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5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page

June 15th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted in Fun Stuff, Social Media

If you’ve already searched for some Fan Page inspiration and undertaken the task of building a custom landing page for your business’s Facebook presence, you may now be in the market for some features that will further engage your fans.

A nice feature of the modern social web is that it’s modular. You can plug in and customize pre-made pieces of software (often created by other users or companies), and mix and match what works best for you without a lot of technical know-how. Facebook works the same way with apps.

Many Facebook apps are built for casual use, like the social games and quizzes you may see your friends using in their personal feeds. But there are quite a few apps that are ideal for a business Fan Page. These are useful for customizing your page with greater detail, showcasing your content from other social sites and getting more information from your customers. Here are five essential Facebook apps that your business may want to take for a spin.

1. Static FBML for Your Page Sidebar

We’ve already discussed how the Static FBML app can be used to make your Fan Page a unique destination. But this versatile plugin can also bring some interactivity to the column that appears on the left-hand side of your page.

Vertical, left-hand navigation is something users expect to find on most websites. They will be comfortable looking there for additional links, promotions and contact details. Moving a Static FBML box over to the left-hand column is a great way to exploit this valuable real estate. Here’s how to do it.

If you haven’t already done so, add the app to your Fan Page and make sure it’s functioning as a “Box” rather than a “Tab.” Add content to your box using standard HTML. Graphics cannot be uploaded to Facebook here, so you must reference them from a URL — likely one on your own hosted website or blog.

For a sidebar, think about adding some clean graphic buttons or icons that link out to other destinations your fans would be interested in, such as your company website, blog or Twitter () account. This sidebar will be visible no matter what Fan Page tab your visitors are on, so consider using graphic elements that coincide with your existing logo and color scheme.

Facebook Wall Tab Image Once your content is added and saved, it will appear as a box on the “Boxes” tab. Head over there to ensure that your HTML has rendered properly. If so, click the “Pencil ()” in the top-right corner of the box and select “Move To Wall Tab.” This will display your content in the left-hand navigation of your page.

Facebook Wall Tab Image

2. Promotions

Promotions Facebook Image Contests and giveaways are a great way to engage people with your brand, especially on the social web. A chance at some free stuff is one of the top reasons people follow and friend brands in the first place. The Promotions app makes it easy to build and publish a contest on Facebook in a way that is inherently social and shareable.

Promotions is different from many Facebook apps in that the content you create for it lives on the developer’s website. This makes it a versatile tool, but you’ll have to sign up for a free account at wildfireapp.com.

Once you create an account and connect the registered app to Facebook, the promotions you generate on WildFire will populate the tab on your Fan Page. Promotions are easily built through a step-by-step process. Provide the dates of the contest, the types of prizes, the fields for the entry form, specific parameters about contest entry and rules, and upload any additional artwork you want to include.

wildfire preview image A nice advantage of having contest data centralized on WildFire is that it can be sourced out to other social networks, and even to your own company website. Any changes or additions you make to your promotions will dynamically update on all of the locations where your customers and fans find you on the web.

Note, the cost to publish a basic promotional campaign through Wildfire is $5, plus $.99 for each day the campaign is active. Additional packages with more customization and publishing options are available.

3. Social RSS

If you already have great content from your company’s blog or another social network that you’d like to bring to the fore of your Facebook presence, Social RSS is a smart tool.

You can configure this app to automatically pull in updates from any RSS or ATOM feed and display them as posts on your Fan Page, either on a dedicated tab, a wall tab (on the left side) or as part of your core news feed. It’s a useful way to automate your content and eliminate the need to republish things manually to your Facebook Page.

Take note, however, that fans on social networks are much more responsive to curated content. Especially on Facebook, where people connect to a smaller community of personal friends and family, an unfiltered pipeline of RSS content may not be welcome in all news feeds. If your core customers are already subscribed to your blog and other social accounts, a double-dose of the same exact content may trigger some to hide your updates or “un-fan” you. Consider relegating your Social RSS feed to a tab if this is the case.

Test where and how an app like Social RSS is best implemented on Facebook, and adjust as needed depending on the size and response of your audience.

4. Poll

Facebook Poll App

Sometimes you just need a little feedback. That’s what social engagement is all about, right?

On Facebook, it doesn’t get any simpler than the Poll app. There’s no account to sign up for. Once you connect it to your Page, all the setup and data lives right in your settings panel.

A poll can be a casual way to get a read from your fans about a new product, a new page design, or your business in general.

In the poll settings, simply name your burning question (What do you think of our new spicy burritos?), list your choices (Delicious (), Pretty Tasty, Needs Work, Offensive) and select your publishing options.

Polls can be published to your Page wall/feed, live on a custom tab or be popped into your left-hand navigation where visitors can click anytime they come to your Page. You can invite your friends to take a poll, and they can easily share it out as they would any other post or app. Both you and your visitors can see the poll results without leaving Facebook.

Publishing a weekly poll about new products or changes in your industry is a great way to keep fans coming back to your Page and talking about your brand.

5. YouTube for Pages

YouTube for Pages App If creating video content is part of your business’s social media strategy (and we recommend it should be) you can squeeze more views out of your productions by dedicating a Fan Page tab to your YouTube channel.

That’s exactly what the YouTube for Pages app does. To activate the app, you’ll have to set up a free account at the developer website involver. Once it’s connected to your Fan Page, simply input the YouTube channel you’d like to pull videos from (it could be your own or anyone else’s), pick a few more settings, and you’re all set.

The app “features” your most recent upload or favorite, and displays thumbnails for previous videos on a simple, clean interface. The videos play directly on Facebook of course, so fans can watch without ever leaving your Fan Page. Just be sure to add the tab in the app’s “Application Settings.”

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Tech-savvy Generations Care About Privacy

May 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted in Social Media

All the dirty laundry younger people seem to air on social networks these days might lead older Americans to conclude that today’s tech-savvy generation doesn’t care about privacy.

Such an assumption fits happily with declarations that privacy is dead, as online marketers and social sites such as Facebook try to persuade people to share even more about who they are, what they are thinking and where they are at any given time.

But it’s not quite true, a new study finds. Despite mounds of anecdotes about college students sharing booze-chugging party photos, posting raunchy messages and badmouthing potential employers online, young adults generally care as much about privacy as older Americans.

The report, from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania, is among the first quantitative studies looking at young people’s attitudes toward privacy as government officials and corporate executives alike increasingly grapple with such issues.

“It is going to counter a lot of assumptions that have been made about young adults and their attitudes toward privacy,” said Mary Madden, senior researcher at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. She was not part of the study but reviewed the report for The Associated Press ahead of Thursday’s release.

Among the findings:

Eighty-eight per cent of people of all ages said they have refused to give out information to a business because they thought it was too personal or unnecessary. Among young adults, 82 per cent have refused, compared with 85 per cent of those over 65.

Most people – 86 per cent – believe that anyone who posts a photo or video of them on the Internet should get their permission first, even if that photo was taken in public. Among young adults 18 to 24, 84 per cent agreed – not far from the 90 per cent among those 45 to 54.

Forty percent of adults ages 18 to 24 believe executives should face jail time if their company uses someone’s personal information illegally – the same as the response among those 35 to 44 years old.

The survey, based on a 2009 telephone survey of 1,000 Americans 18 and older, did find some areas with generational differences in attitudes. For example, while 69 percent of all respondents said a company should be fined more than $2,500 for privacy violations, only 54 percent of those 18 to 24 years old thought the fine should be that steep.

Even so, the majority of young people generally agreed with their older counterparts in wanting more privacy, not less.

“Yes, there are some young people who are posting racy photographs and personal information. But those anecdotes might not represent what the average young person is doing online,” said Chris Hoofnagle, co-author of the study and director of information privacy programs at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

Although they grew up in the digital age, young people know surprisingly little about their rights to online privacy, the study found. They seem more confident than older adults that the government would protect them, even though U.S. privacy laws offer few such safeguards.

The lack of knowledge about the law, coupled with an online environment that encourages people to share personal information, may be one reason young people can seem careless about privacy, according to the study, which was conducted in July 2009 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

There is also some evidence that, by virtue of their age, adolescents and young adults’ brains are hard-wired toward risky behaviour, the report said, citing past psychological studies.

The researchers suggest that lawmakers and educators should not assume that young adults do not care about privacy and therefore don’t need protections.

Rather, they say, “policy discussions should acknowledge that the current business environment … sometimes encourages young adults to release personal data in order to enjoy social inclusion even while in their most rational moments they may espouse more conservative norms.”

Yet that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t believe all the stories about younger people prolifically posting photos of their beer-guzzling, scantily clad selves.

“But there is not enough research to find out (whether) older people do the same thing,” said Joseph Turow, professor at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication. “Older adults, they may not show up naked, but they may be releasing other kinds of (personal) information.”

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