Can Facebook applications increase traffic to your site?
Posted by Katia Pereria on 26 Jul 2007 at 04:08 pm | Tagged as: Social Media
Facebook with more than 32 million active users, and still doubling every six months, is the No. 2 social-networking site after Myspace. London recently overtook Toronto as the city with the most Facebook users.
According to The wall Street Journal, Facebook currently offers more than 800 new services, from photo slideshows to online file storage; this is up from fewer than 100 a month ago. Meanwhile, those who are creating the Facebook services can access information about their customers and make money by selling related items and ads.
Vauhini Vara mentioned in her article that it is people between the ages of 15-34 that are actively using social networks and that a lot of this activity occurs during ‘prime-time hours’. This allows companies to make ‘meaningful brand connections’ with the users. Furthermore, the study showed that social-network-based advertisements offered a return on investment which was higher than that from other online advertising campaigns and even televised ad campaigns.
It has been mentioned several times that flyer and conventional advertising on Facebook does not necessarily generate a click through to your site. Some companies have caught onto the “applications” wave and are taking full advantage of the facilities and launching their own applications with Facebook. A great example, pointed out by Eric Eldon from Venture Beat is Slide. Slide has launched multiple applications; for example “Top Friends” which boasts nearly 10 million users. These applications if used correctly will almost certainly increase traffic and awareness of your product.
Muhammad Saleem from Pronet Advertising speaks about this trend and how demands from companies has lead to a service called FBFactory, they specializes in application development for Facebook. The service takes 3-5 days to create your application.
The key question is how long will this “trend” last? Facebook is getting jammed with applications and unless the applications provide a service that is already in demand, it is not fool proof that it will work and take off as Slide and ILike have done. It is very important to really understand your audience and what they are looking for, Research is critical to making this approach work. It’s not as easy as it may sound.
