Facebook Tabs and Apps – How to make them work for you

Facebook Apps should gives your audience something

When creating a Facebook App come up ideas that engage with your audience and give them something to come back for again and again.
 
This could be shareable content, or having a the ability to vote on items they or others have uploaded. Integrating Pinterest or Instagram helps to promote this and brings in an element of real life to a marketing campaign.
 
The incentive most people give is an offer or prize, and then uploading the results of the campaign on a daily basis. This is a good way to make the app work, it is better to combine a few more reasons for Fans to come back again and again.
 
Giving the app idea a bit more thought of what your customers want and how they engage with your app might make it more appealing. Sometimes you can not offer a prize either as its not easily related to the campaign idea.
 
We created an App recently for Surrey County Council helping to promoting the reduction of food waste. A competition was used as a way to gain interaction with the audience but so was great shareable content.
 
We gave users regular menus and recipes that were uploaded to the app driving Fans back to the page to see fresh engaging content, and asking Fans to Like the page to see new menus increasing the exposure of the App.
 
As well as this we gave Fans the ability to uploads photos of their meal initiatives creating user generated content, and then allowing other Fans to vote on the best use of the Food waste initiative.
 
Sometimes if you dont think about the context of the app and your audience you miss what  is going to be perceived as useful relevant content for your Fans. Just giving a prize to bribe users for example will be seen as spam. Research and planning properly around your target audience helps determine what is appealing.
 
You want to get stickiness with the app, and create shareable content driving Fans to come back again and again day after day. A competition helps this when you promote winners daily, and then have a grand prize on a weekly basis. This level of understanding is really the reason an app will be successful for you.
 
As well as having key reasons to drive engagement and stickiness with the apps combing with great creative and other marketing activity around running social engagement and email campaigns will give the campaign the results your looking for.
 
When reviewing your campaign think about how social the work is, are people and social interactions centre stage?
 
Do your Page posts have killer copy and engaging photography?
 
Are you and your Fans creating content that makes the Facebook experience better?
 
Is it easy for people to interact with and share your content?
 
Did the work drive business results?
 
Did you deepen relationships with customers, increase sales, and drive word-of-mouth Marketing!
  Hopefully these have you given you some food for thought!