Branded Facebook Applications – A tool for success and making money.

January 2nd, 2010

facebook_log_small

The Facebook Application Platform is a marketers tool for success as it provides access to a large audience of over 250 million people worldwide at a low cost. To be successful small local businesses or even well known products or services must give some thought to their audiences; who they are, how do they want to be spoken to, the message and tactics for interaction with the message.

Study’s show that if you plan to advertise on Facebook, your rate of return will increase if you are driving the traffic to a fun and engaging application. An application provides opportunities and simple ways for people to embrace and share a positive experience with your brand.

The application can turn that positive experience into a money making experience if the application is built with revenue generating streams.

The top 5 money making streams on a Facebook Application are:

1.  Display advertising

2.  Virtual Currency

3.  Dynamic Product Placement
4.  Virtual Gifts

5.  Video Ads

How many money making streams are you using to generate revenue on your Facebook Application?

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Facebook Is Now the Fourth Largest Site In The World

August 5th, 2009

The cream always rises to the top and Facebook is the

crème de la crème.

Facebooks’ global rise is nothing less than astounding. In the month of June alone it gained 24 million unique visitors worldwide, compared to the month before, for a total of 340 million unique visitors worldwide.  It is now the fourth largest site in the world, trailing only Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo sites, according to comScore (see table below). While Facebook itself only officially acknowledges 250 million active registered users the unique visitor count includes those who are not registered but visit some of the Facebook pages.

Facebooks Rise to the Top

Facebooks Rise to the Top

In the past year, it has grown 157 percent, gaining 208 million visitors.  It passed its rival MySpace on a global basis back in April, 2008 and since has continue to pass up even bigger sites on its way up.  In the chart above, the blue line is Facebook. It passed Amazon back in August, 2008. eBay fell by the wayside in January, 2009. It surged past AOL sometime in February, 2009, and just last month it finally passed the Wikimedia Foundation sites (which includes Wikipedia).

So there it stands at No. 4. It will be a while, if ever, before it catches up to the three world leaders: Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. They each have between 240 million and 500 million more monthly global unique visitors than Facebook. But it’s always good for a company to have stretch goals.

Worldwide unique visitors (June, 2009).  Source: comScore

1. Google Sites: 844 million
2. Microsoft Sites: 691 million
3. Yahoo! Sites: 581 million
4. Facebook: 340 million
5. Wikimedia Foundation sites: 303 million
6. AOL: 280 million
7. eBay: 233 million
8. CBS Interactive: 186 million
9. Amazon: 183 million
10. Ask Network: 174 million

In the U.S., Facebook had 77 million unique visitors in the month of June, making it the sixth largest site in the U.S. (after Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and all Fox Interactive Media sites combined).

So, the question to you is…are you rising to the top with Facebook?  What is your Facebook presence?
This post was inspired by Erick Schonfeld’ post to Tech Crunch

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Four Steps to Build Your Facebook Fan Base

July 10th, 2009

The verdict is in…Facebook is a revenue breeding enterprise. Facebook board member Marc Andreessen, who just launched a new venture fund, said in an interview with Reuters that he expects the company’s revenue to be in excess of $500 million in 2009, and that in five years it’ll be well into the billions.

If that is true than it is every marketers dream come true.  According to InsideFacebook there are around 240 million, perhaps even close to 250 million Facebook users. If Facebook were a country, it would now have the 4th largest population in the world.  So many eyeballs, so little time. And although it’s not rocket science, so many brands continue to fall short in this space.

Facebookster.com notes, they either fail to build a large enough fan base, or neglect to actively engage with the fans they do have.  For smaller brands or brands who want to connect with a core community, the number of fans may not be the most important criteria.  For other brands who want and need to interact with a huge community, building critical mass becomes important.

Here are four steps to build your fan base and better engage with the one you have:

1. Budget wisely and spend some money on marketing.

Some will tell you that social and spending money is an oxymoron and that great content alone is enough to drive a fan base. That may not always be the case.  Spend a small amount of money with facebook out of the gate with the simple goal of driving a large and quantifiable fan base. The Become a fan engagement ad is your core marketing platform.
2. Leverage other marketing assets
This one is so easy. On your home page, simply promote your social ecosystem (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…) and encourage consumers to become a Facebook fan.  Surprisingly, most brands with Facebook public profiles (yes, this is what Facebook is calling it know) are not marketing their Facebook brand with their internal assets.

3. Be fan centric (vs. brand centric)
This is about pushing out valuable content and not simply pushing out corporate PR.  The key is relevant messaging and exclusive offers/content only offered in this space. Follow these two rules and you will be ahead of the majority of the brands in the space.

4. Applications – Find a turnkey solution
Applications take a lot of time and angst to build and maintain.  If you want to use apps, don’t build your own, instead find a turnkey networking solution that suites your needs.  Your application will provide an interactive means to share your brand while engaging your fan base.

About BAM!apps – Blatantly Animated Messaging Applications – fully customizable turnkey applications designed to maximize revenue. No coding. No hosting.  We do it all for you.

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Brand Behavior – Do you have it!?

June 25th, 2009

The numbers say it all: Facebook isn’t just a playground for high-school kids and college students anymore. With a growth of 276% among users between 35 and 54 years of age within a 10-month range, the site is swimming with potential buyers who have money to spend. So, where are we headed?  The trend away from destination websites and towards social spaces continues to gain momentum, and as much the evident corresponding shifts in brand behavior and activity.  How are you branding your business or yourself on social networks? on Facebook?

The trend
Increasing investment in social media spaces
Mom and Pop shops to Fortune 500 companies with established brands, to date have considered Social media to be an experimental line-item, with limited funding and support. This is rapidly changing as brands continue to seek ways to engage their customers and direct their visitors towards familiar social media spaces.
Just as funding for digital brand activity has lagged the audience’s own shifts in attention and behavior to digital channels, so will it here. This creates tremendous opportunities and brands that get it before the rest will reap the rewards.
Shift from paid media to social currency that earns media
The replacement, of paid media efforts with content and utility intended to foster conversation that can easily be shared with friends in these social spaces.

Shift from low-frequency, one-message campaigns to high-frequency, targeted engaging interaction
The familiar mass awareness campaign definitely still has its place. However the shift towards social spaces requires a shift in mindset and communication style as well. As the destination web becomes the real-time web, brands will need to become much more agile in order to be relevant. They will need to participate, contribute and foster conversation on-the-fly.

Shift from static messaging to interactive engaging social networking applications
A little about BAM!apps – Blatantly Animated Messaging Applications.  The BAM!apps platform allows you to easily create, customize and launch new wave, fully animated social applications on the most popular social networking platforms.  No Coding.  No Hosting.  Up and running in less than one day.

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Anatomy of a money making Facebook application

June 6th, 2009

Much has been said about the various ways you can monetize your application on Facebook. For some it’s been difficult to turn good ideas into dollars. While it is true that Facebook offers a number of revenue opportunities for applications – many Facebook apps have been adversely impacted by the recent changes in the Facebook design and the impact of replacing applications with the stream as the central cog of the Facebook’s social graph.

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The Facebook Payment System – Has it finally arrived?

June 1st, 2009

Over this past weekend the the rumors of Facebook launching their own Payment System seems to finally be reality. Several sources reported that Facebook has started targeted testing of their payment system with a few select apps. While the full impact of this announcement remains to be seen, it’s clear that this validates the entire virtual currency ecosystem that has organically grown within Facebook.

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Introducing BAM!apps – Turnkey, Hosted, Social Network Apps

May 28th, 2009

Things are all abuzz here at BAM!apps now that we’ve finally launched our new suite of fully animated social networking applications, appropriately named – BAM!apps.

So What are BAM!apps? Blatantly Animated Messaging applications blend a unique combination of engaging and expressive content with animation. Instead of sending a hug – why not deliver one right on your friends profile page? That’s the basic idea of BAM!apps animated messages allow you to deliver personalized messages, gifts, and other content directly to your friends profile page.

To see exactly how BAM!apps work check out BAM!Hugz a Facebook App that delivers fully animated hugs right on your friends profile page. You can try BAM!Hugz for yourself by clicking here.

Our product lineup provides the most comprehensive turnkey suite of powerful engaging applications in the industry. We’ve designed our BAM!apps product categories to fit just about any need. Ranging from our Starter Package, Premium and Enterprise these BAM!apps allow us to tailor our solutions to your specific needs. Our Elite Package of BAM!apps gives our customers the ultimate control in how they brand, market and engage their user base. At BAM!apps we are dedicated to making your smart business decision to take advantage of the money making opportunities on social networking successful!

For more information on our BAM!apps just head on over to the BAM!apps Store.

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Money making opportunities within Social Networks – Smart Business Decision

May 19th, 2009

Here at BAM!apps we believe now is the time to start using your social networking relationships to build an online business.  If you’re passionate about a cause, have a branded product or just want to explore the money making opportunities, there is no better time than the present.   Danielle Babb, author of The Online Professor’s Practical Guide to Starting an Internet Business agrees that the time to build your business is now.  An interesting article was recently posted with her thoughts…
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