hey! Glad to be here and help in any way I can. Ask any question about Facebook apps. Is this alternately called “Stump the Expert?” 

Hi  @phyllis-khare & @andrea-vahl

Phyllis, I’m wondering how an app like Booshaka that allows pages to rank their fans based on their activity and engagement and then award them prizes based on those engagement levels remains facebook compliant as I thought incentivising fans with a prize to post, like, share or comment on individual posts on the page was against Facebooks T & C’s?

Don’t get me wrong, i think it’s a good app and concept but i don’t get how they are allowed to do it? What do you think?

Thanks,

Scott

@phyllis-khare glad you are here! 
i have a potential obscure question for you from a client request earlier today. a client of mine has stated that  ”There are some FB fan pages/applications which can post or make exposure on “win a prize” activity on their page to redirect their fans to join the activity like what we did this time.”  
We just used OfferPop’s trivia question application to successfully drive new fans to the fan page. Just not the thousands they were wanting. 
I am unfamiliar with these Facebook contest applications that post or make exposure on their page to redirect fans to the client fan page to like it too. 
The ones I know about … OfferPop, North Social, Fan Builder, etc do not post contest activities on their pages as well. Maybe there is one out there and if so, which contest application is this? 
Thanks for any help on this! 

Well @scottlinklater – I know this really gets people mad, but they is an easy way to fix this. You can Allow the app but there is always a little dropdown on that allow box where you can change it from Friends to “Only Me” so the function will still work, but no one will see the app posting. YOU will see it on your Timeline, but no one else will. I hope I have explained that well enough. I can go look for an image If you’d like.

Thanks  @phyllis-khare

It’s a feature i use often after finding a friend of mine bought a competitors app that he found through me lol

I was testing the app out, didn’t think any of my friends would pay attention, he did, i learnt

Thanks

Scott

hey @andrea-vahl I have one for you to try. I have been doing a little testing with their system. They have an interface for Yelp:

 https://www.socialappshq.com/products/my-yelp-tab-for-facebook-pages 

Make sure you watch the video. It will show you how it will look once installed and configured. If you decide to use it let us know how it turns out!

wow @robinoshaughnessy You either must really want an answer or the system likes your question so much it posted it four times!

All contest apps have settings you can configure and you can also manually Share/Send/ entries back to the Page Timeline.

For example the Photo contest using woobox.com has this option “Voting and sharing of individual images can be done via the thumbnail view, or in the expanded lightbox view, as you can see in the screenshot below.”

Did that answer the question @robinoshaughnessy ? Best companies that have contest apps include; offerpop, woobox, socialappshq, strutta and wildfire. @andrea-vahl is intimately aware of contest apps Maybe she has other ideas for you.

Hi everyone, thanks for asking your questions above, these and Phyllis’s answers were very helpful. @phyllis-khare : What is, in your view, the top 5 app for an online retailer (similar to Amazon) that would want to – at times- recruit new fans, boost engagement on the Facebook page and drive traffic back to the site? 

I noticed this animated image in the Apps of this page: https://www.facebook.com/tijdvooralcoholvrij (please check totally on the right a wineglass being filled).

Is this a new functionality within Facebook being rolled out, a bug or something else?

Yes @jimoborny the gift card to the restaurant was the perfect thing to use in this case. Going from 80 to 10K in a week is amazing. I would think there was also some off-line promotion to support it as well – right? Thanks for the case study. Apps are a FAB way to connect with an audience, unless your audience is mostly on their phone, in which case they aren’t so great.

Oh no @joeri-tan not animated gifs!! It’s against Facebook rules to post one, but it looks like they figured out a way to use one for the App cover image. There is a Facebook app for these, but I don’t want to post it because I feel I have a moral obligation to not promote it! haha. 

Phyllis,
Yes there was.
They actually had a huge email database of people who had been to their restaurants and they reached out to them.
Since they just launched their page the promotion was used as a way to encourage people to like their page.
By giving away their gift cards I think they are going to find that the quality of the people liking their page is high.  Higher than if they were giving away an iPad or other unrelated prize.
Hopefully Facebook while be improving the visibility of apps on mobile devices soon.  They have said they will be.
 

Hi @cheryl-price If you have a blog where you already have posts with images, I would use the Lujure system with their iframes app for pulling in the whole website/blog page, but your website would need to be 851 pixels wide or less for it to really look nice. 

If you don’t have a blog then you also use Lujure to build a really nice page https://lujure.com/ using their plain text and images apps. 

Almost every app company has a way to create a beautiful page. I bet there are people watching this forum who have a few of their favorites they’d like to list. List away!

yes @cheryl-price I thought that’s what I was suggesting… I hope I explained it correctly. 

@Phyllis Khare: I found out it’s a layered .PSD file, not animated Gifs. But I am surprised this is possible, since I only knew static graphics until now. 

Where does it say in the Facebook terms of usage that it’s against the rules?(or where does it say you’re not allowed to use animated Gifs?). 

I am from The Netherlands and hopefully somebody can clear this out for me. If it’s a new functionality within Facebook I would support it totally, since I think it’s a real added value. Thanks for your effort so far.

@Phyllis-Khare : Thanks for responding so quickly, appreciated. Well, the thing with this animation is, it makes the app stand out more from the rest, making it the perfect Call-2-Action towards visitors.

But how do you deal with situations like this for a cliënt? Facebook TOS is (indeed) sometimes not so clear on issue’s like this. This makes it hard to make a decision in using it or not for cliëntwork. 

Esspecially in the translated version of the TOS (dutch) it can be confusing.Facebook would really make it userfriendly if they would make everything more transparent/crystal clear concerning graphics, limitations and other restrictions.

For example:”All graphics on Facebook Profile or Pages should be static, except the graphics being used in a post”. This is clear and monkeyproof, no discussion about it.

This subject alone could be an appendix to many Ebooks & Seminars released.Idea?

Hi @nedraff – if you use a ‘fan gate’ you need to make sure the offer is interesting enough to make someone click the Like. You are offering them something in exchange for being able to have your updates in their news feed. I would stop trying to think of it as ‘forcing’ and more of providing a benefit (discount code, free report, extra tutorial). 

As far as apps for new concepts I would think any of them that provide a static html space to put your own code, or images that link back to your website would be good. I would also visually tie it in with your Cover image (no arrows though).

Hi @hytare Any Page would still need to promote the app in regular updates to really use them well, as many people will only see the Page Timeline once or twice. The other drawback is you don’t see apps on the mobile Facebook app – at all! So all that work for nothing on a mobile device! 

Facebook now shows you a hover card when you hover over a business Page name in the news feed, but only on a computer browser interface, so the cover image, profile image and Page category become VERY important now. One of the best hover cards I’ve seen is for New Media Expo - https://www.facebook.com/NewMediaExpo Go to their Timeline and hover over one of their posts and see what a nice impression it gives for the business.