Without being too braggy I know our work is more than decent enough to run with the big dogs: it’s just so that reaching everybody is a hard job. It’s also noteworthy that not everybody you know is a fan of your work. The trick is too find all the people that would like your work and let them like your page.

A few things that have helped our cause are these:

Put it on your own website/mailsignature/msn window
Kind of logical, but often overlooked. Your friends and readers will only find it logical that there are links to your own company website. It’s what you do. As long as you do not jam it in their throat they will not take offence.

Invite your subscribers
If you have an email base which you use to send newsletters, let them know about it with a small infoblock. Most likely the receivers have Facebook and are more than happy to like your page to get more news from you.

Create an attractive page
Make sure your page looks okay: nice logo in the profile picture area, fangate that explains what you do and what you can offer, relevant information, well-designed and easy to understand subpages, etc… you could even ask us to do it for you.

Ask already-likers to join in on the quest for more likes
Why not organize an online “contest” that asks the users to tag your brand in their pictures? It generates buzz on their wall which might lead to more likes. If people see your brand on Facebook and like the product they will like your page aswell. You could do small contests, give-aways, … the fangate (ex.: like us and get the chance…) makes sure they like the page before they see the contest information.

Make a small print ad about the page in real life
A small sign in your office/store reminds the people that you have a Facebook page: if they remember this while they’re browsing Facebook they might add your page to their likes.


The growth will offcourse depend on what kind of company/product you try to like, but these small things could already help alot. If the people don’t know about it, they won’t be able to like it.

<?php
 
require 'facebook.php';
 
$app_id = "your_app_id_here"; 
$app_secret = "your_app_secret_here";
$facebook = new Facebook(array(
        'appId' => $app_id,
        'secret' => $app_secret,
        'cookie' => true
));

After this all we really need is a parameter that tells us if a visitor likes the page he’s viewing or not. You can find this in the signed_request object, a Facebook object that holds various information about the page and the user. Get that object and read out the page_liked parameter:

<?php
$signed_request = $facebook->getSignedRequest();
 
$like_status = $signed_request["page"]["liked"];

When we have the like status inside a variable the rest is easy, a simple if statement will give us the ability to feed the visitor two content pages: one if the user doesn’t like our page yet and one if the user does like our page. That’s about it: easy peasy lemon squeezy! Just don’t forget to close the php code after the if and you’re all set:

if ($like_status) {
echo "<div style='margin-top:0px; position: absolute; top:0px;left:0px; width:520px; height:750px;'>
    <iframe src='HTTP://_THE_PAGE_THAT_NEEDS_TO_BE_SHOWN_WHEN_PEOPLE_LIKE' width='520' height='751' frameborder='0' scrolling='no'></iframe>
</div>";
} else {
echo "<div style='margin-top:0px; position: absolute; top:0px;left:0px; width:520px; height:750px;'>
  <iframe src='HTTP://_THE_PAGE_THAT_NEEDS_TO_BE_SHOWN_WHEN_PEOPLE_DONT_LIKE' width='520' height='751' frameborder='0' scrolling='no'></iframe>
</div>";
}
 
?>

Online you should now have atleast four files:

- the facebook.php file
- the fangate php file (index.php for instance)
- the file that people see when they’re not a fan yet
- the file that people see when they’re a fan

It’s that easy, really: so open up your favourite texteditor and start fan-gating away!

var APP_ID = "my_app_id_that_you_don't_get";
var REDIRECT_URI = "YOUR_PAGE_HERE";
var PERMS = "publish_stream"; //comma separated list, I only need publish

Now this will only work for one fan page, since we hardcode the fan page in the redirect uri. if others add the application to their page they will be redirected to your page instead of their own. Totally cool for you, but not so user-friendly. Offcourse, I have a solution for that too:

var APP_ID = "my_app_id_that_you_don't_get";
var REDIRECT_URI = document.location.href;
var PERMS = "publish_stream";

Much thanks goes out to my loyal testrabbit: Artcore Society‘s own Robby Carlier.

note: Accessing another domain from within an IFRAME is a security violation and will not be accepted by most browsers. You should disregard the last portion for now and insert the REDIRECT_URI hardcoded. I’ll look for a solution and post my findings.

While doing the project I kept thinking about a quick how-to to further explain how it all works.

Constantly delaying this however, made sure somebody beat me to it. Be sure to check out the magnificent post Adobe Flash & Facebook Connect by Steven Van Hissenhoven. You can download the source code and view an example, I barely would have done it better myself! He even made a header about it which is a solid idea and a quick and easy test to… well… test it out.

Go forth, my flash-meets-facebook connect ninjas!