2011 has finally arrived! It’s the moment we renew our pledge to social media commitments and keeping our audiences enthralled with our content! As I went through my blog achieve the other day, I was deeply encouraged by the responses obtained from the below posts, especially in helping page admins to discover some favorite apps of their own:
- 13 Facebook Applications to Promote Your Blog
- 16 Facebook Applications to Boost Popularity of Facebook Fan Page
- 31 Facebook Applications to Enhance Your Facebook Page
- 5 Ways to Create Welcome Tab (Custom & Sub-tabs) for Facebook Page
Coincidentally last month, a reader wrote in and requested for ideas in increasing fan base and fans engagement on their page wall. During my research, I came across Appbistro, a market place for facebook page applications that saved me a lot of time in discovering new applications when I logged in as my Social @ Blogging Tracker page:
Basically what it does is to identify my page type then recommend me the best applications for my facebook page. I can sort the app results based on popularity, rating or price range. Thanks to Appbistro, I found myself a new set of facebook applications for my facebook customization work in 2011. Most applications below are either free or allowing free trial as I know how much we all love FREE stuffs.
Kindly be reminded that this review is based on my personal opinion only and has nothing to do with Appbistro or any app developers sponsorship whatsoever.
To Listen to Fans / Customers Feedback:
#1 UserVoice
I had briefly touched about UserVoice in promoting your facebook page with testimonials. When I finally tested out this app in mid December, what a great substitute for Feedback app this is! Your fans can now provide suggestions for your service/product, and have others to comment and vote for existing discussions. You will then be notified for each new update via email so you can moderate fans posting at once. When you feel a subject has gotten enough feedback, close it so no further voting or new posts can be added to it, except for comments.
Two features I love about Uservoice: page admin can retrieve deleted ‘ideas’ (if you had deleted any posts by mistake) and each response on the forum will not be posted back to any of your fans profile wall – I’m sure most will appreciate that, especially in separating personal profile from business pages.
This application is cross posting between your fan page and UserVoice homepage, where you can setup own alias for the domain (yourusername.uservoice.com). Learn more about their different plans and how extra features such as ‘export’ or ‘unlimited forums’ can meet your page requirements.
If you’re not ready to pay for the service, you can always customize afeedback form using Static FBML all by yourself.
To Give Incentives and Attract New Fans:
#2 Gifts for Pages
Everyone loves FREE gifts! ‘Gifts for Pages’ prepares a facebook tab for you to create branded gifts so fans can distribute to their own friends on your behalf! Inspire your inner creativity and personalize some catchy 130×130 px image icons to grab fans attention. Give them something meaningful or worthwhile to share, then track fans responses via traffic graph. If you don’t like the existing layout, modify the ready CSS file to fit your brand’s image.
It’s always good to learn about giving prior to receiving.
#3 Easypromos
If you don’t know how to customize a promotion tab yet, this is the app for you. Easypromos is FREE for FIRST-time promo only ($15/promotion after that) and you should definitely take a look at the features and configurations, very easy to setup. Specify the length of your promotion period and select the criteria from the given options. One of my favorites is that page admin can encourage non-fans to like your page first before they are able to fill up the entry form.
You may choose how to display this promo on your page wall and check your fans registration form within the application itself.
Note:
Promotions are great but make sure you’re not violating any of theseFacebook Promotion Guidelines before set one up.
Extra Read:
To Encourage Fans Participations via Polls and Media files:
#4 Fan Appz
Fan Appz will impress you with its wide range of social media marketing applications. Free account provides Polls, Quizzes and Top 5’s. To me, those are sufficient enough to generate interest and participation from fellow members, if your questions (and images) are intriguing enough:
Page admin can edit or delete published poll or quizzes but not after fans had already voted on them. Plus, you will be given scheduling feature to promote the poll on your page wall so fans from different time zones can participate. To discover more about their paid plans read here. Just remember a free plan will have an advertisement link on the tab and you won’t be able to set promotions/coupons.
#5 ffwdPlayer
I had been asked many times about better ways to import a video channel into a fan page. Besides Involver, ffwd Player can be an excellent alternative to publish videos uploaded by you on other video hosting sites such as YouTube or Brightcove.
The video-import is extremely easy by inserting your channel’s username, then you can configure so to update it automatically with feed (either via uploads, favorites, playlist or search). Customize your video tab with brief description of the videos and include a header image. Your fans can later share the videos with their friends via the ‘Share’ button per video.
#6 Livestream
(image credit: Livestream)
How fun it is you can now broadcast live from your fan page to get in touch with fans all over the world! Just a click at the Livestream tab your fans can enjoy real time interaction with you via the comment box during the live broadcasting. As usual, the ‘Share’ button is highly visible so if your fans find it interesting enough to share with their friends, they probably will. Customize your livestream tab with a catchy header image for brand awareness. Your livestream is not limited within facebook page only, it will be kept in a video library on livestream.com and to be viewed or used on your external sites, such as a company blog.
Another great example of Livestream can be seen on Facebook Live. Read about their paid plans if interested.
#7 Peekeez
Peekeez is very similar to livestream, it lets you setup a live video broadcasting from your webcam on facebook page and encourage fans to comment, share within the tab. Say, if you have a restaurant and you’d like to show off how busy the day can get, Peekeez is perfect for the task.
What makes it different from Livestream is that it does not cross post to its official site. According to their privacy policy that “your webcam can only be viewed on your facebook page” but it’s not entirely free. You may have trial period up to 14 days and after that it’ll cost you $20/month.
#8 Posted Items Pro
Posted Items Pro is basically a tab where you gather your favorite medias to be shared in one place with your fans. All you have to do is decide which media files (blog posts, video, mp3, web link or image) you’d like to feature with proper title, source link and descriptions. For web link, you can even select a thumbnail for the post. Then all the media files will be displayed within a tab named ‘Favorites’. Your fans can comment or share these files with their facebook friends, a harmless and effective way to increase page impressions for your business page.
#9 Clobby Group Chat
Some people told me how they admire Facebook Groups for having the Group chat feature. If you feel the same way, why not try out this real time chat app called Clobby Group Chat? Your fans will be able to invite their friends to join in the chat or ‘like’ a chat, so it’s great for viral effect. I once blogged about this application so if you’re in for a detailed review, kindly refer hereClobby: Facebook Group Chat for Fan Page and Personal Account.
To Encourage Geotagging for Local Business:
#10 PlaceWidget
(image credit: appbistro)
PlaceWidget adds a foursquare tab to your facebook page that includes your venue info with an easy configuration. You can show off mayor, offers and tips to visitors – this is obviously a plus if you and your fans are dedicated users on Foursquare. Comparing to the after-merged facebook places and a fan page, this would not alter your existing page layout and landing tab settings.
Extra Read:
Find out what other types of location you can add on Foursquare here.
For Marketing, Job Opportunity & Branding:
#11 TextualAds
You do aware how prevalent mobile marketing is these days. TextualAds is not for everyone but if you are interested in mobile marketing, textualads is an application that allows your fans to opt in for latest promo or product news via text messages. You will be able to send targeted SMS for your marketing campaigns according to your fans age, country, state, gender etc with customizable layout (css style sheet) and messages – but these are under paid plans, of course. Free account has less customization but may be good to try out:
Just be reminded that people are very cautious with their privacy. If you are going to use TextualAds make sure you had made clear that you will not distribute or misuse your fans’ personal details. Trust is hard to come by these days so never, ever violate that promise.
Extra Read:
To learn more how powerful textualads can get, here’s a post that will amaze you.
#12 Work For Us
What can be more rewarding by offering your fans a chance to work as a team? Work For Us allows you to post job openings on business page. Apart from filling in the forms, applicants can attach their CV/Resume without having to leave the page at all! Work For Us makes it easy to share job opportunity with friends via ‘Share’ button or a personalized private message.
One thing I love about this application is that you can integrate your twitter account and set the tweeting frequency for the new job vacancy.
All accounts are given 30-days free trial or, you can always subscribe to its Free plan for one job slot.
Extra: similar application – Jobmagic
#13 Contact Tab
I absolutely love Contact tab! This is a comprehensive tab about your business info and how your potential clients can reach you. Not only banner image and logo, you can include contact forms, contact methods and embed a comment box within the tab. The setup is very easy, simply fill in the required info and Save it. If you’re interested to display the location of your premise via Google map or Bing map, feel free to do so. A remedy to a plain, dull info tab that makes you stand out from the rest of your competitors.
#14 dPortfolio
I’m all about adding Testimonials and portfolio to your social profiles if you are to promote your business as effectively as possible. As much I prefercustom tabs for the job, but if you are not familiar with customization, feel free to adapt dPortfolio in categorizing your quality work with descriptions. Honestly, I was having second thoughts when placing this as # 14 since I was getting error message when trying to save my project, the page stalled for a long time and didn’t stop. It could be a temporary error since no other users are complaining about this yet, so I’m putting this under observation as I really hope it would work.
There are over 110+ applications on appbistro so these are just the tip of an iceberg. You can learn more about other facebook applications that match your needs by logging in with your user profile in which your facebook page has attached to it. If you are not ready to login with your facebook account, why not browse all the applications here.
The paid apps listed in appbistro are either using their payment API or attach with an affiliate program with them. That’s why some apps can be purchased straight from the site (Cart) while some are not. When enquiring about their future project, I was told that appbistro is working on a whitelabel application store. Any service or website that owns an API can integrate their own application store powered by appbistro, a great news for app developers in search for a platform to showcase and market their products.
Friendly Reminder: some apps require access to your basic facebook info. There will always be a pop up box to alert you what information the app will be accessing so make sure to check them through before you click ‘Allow’. Also, if you decided to discontinue an app from your page, apart from removing it from your ‘Edit Page’, make sure to remove it from your profile’s privacy settings here as well.
Now is Your Turn
How do you plan on enhancing your facebook page in 2011? Will you be using Appbistro or any of the facebook applications above to increase fans engagement? Do share your thoughts.
SPECIAL GUEST on SBT In TWO WEEKS TIME!~
In conjunction with the new year, an honorable guest poster will be here for the first time on Social @ Blogging Tracker! I’m pretty sure most bloggers are familiar with his name and It’s truly a privilege to have him here! So if you wish to know who is my mysterious guest make sure to subscribe so you won’t miss this! I can assure you it’s worth the wait. 
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