My colleague Chad recently wrote about 6 Dogooding Webby Things Your Nonprofit Should Check Out, and I wanted to show how quick and easy it is to implement one of those webby things, the Facebook Fan Box. It's not a fit for every organization, but if you have a strong Facebook presence and want to promote it on your website, don't let the idea of building this custom piece intimidate you. And the steps work for everyone, whether your site uses PEO or a different application.
Step One: Visit your Facebook page. Go to your organization's Facebook page and click the link on the left that says Add Fan Box to your site.
Step Two: Get the code. You will be taken to a second page where you can check whether you want to include both your stream and fans, or just one of the two. You will get the auto-generated code along with a preview, like this:
Step Three: Add the code to your site. Edit the "connections" entry in the code if you want to display more
than 10 fans at a time, and the "width" bit if you want it to be wider
than 300 pixels. If you use Patron Edge Online as your content management system, save this code to Notepad as a .htm file and add it to PEO as a screen part. If you use a different CMS, the process should be pretty similar. Of course there are advanced options and extra styling you can get into, but these three painless steps get you from zero to Fan Box in five minutes.
Is your site using the Fan Box feature or custom Facebook applications? How do they fit into your marketing strategy or promote your mission? Leave a message for other readers in the comments.