With almost 1.6 billion monthly active users, there is no doubt that Facebook is the place to be when it comes to looking for ways to scale up your growing business. As Facebook has evolved, it has realized that it has had to provide more tools within its platform in order to maintain these active users and attract more businesses. Having started as a social network, Facebook is now illustrating how it can become an effective marketing tool to target specific segments of your audience and engage with them in new ways.
Facebook now offers so much more than just a business page where you can market yourself. Now, there are numerous apps that focus on advertising, marketing, branding, customer engagement, audience research and competitive analysis. Here are eight apps that your business should consider when looking to scale on Facebook:
1. Hootsuite
As mentioned earlier, social media data that is presented visually provides valuable information on business marketing campaigns. This is especially true for Facebook marketers.
Hootsuite is already a trusted name in the world of marketing and for good reasons. In addition to laying out information cohesively, this tool also provides businesses with social media analytics reports to further help you learn from your mistakes – then you quickly pivot and expand your successful engagement campaigns, and ultimately scale. In analyzing over 10k freelancers, I’ve found this is a product that the majority of them use.
Image source: https://hootsuite.com/ads
2. Polldaddy
As mentioned earlier in this post, our ability to collect UGC can provide invaluable for Facebook marketers worldwide. This also extends to being able to reach out to users for direct answers. Polls and surveys provide these opportunities in simple and engaging ways.
For instance, Polldaddy’s solution is offered in a number of different languages and can be embedded across different mediums and devices for maximum exposure.
Image source: http://blog.polldaddy.com/2011/12/16/getting-your-poll-on-facebook-the-definitive-guide/
3. Shortstack
Part of business scaling rests on one’s ability to keep potential customers engaged, especially when platforms such as Facebook are incredibly crowded. One way to approach this issue is to consider running active contests and giveaways on your own organization’s Facebook timeline. Shortstack took this idea to another level, by asking timeline visitors to caption photos – a clever way to keep prospective customers excited about your product offering (think memes – ‘grumpy cat’).
Image source: http://www.shortstack.com/facebook/
4. Work4
We have yet to mention one critical component of scaling up: good employees. With Facebook accounting for 17% (and the majority) of the total time spent daily on mobile (2014).
With a catchy and highly accurate slogan (“Reach your candidates where they spend most of their time”), Work4 aims to solve this problem by essentially integrating a targeted recruiting system within Facebook, highlighting potential recruits based on specific skill-sets and optimizing job postings.
Images source: https://www.work4labs.com/
5. Massplanner
Many businesses make sincere attempts at scaling by investing in posts. While this is a great starting point, ensuring that both these posts reach their targeted audience and that they are scheduled accordingly can define the effectiveness of such efforts.
What’s needed are tools that are highly focused on maximizing the performance of Facebook posts. This is Massplanner’s value proposition, as it not only examines your actual messaging, but also your group segmentation strategies.
Image source: http://www.massplanner.com/facebook-poster-features/
6. Woobox
It can be difficult to come by turnkey solutions to Facebook optimization, a one-stop shop for all the main engagement needs businesses need to consider in order to scale.
Woobox may just be one of those must-have business apps, as it looks to provide its adopters with interactive engagement features to better reveal your business’s messaging on Facebook, including specific posts and/or promoted offers.
Image source: http://blog.woobox.com/2014/05/facebook-hashtag-entry-for-photo-contests/
7. Ecwid
For many businesses, marketing across Facebook often ends when a prospective customer reaches your Facebook page. What if you could immediately reach out to this audience with actual products? This would help you bridge the gap between simple interest and point of sale.
Ecwid’s Facebook integrated shopping cart fills this need in a simple, embedded format, allowing you to present your products instantly.
Image source: https://www.ecwid.com/facebook-commerce
8. SnapApp
Finally, for many businesses, being able to maintain high engagement levels on Facebook campaigns can be complex. One of the secrets here depends on your ability to launch interactive elements as part of your content marketing strategies.
SnapApp is a great tool for businesses to deploy when launching their next Facebook campaigns, as it turns some of your original content into engaging and interactive promotional offers that help boost conversions.
Image source: http://cdn.snapapp.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fb_results.jpg
Do you have suggestions for other business apps that leverage Facebook for scaling? Share them with us below.