What to Know about Social Apps for Business

Social applications can make a marketer’s job easier! By automating some things, and enhancing others, the right apps can make the customer experience more rewarding, while saving time for business owners and marketers.  If you use that time to find other “just for fun” apps, like Facebook Games, well that is up to you!

In addition to WordPress plugins, like Gravity Forms, there are many other apps that you can add to your branded social networking  presence to enhance your strengths. Have you been to a webpage recently,  that asked you for permission to connect via Facebook or Twitter? This was probably a type of social application.  If you click “Allow” it will connect your accounts and make some cool things happen.

A few things that most social apps have in common:

1. They encourage interaction by incorporating comments, likes, or shares
2. They can be installed easily and often link multiple social networks together
3. They are usually free, or relatively inexpensive

How do you want to promote your business?

Blogging: If you have a company blog, installing an app that pulls in updates from an RSS feed, can give your blog more exposure. For Facebook, try Networked Blogs or RSS Graffiti or for Linkedin try the WordPress app. For busy marketers with frequent blog posts, this can be a nice way to ensure your updates get posted on your social networks automatically.  I like to follow up the automatic RSS blog post with a leading question (Facebook status) related to the blog to encourage interaction.

E-Commerce & Coupons: Shopping Mall by Payvment lets you launch an e-commerce storefront, right from your Facebook page for free.  There are also applications such as Involver that have a wide variety of Facebook apps to choose from, including a Coupon application. Although the Coupon App is one of Involver’s Professional paid apps it could have a great value for the right business (watch for more about coupons in the next Mobile Applications blog).

Sweepstakes or Contests: Wildfire apps have some cool tools to create interactive sweepstakes, contests, or giveaways that are engaging and spread like their name describes.  A branded campaign can be easily published within multiple social networks and then the sharing potential can make it spread even further.

Managing all social media under one umbrella:

There are many great apps out there for marketers to use for managing their social media efforts.  A favorite of mine is HootSuite, but I have also used TweetDeck (who was recently acquired by Twitter, so I am interested to see what develops).  Both allow you to easily manage contacts in lists for multiple social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and others.  An added benefit of HootSuite is the scheduling functionality and co-marketing  team features.

As mentioned in a previous blog post about WordPress plug-ins, always take the time to research 3rd party applications first, paying special attention to their track record and reputation.  If you need help, we are happy to assist you with choosing and installing apps to your social networks.

What social networking apps did I miss? What have you found to be particularly useful? Please share in the comments below.

Disclaimer: 3rd party software and applications are not a built in functionality of the programs and technologies that are designed to integrate with programs like Facebook,Twitter, Linkedin and other social networks.Vivid Image is not responsible for, nor do we have any control over any changes made to applications by their creators. The functions within each application are those of the creator and Vivid Image support may be unable to answer/troubleshoot issues.

Photo Credit: by garryknight