Your Brand has an Application on Facebook, now what?

Your VP just ran to you in a panic after reading that Facebook had hit 200 million users “We NEED to develop an application and get on Facebook”!  As a good employee and student of the Social Media world, you went out, hired someone to develop the application.  The application is launched and everyone is happy. You send the application to your boss on Facebook, he shares it with his friends, and everyone is happy, right?

Well, sort of. After a few weeks your boss asks you “how’s the application doing?  You say “what do you mean”?  The application is…well the application right?  We followed the rules; we’re interacting with our consumers on Facebook. We GET Social Media….WRONG.

Relevant actions that your consumer can take within your application to gage success:

• Contest/Sweeps Entries – Perfect for companies like Bluefly, Coke (my coke rewards), Publishers Clearing house etc.
• Coupons Downloaded/redeemed
• Games played
• Videos Viewed
• Uploads (e.g. images, videos)
• Poll Votes
• Messages sent (*e.g bulletins, Updates, Emails, Alerts)
• Invites sent
• Newsfeed items posted
• Comments Posted
• Friends Reached
• Topics/forums created
• Number of Group Members or Fans
• Reposts *”Shares”

How to Ensure Your Facebook Application & Page will Crush it! 3 Tips for Advertisers

Freshness and relevance is appropriate regarding anything in social media, but are especially important for brand pages, and applications.  Even though Social Media offers a unique manner of communication with your consumer, that’s not to say it’s easy to engage said users.  Pages must have a dedicated page manager to update posts, and content.  Content management by a third partly is also strongly recommended. Full Disclosure – I work at Buddy Media which provides these services.  I fully feel they are essential if you’re to engage with your users appropriately.  Management, and tracking of these activities will place your Brand ahead of the game.

Consider this: Branded Social Media Applications or App-Vertising campaigns, deliver six times the number of impressions that traditional banner display campaigns.  SIX TIMES!  Essentially what you get as an advertiser is an accelorator.  Applications surpass banner placement on social networks.  When utilizing an appropriately designed, well thoughtout and appropriately implemented application a brand is paying almost 80% less for each engaged user than if they were to purchase display advertising on a social media network.  

1. Applications should have a fresh “hook” to them to facilitate viral growth

2. Don’t reinvent the wheel – if your current UI is loved by your users, request that your application developers replicate the look and feel

3. Give the users a reason to re-visit the application. Anything where they may be competing against friends always works.