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September 17, 2007
Social Media Strategy: Understand the Goals of Your Facebook Application
During the past month I have met with a number of companies, mostly startups, and spoke to them about their social media strategy. At some point during our discussion, we invariably ended up talking about Facebook and the “killer app” they were thinking about and in some cases already developing for Facebook.
Something to think about when green-lighting the development of applications for Facebook is: What is the underlying goal for YOUR efforts? What is YOUR end game? Why are YOU building this specific application? Is it “just for fun” or are their other underlying business motivations?
Sometimes a company’s known product and/or service is not an obviously good match for a typical Facebook application. So in these cases it doesn’t really make much sense to simply replicate their product/service to be inside of Facebook. Plus there are the Facebook Developer Terms of Service and Platform Application Guidelines to keep in mind.
This doesn’t mean the company shouldn’t be embracing social media or launching their own Facebook application. In these cases, my suggestion is for the company to think about using Facebook as a “Trojan Horse Play” and to use Facebook to help them build a database of customers for their primary product and/or service. And while this leaves the more challenging job of converting people from Facebook who are using their application to paying customers, companies following this strategy will end up with an active, pre-qualified and engaged “bottom up” community to work with.
So what is YOUR Social Media Strategy? How are YOU embracing social media? If you are deploying a Facebook application, what are the goals of YOUR Facebook Application?
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Tags: Social Media, Facebook, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on September 17, 2007 07:41 AM | Permalink
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Comments
We at SpeedBit have been debating for a while on our involvment and development in the social web - and I must say, the points you emphasized are right on the money.
Personally, I'm sure the Facebook goldrush will pass, as I am sure Facebook itself (which I love and enjoy using) will sink down eventually, just like myspace, friendster, classmates, and so on.
These sites (social nets) all have a lifespan, that is based on their innovation, average user profile (web pioneer or simple-user), and amount of spam-commercial activity. But most importantly, there is the trend-factor, which people seem to forget.
Websites, and expecially social nets, like clubs, pubs and restaurants, exist in a trend/fashion/style existence, and rise and fall, not only on the merit of their functionality and/or quality.
I think that we would all be smart to remember that.
Posted by: Davidi Silberstein at September 17, 2007 10:51 AM
i think facebook is a work in progress and like "god", "love", "beauty" is in the eyes of the beholder - its what you want it to be - i have spent the last three days running with my shoes tied together trying to build some facebook apps that might resonate with facebook audience and with many of the social and creative projects i have been playing with for last of my 12 online years - seems like a long time in hind sight - i find facebook to be a social sculpture/movement that touches on the promised land of dreams geo (at) RandomPlace.com
Posted by: geo geller at September 17, 2007 09:25 AM
Jeff, Yes, the current "rush to Facebook" reminds me of the mid-1990's when suddenly everyone was saying "We have to have a web site!" You would ask them WHY they needed a web site and the answer was sort of "Well, you know, we *have* to have a website!" Same thing in recent years with blogs - "We have to launch a blog!" - without a lot of thought about WHY a blog would be helpful. While experimentation is defiinitely great and necessary and may pay off with unexpected dividends, success is far more likely if some thought is put into it in advance (including defining what constitutes "success"). Thanks for reminding all of us. -Dan
Posted by: Dan York at September 17, 2007 08:54 AM