My goal was to write a post about the best Facebook applications for personal branding. I quickly learned that the list was a very short one!
I started with the Mashable blog post: 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook. As I dug further into the more interesting apps on the list, I discovered that most of these apps had a lot fewer users than the top two applications. (See the chart below).
The two most promising apps were ones for blog promotion:
- Networked Blog app – helps you promote your own blog on Facebook. This shows up on your profile and within your Boxes tab.
- Social RSS – this promotes your blog or business via RSS feed. This can show up on your profile, within your Boxes tab, or as a separate tab.
*Note: The Boxes tab is where any Facebook applications you’ve added will show up. If you haven’t added any applications, you won’t see a Boxes tab.
Some applications that looked promising:
- Testimonials – a way to gather testimonials. It’s limited because you can’t do a search of businesses.
- Professional Profile – allows you to create a tab for professional activities.
- My LinkedIn Profile – provides you with a badge that you can display on your Facebook profile.
However, when I took a look at the number of users and fans, I wasn’t convinced. Networked Blogs and Social RSS both have over 10 times the number of users than these other applications. Facebook has a user base of over 350 million and I think it’s very telling that these applications don’t have many users. Plus, these applications were given low ratings.
| App | #Users | #Fans | Rating(1-5 stars) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Networked Blogs | 935,000 | 113,000 | 4 |
| Social RSS | 416,000 | 7241 | 2.3 |
| Testimonials | 57,141 | 2693 | 2.3 |
| Professional Profile | 31,492 | 2387 | 2.4 |
| my LinkedIn Profile | 10,918 | 2359 | 2.8 |
To summarize, I would recommend using the Networked Blog application for personal branding and promoting your blog, but stick to other sites like LinkedIn, for more robust personal branding.
Nancy Loderick's Blog 
Paul Geffen
February 22, 2010
These numbers make sense given the legacy of Facebook as a personal site. There are many ways that FB isn’t set up for business and doesn’t try to be. The most obvious is the very limited set of options available for a Fan page. Personally, I like that approach.
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Nancy Loderick
February 23, 2010
@paul – It’s interesting that while Facebook is still viewed as a personal site, more and more businesses are setting up Fan Pages in an effort to expand their businesses. It will be interesting to see what new features Facebook will add to appeal to businesses.
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jeremywaite
February 25, 2010
Great post Nancy, thanks! I think it will be interesting to see where Facebook takes it’s “brand” given that so many business are now using fanpages as their main marketing weapons instead of a standard website. It’s over a year ago now that Vitamin Water’s Superbowl ad was http://www.facebook.com/vitaminwater and not their normal site. Or maybe we’ll all just get bored of facebook when it starts to become too much like a marketplace??
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Nancy Loderick
February 25, 2010
@jeremy – thanks for sharing your thoughts. Already I’m hearing that for companies trying to market their brands, Facebook is getting old and they should be going onto Twitter. With things changing so quickly these days, it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months. I also see companies rushing to put up Fan pages because they read that this was the way to market their brand. When they do this without thinking through their strategy, it doesn’t work.
p.s. I love the name of your company, Punk Branding, it’s very memorable.
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BlogMage.com
March 12, 2010
Hi, nice blog. I am inviting you to join our monthly blogging tournament.
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Nancy Loderick
March 12, 2010
@blogmage – thanks for your comments and your invitation. Mmm, a blogging tournament – now that’s a new one! When I hear the word tournament, I think of tennis, not writing. I’ll have to check out your tournament.
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C. Fowler
April 8, 2010
So pleased to digest such a insightful blog that does not fall back on cheap rhetoric to get the topic fulfilled. Thank you for an enjoyable read.
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Nancy Loderick
April 9, 2010
@C.Fowler – thanks for your comments. Glad you enjoyed reading my blog!
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Bree Tanner
May 2, 2010
hi impressive little journal you got right here 🙂 I am using the exact same theme on my website and yet for whatever explanation it appears to stream more quickly on this blog despite the fact that this blog features a bit more content material. Have you been implementing any specific plug ins or widgets which quicken it up? If you could possibly share the titles so that I can use these in my personal online site so twilight new moon fans could watch twilight breaking dawn online trailers and films quicker I’d personally be thankful – regards ahead of time 🙂
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Nancy Loderick
May 3, 2010
@Bree – thanks for your comment. As for plug-ins, I’m all for simple and uncluttered. The WordPress widgets I use:
*RSS feed
*Categories
*Archives
*Share this post.
For social bookmarking of each post, I use Get Social Live from Hillel Stoler.
I hope this helps!
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L.Lipski
May 6, 2010
You are 100% on the money! Most people I see view things in the short run and try to take every opportunity to promote or hype themselves instead of building credibility by helping others achieve their goals.
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Nancy Loderick
May 6, 2010
@L.Lipski – thanks for your comments. My mission for my blog is to educate folks on online tools and personal branding. I’m glad it’s working :).
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