Facebook apps lend enormous opportunities to brands to be more creative, strategic and most importantly precise and relevant with their efforts on social platforms. Well, there are a few brands that stand unaware and unsure about the potential of Facebook apps. No wonder there are only one out of ten such apps created that actually go viral. Brands need to gear up with unique and one-of a kind apps showcasing competitive intelligence that help them cut through the clutter.

Considering the recent facts; Smartphone penetration, internet subscriptions, accessing any content on internet through phones, apps usage and the average time that people spend on social media everyday is aggressively on a rise. So is it not a really good race that the brands can run on to bring out the best through apps?

Its not the number of users where the actual value lies, but it’s the users involved in the engagement itself. For instance, if 5 minutes are spent on a Facebook app by 20,000 people, that brings it to 1,00,000 minutes. It is not a minor thing to consider as users are not watching a 15 second ad but are actually spending credible five minutes here.

Brands ‘should make a sincere effort’ to capitalize on this trend of apps.

So, when are you planning to come up with an app? We are sure you will give it your best shot and creates something really spectacular. While delivering valuable user data, facebook apps can increase the fan base of your brands’ on social media. It basically turns out to be a healthy Facebook presence adding value to the brand identity online. Online sales, incentives, offers, contests & competitions etc. can all be actively promoted through these apps.

The Facebook apps give brands a chance to create interactive digital campaigns that are more creative & relevant than simple updates on the Facebook Timeline.

When executed extremely well, an app potentially meets up with the brand’s engagement expectations, reach and a strong brand loyalty.

These Facebook Apps have been classified into top categories as mentioned:

• – Product Apps which allow Facebook fans to use and explore the app for a deeper insight into their new or existing brand.
• – Deal and Offer Apps are geared towards the output of deals and offers for their fans, also faired well for these top brands, based on the App’s MAUs.
• – Interactive Apps are aimed at input from fans. This basically includes sending in videos, pictures or voting on the specifics of a product.
• – Contest Apps give fans a chance to enter a specific contest and win prizes given out by the brand.
• – Online Game Apps engage fans largely on the product based social games.

Your app strategy should do these things:
· Define the custom app strategy
· Promote and drive traffic to your app

Don’t miss to check out an Infographic on the analysis of Facebook apps of leading brands here by neolane, a conversational marketing technology provider.

What do brand app users generally like or want?

• – Users appreciate discounts, freebies and sales.
• – Brands that share tips & tricks related to their products etc.
• – And of course users love to participate in contests and most of them also engage in useful brand conversations.
• – People also like the brand apps and pages to resolve their queries and complaints regarding some service or product.

A brand app strengthens & establishes its social media traction. Therefore, any facebook application should be simple, accessible and user friendly to achieve great results.

Facebook apps if do not excel in the mechanism or if the user journey turns out to be bad, there are chances of these apps to be hugely exaggerated due to slow navigation and data capture. Therefore, designers and developers need to excessively create a mobile friendly app that fits all.

The overall user experience should be based on speed, simplicity, aptness, call to action; lots of content and simple actions, in short, the app should never be complicated and cluttered.

Paul Adams, global head of brand design at Facebook has quoted sometime back, “Almost every app built for a brand on Facebook has practically no usage…heavy, ‘immersive ‘experiences are not how people engage and interact with brands. Heavyweight experiences will fail because they don’t map to real life.” He strongly supports the “less is more” concept.

So, whether you are already done with your idea and plans for a Facebook app, or you are thinking of coming up with one, just take a small step backwards and rethink the strategy of the app execution, reevaluate the user journey and experience and then strategically reconsider the complete app journey.

Glance through this Overview of Apps on Facebook to get clear, very clear with this amazing feature.

Check out a few useful apps for Facebook business pages here and start exploring the same for your brand too. Also check 101 of the Best Facebook Apps & Tools for Businesses in 2013 by Socialable that might just help you leverage your brand in this arena. And we just can’t miss checking out the India’s Top 10 Facebook Games and Apps this year. Now you must be wondering on the generating revenue aspect of these Facebook apps. To know more about it click here ‘How to Generate Revenue from Facebook Apps’.

Let’s have a look at a few great examples amongst thousands of other examples, where brands have successfully engaged with their audience, interacted in a way that not only added value to their brand but garnered likes, shares and credibility to their Facebook presence.

Yes, apps are amazingly simple, quick, accessible and shareable!

Many brands have gradually realized the fact that Facebook users do not want to, or do not have much time to participate in what a particular brand does. These particular apps have a great potential to go viral, very nicely supporting the online and offline brand campaign. They are not only simple in functionality but evolve with an ease of sharing. All these apps give their users an experience beyond imagination as they are quick to engage too. Amazing Facebook apps like these benefit both brand visibility and the user’s online identity.

Amul has launched the ‘Eat milk with every meal’ campaign, with the aim to reposition milk as a part of every Indian’s daily diet and to give a trendy appeal to the entire range of Amul dairy products.

They took an initiative to use Facebook and ask users to create memes of their friends, and sharing that they eat milk with every meal. Amul’s idea is to spread the message in a light & funny manner supported by creating a friend’s meme to do that. A Facebook app ‘Meme You’ hosted on the Amul Facebook page will ask you to create memes of your friends, after you like the page. Click ‘Get meme-ing’ to get started with the app.

This meme app certainly helps position milk as a part of our diet in an offbeat manner. It provides fans a fun reason to use it.

Launch of Youth Card by Axis bank: To target the Indian youth, Axis bank, India’s third largest private sector bank launched a Facebook campaign for the launch of its Youth Card. The bank designed a micro site and also an interesting Facebook app – Youth Card.
As awesomely as the bank came up with a microsite for the same, within its main site, its focus for the
campaign was on Facebook. A Facebook application called ‘YOUth Card‘was created on the Axis Bank Facebook Page. The bank gave the freedom to design their own card. Best designs also stood a chance to win exciting gadgets such as tablets. Encapsulating an easy to use edge to a superbly designed campaign to grabbing the aspect of sharing it, Axis caught all they eyes here. Click to read the entire campaign here.

Vodafone Zoozoos 10 million celebration: The much loved Vodafone Zoozoos marked the day when their Facebook page crossed 10 million ‘likes’.

An animated Facebook app was specially created for this occasion that featured short Zoozoo videos in the very own Zoozoo style. The videos depicted how and what positivity a ‘like’ brings into situations of sorrow, anger, anxiety and hopelessness.

Check these two amazing apps by Lakme Salon.

Flaunt your Powerful Hair influenced its fans to confidently flaunt their powerful hair. This app garnered a lot of fans. Hair-O-Meter is yet another app by Lakme Salon that inspires fans to upload snaps of their hair-do and analyze the credibility of their style.

Infosys launched an innovative app to encourage audiences to capture and upload with inspiring pictures of themselves with their innovation. Good to try app!

Campaign focused Facebook apps are categorized into:

The focus of brands in terms of Facebook apps should focused on content consumption, content curation, content creation, user connection, user recommendation.
Courtesy: kuliza.com

When are you planning to try the magic of apps, definitely an ‘App’ le that would keep lower engagement away!

Now there are a lot of reasons why you would consider Facebook Apps. The first most essential thing being communication, they build and sustain a great level of communication or interaction between your consumers and brand. Brand loyalty increases as you easily build deeper relationship with your audiences. Engagement is always on the rise and credible as it fosters user’s interaction with the brand app, liking and further sharing it. The challenge lies in how the Brands in India would utilize the immense power of apps and leverage it to its full potential. When are you planning to jump into the bandwagon of apps which is escalating at a great rate in India?