Wednesday 8 April 2015

Facebook Apps for Business Users


With a Facebook presence now almost mandatory for businesses, trying to create a legitimate presence without getting lost in the crowd can be difficult. One way to ensure that you are ahead of the competition is to keep on top of the newest ways to use Facebook apps.

Facebook Pages

This is possibly the most useful of the Facebook apps for business users. It allows you to manage multiple accounts and pages, check notifications, schedule and post updates, and keep an eye on some of the more basic ‘Insights.’ It will also send you a gentle reminder if you haven’t updated in a while.

Ideal for those who have multiple pages to manage, whilst on the move.

Facebook’s official Pages app is available free on Android and iOS. If you’re a Blackberry user you might try the SlateIt Dashboard App (also free), and Windows users can download the FB Pages Manager app.

Facebook Groups

Many small business owners are members of lots of different Facebook groups, interacting with other business owners, creatives, and customers. The Facebook Groups app – free on Android and iOS – works much like the Facebook Pages app, allowing you to better manage your interaction with multiple groups.

Messenger apps

In addition to Shout! for Messenger, and Stickered for Messenger, you can now get Selfied for Messenger and Strobe for Messenger. All of these are designed for personal accounts rather than business users, but there is no reason why you can’t experiment with ways to make them work for you – especially if your target market uses these sorts of apps themselves.

Shout! allows you to turn photos into a sort of mini-powerpoint, by overlaying words one by one on the picture.


Stickered does exactly what it says on the tin, allowing you to customise photos with a number of stickers and effects.

Selfied lets you take pictures to replace smilies. This might work really well for businesses who have a recognisable staff – pick your notoriously grumpy employee, and use their selfie in place of a ‘feeling bummed’ or your perkiest for a ‘feeling motivated’.

Strobe is a GIF-making app. Again, worth playing with for certain businesses, the four-frame GIFs could allow you to send product previews to selected clients.



Riff

Facebook’s latest toe in the water of video content. Rumoured to have been designed out of the popularity of last summer’s Ice Bucket Challenge, which saw videos leap to one billion watches per day on Facebook, Riff is perhaps less about trying to market a successful app, and more about trying to gather data on video creation, and who engages with Facebook in this way.



Similar to Snapchat’s Our Story feature, Riff allows you to take video clips of up to 20 seconds, then forward them to friends to add to or ‘riff’ on. Another potentially fun app for some teams – try letting your employees make promo videos this way.


If you are looking for the best mobile phone deal for your business, get in touch with us at Fivebars Mobile.

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