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”

The Application has become the new Ad Unit

The job of a brand right now, when interacting in the Social Media eco-system is to get the most effective ad unit in front of an ever elusive group of consumers.  Currently the only way that this can occur in a cost effective manner is via an appropriately designed and implemented application. 

Think of it this way: if you pay for development of an application at Buddy Media the media buy is strictly performance based, once you pay for the initial installation of the app, you no longer pay a fee. Meaning that if consumer #1 installs, then passes you appropriately viral application to their friends and family (consumers #2 -#30), you don’t pay a red cent beyond consumer #1.  Suddenly the ground swells. You start to leverage the power, and see the value.  A guaranteed media buy within the most engaged attentive ecosystem of educated, consumers…ever. Keep in mind that the largest growing group of facebook users is 35+. Now we start to see the truly viral nature of the social web.

Social brand loyalty results in trial or adoption of a page, education of the brand features and benefits, extended reach to a broader demographic target (remember my post regarding the network neighbor).  Rapid lift in awareness of the brand.  Applications are the most powerful Ad Unit online today.

 

Buddy Media Continues to Experience Record Growth; Adds Industry Veterans to Expanding Sales Team

This entry was posted by Buddy Media on May 27, 2009

New hires to help meet tremendous market demand for Social Media Applications & Strategy.

Buddy Media, the leading media company for social media campaigns and branded app-vertisements, today announced it has experienced record growth and has undergone a significant expansion with several new appointments to its sales team. The company has run programs for more than 100 clients and is on track to post a 300% increase in revenue in 2009 compared to 2008.

The new hires include Andrew Goldberg and Chris Dessi who join the company as Directors of Sales for the East and Mark Sarsha as Director of Sales, West Coast. All three bring relevant media and advertising sales experience to help Buddy Media meet increasing market demand for smart social media strategies and app-vertisements that help bring brands and social networkers together in meaningful ways.

Andrew Goldberg has more than 15 years of experience in media sales and joins Buddy Media from XM Satellite Radio, where he was Director of Advertising Sales and was responsible for building XM’s Northeast ad sales team.

Chris Dessi brings more than a dozen years of experience to Buddy Media, having previously held the positions of Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Miva (NASDAQ:MIVA) and Zanox, Inc., a Berlin, Germany based multinational ad network. Dessi has also served as Director of National Ad Sales for Epic Advertising (formerly AzoogleAds, Inc).

Mark Sarsha joins Buddy Media from OK! Magazine, where he served as Western Sales Director and built a team that grew sales volume by more than $3 million during his tenure. Prior to OK!, Mark was the Western Advertising Sales Director at USA WEEKEND magazine and usaweekend.com.

“We continue to grow by leaps and bounds because brands see the value in engaging the hundreds of millions of people on social networks wherever they exist,” said Buddy Media Chairman and CEO Mike Lazerow. “Chris, Andrew and Mark bring exactly the kind of experience and track records that we look for in Buddy Media employees. All three will be invaluable to driving our success and that of our clients.”

About Buddy Media

In today’s social media world, every brand needs a Buddy. Buddy Media, the leading media company for social media strategies and branded app-vertisements, offers proprietary technology solutions – including Builder, BuddyBrain and the Social Page Management System – to help brands engage their audiences by extending their advertising campaigns into the social world. Some of the world’s largest brands, including FedEx, New Balance, Time Inc. & Microsoft work with Buddy Media to create social brand loyalty and social brand advocates. Based in NYC, Buddy Media is a privately held company backed by Softbank, European Founders Fund and GreyCroft partners amongst other investors.

The Total Facebook Makeover for Brands

“Facebook marketing requires communicating, not advertising” Forrester Research, Inc

Facebook users are aging.  Over 35 may not be the largest group that is interacting on Facebook, but they’re the ones that are growing the most.  What worked for your brand on Facebook yesterday will not work on Facebook tomorrow.  What does that mean for your brand? You need to hire professionals.  Don’t always look for the silly hook. Sometimes slow and steady wins the race. Just do it. Get engaged, and get into the Social Media sphere. If you work with a partner, your applications and pages will evolve with your brand.  Ads on Facebook are horrible, and don’t convert.  Ads that are INSIDE applications are powerful.  Sponsorship deals will continue to grow. 4-26% CTR for Sponsored feed stories.  Read and respond to comments.  Enable discussion by leveraging your pages, and a page management system.  Be transparent about your role and perspective. 

Finally, create useful apps that model what friends do naturally – share info, experiences, and laughs

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. 

Rich Page, Poor Page – Not every Facebook Page is created Equal

Pages are becoming more and more an essential part of major brand’s Social Media Arsonal. Facebook has recently allowed brands to increase the breadth and depth of information available on said pages. Essentially these pages (if developed and tracked properly) can become micro-sites assisting in all marketing efforts for a brand. They’re easily modified, appropriately engaging, and at times can become the central hub of information or PR for major brands. 

Because you cannot track how many “fans” you have on your page, brands should look to alternate ways to track success of a page.  Firstly, ALL brands should have a page presense. If you don’t I can almost guarantee that one of your customers has already taken the liberty of starting a fan page, and or (worst case) and negative page about your brand.  Once your page has been launched, your message and voice conveyed appropriately you must of course have a media dollars to help support the page. If you build it, unfortunatly they don’t always come. 

• Number of Fans
• Active Users – Total users that interact with your page over a specfic time frame, usually per day, week, month. 
• Fan Profile – mining the information about the fans of your page can offer optics into a consumer base you may have never tapped into before.
• Unique user reach – percentage of those users that have become a fan among the total social media audience (or calculated as active page users per audience)
• Growth – Average numer of users within a specific time frame
• Influence – Average number of friends among each “fan” of your page
• Number of pages your fans are also fans of

What’s the Difference Between Widgets and Social Media Applications?

I keep hearing this question, so I thought I’d attempt to offer some brief insight:

Applications are platform-specific. (facebook or myspace). Widgets can function on any site that accepts external content. This includes social networks, blog platforms, start pages, desktop platforms personal web sites –

Widgets can function differently on different platforms. So for example a widget may not fully integrate with a specific social network, or deliver varying degrees of integration with a social network like accessing an using certain social data. The benefits of Widgets are that they encourage connectivity, self-expression or collaboration think – GAMES – TOOLS – INTERACTIVE CONTENT

Applications tap into sharing and data via a social network like facebook or myspace via friends, locations etc.