Facebook Friday App Review – LiveChat

17/02/2012 By

LiveChat for Facebook fan pages offers your fans or customers a portal to converse directly with you through a tab on your Facebook page. Many companies are already using Facebook as their preferred customer service centre and the LiveChat app makes it even easier for fans to reach you, as well as significantly improving your customer service.

Added to your page with just a few clicks, LiveChat enables visitors to log in using their Facebook account making the chat even more accessible – a visitor can be chatting with you or your operators after just 3 clicks. LiveChat is also the preferred software of global companies such as Adobe, Salomon & Netgear.

LiveChat offer a 30 day – no credit card required – free trial, offering you the opportunity to try before you buy and with no immediate expense. If you like what you see and decide LiveChat is the software for you, prices start at $36 / month and rise from there depending on how many operator seats (the amount of people you have available to chat) you require.

 

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Facebook Friday App Review – Flickr Tab

10/02/2012 By

There are many photo displaying apps available to Facebook page owners, and Tabfusion’s Flickr Tab is one of the most popular with over 30,000 monthly active users. Designed for use with Flickr, one of the world’s most popular online photo sharing websites, the Flickr Tab integrates effortlessly with your Flickr account.

Yahoo! own Flickr and in 2011 reported they had 51 million registered members and more than 80 million unique visitors. As of August 2011 the site was hosting over 6 billion photos.

Once added to your Facebook page, all you need to do is login to your Flickr account and your images are displayed to your fans. Your fans can then browse your galleries. The below image shows the default view for Flickr Tab, and there are three more settings meaning your fans can customise how they see your content.

Flickr also has an official app for the iPhone, Windows Phones and the Android platform meaning you can update your fans whilst on the move.

You can install Flickr Tab here…

…see it in action here…

…and join Flickr here.

 

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Facebook Friday App Review – Twitterfeed

03/02/2012 By

What is it?
Twitterfeed automatically updates your Facebook status with data supplied by your website.

How does it work?
It looks for an XML/RSS file on your site and then posts any new information to Facebook, on your behalf. It’s very much a “set and forget” type tool, so once you’re up and running you don’t need to do anything besides update your website.

Getting Started
Before you do anything you’ll need to get your website to generate an XML file when it updates or set up an RSS feed. Once you’ve done this you can set up your Twitterfeed account, which is completely free and simply a case of entering an email address and password. Once your account is set up you can log-in and start adding feeds.

To add a feed you need to enter a name and a link to your RSS feed. You can then select the content you would like to be posted to Facebook e.g. title & description, links etc. For URL shortening there’s a plethora of options including bit.ly, TinyURL, and SnipURL. Certain URL shorteners, such as bit.ly give you stats on how many people have clicked your link, which is handy.

Twitterfeed also allows you to the set how frequently it should check for new post and how many new updates it should post at a time.

Once you’ve carried all of the above simply save your changes and Twitterfeed will begin working its magic.

Closing Comments
All-in-all Twitterfeed is a great way to drive traffic to your website and streamline your activity.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Facebook Friday App Review – Involver Music Player

27/01/2012 By

Involver’s Music Player app gives users the ability to share and promote music on their Facebook page, as well as adding discographies and promoting tour dates. Once set up users can add unlimited tracks to their page and the app’s functionality allows fans to share tracks to their followers and friends news feeds.

The Involver Music Player app is one of their ‘Enterprise Apps’. An Enterprise plan unlocks all apps in the suite and is aimed primarily at large brands & agencies. With prices starting at $2,749 a month it’s not the easiest app to make a business case for.

There are free music apps available like this one from Tabfusion which may be better suited towards your needs.

Read our other Facebook Friday reviews of Involver apps:

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Facebook Friday App Review – RSS Graffiti

13/01/2012 By

RSS Graffiti allows you to publish multiple RSS/ATOM feeds straight to your Facebook pages and/or profiles, automatically getting your latest news and updates onto the Facebook homepages of your fans and friends and saving you a lot of time.

With over 600,000 users, the RSS Graffiti app is used to share over 60 million pieces of content on Facebook each and every month. RSS Graffiti is also very quick and easy to set up, in just a few clicks your fans can be updated with your latest news as soon as you publish an item, leaving you one less thing to do.

RSS Graffiti appears on your page as a tab containing all your latest news and is a very simple but effective way of distributing your latest news and automating your social media content.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Facebook Friday App Review – Hootsuite

06/01/2012 By

Hootsuite is a web based app external to Facebook which allows you to manage your Facebook along side other social networks such as Twitter & LinkedIn – helping to keep you on top of all your social media activity in one place.

We’ve blogged about Hootsuite before, focusing on it’s Twitter offerings and the way it handles Facebook is much the same.

Each social network you add to your Hootsuite account is displayed in it’s own tab. Within this tab are various streams, as default for your Facebook Page you will be displayed a newsfeed and pending stream posts – the only other pre-defined stream available for Facebook Pages is the events stream which pulls in information of any events you have set up for your Facebook page.

As well as these pre-defined streams, a useful extra is the custom search streams. By setting up custom streams you can track mentions of your company, brand name or product across Facebook – helping to see what people are saying about you and your Page.

One of Hootsuite’s strongest features is the ability to send the same message to any number of social networks you have set up. So, instead of logging into Twitter and tweeting, then logging into Facebook and posting, you only need to enter it once, tick the accounts you want to post it to, and hit send. You can also set up future updates by using the sechedule feature – a handy little time saver.

Hootsuite’s free version allows you to manage 5 social profiles from one account, and with the paid version costing just $5.99 a month Hootsuite is a cost effective way of managing your social media activity.

While Hootsuite for Facebook isn’t as diverse as it is for Twitter, it does work well and offers some great features. Hootsuite becomes very valuable, however, when dealing with multiple social networks and account.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Facebook Friday App Review – Bulb Storm

06/01/2012 By

Bulbstorm is an online social network where individuals, experts and companies come together to create ideas and improve products and services. It aims to harness global creativity so that users can gain the feedback and expertise necessary to turn ideas into reality.

I took the website for a test run and found navigation of the site to be highly intuitive. To get started, you post a “bulb”, which is how you showcase the idea you want to “bulbstorm”. Bulbs must include a title, category, type, developmental status and description. Optional extras include keywords, a video link and an image. You can also state whether or not you have ownership of your idea. The more detail you add to your bulb, the easier it is for other users to contribute. Additionally, Bulbstorm allows you to control access to your bulb/idea by adjusting the sharing status. Green is unrestricted, yellow is restricted and “lights out” means your bulb/idea is only viewable by you. There are also non-disclosure agreements available for people who wish to protect their intellectual property rights.

Bulbstorm’s social functions are essential to how it works as they allow you to find/invite friends to your bulbstorm‘s and solicit idea feedback via email, external sites (using widgets) and Facebook. Another way you can solicit feedback is by setting “Bulb Challenges”. Users who rate or contribute to a bulb challenge earn WATT$, (Bulbstorm’s very own currency). They can then use this currency to promote their own bulbs. To maximise challenge feedback, some companies allow users to cash in their WATT$ for actual prizes. Rating or contributing to a bulb takes no more than a few mouse clicks. The “Groups” facility is yet another way to solicit feedback. It’s a good way to harness expertise from certain areas.

For the most part the Bulbstorm Facebook app serves as a gateway to things you can do on the Bulbstorm website. The “Home” tab features links to bulbs, groups and bulb challenges. It also provides stats such as WATT$ earned. The “Friends” tab allows you to invite your Facebook friends who don’t have a bulbstorm and the “My Bulbstorm” tab takes you to your dashboard on the Bulbstorm website. Like the Bulbstorm website, navigation of the Bulbstorm Facebook app is highly intuitive.

Overall, Bulbstorm along with its Facebook app is a strong, useful service. It’s particularly good for manufactured products and defined services and is a great way for individuals & companies, to market and fine tune an idea. It also helps them gain invaluable feedback and find other people to collaborate with. In particular I think Bulbstorm’s WATT$ currency system is a great fit for Facebook as it’s fun, engaging and rewarding, exactly the things that Facebook users would enjoy in a marketing platform.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Facebook Friday App Review – ShortStack

23/12/2011 By

What’s it for?
ShortStack makes it really easy to create custom tabs for Facebook Pages. The app removes the need for knowledge of coding as it allows users to create pages using a customisable widget editor or premade templates. If you have knowledge of CSS, ShortStack allows you to edit all aspects of the application.

Features
As far as widgets are concerned, just about anything you would want to add to a Facebook page is present including images, videos, Twitter feeds, RSS feeds, polls and email sign up forms. There’s also an analytics platform that allows you to track how many people are viewing your page. Additionally, there’s an abundance of features that make it easy for administrators to manage multiple pages.

Getting started
To get started you simply login with your Facebook account and “allow” the app. Alternatively, you can set up an actual ShortStack account although you still need to allow the app to access your Facebook account before you can install any pages you have created.

Usability
The user interface is very easy to get to grips with. There are 5 buttons along the top of the main dashboard that allow users to switch between viewing their designs, tabs, media, templates, forms and promos. The design section lets you choose your widgets with a click of mouse and drag them into position. You can also preview your page in this section. Once you’ve finished creating your page, you simply hit the orange “Install Tab” button to send it live.

Cost
ShortStack offers 4 plans ranging from $15 – $300 per month. You pay more or less according to how many “likes” your Facebook account has accumulated. There’s also a free plan for those with 2,000 likes or less.

Closing comments
ShortStack’s ease of use makes it a great app for anyone looking to harness the marketing potential of Facebook but lacking in the technical knowledge and/or resources necessary to create a strong Facebook page.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Facebook Friday App Review – north social Document Display

16/12/2011 By

North Social’s Document Display give you the ability to host documents on your Facebook page, meaning your fans can read your white paper, menu or how-to without having to leave Facebook itself. North Social’s apps are extremely customisable and easy to use – and this is no different.

Working hand in hand with Scribd, the world’s largest social reading and publishing company, Document Display is both simple to install and simple to use. By giving the user the ability to customise the tab name, Document Display is also suitable for almost any purpose – for example, a retailer could easily use the app to display their catalogue.

Document Display also includes “download” and “print” buttons to increase it’s functionality, as well as Facebook sharing and commenting features which will help to improve the conversation about your product or company.

With North Social’s whole suite of Facebook apps being available for a monthly fee of just $19.99 a month (rising to $149.99 a month depending on fan numbers) there is no huge outlay for some hugely effective products. There is even a 14-day free trial and no long term contract, you can cancel at any time.

See Document Display in action here.

You can install Document Display here.

Read our reviews of other North Social Facebook apps:

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,
« Older Posts