How to Link to Your Facebook Fan Page from Your Profile Page
Please note: This information will soon be outdated by changes that Facebook will be making to boxes and the boxes tab. Please read my new article Upcoming Facebook Changes to Boxes and the Box Tab that Will Impact Your Custom Fan Pages.
My friend Rick Morgan and apparently many searchers finding this site have asked how you can link to your Facebook Fan page from your Facebook profile. And until Rick asked me about this it didn’t even occur to me to create such a link but, of course, it’s an excellent idea.
Well, the short answer is that Facebook DOES NOT provide a direct way of doing this. This does not mean, however, that it can’t be done. It will require the use of a particular application and a teeny bit of html.
How to Do It
- Install the Custom Profile Box application.
- Add your code. On mine I added my 125×125 site ad linked to my fan page, some text, and linked icons for other social networking sites where you can fine me.
- Unfortunately, the name of the box can not be changed and is called ‘Custom Profile Box’. The Custom Profile Box also can’t go any higher on the left sidebar than right under your list of friends.
- Ok, and I kind of lied. The Custom Profile Box has a visual or WYSIWYG editor so you don’t technically need to know html to use the application. I do, however, believe you will have better results if you use some html so you can check and edit your code.
- So, I don’t know if anyone actually notices my Custom Profile Box but it has given me a way to link to my (Anti) Social Development fan page from my personal profile. Something that Facebook doesn’t give us a direct way of doing.
- And the very attentive and very curious might wonder why not just use the fbml application that I mentioned in my earlier article about creating a custom fan page. Well, the fbml application is only for pages. It can’t be used on profiles.
photo credit: zak_greant
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June 17, 2009 at 8:24 am
Yes, thanks to Kim, I now have a link from my personal profile to my business fan page. – good stuff.
Rick Morgan´s last blog post – I’m Off to Camp
June 17, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Hi Rick – Thanks for the idea :-)
June 17, 2009 at 8:48 am
Very nice as usual. I will have to try this out later today. I might have to rethink my two column layout, however. Too many cool things to add to WordPress…must have control…must have control….
Rick´s last blog post – NEW Live Radio & Web Show today at NOON – Mountain Time!
June 17, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Hi Rick – This is for linking the facebook profile to the facebook fan page – I think based on some of the comments I wasn’t very clear about that.
It’s all the slamming doors while I’m trying to concentrate on writing ;-)
June 17, 2009 at 11:49 am
I don’t have a fan page for MomGrind yet because I’m not sure I need one. I’ll think about it. :)
Vered – MomGrind´s last blog post – Frosted Cupcakes
June 17, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Hi Vered – I wasn’t sure if I needed one either but I learned a lot about
facebook. It is starting to help me get more clients though.
June 17, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Even I don’t have a fan page.. I should first learn how to create one and whether it has some good benefits (like traffic may be)
Will comment more after studying facebook well – right now, I just have a profile and some friends there but not much of activities.
Ajith Edassery´s last blog post – Deep Linking – The most important aspect of Link Building & SEO
June 17, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Hi Ajith – I’m getting a little bit of traffic from the fan page and from
networked blogs on Facebook. I’m starting to get some clients from it,
which to me is better than traffic.
June 17, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Hi Kim – I’m not sure I get this. Am I understanding right – I need to use this one for facebook and check out your other article for making one to use on other places, like Twitter? But does this just link to your facebook fan page?
I don’t have one of those, although I’ve noticed some people have one as well as a normal facebook page. But I’m not sure if I’d manage to update two seperate accounts.
June 17, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Hi Cath – I think the confusing part is the Facebook terminology. The page you made on Facebook is your profile page. If you made a page for your business or website that would be your fan page. You can only have one profile page but you can make any number of fan pages – for example, I could have one for this site, one for Doctor Who, and one for Beckham ;-) A fan page doesn’t require a separate login – when you create one you are the Administrator of it and you have full access to it through your regular login.
Facebook doesn’t have a way though for us to make a link from the our personal profile pages to our fan pages. This article is about using the Custom Profile Box to make our own links.
I hope that helps :-)
June 17, 2009 at 8:14 pm
I think I have two similar applications that allow you a custom HTML segment… does this one allow the column to be longer, or is it still standard size?
I still think it’s odd that Facebook won’t have some special “Pages” tab to highlight all of your pages created by a Facebook member.
~ Kristi
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June 20, 2009 at 11:45 am
Hi Kristi – Somehow I missed this comment earlier. There is more
that one application you can use for this. I’m not sure about the size – I
didn’t try to make a longer column.
I wish we could still rename tabs too.
June 22, 2009 at 11:15 am
Hi Kim – Thank you. I get it now. The fan page sounds like something worth adding but you’d have thought facebook would have made it easier to link them wouldn’t you. It’s lucky we have you to explain these things.
June 22, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Hi Cath – A lot of things about Facebook customization are unnecessarily
difficult. I’m not sure why – it’s very possible the site grew faster than
the features for it. Glad that helped :-)
June 24, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Thanks Kim. I tried the custom profile box several times and it tells me it was updated successfully each time, but when I check my profile, it’s not there! I’ve looked in each tab. Very frustrating!
June 25, 2009 at 6:50 am
Hi Atoussa,
Make you add the application and then go back to your page before putting
any content into it. Then select Edit Applications from you list of apps. Try it again – it should work now. It may also go to your Boxes page and you will need to move it to the wall. I’ve had similar problems with facebook apps.
June 25, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Thanks Kim. I was able to set up the box as you explained. But now my link to the page doesn’t work. It keeps taking me to the FB home page instead of the Page I created. I verified the link. Weird!
Plus if I want to share anything re: my company, it gets posted to my personal profile not my company Page. Trying to figure that one out too!
June 25, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Hi – Ugh … sometimes facebook is buggy. When I have trouble with it I leave it again and then try again later…
June 28, 2009 at 1:32 am
I don’t know what the deal is, but the application is not working and I do not see a wysiwyg editor at all.
Jenna
Jenna Ryan´s last blog post – How to Get Your Blog Posts to Show Up on Facebook
June 28, 2009 at 8:16 am
Hi Jenna – Facebook can be buggy. Whenever I have trouble with an
application I try again later and then it usually works.
June 28, 2009 at 1:45 am
Hmmm, I’ve done exactly as above, but the box doesn’t appear yet in my profile. What did I do wrong?
June 28, 2009 at 1:49 am
Oh, it’s embedded in the BOX tab. I just need to MOVE TO WALL. Thanks for this.
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June 28, 2009 at 8:16 am
Hi Lex – I’m glad you found it.
September 2, 2009 at 3:38 am
Facebook profile urls can be difficult to remember (so you cant recall or print them on visiting cards) – you need to meddle with account settings before you get a pretty url like
facebook.com/myname
There are more facebook tips here
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September 2, 2009 at 8:59 am
Hi Huang – Thanks for the info :-)
September 4, 2009 at 11:49 am
Hello,
I have a question that i trying to have answered, perhaps you smart people can help me out.
When I signed up for a facebook fanpage for my business it automatically had it linked to my personal page which was fine in the beginning but not anymore.
When i want to make updates from other sites via tokens etc and have to give my login only my personal page updates NOT my facebook fanpage which was the intent.
So – is there anyway to create a separate login form my fanpage when its already under my personal login?
All help would be very helpful.
Jonas
September 7, 2009 at 9:04 am
Hi Jonas – Unfortunately, the answer is no. All fanpages have to be associated with a profile page and don’t have their own logins.
October 12, 2009 at 12:03 am
Hi Kim,
Thanks so much! I’ve been looking all over trying to figure this out and now I’m grateful to have landed on your lovely green site! I’m going to tweet this article now!
Dan Ronken´s last blog ..Missed Simple Branding Opportunity in Email Signature
October 12, 2009 at 8:59 am
Hi Dan – Thanks! I’m glad the article helped you out.
October 12, 2009 at 11:21 am
Strangely enough, I took all the steps and when I clicked ”profile is updated,’ But I still don’t see the box in my profile. Not sure what I missed, but I’ll have to re-visit.
Dan
Dan Ronken´s last blog ..Missed Simple Branding Opportunity in Email Signature
October 12, 2009 at 11:32 am
Hi Dan – Check the boxes tab. It may be there. You then click on the little pencil/edit icon and select move to Wall. On the wall you can move it around on the sidebar but it has to be lower than the list of friends.
October 14, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Ok there are a few more steps to do this. After you setup the custom profile box and put in the content you want publish it. Then go back to your profile and click on applications, click on edit application. You’ll find the custom profile box application, click on edit settings then click the add button then click okay. Now go back to your profile and click the boxes tab then add the box to your wall. I just did this today and it works great.
October 14, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Hi Noah – You’re right. It ends up on the box page and needs to be moved to the wall. It can get confusing.
October 14, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Yeah you just have to add it before it shows up on the boxes tab. Drove me crazy for a while until I figured it out.
October 25, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Dear Kim,
Thanks for the useful information. I tried a while to read it through, found the “Application Edit”, moved the it from “Box”, and finally had it shown on my facebook profile. HOWEVER, it’s not well box, but all codes. So my question will be very simple and in the beginning level: What code you mentioned to add on the “Custom Profile Box”? I pasted the same code from the page “Add Fan Box on You Site” of Fan page, and it worked well on my blog. Thank you!
ps: Is it allowed to have some Chinese in the custom profile box?
October 26, 2009 at 7:54 am
Hi Amy – I used html. Is there are scripts in the code because that won’t work. Also, if code is showing there might be an error in the code. One thing to test is a simple link to your website to make sure the box is working properly.
I’m not sure about Chinese – I don’t see why not but I don’t know that answer for sure.
October 27, 2009 at 11:53 am
Thanks for your reply. I guess I should forget about this, because I can’t figure out the “html” and “scripts”. BTW, the link to my website works well. Thank you Kim.
October 27, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Dear Kim, i tried it again. I used “html profile box” (instead of “custom profile box), then the link is created on my profile. Only link but good enough for you. Thank you!
ps: I don’t expect you can totally understand what I mentioned as above, but if you can, and it happens if you have the better solution, please let me know. Thank you!
October 27, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Hi Amy – That’s odd – both applications should have worked. At least the link is there now.
December 10, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Hello, thank u for the info! When I add custom profile box it doesn’t have a WSIWG editor at all? it’s just an empty box… How do I add an image or link text without knowing html?
thks!
December 11, 2009 at 11:25 am
HI Angela – Did you add the HTML profile box or the Custom Profile box?
There is a button on the far right called Source – if you click on that it should switch between the source code and WYSIWYG.
Also, Facebook is removing boxes soon and I don’t know if this application will continue to work. Please check this article
http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/upcoming-facebook-changes-to-boxes-and-the-box-tab-that-will-impact-your-custom-fan-pages/
February 1, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Hi Kim, I know the box concept is going away soon, but I’ve just created our business Fan page and I’m looking for a way to get our existing customers to move from our old Profile page to our new Fan Page. In addition to just posting the news that we have a Page, I thought this link may help (even in the short run). If you have other ideas for getting customers to move from a Profile to a Fan page, I’d love the advise.
My question is about the simple HTML you used in your custom profile box. I’m not an HTML person, but can work through most things with a bit of coding help. Can you share the simple code you used in your Custom profile box to get me started?
Thanks!
February 1, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Hi Caroline – The first thing I would do is invite all of your friends to join the new fan page. A lot of them will join.
I used html on the box. You just need a couple of html tags – link, image and table. The images you use also need to exist on another server – for example, where you have your website. Facebook won’t store the images for you.
Rather than using my code you will probably be better off looking up the html for links, images and tables. This site has great examples.
http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
February 1, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Thanks for the site link. While I was playing around with my CPB, I was “inspired” in a different direction.
I wondered why I couldn’t just add a FB Fan Button to the CPB that was linked to my fan page. I found iFrame Fan Box code and added it to my CPB and customized it with my ID, SRC etc. It renders perfectly in the CPB during editing. It is exactly what I wanted. But, when I save the code and view it on my profile, it doesn’t render the same way that it did in the CPB application box. Why would that be? I could just give up and put a plain picture in the CPB and link that to the Fan page (the link works), but the Fan Box looks so much better and conveys the idea so much better.
February 1, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Hi Caroline – The fan box is a good idea. How is it not rendering properly? Does it not fit or is there a different problem?