You guys may have noticed that over the last few posts I’ve only been accepting comments from people who have liked my brand new, first ever Facebook fanpage. A fan page that I constructed specifically to promote my latest blog, The Gifts Guru. Now they tell me that the more likes you get on your Facebook fan page the better off you are. That’s why I thought up the idea of only accepting comments from people who have ‘liked’ my fan page.

From the low comment count on my last Friday Funnies post, which was bloody hilarious I might add, it seems that asking them to ‘like‘ my fan page was too much to ask. Even the fact that I have a dofollow PR3 blog wasn’t enough to entice them. Then again, that’s not counting the 20 or so comments that I deleted because they didn’t do what I asked them to at the end of the post. Just goes to show that they’re were only commenting for the link juice and couldn’t even bother reading the post itself. As far as I’m concerned they deserved to be deleted.

Which brings me back to working out how to get people to like my fan page. After a bit of research I decided on the WP4FB2.0 WordPress plugin. At first I thought it was going to create my Facebook fan page for me but after delving into it a little deeper I worked out it did something a whole lot more important! It gave me the ability to create custom Facebook Fan Page tabs directly into my timeline.

Once you’ve created your initial fan page you can link to multiple professional looking fan pages from it by using the app creator built into the plugin’s interface. What makes this plugin really special is not only does it help you to create these pages, it also has built into it a feature where you can ask people to do one of three things before they are able to view it.

• FanGate: This is where they have to ‘like‘ your page before gaining access. This is the one I used. You can see it in action on my Facebook fanpage, it’s the Valentines Gifts tab.
• InviteGate: If you use the InviteGate they need to invite their friends, you stipulate how many, to like your page. Once the stipulated number have liked your page they then gain access.
• ShareGate: They need to share on their timeline before gaining access.

There are other features you can use as well like Sweepstake and friendgate. I have to admit that I got a real kick out of using this and love how simple and easy it is to create these fan pages. If you click the ‘Home’ tab on my fan page you’ll notice that it is very similar to the way my blog looks. You will also notice the menu bar I created actually links to specific pages of my blog. It even imported the social share button so they can share it with their friends via Twitter, Stumble and several other popular social sites including, of course, Facebook. 

The only negative I found was that it didn’t like my Adsense Firestorm plugin but worked fine once I deactivated it. While I used a layout without any sidebars you can select to have one either on the left or right. It also comes with ten templates to get you up and running quickly but I found it so easy to use I designed mine from scratch.

Now all I have to do is direct traffic to my fanpage so they will see these tabs so they can click on them. I’m currently trying think of something that is so intriguing they will want to like my page in order to reveal what’s behind the door, so to speak.

Now, in regards to comments on this post. You don’t have to like my page to leave a comment but I’m going to be really stringent with the comments left on this post and will be deleting any that do not add something to the post. I would rather have no comments at all than a bunch of unrelated one. Do yourself a favor and leave a comment that has some substance.

Oh, and just so you know, the swinging effect of that link is only possible because of the SoreThumb plugin