I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about our Windows Facebook presence, or lack there of. There are pages devoted to Windows on Facebook (good and bad) but there isn’t a strong presence or strategy for this platform to date. That’s where my team comes in. We are thinking a lot about what kind of a presence we want in Facebook and how to sustain that over time. We want it to evolve with our campaigns rather than be a flash in the pan presence that dies off over time.  Without devoted, ongoing support on the platform any and all investment we make will quickly diminish in returns.  We are designing the Facebook.com/Windows page now and will announce it as soon as we launch which brings me to my point of this post.

As part of a launch plan for a Facebook page you have to have a plan for how you are going to get people to come to your page. Facebook is not designed for people to discover things on their own. The only way people virally discover new content and cool stuff is through the persons newsfeeds on their new Facebook homepage. Basically if a few peeps with big networks engage in your page then their networks will see it and hopefully you can build traffic that way. One way to get people ‘in the door’ is Facebook apps. What are apps? They are the fun toys you see in Facebook. Sometimes they are in the form of virtual gifts and look like this gift below.    Sometimes they enable people to pull content from other sources through API’s. The purpose of them is to create unique engagement activities for people in Facebook to participate and pass along. But what I have learned over the pass week is this apps are not cheap! An app can cost upwards of $100K. Not all apps are that expensive but to do something relatively engaging they are going to cost a pretty penny. That would be fine if the apps had a long shelf life and the cost could be amortized over a long period of time, driving down the cost per engagement. As it stands now most apps are build for a short running campaign that has a shelf life of weeks, not months. That is going to quickly become cost prohibitive for most brands. Campaign owns are going to be hard pressed to show value for that cost in such a short period of time. The reason they don’t last long is the dazzle wears off quickly. An Indiana Jones hat may be funny for a few weeks but I’m not interested after that so it’s lost it’s appeal to be passed around.

What do to? App builders need to do 3 things

1. Get much more efficient in building apps allowing them to lower their costs. There are a few developers now who have build a ‘platform’ such as Slide where it’s cheaper to use a pre-existing application. I think app developers will either have to move to this model of pre-existing apps (think model homes) that can be tailored or find a way to reduce the man hours it takes to build them.
2. Find a way to drive desired outcomes. Apps are more like tv commercials.  They are not very useful in driving downloads, click throughs to yourdomian.com or shopping cart checkouts. Their purpose is brand engagement for a niche market.
3. Make apps more discoverable through the clutter. I’ve heard there are 10’s of thousands of apps on Facebook right now which makes discovery even more challenging. The worst thing would be to build a $100,000 app and then have no one find it. Ouch!

We are looking at 2 apps to launch our Facebook page with. They aren’t too complicated and I’m making sure they have strong viral components so they can easily be passed on and show up in people’s newsfeeds.  We aren’t starting with a gift simply because they are too expensive with little track record for success to date.