Brands have invested in maintaining and growing Facebook pages for several years now. Pages enable two-way conversation between brands and consumers, and the effectiveness of this single outlet is evident in the fact that millions have connected, commented and interacted with their favorite companies and organizations via Facebook Pages.
Pages will continue to be an important component of brands’ overall social media strategies into the foreseeable future, but they are now joined by a new, complementary contender on the platform – Facebook Timeline apps.
Timeline apps rely on Facebook users to do the sharing, rather than brands initiating the process themselves. This shift toward empowering consumers to become brand storytellers is important —particularly for brands looking to reach younger generations who are less receptive to marketing messages coming directly from brands.
For an early example of how timeline apps are evolving the way that brands and organizations approach Facebook, consider The Washington Post’s recent activities:
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— The Washington Post has a Facebook page at facebook.com/washingtonpost. The organization authors status updates—mostly containing links to recently-published WaPo articles—and these posts reach a select number of Facebook users via the news feed: 311,484 people have liked the page since its inception, and 18,535 have talked about it (created a story about the page by taking actions such as liking, sharing or commenting on a status update) in the past 7 days. This page is running along nicely, and continues to attract a moderate number of engaged users.
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— The Post could stop right here, continuing to think of the page as the sole arm of its Facebook strategy. But instead it created the Washington Post Social Reader—a timeline app which lives on Facebook, as a component baked into washingtonpost.com, and on mobile via iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire apps. Its use case is based on the concepts of frictionless sharing and social recommendation: “Once you're using the app, the stories you read will be instantly shared with your friends, and your friends' reads will be shared with you, creating a socially powered newswire of intriguing articles.”
Eleven million people are using The Washington Post’s timeline app—35x the number of consumers who have liked its Facebook page. This indicates that, while there are 300,000+ people who like to learn about news directly from this organization’s page, a much larger audience has taken interest in discovering The Washington Post’s content through their friends.
The emergence and early success of timeline apps like the Post’s Social Reader reveals a broader trend—that brand stories on Facebook are more effective when told through the lens of friends. While Facebook pages remain relevant, progressive brands will see a significant benefit from developing their own timeline apps—or partnering with existing integrations—making it easier and more compelling for consumers to create and share authentic content about the brand with their friends.
It can be tempting to think of these apps as pie-in-the-sky concepts which don’t warrant the attention of marketers just yet, but the numbers prove otherwise. When done just right, timeline apps clearly have the potential to eclipse Facebook pages in terms of overall reach—and that is an opportunity (not a threat) for those who begin planning and building their timeline apps now.
What makes a timeline app?
Timeline apps incorporate descriptive action verbs to describe the real-life activities in which a Facebook user engages. So instead of liking a book, users can install a timeline app connected to their e-reader which tells friends that they are reading a book through Facebook’s new vocabulary of actions. Many of these actions are posted seamlessly without any additional work for the user.
Trends from these real-life activities are bundled up into mini-infographics which are published to the timeline, ticker and potentially the news feed—telling stories with engaging visualizations. In Facebook’s own words, “[these new] apps bring your timeline to life.”
Where should brands begin?
The only way to comprehend how timeline apps function is to try out at least one of the 60+ apps. One of my personal favorites is Foodspotting.
After developing an understanding of how these apps work, brainstorm the real-life actions consumers take which are most relevant to your brand or organization. Are they “donating” to your cause, “playing” your game, “watching” your programming or “cooking” with your products?
The next step in planning is to map out all potential touch points. Timeline apps are not confined solely within Facebook; they are typically baked in to the brand’s website or mobile app. For example, the Foodspotting mobile app is the primary input source, and the consumer’s Facebook Timeline is the output source—where that content is visualized and shared with friends.
