Much has been written on the value of Facebook for marketing. Bloggers and marketing professionals have covered everything from "the value of listening and engaging," to "metrics and analytics." In summary, marketing on Facebook specifically, and on social networks in general, can be very successful and effective when done right.

However, one thing that is often missing from the discussion is any mention of using custom applications in the process of engagement. In most discussions, the emphasis is on building valuable connections between real people (and rightly so!). However, I am often disappointed by the low-tech methods that many companies still use to engage people in the high-tech world of social media.

While I certainly will not advocate that a custom built Facebook application is the right solution for every company, I would like to suggest adding a bit of promotion to custom applications as a possible tool for some companies and some situations.

I would also like to emphasize many other "high-tech" tools that can help incorporate the Facebook experience into your business and that may provide a superior method of engagement than a Twitter account or Facebook page can provide.

But first, some benefits of custom applications:

Fishing Where the Fish Are

As of this writing, approximately 450 million users have registered on the site. For many businesses, social movements, and interest groups, fan pages have already been created and there is a group of people already interested in what you are doing. This is especially true for new products (try searching for any new movie, product or event on Facebook).

By building a product in an environment where people are already passionate about your service, and where it is very easy to spread word about yourself, it can be quickly profitable and have a great rate of return.

Engagement Beyond Conversation

Sometimes people want to talk to you. Sometimes they want to complain. Sometimes they want a special deal, and sometimes they just want to see what you are doing. Applications should not replace real communication, but they can enhance the experience of users who are looking to do more than just talk.

An application can give you some cool features, and enhances your ability to engage users. It makes your site or page a destination, and it becomes more attractive to a broader range of users.

Analytics

Facebook strictly controls what user data you can access. This ensures that users can use products without fear of privacy infringement. However, applications can be more successful at gathering information by giving people the ability to register or intentionally share information with you. This lets the user choose whether or not to participate, but still give you the ability to gather valuable information that can help make future marketing and promotional efforts more effective.

Facebook applications have a broad range of capabilities. Some of these have been listed below, and include applications on Facebook.com, integration into independent websites, and mobile applications. This also includes Facebook widgets; however I will generally refer to everything as "applications."

Facebook.com Applications

For some businesses, applications are the business. Take Zynga, for example. They have developed seven of the top ten games on Facebook, and currently run an estimated $50 million per month.

It would be great for everyone to have that revenue, but Zynga has shown that running a business solely on Facebook applications can be a very profitable business model (with the recognition that they have just recently expanded outside of Facebook as well).

With over 550,000 applications on Facebook, applications have been used for all kinds of solutions, including mini-games to promote movies, connections to real-life retail stores, content sharing, and many more.

This allows companies to tap into what makes Facebook so successful, as well as offer a unique service and experience to your current and future customers.

Beyond Facebook.com

Many websites want to catch the social media trend by making content easily sharable, as well as making it easy to promote things to friends. For example, say you run a restaurant business. It would be very nice if your customers could login to your website using their Facebook account and see which of your menu items their Facebook friends have tried and recommended, as well as public recommendations from other people on Facebook.

This is actually possible through Facebook’s Open Graph and through Facebook Connect, which allows third-party websites to build into Facebook’s social web. It does this while maintaining the privacy of the individuals – by limiting the data shared – while still giving the freedom to merge Facebook-type discussions into the web as a whole.

This same type of integration can also be done on mobile apps. Continuing the restaurant example, let’s say that you have a mobile app that helps people find the nearest location of your restaurant. By integrating Facebook into it, it could let people automatically notify their friends that they are eating there, and invite them to join in. Or if you were a clothing store, it could help users upload different outfits to your Facebook page, and invite your friends to give you feedback.

Facebook has made it intentionally easy to integrate applications into the site, and despite some intermittent privacy concerns, they have done a fairly decent job at making it a secure and comfortable feature for people to use.

Development and Costs

Facebook has gone to great lengths to make its site accessible to developers, by allowing more common programming languages such as ASP.NET, Java, and Ruby on Rails to be easily integrated or translated into Facebook’s FBML/XFBML code, as well as offering other tools and features. This has made development very accessible to many developers, which brings costs down but also means that quality can vary as well.

Custom development can be done in-house, if you have the staff and support available. There are also custom development companies that offer custom Facebook applications.

When searching for a custom application development company, be sure to find one that specializes in all of the technologies you need. In addition to building a Facebook application, see if they have experience with mobile integration (if you need you app to work on smart phones too), or with other Internet applications and integration, if you plan to incorporate an external website.

At Amadeus Consulting, for example, we have extensive experience developing mobile applications, rich Internet applications, and enterprise systems for large and small companies. We have been working with these technologies for some time, and are very comfortable building custom solutions and integrating the necessary technologies necessary to make your project function as necessary.

If you have specific questions about cost and capability, or anything else, we would be more than happy to speak with you. Click on over to our Contact Us page, and let us know how we can help.