Most Facebook Fan Pages bring the visitor to the Wall. This is the equivalent of landing in the middle of a conversation. Wouldn’t it be better to open the door first with a special Welcome tab? Or offer an overview of what actions your organization is promoting now? Consider developing a custom Welcome tab to introduce the organization to its visitors, and convert fans to stakeholders.

Facebook Page administrators can choose any tab to be the landing tab. Most choose the Wall tab.  However, why not add a custom landing tab highlighting the value of Liking the Page? A custom landing (or Welcome) tab is designed for visitors to your Page who have not yet Liked it; once they become a fan, fans land on the Wall. The value of a custom-designed landing tab is that you can create the first impression, ask visitors to become a fan directly, ask visitors to take an action, and show the “at a glance” unique value of your cause. 

Pages with  custom landing tabs have a higher conversion rate to fans than Pages without them.

According to a May 2010 BrandGlue study, visitors to Pages with a landing tab converted to “people who like” the Page at a rate of 47%, while those without a custom landing tab converted at a rate of 23%. That’s a pretty compelling statistic. You can check these statistics for your own Page by looking at the Page Views in your Page Insights. What percentage of Page visitors currently convert to fans?

Another approach is to develop a custom landing tab with a special offer. Organizations could learn from Danny Brown’s recent experiment of offering an exclusive e-book, only available through his Facebook Page, and only available to people who  liked his fan page. Danny Brown found that, within a week of the offer via Facebook, the number of people who Liked his Page grew by 245% (from 190 fans to 466). And, importantly, there had been only seven unsubscribes – the vast majority remained fans. (Hat tip to @AskAaronLee for pointing me to this experiment.)

How could a nonprofit organization take advantage of this?

• Create a similar goods promotion, such as the WeCanEndThis.com t-shirt (given away for free at SXSW 2010)
  
• Offer an exclusive Facebook application, such as the facebook application for My Social Actions
• Download a free e-book, such as World Shapers: Extraordinary Women Making a Difference
• Download an iPhone app, like the iPhone app for The Extraordinaries

Nonprofit landing tabs come in all flavors: some offer a call to action, others highlight the latest projects, reveal special offers, ask for your email, or offer incentives for Liking the page. It is up to your organization to decide what makes the most sense. In the slide show below, I’ve highlighted 15 nonprofit Pages with custom landing tabs.

I also created a wiki exclusively for Facebook landing tabs. In the wiki, you will find the links to Facebook landing tabs in the slide presentation. I invite you to join and add other links, as well as include information about metrics related to custom landing/welcome tabs.

A few resources:

How to create a landing tab that converts visitors to fans (All Facebook)

Welcome Tab Facebook Application (create your own)

Facebook Landing Pages Wiki (add your landing page to this, discussions on usage and metrics)

Guest blogger Ed Nicholson at SXSW Interactive 2010

Ed Note: On February 16, I wrote a post entitled “Nonprofit Collaboration: Doesn’t It Make the Pie Bigger?” which elicited 27 comments, and started many discussions. Ed Nicholson, who manages corporate philanthropy for Tyson Foods,  commented on the post. He wrote “I predict you’re going to see some experiments in collaboration among funders toward encouraging more non-profit cooperation (I love your term “coopetition”). There are already some larger hunger relief funders (some of us competitors in the marketplace) having informal discussions about how we can work together to influence more efficiency and collaborative work among the non-profits we fund.” After that comment, I had to ask Ed to submit a guest post for this blog on the idea of collaboration and coopetition, from the funder’s perspective. This is his guest post:

A couple of weeks ago, I was intrigued by the lively discussion here about non-profit collaboration and “coopetition” (I love that term).

As someone who helps manage a corporate philanthropy budget, I’ll tell you it can be frustrating and confusing to be approached by requests from multiple non-profit organizations with the same missions and areas of operations. Which one to fund? Who’s doing the best work? Where are the redundancies and inefficiencies that are surely there? There’s a temptation (rarely acted upon) to tell all of them, “When you guys get this sorted out, come back and we’ll consider it.” In other words:  “Go collaborate, and make it easy for us decide who’s doing God’s work.”

Easy for us to say, right?

I’ll quickly grant that many in the for-profit sector probably have unrealistic expectations of non-profit organizations to be so mission-focused that all competitive activity is set aside.  After all, whether we’re doing it for money or love, all of us have rent to pay and organizational objectives to achieve.

But the fact is funders do notice organizations that have a collaborative spirit.  I believe those organizations will be rewarded.  Because now more than ever, the question: “How are we going to solve this problem?” is taking priority over:  “Which organization does best in this area?”

At Tyson Foods, we’re not a big funder in the grand scheme of things. We’ll never (to borrow a phrase from finance) “move the market” when it comes to influencing how grant recipients behave. However, we’re around some of the big guys on occasion, and I can tell you, there is talk about how influence—and funding—can be used to drive more collaboration and efficiency among non-profits. There’s even some discussion about how funders can collectively drive collaboration.

I’m going to suggest that your online community is a great place to start that collaboration. Online communities tend to tune out organizations that have an ego-centric approach. We could all benefit by spending less time talking about ourselves and more time talking amongst ourselves.

For whatever it’s worth, potential stakeholders who spend time in this space, especially those who “get it,” are going to be much more impressed by organizations that show a collaborative online presence than those who use social media channels as broadcast vehicles. As corporate and foundation funders themselves join online communities, they’ll take notice of organizations that add value and engage, rather than simply pump out their own messages. I know I take notice.

Would you ever retweet those who are competing for resources, or link to their blog posts?  Do you engage with those who aren’t potential donors or sponsors? Do you link to good things those outside your own organization (and not just your sponsors) are doing or saying? How do you add value to the community?

I have a recurring event on my Outlook calendar for 5pm each day: “Do something good for the community.” It reminds me to put up some bit of online content that’s purely for the good of the cause. It’s not an easy resolution to follow, and one I often neglect. But I know if I can do it, it will benefit my company as much as it does the community. That spotlight, focused outwardly, invariably reflects back favorably on us.

Ed Nicholson is director of community and public relations for Tyson Foods, Inc. He helps manage corporate philanthropic activity, and has directed Tyson’s involvement in hunger relief since it became the company’s philanthropic focus in 2000.