A few months ago, Facebook changed the whole look of business pages. The cover image, the Timeline, and of course, moving the tabs from the left side of the page, where they were shown as links, to the top, as large clickable images.

And Facebook Tabs are awesome.

Take Coca-Cola, for example.

You can see that they’ve decided to leave the ‘Likes’ tab where it is (you can move tabs around, but more on that later) – probably to show off their 46 million fans, (and between you and me, wouldn’t you?) but smaller pages are probably better off putting a more effective tab there instead.

But they’ve also added a ‘Home’ tab which sends people to a Facebook version of their homepage (not as good as having your website on Facebook, but we’ll get in touch with them ), and their ‘Move to the Beat’ app, which takes you to their Move to the Beat website. It’s a fantastic place for fans to interact with their Facebook friends, interact with the Coca-Cola brand, and of course, share their experiences with their friends.

Another company that puts a great deal of emphasis on their fans is Microsoft.

The ‘Superfans’ tab takes you to see who the fans of the month, who have the most influence, and more! And of course, to increase your score – you need to start interacting with the page.

I’m going to start working on my score right away!

So Facebook Tabs are fantastic to get your fans to interact with your brand, and share those experiences with their Facebook friends. You can ask your fans to add and vote on photo captions, offer them live support, and much more. Your fans will love you for it.

So what can go wrong?

You only get three wishes (or tabs)

Well, for one thing, you’ve got a limited number of tabs – namely, three. Facebook gives you 12 slots, true, but not many people actually click the small arrow to see the rest of the tabs.

(If you’re asking ‘what small arrow’, don’t worry – you’re in the majority If you’ve got more than three tabs installed, look at the right hand side of the one on the right, and you’ll see it)

Take this page for example:

This page wants as many people as possible to visit their website. The actual number of Facebook fans they have probably isn’t as important to them. All they need to do is hover over the ‘Likes’ tab, click the ‘Edit’ icon (the small pencil), and swap places with the Mywebees app. This immediately gives their fans another way to visit their website.

Here’s an excellent example of how to do it right:

This is a great way to use the page’s three most visible tabs. There’s a call to action, simple tab images that stand out, and a clean look to the page. Having their website one of the top three apps, by the way, might help drive more people to their website, and you can easily implement a contact form in Mywebees.

Your tabs need to work

Tabs are applications that you install. And like any other application, they need to be configured, set up, and maintained. Even big companies with million of fans don’t always remember to do this – take Starbucks for example:

This is what happens when you click their ‘Pinterest’ tab on their page. Hardly the best user experience.

Here is another example of a tab that isn’t very effective. Clicking the ‘Welcome’ tab:

Leads to this:

Not very obvious who they are and what they would like you to do, right?

And clicking the ‘Videos’ tab here:

Shows you this:

Which is hardly what you want your fans to see first thing they land on your page, right?

Here’s another page that uses the three tabs to the best effect:

Don’t be confusing

When you go to a web page – any web page – it’s usually obvious what each button does. ‘Search’ will search, ‘Home’ will send you to the homepage, and so on. Tabs aren’t any different. I’ll click on tabs that I understand what’s going to happen (or I have a hunch). If they are confusing, I’ll probably just leave them alone, and you’ll be missing out on a fan who won’t visit your page.

For example:

Which one do I press? The ‘Welcome’ tab or the ‘Home’ tab?

Or here:

Do I click ‘YouTube’, or ‘YouTube’?

You can change both the image and the title of all your tabs easily.

Just click the down arrow on the right of the screen next to the last tab, then roll over the tab you want to change and click the ‘Edit’ pencil.

Now, click ‘Edit Settings’

And you can change the image and name of your tab.

Here’s an excellent example of a page that has an attention-catching image, and tells you exactly what to expect when to click the tab.

As you can see, they changed the default ‘Mywebees’ app image to something a bit more eye catching, and changed the tab name from the default ‘Home’ to ‘Website’.

So, to sum up:

1. You have three tabs. Use them wisely.
2. Check your tabs, and make sure they are set up properly.
3. Customise your tabs.

This way, you can increase fan engagement, get more people coming to your website and of course, get more business.

So what other ways do you know of making the tabs more effective? Sound off in the comments!