Whether you're running a $50 campaign for County treasurer or a $5 million dollar bid for US Senate, you're going to find yourself doing at least some degree of online organizing - from building an email list, to sharing photos and videos from events, to maintaining a Facebook or Twitter account.

The internet - everything from your campaign's website, blogs, social networking sites - gives you an opportunity to strengthen your relationships with supporters and reach out to potential supporters. And as with traditional, offline organizing, you set up shop where the people you're trying to reach are.

While it seems cliché to say that everyone's on Facebook - even your mom (no really, mine is) - it's kind of true. Facebook recently surpassed Google as the most visited site in the United States. The social networking site boasts 400 million active users, half of which log into the site at least once a day. And when more than 20 million people become fans of pages each day, why wouldn't your campaign have a presence?

You've probably already taken the first step and created a Facebook fan page for your candidate. Let us help you take it to the next level by using the tools of Facebook - including tabs and FBML - to create custom landing pages for potential supporters and drive your fans to the tabs you want them to see.

For more resources on using social media in a campaign, check out the Organizing Tool on Developing a New Media Strategy.

Facebook Tabs & FBML - A Few Tips

Once you decide that your campaign should have a presence on Facebook, you have to make a choice - do you create a group or do you create a public profile (aka fan page). Facebook public profiles - or fan pages - are pages that share many of the same features of a personal profile, but are for an organization or issue campaign.

While there is one feature that a Facebook group has that a public profile does not (being able to send messages to group members), in my opinion, the advantages of a public profile having many of the same attributes as a personal profile make it a better fit for a campaign's general presence on Facebook.

Hint: You may find that groups lend itself to other types of online organizing, for example constituency-specific groups, convention delegates, campus groups. If you don't expect the group to grow larger than 5,000 (the messaging cut off), having the ability to send messages to a group can come in handy.

But enough about groups. Let's talk about how your campaign can get the most out of your fan page - err, public profile! (If you're looking for a step-by-step on how to set up a public profile, click here).

Public profiles, like your own personal Facebook page, allow you to create "tabs" and specify the content that's displayed on them. Some tabs (such as the Wall tab, Info, Photos) are added by default and you also have the option of creating some yourself.

Be conscious of how many tabs or applications are set up on your public profile, too many tabs can make your profile look cluttered and distract from the tabs you want supporters or potential supporters to see.

Remove tabs or applications that you aren't planning on using. If your campaign isn't planning on using one of the pre-installed applications (for example, Discussion Boards) in the foreseeable future, you might want to consider removing it - you can always re-add it to your profile later. To remove an application/tab, click on "Edit Page" under your profile picture, and then scroll down to the list of installed Applications and click "Remove Application."

If you want to keep an application - for example, Notes - but you don't want it to have the prominence of a tab, you can click "Application Settings" and make it a "Box" which can be placed in your Wall tab or in the Boxes tab.

Customize the tabs that appear on your profile page. When you think about structuring the navigation of your campaign's website, you might have thought a lot about where you wanted to drive traffic to. It should be the same when you think about your campaign's Facebook public profile. After you've removed the tabs you're not planning on using, you should think about how you can effectively use the tabs remaining to drive supporters to take the actions you want.

Use "Settings" to configure which pages your supporters - and potential supporters - see when they visit your page. This allows you to create a customized landing page for potential supporters, a space where you can (or should) introduce yourself, provide links to sign up for campaign updates via email, and encourage them to become fans.

When your supporters (fans) visit your page, they're automatically directed to your Wall tab. That makes sense. From there, they can read your updates, post comments on items in your feed, "Like" items, and share them on their wall.

Be sure to check your default settings of what content is displayed by default - "Only Posts by Page" will limit the initial view to only your own posts while "Posts by Page & Fans" will also display the items that Fans post directly onto your page or that reference you.

Over at Alliance for a Better Minnesota, we had some fun with Tom Emmer's fan page, which for a short time displayed "Posts by Page & Fan" by default.

Now that you've tidied up your public profile page and made sure you have your settings just right, you're ready to take your page to the next level of awesome with custom tabs and FBML (Facebook Markup Language).

By adding the FBML application to your page, you can create custom tabs to promote particular asks (donate, volunteer, etc.) and customized landing pages for users who are not already fans of your page.

The first step is to add the Static FBML application to your page. To do this, visit the application's page and click "Add to my page."

A window will pop up listing all the pages you administer. Simply scroll down to the one you want and click "Add to Page."

Before we get too far into the weeds, it's important to note that FBML is it's own language. Simply copying and pasting the code you use on your website (HTML) won't work. It's pretty simple to learn, but it does take some practice. Click here for a list of allowed FBML and HTML tabs.

That said, FBML will let you take normally dry welcome text and turn it into something more visually appealing.

Taking control of your tabs will enable your campaign to highlight particular things and draw attention to them.

For example, if your campaign was recently endorsed by the local newspaper, you could create a "Welcome" tab, put the newspaper's logo at the top, and include various highlights from the endorsement, with links to donate and volunteer.

You could also create a "Donate" tab that includes text, images, and a big red "donate" button linking to your contribution page.

Embedding video using FBML. So you've created a Welcome page for your campaign and want to include your candidate's announcement video on it. But when you get the <EMBED> source code from YouTube and paste it into your FBML, you get a blank screen, like this:

That's because FBML doesn't recognize the HTML tags your using to embed the video. (Click here for a list of allowed FBML and HTML tabs).

But don't worry -- public profiles allow you to embed any flash element onto your page. And it's super easy!

Here's what you have to do:

First, get the YouTube ID of the video you want to embed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG0g8isWiUU

In this case, the video ID is FG0g8isWiUU.

Now, copy the video ID and paste it where you see the string of X's below.
So, you start with this:

<fb:swf swfbgcolor="white" imgstyle="border-width:3px; border-color:000000;" swfsrc='http://www.youtube.com/v/xxxxxxxxxx' imgsrc='http://img.youtube.com/vi/xxxxxxxxxx/2.jpg' width='340' height='270' />

and you replace the Xs with the Video ID from the YouTube URL:

<fb:swf swfbgcolor="white" imgstyle="border-width:3px; border-color:000000;" swfsrc='http://www.youtube.com/v/FG0g8isWiUU' imgsrc='http://img.youtube.com/vi/FG0g8isWiUU/2.jpg' width='340' height='270' /> 

 Note: in the code above, imgsrc= refers to the image that a visitor has to click on to play the video. It's recommended that you replace the default img with one of your own, or add language that makes it clear that you have to engage (click on) the image to play the video.

Now that we've created this new "Welcome" tab, we can adjust the "Settings" to make it the landing page for Facebook users who are not already fans.

Linking to tabs. So you've created a tab, and now want a direct link to it. If you go to "Edit Page" and scroll down through the applications to find the tab, you can get the link by clicking "Link to this tab."

Being able to directly link to a tab on your Facebook profile is seriously under utilized by most political campaigns.

Let's walk through a scenario: your campaign is about to release a television ad, you've uploaded it onto YouTube, have the press release written, and are going to send it out to your supporters. Do you link to the video on YouTube.com or do you embed it on a page on your website? While the second option is definitely better than the first, did you even consider Facebook?

You know how to create a custom tab, we've run through how to embed a video, and you have extra real estate within the tab to embed buttons to donate, a link to your website, and supporting documents. When you're driving traffic to your Facebook profile, you're also giving the folks on your email list, your followers on Twitter, etc. the opportunity to become a supporter on Facebook. You might even want to think about adding an image encouraging visitors to become a fan right on the page.

Making sure Facebook shares your content correctly. Have you ever posted a news story or web site to your Facebook page and the title, description, or image associated with it seem completely unrelated?

When a link is shared on Facebook, Facebook scans the page for these HTML tags to display the title of the page, a summary of the main content and an image. If there's media content on the page, those media files are also important to identify.

While you can't control the way Facebook displays elements of other websites, you can control the way it displays elements of your campaigns' by using META tags.

In order to make sure that the preview is always correctly populated, you should add the tags shown below to your HTML.

Here's an example of the META tags we use on NetrootsMinnesota.org, the website for Netroots Minnesota, a regional conference of Netroots Nation.

<meta name="description" content="Netroots Minnesota, a regional conference of Netroots Nation, brings progressives from across the state together to strengthen our community and inspire action. " />

<link rel="image_src" href="http://netrootsminnesota.org/wp-content/themes/netrootsmn/images/netroots-small.jpg" />

And this is how NetrootsMinnesota.org is displayed whenever someone shares the URL on Facebook:

To learn more about using META tags to make sure your preview works correctly, click here.

Facebook even makes it super easy for you to add a "Share on Facebook" button to any page on your website.

To add a share button to a particular page on your website, simply copy & paste this code onto that page:

<a name="fb_share" type="button_count" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>

TIP: If you don't want the share widget to show the number of times the page has been shared, change type="button_count" to type="button"

But there are times when you want someone who is on Page X on your website, to share Page Y. For example, if a supporter has just signed a petition and is redirected to a thank you page, you don't want them to share the Thank You page, you'd want them to share the petition.

Sharing to a custom URL is simple, too! Just use the code below and include the URL to the page you want shared in share_url.

<a name="fb_share" type="button_count" share_url="http://yourcampaignwebsite.com" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>

fin.

So you've reached the end of this missive on how your campaign can use tabs and FBML to enhance your page on Facebook. You're well on your way to creating awesome tabs to drive supporters to certain actions and to put your best food forward to potential supporters.

Wellstone Action!

NEWSLETTER SIGNUP

BEST PRACTICES FOR CAMPAIGNS USING FACEBOOK

For more resources on using social media in a campaign, check out the Organizing Tool on Developing a New Media Strategy.

Facebook Tabs & FBML - A Few Tips

But enough about groups. Let's talk about how your campaign can get the most out of your fan page - err, public profile! (If you're looking for a step-by-step on how to set up a public profile, click here).

Public profiles, like your own personal Facebook page, allow you to create "tabs" and specify the content that's displayed on them. Some tabs (such as the Wall tab, Info, Photos) are added by default and you also have the option of creating some yourself.

Be conscious of how many tabs or applications are set up on your public profile, too many tabs can make your profile look cluttered and distract from the tabs you want supporters or potential supporters to see.

If you want to keep an application - for example, Notes - but you don't want it to have the prominence of a tab, you can click "Application Settings" and make it a "Box" which can be placed in your Wall tab or in the Boxes tab.

Now that you've tidied up your public profile page and made sure you have your settings just right, you're ready to take your page to the next level of awesome with custom tabs and FBML (Facebook Markup Language).

By adding the FBML application to your page, you can create custom tabs to promote particular asks (donate, volunteer, etc.) and customized landing pages for users who are not already fans of your page.

The first step is to add the Static FBML application to your page. To do this, visit the application's page and click "Add to my page."

A window will pop up listing all the pages you administer. Simply scroll down to the one you want and click "Add to Page."

Before we get too far into the weeds, it's important to note that FBML is it's own language. Simply copying and pasting the code you use on your website (HTML) won't work. It's pretty simple to learn, but it does take some practice. Click here for a list of allowed FBML and HTML tabs.

That said, FBML will let you take normally dry welcome text and turn it into something more visually appealing.

Taking control of your tabs will enable your campaign to highlight particular things and draw attention to them.

For example, if your campaign was recently endorsed by the local newspaper, you could create a "Welcome" tab, put the newspaper's logo at the top, and include various highlights from the endorsement, with links to donate and volunteer.

That's because FBML doesn't recognize the HTML tags your using to embed the video. (Click here for a list of allowed FBML and HTML tabs).

But don't worry -- public profiles allow you to embed any flash element onto your page. And it's super easy!

Here's what you have to do:

First, get the YouTube ID of the video you want to embed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG0g8isWiUU

In this case, the video ID is FG0g8isWiUU.

Now, copy the video ID and paste it where you see the string of X's below. So, you start with this:

<fb:swf swfbgcolor="white" imgstyle="border-width:3px; border-color:000000;" swfsrc='http://www.youtube.com/v/xxxxxxxxxx' imgsrc='http://img.youtube.com/vi/xxxxxxxxxx/2.jpg' width='340' height='270' />

and you replace the Xs with the Video ID from the YouTube URL:

Note: in the code above, imgsrc= refers to the image that a visitor has to click on to play the video. It's recommended that you replace the default img with one of your own, or add language that makes it clear that you have to engage (click on) the image to play the video.

Now that we've created this new "Welcome" tab, we can adjust the "Settings" to make it the landing page for Facebook users who are not already fans.

Linking to tabs. So you've created a tab, and now want a direct link to it. If you go to "Edit Page" and scroll down through the applications to find the tab, you can get the link by clicking "Link to this tab."

Being able to directly link to a tab on your Facebook profile is seriously under utilized by most political campaigns.

Making sure Facebook shares your content correctly. Have you ever posted a news story or web site to your Facebook page and the title, description, or image associated with it seem completely unrelated?

When a link is shared on Facebook, Facebook scans the page for these HTML tags to display the title of the page, a summary of the main content and an image. If there's media content on the page, those media files are also important to identify.

While you can't control the way Facebook displays elements of other websites, you can control the way it displays elements of your campaigns' by using META tags.

In order to make sure that the preview is always correctly populated, you should add the tags shown below to your HTML.

Here's an example of the META tags we use on NetrootsMinnesota.org, the website for Netroots Minnesota, a regional conference of Netroots Nation.

<meta name="description" content="Netroots Minnesota, a regional conference of Netroots Nation, brings progressives from across the state together to strengthen our community and inspire action. " />

<link rel="image_src" href="http://netrootsminnesota.org/wp-content/themes/netrootsmn/images/netroots-small.jpg" />

And this is how NetrootsMinnesota.org is displayed whenever someone shares the URL on Facebook:

To learn more about using META tags to make sure your preview works correctly, click here.

Facebook even makes it super easy for you to add a "Share on Facebook" button to any page on your website.

To add a share button to a particular page on your website, simply copy & paste this code onto that page:

TIP: If you don't want the share widget to show the number of times the page has been shared, change type="button_count" to type="button"

But there are times when you want someone who is on Page X on your website, to share Page Y. For example, if a supporter has just signed a petition and is redirected to a thank you page, you don't want them to share the Thank You page, you'd want them to share the petition.

Sharing to a custom URL is simple, too! Just use the code below and include the URL to the page you want shared in share_url.

fin.

So you've reached the end of this missive on how your campaign can use tabs and FBML to enhance your page on Facebook. You're well on your way to creating awesome tabs to drive supporters to certain actions and to put your best food forward to potential supporters.

If you have questions, comments, or any sort of feed back, you can email me at xavier(at)allianceminnesota.org or tweet me at @xavierla.

Now, copy the video ID and paste it where you see the string of X's below.
So, you start with this:

<fb:swf swfbgcolor="white" imgstyle="border-width:3px; border-color:000000;" swfsrc='http://www.youtube.com/v/xxxxxxxxxx' imgsrc='http://img.youtube.com/vi/xxxxxxxxxx/2.jpg' width='340' height='270' />

 Note: in the code above, imgsrc= refers to the image that a visitor has to click on to play the video. It's recommended that you replace the default img with one of your own, or add language that makes it clear that you have to engage (click on) the image to play the video.