One thing we get from our clients every now and again is that yes, they have a Facebook page and Twitter account, but now what? Of course, the next step is to engage your target market through varied and enticing content. Giveaways, landing pages, competitions, polls and other engagement apps are cropping up across social networking and are looking increasingly impressive.
Using software to liven up a Facebook page is becoming easier as more resources become available to business owners. Having an amazing landing page is no longer the playground of corporates. If you don’t have the resources to go to a developer, or you fancy yourself a bit of a computer geek (as I do), sometimes you have to do these things yourself. Let’s face it, most of the time it’s more fun that way so if you have the time, give it a crack.
So here are our favourite suites that are relatively low cost, that you can explore to turn your social networking pages into a lead generation machine.
Wildfire
We think that Wildfire is one of the more user friendly apps. It’s cross platform integration, measurement and analytic features make it one of the easier ones to measure your ROI, so it’s our top pick.
This one suite can run a range of different promotions- competitions and contests, quizzes, coupons. After you’ve set up your promo, Wildfire will publish it simultaneously across your Facebook pages, Twitter, and even integrate it onto your website.
The design features are also really simple to use, meaning you can customise layouts that are in line with your brands look and feel.
North Social
North Social offers 19 Facebook apps delivered in a single self-service subscription, allowing businesses of all sizes to create engaging fan pages and fan experiences. It allows users to set up custom Facebook pages in order to launch social media campaigns, integrate photos and videos, incorporate feeds and more
The great thing about this is that it’s simple enough for everyday businesses to use, but has plenty of features that major brands like Coca-Cola, Sony and Hard Rock Café use. So if you’re looking for something you can get a little more advanced with, this suite will be good for you
Strutta
Strutta is more focused on contests and sweepstakes. If competitions are your thing, this builder is the most flexible tool available to create a promotion for your social networks. They offer a variety of contest models to choose from, allow multiple media types, voting and judging options, and easily adding custom survey questions to gather data.
Fan Appz
Fan Appz call themselves “The most popular integrated suite of applications for Social Media Marketing.” Big call, and personally I’m always a little bit suspect of companies with using “z” instead of “s”. However, this suite has a range of different applications you can use which are unique to them. They have a “Top5s” apps, Which… are you? quizzes and virtual gift stores. If you play around with the examples they give, it sucks you in and can be a lot of fun.
The only downside we can see is that is it very “fan” based. It would be a great solution for sporting teams or businesses that have personalities fronting them. The NBA use this suite, so go to their Facebook page for some great examples of how to use it.
The more followers you have engaged in your promotions and sharing with their friends, the greater reach and effectiveness your pages will have. What suites do you use, and how have you found they’ve worked for you?
