Website Applications

Even if you don’t decide to develop your own, there are plenty of website applications you can use on your own website to give the impression that you are technologically savvy and innovative. If you have a stock market website, why not include some stock quote applications? If you are a mortgage lender, mortgage calculators make ideal tools to add to your website because they help your buyers determine how much house they can afford.

You can even hire someone to create special applications for your website to further promote some product. For instance, recently, a website call Telonu.com that offers reviews of employers also created an application that tracks the layoffs in the different companies. People who go to the site cannot only get an idea of how good they are to work for, but whether they are stable, growing companies or not.

Social Networking Applications

There is a great glut of applications on social networking sites, like Facebook. But, there’s always room for one more, if it is genuinely innovative and engaging. These make an excellent foil to introduce new customers to your business and to interact in a manner that is non-threatening and friendly. Different examples of popular applications on Facebook are L’il Green which gets environmentally conscious people to build virtual gardens and save rain forest while they’re doing it. If an application is well accepted, it can spread across Facebook very fast, landing you in practically everyone’s inbox.

You can hire someone to create a Facebook application or you can do it yourself. Basic ones are generally just a collection of images that are used to promote some concept and that are fun to send as gifts to others on the same social networking site. Just downloading one application will often get you a link to create your own application, should the mood suit you and you have a firm concept that promotes your business niche too. Don’t just go willy-nilly. Try to use the application to help provide exposure for some area within your business that is targeting a specific market niche.

Look At Me!

One way that Facebook and Twitter allow you to personalize the profile is by using your real name, or in the case of Twitter, a screen name. This draws attention to who that person is and helps to boost their self-image. In the same way, if you are trying to sell cups or calendars, if you have some way that you can include a personalization to make the item more custom, you will generate more orders. Everyone likes to see their name in print!

Generate A Group Identity

On Facebook, you can set up a Facebook page for celebrities, businesses, and products. People then join these pages to become a group of fans that like the page or topic. Once you have a group of people together, it can be a great way to get a group identity together by creating interesting names for the groups, having interactive activities on occasion and creating social badges that show people as being a member of that group. This helps in promoting your group and your business as other people go to other social networking sites. They can then identify themselves by saying they’re a member of that group or using some other form of badge or button that you provide to identify themselves with pride. Even if they never go elsewhere to promote your group, the fact that they are a part of a group that you started gives you a captive audience and relaxes many of the restrictions that you have for marketing in Facebook. You can’t spam others on their profiles with your offers, but in a group, the practice may be more acceptable if it helps to facilitate group activities and uphold group standards of identity.

Social Values That Sell

If you are a non-profit organization trying to use social networking to help generate contacts and promote some of your products, you can sell through the promotion of your social values. For instance, if you are a non-profit that believes in environmental issues, you can promote specific items in your product line-up, in a post to a group wall, that shows how that item helps to save the environment. Since people wouldn’t join the group of a social conscience site without having some of the same values, it provides an excellent trigger to generate buying behavior.