5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page
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.
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.
2. Promotions
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.
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
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
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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U2 Explores Spirituality On Band’s Own Terms
Yearning for answers, relationship with God underpins its theology.
Singer Bono and drummer Larry Mullen of U2 perform in Barcelona during the band’s "360" world tour. They play Toronto Sept. 16 and 17.
Years before becoming an Anglican priest, Andrew Asbil felt drawn to Irish rockers U2 and their message of hope and salvation.
“I’ve been a huge fan since the first album, Boy, came out,” says Asbil, 48, now minister at Toronto’s Church of the Redeemer.
Boy, released in 1980, set U2 apart, he says. It wasn’t the fluff the 1980s became known for, instead challenging fans to find meaning in life. In his first year of university, Asbil was hooked, and remained a fan as his studies led him to theology.
“When I started my seminary work, I began looking at the lyrics in a different way and began to see a lot of the biblical narratives.”
The band’s lyrics seeped into his conversations and sermons. Last spring, he even featured “The Moment of Surrender” from U2’s latest album in Good Friday services.
“It’s a song that says there come moments in your life when you have to surrender to love,” he says.
And on Sept. 14, the Church of the Redeemer, at Bloor St. and Avenue Rd., will host a U2 night, with Asbil exploring the theological underpinnings of the band’s music, with musical accompaniment from parishioner and Toronto musician Mike Daley and his band. The free event runs from 7 to 9 p.m.
U2 plays two shows at the Rogers Centre on Sept. 16 and 17.
Asbil, who has seen the band several times, says there is almost a “covert” aspect to the spirituality of the band’s songs that attracts both secular and religious audiences.
“There’s a subtlety to it,” he says. “They weave in images that are archetypal, but also spiritual.”
Not everyone agrees, however. Bono’s legendary ego can come across as self-righteous and has turned off as many people as it’s inspired. Asbil says not all his parishioners share his enthusiasm for the band. Bono, himself, has admitted to an inflated opinion of himself.
“I’ve got a messianic complex. It’s true. And anyone who knows me, it’s hardly a revelation,” he said in his 2006 address to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.
U2 has never hidden the faith of its members, though few outside the most devout of Christian families paid much attention.
Three of the band’s four members – singer Bono, guitarist The Edge and drummer Larry Mullen – were deeply involved with Shalom, a charismatic Christian group in Dublin, when the band formed 30 years ago.
Bassist Adam Clayton has been described as spiritual, but not religious.
They left Shalom after leaders of the movement told them to choose between it and their music. They chose the music, but never left their faith behind. Now free of organized religion, they could explore their faith on their own terms.
And that, says author Greg Garrett, is what distinguishes U2 from other Christian rock bands, who he says push “a message instead of following the truth wherever it led them.”
No traditional Christian rocker band would sing “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” as U2 does, writes Garnett, author of We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel According to U2.
Still, the band’s obvious Christian references made it “safe” for the children of religious families to listen to, Garrett says in a telephone interview, while its willingness to ask troubling spiritual questions appeals to the non-religious.
The theology of U2 is a yearning for answers and a relationship with God rather than claiming to have found any such thing. That, says Garrett, resonates in a secular society in which traditional houses of worship struggle to keep members.
It’s religion for those who don’t want churches or the faith of their youth. The faith of U2 is questioning and unsure, yet hopeful that a better world is possible. It is Christian-based, but its messages of peace and love are common to many religions.
“I presume the reason for this gathering is that all of us are here – Muslims, Jews, Christians – are all searching our souls for how to better serve our family, our community, our nation, our God,” Bono said at the Prayer Breakfast. “I am certainly searching, and that, I suppose, is what led me here.”
U2’s music could perhaps come only from Ireland, where religious strife has torn the country apart. Bono is the son of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother.
In “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” he sings, “I can’t believe the news today, I can’t close my eyes and make it go away,” calling on listeners to bear witness to the troubles around them as the first step to addressing them, Garrett writes.
In the song “One,” the turn of phrasing is key as Bono sings, “We get to carry each other,” Garrett says.
The line isn’t the more obligation-sounding, “We’ve got to carry each other,” as the faithful have often viewed scriptural passages telling them to help the less fortunate.
“It’s not about duty, or slogging through working at the soup kitchen,” Garrett says. “It’s a great joy and blessing to be able to lift each other up, because community is where we’re formed.”
Asbil admits he cringes at U2 shilling for Research in Motion on its latest BlackBerry commercial, but quickly comes to their defence.
“The purist part of me says, `Oh, for heaven’s sake, how can you do that?’ But on the other hand, they are business people, they donate a lot of their time, they donate a lot of their money, they donate their name” to social causes, he says.
“The lasting legacy of U2 is that the music speaks to a higher ideal.”
By: Stuart Laidlaw
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Lost and Endangered
A hiker became lost and ends up spending the next three days wandering around in the woods looking for food. Finally, he spots a bald eagle perched on a ledge, hits it with a big rock, and begins eating the bird raw.
A park ranger stumbles onto the scene, finds the hiker eating the bird, and arrests him for killing an endangered species.
In court the hiker explains that he was on the edge of starvation and had no choice.
“Considering the circumstances, I find you not guilty,” says the judge. “But I have to ask – what did the bald eagle taste like?”
“Well, your honor,” the hiker says, “it tasted like a cross between a whooping crane and a spotted owl.”
