merely want to send an email when you update your blog, FeedBurner is the way to go. They offer a nice signup form code that gives your visitors options for signing up and automatically sends out an email when you update your site. In addition, you can see subscriber stats in the feedburner control panel.

Email Users is probably the simplest email plugin, and seems to do the job. It picked up my existing subscribers from the database and sent an email. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do.

Very nice. But its lacking some power. It doesn’t keep a log of what was sent, to whom and when.

Plus features:

• Choose who to email by individual users or entire groups.
• Email according to WordPress’ built in ‘roles’ (subscriber, contributor, author, etc), they’re called user groups here.
• Updates your subscribers with new blog posts to their email.
• Allow users to email each other through your site.
• Extremely quick and easy to set up and utilize (under 5 minutes)
• Being able to organize subscribers into roles has interesting possibilities.

The Email Users plugin could do the trick if you need something quick and lightweight that actually works.

I didnt see screen shots, so i took these from inside admin:

One more thing. If you’re looking for a more powerful way to build email campaigns AWeber rocks. You can Try them now for a $1

Happy Emailing!