Do you find Facebook Pages frustratingly limited? Would you feel more capable of keeping up with location based social media if you had a dedicated management app?
If the answer is yes to either, then great. Because solutions are here. And as a PR agency in Manchester obsessed by all things interactive, we know both are well worth getting to grips with.
Several changes to Facebook Pages have been implemented, with three proving particularly relevant. These accounts are often used by businesses, but had previously been restricted to little more than a brand hosted fan hub.
Not any more. Users can now comment, and interact with others on the social network, under their company name. Better yet, switching between an individual administrator profile, and a business Page is easy. Simply click Account in the top right, select Use Facebook as Page, and start up a corporate conversation.
The other major alteration is to the masthead. This has also impacted on personal accounts, only with a Page the switch is potentially more problematic. A series of images now appear underneath the basic information, but the order these are displayed in cannot be defined. It means successful visual branding becomes complicated, so it’s up to you whether this encourages or restricts creativity. With a keen eye, and strong brand identity, this can be used to help you stand out.
You may also have noticed the tabs are gone. The result is that things can be harder to see, as the familiar navigation links have been removed, and replaced by a less-obvious column to the left. However, it is possible to turn this into a positive change with professionally designed pages- just ask us how.
Moving away from the world’s most popular social network, though not too far, Foot Feed is a fantastic new app. If you’re aware of social media dashboards like Hoot Suite then this will be familiar territory. Smartphone users are checking into restaurants, nightclubs, businesses and bars by the bucketload, and grabbing some great discounts in the process. But people are busy, meaning there’s less time to Tweet.
Foot Feed allows you to let the world know where you are on Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places, Twitter, and Google Latitude, all at the same time. That also means multiple rewards, and recommendations from people using any and every of the aforementioned networks, suggesting consumers will love it.
In reverse, it offers a business up to five times the impact these GPS-dependent applications would individually. So whatever your opinion this makes perfect mass-marketing sense, as does the developer’s offer of an API to companies that want to add the multi-check in option to their own apps. Essential without a doubt, the only question we’re asking is what will they think of next?