30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook
Josh Peters is a freelance social media consultant from Salt Lake City, Utah. He authors a blog at Shuaism.com.
) is the only place for business? Facebook (
) is growing rapidly and it’s becoming a destination for businesses and business professionals alike to establish a presence. Here are over 30 Facebook applications to help promote, network, communicate, collaborate and accomplish more with your business.
Which apps do you use? If I missed any that should be on this list, please feel free to add them in the comments.
Blog Promotion
Networked Blogs app – This app shows up on your profile or in your boxes tab and displays your blog and any of the blogs you like to read. It’s a great way to promote yourself and others.
Notes (Default App) – Default App found on the right side of your profile. Add your RSS feed and view your friends’ feeds. When your blog updates it shows the article in your feed.
RSS Connect – This one can be in either a box on your profile or even better, its own tab on your profile.
Simplaris BlogCast – Quick and simple way to put the title of your blog post and a link to it in your feed.
Business / Self Promotion
Define Me – Displays a cloud of words others use to describe your business. This could be your best friend or worst enemy depending on your business and customer service.
GLPrint Business Cards – A flashier business card; gives you options to create your digital business card.
IEndorse – Testimonials are a great way to build the value of your company. This app allows Facebook denizens to endorse your company or find it via the IEndorse business database.
My BusinessBlinkWeb – Create a widget that promotes your business and that others can place on their profiles. This basically turns your friends, clients, or customers into your advertisers.
Professional Profile – Create a tab on your profile for all of your professional contacts, information, and activities. Very useful if you want to separate the two sides of yourself.
Posted Items (Default App) – This is one you can find on the upper right side of your profile and it allows you to share anything you find on the Internet by posting it to your profile. Videos, blogs, or even articles about you or your company or anything else you find interesting.
Testimonials – Like IEndorse it’s a way to gather customer testimonials, but it doesn’t have the business database for searching businesses.
Communication
CalliFlower – Free conference calls!
Smart Phone – Phone to phone calls and even some conference call features that are all handled from your FB profile.
SmartMessage Center – Smart is right. This tool allows you to send messages to groups or individuals and gives you back one single result that you can share. It’s a great tool for gathering information and then organizing it into a single page instead of wading through pages and pages of replies. You can even get the results exported as a PDF, RSS, or XLS file.
Telephone – Talk, IM, or leave voice messages. I’d say it’s more like a cell phone than a telephone, but you get the idea.
Voice Mail – Voice messaging, voice chat, voice enabled wall posts, and more. Add some sound to you profile or just make it possible to leave voice messages.
Networking
Introductions – If you’re not good at meeting new people this app will help introduce you.
My LinkedIn Profile – Creates a badge from your LinkedIn profile that gets displayed on your Facebook profile.
SocialFly – Create notes about your online contacts, setup reminders to talk to them, and manage your contacts. Great app for keeping up with business contacts.
Tag Biz Business Network – Puts a tag cloud of descriptive tags on your profile and participating friends’ profiles. These tags link back to the Tag Biz directory where you can easily find similar businesses or people and make your networking time more efficient.
Workin’ It! – Helps you post and send out your work experience to potential employers or clients and gathers recommendations from your friends and co-workers.
) – Hooks into your Xing account (like the LinkedIn app does with LinkedIn) and brings the networking features of Xing to Facebook.
Collaboration
Huddle by WorkSpaces – Store or share documents, make plans, collaborate on projects, and more (also one of the LinkedIn apps).
My Office – This virtual office will help get everyone on the same page by sharing documents, tasks and more.
Audio/Visual
Facebook Video (Default App) – Share videos of presentations, product demos, and even company commercials.
PodCast Player – Share audio interviews on your profile, or your company’s podcasts.
SlideShare – If you’re already using SlideShare to share your presentations online then you can connect the account to your profile. If you aren’t already using it you should and start sharing your presentations on your profile.
Miscellaneous
JD Supra Docs – Stream your documents and info from your JD Supra Docs account to your Facebook profile.
Memorable Web Addresses for Profile, Page or Group – Instead of having the default, crazy Facebook address to get to your account you can now make an easy to remember and easy to find address for your business or group.
My Money – This online banking app isn’t very useful if you’re a large business, but for small or single owner businesses it’s just one more tool that can help make Facebook a more valuable business stop.
Page Maps – Display a mini map (with links to larger maps) of where your business or favorite place to have business meetings are.
Static FBML – Add some advanced functionality to your Facebook Page by being able to render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language) on the page. Change the look and feel, and even add apps, forms, and widgets from other places.
Run Your Business Online
With the right combination of apps you could pretty much run your business from your Facebook profile. Conference calls, virtual office, collaboration utilities, finance apps, document creation and sharing apps, and a separate tab for your business contacts and activities. Facebook is definitely a social network that can be tailored for the business professional.
What do you think? Please leave your feedback and any apps I may have missed in the comments section.
Josh Peters is a freelance social media consultant from Salt Lake City, Utah who, when he’s not frolicking in the fields of social media, enjoys working on his startup RoyalAnts, watching horror movies with his wife, and playing with his dogs. He blogs at Shuaism and would really like to connect with you on Facebook, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter (
).
More Facebook resources from Mashable
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Image courtesy of iStockphoto (
), shironosov
