Facebook Fan Page Design – Part 3: Photos

ANOTHER PIC IN THE WALL

iPhoto announced TODAY (October 20th) that iPhoto 11 has new integration with Facebook. If your friends leave comments on your photos, you’ll see them in iPhoto. iPhoto even shows you all of your Facebook photo albums, including the ones you published using another application. You’ll always know which photos you shared (or didn’t share) on Facebook, because iPhoto keeps track of that for you.

Facebook is currently on a tear to loosen its restrictions and gain some good faith with its users.  There are other photo services and software that allow you to post to your wall – even iPhone apps.  My only advice is: FIND ONE AND USE IT.  I, personally, use the iPhone Facebook App, as well as Posterous.com to pass pictures to my wall.  Posterous even has a new iPhone app that allows you to automatically broadcast all your pics, tweets, even videos to ALL your social media services.  But I digress …

If you are just tuning in, be sure to read up on our first two posts covering Customizing your Facebook Fan Page, and Creating a Micro-Site on your Facebook Fan Page.

In this, our third installment, we will be talking about Facebook Photos.  Photos is really at the heart of where Facebook began – posting pictures of people you wanted to date … yes, Facebook has a dark … sordid … past. Ahem.

ABOUT FACE!

So, at the very least, we KNOW this: the “Face” in Facebook speaks of class pictures.  With roots going back to high school and college yearbooks, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that the same people I went to school with are populating my list of friends in Facebook.  They can all see how I have lost my hair and gained a bit of weight … but they can also see my beautiful wife and children.  A picture is worth … you get the idea.  Since everyone uses pictures in Facebook, I want to focus on a couple of unique implementations I have seen to help your church stand out in a sea of look-alikes.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Facebook does a pretty good job explaining pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=412

MY BETTER SIDE

First things first…. make your profile pic 180 x 540 (thats in pixels). This is free real estate – USE IT!  Be creative.  If you don’t know how to do this type of work, I will have to refer you to either Photoshop or an equivalent like Pixelmater (MAC).  There are also decent online tools like Aviary, PicNic, or photoshop online.  You may need to just call a friend.

ADVICE YOU WON’T TAKE … LIGHTLY

To maximize your photos, let your readers publish their own pictures to your Wall.  That’s right, I am telling you to open your Facebook Fan page up to the masses. Letting any Fan post a photo.  Why?  Isn’t the idea to build community, after all?  You will have to watch things closely, but we all know you are not about to open up your webpage to anyone’s pictures.  This is the place to allow it.

Pictures are a compelling reason for people to visit.

TIP: Did you know you can send a public link to a facebook photo page even if they aren’t logged into Facebook?  Just log in, go into an album, click Edit Info, then look for the link at the bottom of YOUR page… copy and paste it into an email to send it on.

SMALL IMPROVEMENTS

SLIDESHOW: When you have photo albums with lots of images, there is a simple Facebook Application that allows you to place a PLAY button that automatically steps through each image in the Album — like a slideshow.  Check it out here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?v=info&ref=appd&id=185054343743

COVER FLOW:  This is an application by a company called Involver:  http://www.involver.com/gallery.html. Just go to this page and click the INSTALL button next to the Photo Gallery App.  It is very easy to use and adds a nice touch.  The free version is limited, but it is enough to see if it is worth pursuing.

FINAL SHOT

Facebook is overrun with clutter these days, so don’t go overboard with lots of little images.  The fanpages that stand out make good use of large images and simply make that image a link to a website.  Here are a few great examples.