We’re at the San Francisco Design center, blogging Inside Network’s third annual Inside Social Apps conference. The final panel of the day focused on how marketers and brands can use social apps to maximize audience engagement.

Joining moderator Josh Constine, of Techcrunch, were Context Optional CEO Kevin Barenblat, Buddy Media Senior VP Carla Bourque, Facebook Page Product Manager Russ Heddleston, Starz Media VP of Digital Media David Katz, Hearsay Social CEO and Starbucks Board Director Clara Shih.

All of the panelists agreed that building mobile experiences and applications is becoming increasingly important for brand marketers. Shih, of Hearsay Social, and Barenblat, of Context Optional, said that developing application experiences that involve the user being physically present at a retail store have potential for both marketers and developers. Bourque, of Buddy Media, said her company’s mobile focus was primarily on enabling social commerce at scale and driving conversions.

While panelists agreed that building applications for mobile will be increasingly important, their take on building Open Graph applications was mixed. Shih, of Hearsay Social noted that for lifestyle brands, Open Graph represents a significant opportunity because of its ability to connect identity to brands and products. For small or local brands and companies, or those outside of the lifestyle space, Open Graph might not be a good fit. The consensus was that developers and marketers should focus on testing new ideas and generating success at a small scale in order to demonstrate impact, and build upon that.

When asked about the future of page tab applications, and whether they will become mobile compatible at some point in the future, Heddleston, of Facebook, did not make any definitive statement. He reinforced the importance of mobile in Facebook’s overall strategy and noted, “We haven’t yet come out with a separate solution for tab applications for mobile, it’s something we’re looking into, and something that would make sense.”

The panelists discussed some of the factors that go into deciding whether businesses should develop custom applications for their page or work with platform templates. The general consensus was that custom development might not be cost-efficient for some companies, but business objectives should ultimately drive the decision. Shih, of Hearsay Social, said that she’s seen a 50-50 split among larger clients — half begin with a template from Hearsay’s app gallery and half are completely custom experiences developed by another digital agency.

As far as brand integration within existing apps, such as popular social games, the panelists emphasized how distribution and engagement are key things brands should look for before spending money on placement. Katz, of Starz Media, said he especially looks for examples of what an app developer has done before and wants to know that a company has delivered results for similar brands in the past.

Facebook hired former Levi’s CMO Rebecca Van Dyck to lead its global marketing efforts, according to Ad Age.

Van Dyck, who worked at Apple and Wieden+Kennedy before Levi’s, will bring important branding experience to Facebook. An initial public offering this year will put more pressure on the company to improve its image. Although it has in eight years become one of the most well-known brands in the world, it ranks among the lowest in consumer satisfaction. With Google heavily promoting an alternative social network, Facebook will need to be strategic in coming years.

Facebook significantly increased its marketing and advertising efforts in 2011. It spent $28 million in advertising last year — up from $8 million in 2010, according to IPO documents. The social network runs Google AdWords and Facebook ad campaigns. (We have reached out to Facebook to clarify how its house ads are billed.) The company has recently formed a number of partnerships with media companies like NBC, the New York Times, USA Today and Politico to build its brand.

Facebook mentioned in its IPO filing that unfavorable press coverage could negatively affect its business. This is true for any company, but it is notable that Facebook included it in the risk factors section of its prospectus. Google and LinkedIn did not.

Google ran a number of television commercials last year promoting its social network and other products. Facebook could follow suit, but since CEO Mark Zuckerberg is known to be skeptical of traditional advertising, the company could be looking to try other types of campaigns.

Van Dyck was recently involved in Levi’s “Go Forth” initiative, in which the company donated more than $1 million to renovate a community center and aid an urban farming program in Braddock, Pa. Facebook was likely most interested in Van Dyck’s experience with Apple where she worked for seven years and helped with launches of the iPhone, iPad, iPod and iTunes.

Image credit: Rebecca Van Dyck’s LinkedIn profile

With Open Graph actions, users can now interact with and share things on the web in more nuanced ways than liking or posting. The new dynamics between apps, Timeline, Ticker and News Feed means more options for brand exposure on Facebook, but not necessarily in ways brands can control or own. Instead, marketers will need to think beyond their Facebook pages and consider partnership opportunities with other apps, as well as how to build new experiences for the web and mobile devices that last beyond a single campaign.

A lot of the actions users take in Open Graph apps are going to involve commercial products or entities. People will be able to “watch” movies, “wear” designer items, “drink” beverages and so on. Most of these actions will not be taken within brand-specific apps. Instead they’ll be made via Rotten Tomatoes, Pose, Foodspotting and other third-party platforms. As a result, we may start to see more brands directing people to these apps. For example, a movie page on Facebook could link to the Rotten Tomatoes page after opening weekend and tell fans to rate the movie, knowing this will generate additional impressions among a user’s friends. Brands will also be more likely to partner with apps to offer promotions or be featured in some way now that their reach will be much greater. This is because instead of waiting for users to actively share things on Facebook, Open Graph apps can continuously publish lightweight stories about users’ activity. As a result, formerly niche communities like the aforementioned Pose or Foodspotting could become more viable marketing avenues.

Marketers might be tempted to create their own Open Graph apps, but they will need to think more long term than they previously have with Facebook. Timeline apps provide value through use over time, helping users share part of their identity or learn something about their own habits. These apps are not ideal for one-off promotions. If marketers create them solely to take advantage of “frictionless sharing,” users are likely to recognize them as spam.

Another important point about Open Graph apps is that since they benefit from users taking repeated action, they work well as mobile and web integrations not page tab apps. A few of Facebook’s more than 60 Open Graph partners developed canvas applications, but none were using page tabs. We suspect this is in part because tabs apps are unavailable on mobile and pages could be converted to the Timeline format sometime this year. Marketers should be mindful of how much they invest in page tab apps moving forward and instead consider what kind of Open Graph integration or partnerships would be most relevant for their consumers.

See our breakdown of Open Graph apps by category here.

Image credit: Facebook

Facebook quietly launched a contest Tuesday called Small Business Boost that will award $10,000 to 10 small businesses that gain the most new Likes by April 1.

Small business owners in the U.S. that manage pages on the social network can enter the contest through an app on the Facebook Marketing Solutions page. Entrants with 50 Likes on their page when they sign up for the contest will receive a $50 ad credit for the site. Pages that gain 100 new Likes during the contest period will earn another $100 ad credit. The ten pages with the most new fans will win $10,000 in Facebook ads. In September, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg announced the company would give $50 advertising credits to up to 200,000 small businesses but did not explain how. This appears to be part of that program, but we have not gotten a response yet from Facebook.

Although the contest materials encourage page owners to increase their Likes, they do not offer practical tips about how to do so. This oversight could lead small business owners to try to grow their pages in ways that devalue the Like — for instance, getting distant friends to Like a business they do not frequent. Contest rules prohibit page owners from obtaining Likes by setting up fake accounts and incentivizing users to Like the page in ways that violate Facebook page terms. However, these guidelines are written as legal documents that might be confusing for many page owners.

The company is hosting events, also called Small Business Boost, around the country to provide tips about how to use the social network to increase business. These events are put on in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business.

The contest, oddly, has not been mentioned in a post on the Facebook Marketing Solutions page, though the app to enter is there. Some page owners, however, have received emails directing them to the site.

Unified announces its Social Operating Platform today to help brands and agencies manage paid media campaigns across networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon. Operating in stealth mode since April 2011, Unified already claims Microsoft, Unilever, Digitas and more than 200 other advertisers as customers.

CEO and co-founder Sheldon Owen said Unified takes an enterprise approach to social advertising to give companies one system to manage campaigns from creative and planning stages to reporting and analytics. As businesses try campaigns on a number of new platforms, they can find themselves struggling to put things in perspective and understand how social media makes an impact. Unified’s Social Operating Platform calculates earned media and ROI by automating what many advertisers do manually through spreadsheets.

For example, a companies might use the Social Operating Platform to run Facebook ads to bring new fans to a page. In addition to setting a cost per action goal for the campaign, advertisers can assign values to other relevant metrics that are not otherwise included in an ad report. An advertiser paying $1 per fan might believe wall posts and comments are engagements with viral reach worth $0.20 each. The Social Operating Platform uses the Facebook API to display all of an advertiser’s performance indicators in one dashboard and calculate earned media value.

One problem might be that advertisers might not know what sort of value to place on a YouTube share or Twitter @ reply, for instance. Besides offering some strategy consulting, Unified aims to help advertisers through its Unified University training program. The web-based program provides information about a number of social advertising platforms and allows people to get certified on its system.

The Social Operating Platform is available for an undisclosed per user license fee, and the company offers other services and ways to integrate additional data that are negotiated on a case by case basis.

Lionsgate has made its 2011 thriller “Abduction” available for streaming on Facebook for $3.99. This is the first time a studio has released a film on DVD and Facebook simultaneously.

Users can purchase 48-hour access to the movie that will stream from a Facebook canvas app, Lionsgate Social Cinema. The app accepts credit cards and PayPal, but does not include Facebook Credits as an option, even though it does so for a number of older titles. Facebook takes 30 percent of transactions with Credits.

Warner Bros. was first to bring movie rentals to Facebook in March 2011, when it made The Dark Knight available for 30 Credits, or $3. It later offered “Inception,” two “Harry Potter” titles and other films for streaming. Lionsgate has made popular films like “The Blair Witch Project” and “Saw” available for Facebook rental, but no studio has offered a release as new as “Abduction” on the social network.

The action movie had weak box office performance and was widely panned by critics. Lionsgate is probably hoping to capitalize on star Taylor Lautner’s large online following. As of this writing, though, there was no mention of the rental on Lautner’s official Facebook page. The Abduction page has made two posts today to its more than 991,000 fans, but getting a mention on Lautner’s page with more than 12 million fans could give the effort a huge boost.

Like other Facebook rental plans, “Abduction” is available to users for 48 hours, during which time they can pause, rewind and play as many times as they wish. Users can leave Facebook and come back to the movie, but they have to do so using the same account. People who rent the film will also get access to trivia and an exclusive interview with Lautner.

Facebook has partnered with another national restaurant chain to test a feature that lets pages post coupons and promote them with Sponsored Stories. This time around, claiming coupons generates a more prominent story in users News Feeds, which could lead more users to discover offers. The feature has several implications for page engagement and advertising both on the site and on mobile devices.
Sandwich chain Which Wich has been making “offer” posts similar to the “coupon” post we saw BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse advertising in early December. Which Wich first shared a coupon for a free 22-oz. soft drink with purchase of any sandwich on Dec. 27. As of this writing, 4,354 people have claimed the offer — a small percentage of the restaurant’s more than 104,000 fans. The company has also begun using Facebook homepage ads to promote the deal.

For now, coupon posts are only available to select companies working directly with Facebook. If these tests show promise, it is likely the social network will make offers self-serve for page owners, as it did with check-in deals in November 2010. Providing an organized way for pages to give out coupons is a good move for Facebook. Studies have found many people come to Facebook pages for exclusive offers and discounts. A number of third-party app developers offer coupon tabs for pages, but the process of receiving a coupon often takes multiple steps and these apps cannot provide the same viral reach as a native Facebook feature would. Nor have these apps made coupons available for download from mobile pages.

As we suggested last month, coupons could be huge for Facebook when it begins showing Sponsored Stories in the mobile News Feed. The company hasn’t announced plans to do so yet, but it is easy to imagine how coupon ads could function just as well on mobile devices. As on the website, one click sends an offer directly to your email inbox.

For Facebook, maintaining quality offers and ensuring businesses honor them could be a challenge as the feature scales. Check-in deals are approved by Facebook before going live, but few merchants seem to be taking advantage of this service. The social network should consider why that is as it experiments with another coupon program. The company also tried to build a daily deals service on top of its platform last year, but ended the effort after four months.

The new coupon feature has promise because unlike check-in deals, these coupons can be claimed without visiting a location, making them more likely to be shared across the network. Plus, the ability to post an offer to a page and promote it with Sponsored Stories could lead more businesses to try it out. Check-in deals never had these these additional means of discovery.

Engaging users with New Year’s festivities was a big theme on our round up the featured Facebook campaigns this week. We spoke to IFeelGoods about their use of Credits as buying incentives. Then we saw Weight Watchers promoting its services, as well as 24 Hour Fitness, and Applebee’s as part of 2012 musts. Finally, there was H&R Block, which launched a TV/Facebook campaign lauding its services to help customers find extra money in their tax returns.

Below is an excerpt of this week’s full Featured Facebook Campaigns entry in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of over 100 other Facebook marketing campaigns by top-performing brands and other organization on Facebook.

IFeelGoods’ 1-800 Flowers Case Study

Goal: Network Exposure, Engagement, Product Purchase

Method: Utilizing IFeelGoods’ technology, 1-800 Flowers offered customers 25 Facebook Credits and 15% off a Valentine’s Day purchase.

Core Mechanic: This offer was supported by ads on Facebook, but is at the core of what IFeelGoods co-founder and CEO Michael Amar told us is the company’s emergent specialty. The overlap between social gamers an online buyers is high, he told us and  in majority of people using Credits are women.

The 200-plus campaigns the company has supported in the past year and a half have been aimed at finding different ways to incentivize purchases using Credits. As Credits have expanded beyond games, enabling users to also watch movies, attend concerts, or interact with their favorite TV shows, Amar told us that Credits are beginning to displace other, more traditional incentives for customers.

“Instead of using coupons, you can use Credits,” he said, pointing out a very interesting tactic brands may now use in conjunction with his company’s technology. Brands that by ads on Facebook mentioning the availability of Credits to customers, see a double-to-triple increase in traffic.

“They want Facebook Credits so much that they share with their friends,” he told us, noting that in some cases the strives as much as 30% more users. “People are addicted to Credits, so they will keep following the brand to get more Credits, so we see there is a loyalty play.”

Impact: In the case of 1-800 Flowers, the IFeelGoods promotion resulted in 4,000 orders, a doubling of the Facebook Page Likes, and a 250% increase in Wall posts, according to company numbers. PageData shows us that, since this promotion, the Page has grown even more to 291,500 Likes, even picking up a bump in the past few weeks.

Weight Watchers’ Believe Campaign

Goal: Product Purchase, Brand Loyalty, Engagement, Network Exposure

Method: The app features several videos from spokeswoman Jennifer Hudson, several  success stories of customers, information about how to sign up, and bulletin board for users to participate, and other information.

Core Mechanic: The app has been promoted in the news feed, and engages users by asking them their health goals in 2012. The content also promotes the company’s specials for potential customers in the new year, such as signing up for free.

Impact: The Page currently has 854,600 Likes and PageData shows a recent spike in the number of Likes on the Page.

Page owners saw a number of improvements in the design and features available for their marketing and community-building efforts this year. The social network eliminated a few features, but these moves seemed to be in favor of promoting engagement and avoiding spam.

Redesign

Facebook redesigned pages in February to include a photo strip above the Wall. Many pages have used this as an opportunity to show off their creativity and increase branding. In October, pages became even more visual when the social network made photos up to four times larger within posts. This led some pages to start posting images including large text. Since Facebook had also begun displaying the number of times a post was shared, some pages saw a viral effect from this strategy.

Moderation Tools

This year Facebook introduced several features that help page owners manage their communities. A long awaited notification system was put in place in February. Since then, notifications have become even easier to access from multiple areas of the site, including the homepage. The social network began automatically hiding posts and comments it suspected to be spam or those that include words that page owners add to a blacklist. This reduces the effort admins must take to maintain quality on their pages.

The social network also added a “Use Facebook as a Page” feature  that allows admins to initiate conversation and respond to posts on other pages. So far, this seems to be used more by individuals and small businesses than major brands. People can also post as their pages through Facebook’s comment plugin that many sites have implemented this year.

Fan Engagement

A few user-facing changes created new ways for people to interact with pages. The Questions feature, launched in March, gave page owners a way to ask structured questions that gained viral reach through the News Feed.

A recommendations box on pages that [includeS] an address allow users to share their opinions about a location or a business. Writing a recommendation generates a story in the News Feed, and friends’ recommendations stay pinned to the top of pages as a way to influence other users.

One change page owners have mixed feelings about is that people no longer have to Like a page in order to comment on it or mention it in a post. Many page owners would prefer to build their audience by requiring users to become a fan in order to interact there. From a user perspective, this is a welcome change because people do not always want to subscribe to a page’s updates or indicate to their friends that they “like” something simply because they have a comment or question. And as page owners begin to focus more on the “Talking About This” metric than Likes, this can be seen as a positive move.

New Insights

In October, Facebook overhauled its Insights product for pages, adding new social metrics about the number of users reached through organic, paid and viral means, as well as data about how many users clicked on posts or shared it with friends in some way. The additional information and graphs are a step in the right direction, but many page owners will need further guidance to understand how to take actions to improve and measure success.

The social network flirted with real-time insights in January, but the feature was inconsistent and eventually scrapped. Reach and People Talking About This for individual posts are available to admins after about a day.

Eliminated Features

In April, Facebook removed the option for fans to send page suggestions to their friends. Users could previously send direct invitations for others to Like a page. To reduce what some users would consider spam, the company took the feature away from fans, but left it for admins. Fans can still use the Share button to post a link to the page or write a recommendation that their friends can see.

With the new Messages, page updates — direct messages sent to all fans — were often relegated to the Other folder few users knew of or bothered to check. Even before this change, page updates had low open rates so Facebook eventually scrapped the feature in September. Some page owners saw this as the social network working against them.

The Discussions tab application was removed at the end of October. For a few pages, these were active areas for fans, but because Discussions lacked notifications, they were difficult to moderate and generally went unused. Facebook eliminated them to encourage more activity on the Wall. The Wall, however, is not organized by topic as Discussions could be and posts are more easily lost in the stream. This will be an issue for the company to address next year, possibly with a redesign to make pages more similar to Timeline.

Facebook also eliminated the option for automatic feed syndication through the Notes app. Some pages shared news or blog posts by syncing an RSS feed with Notes. To encourage page owners to customize posts for their fans, the company got rid of this functionality.

Charity figured big in our list of featured Facebook campaigns this week, with the Make-A-Wish foundation telling us that up to 40% of their funding comes this month, and even other brands engaging in charity to spread the message on Facebook. TurboTax and IKEA both launched campaigns to promote their products,  but combined them with seasonal charity drives. Orbit Gum and Sheet Energy Strips went the way of user–generated content to grow their audiences, and promote their products.

Below is an excerpt of this week’s full Featured Facebook Campaigns entry in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of over 100 other Facebook marketing campaigns by top-performing brands and other organization on Facebook.

Make-A-Wish’s Season of Wishes Campaign

Goal: Page Growth, Charity, Engagement, Network Exposure, Brand Loyalty

Method: The Make-A-Wish application, Season of Wishes, created by Bulbstorm allows users to Like, watch videos view photos read stories and share to the stream the stories of children who participated in the foundation’s program. The campaign also allows users to share their own stories, and runs from November 15 to December 31.

Core Mechanic: We spoke to Petri Darby, Director of Marketing, Communications & Digital Strategy for Make-A-Wish and Bulbstorm CEO Bart Steiner about the campaign, which revolves around the stories of children who used their wishes to give to others. Darby told us that Bulbstorm custom designed and developed the app for the organization, bringing them from a more traditional tab–based form of marketing, to a more “comprehensive and engaging tool.”

The importance of this app cannot be underscored, given that this organization’s funding is largely provided during this time of year. About 40% of the organization’s funding comes in last few days of December, Darby told us. Yet, the organization’s strategy for obtaining these donations is not simply asking for them, he told us, but by using an app like Bulbstorm’s to create, “stronger relationships and engagement that we believe, ultimately, will lead to more donations, more volunteer support, to more referrals.”

“We look at social media as a channel for a dialogue and build relationships, and we believe content is the best way to achieve that,” Darby told us.

Impact: PageData notes that the Page, which currently stands at 316,700,  has seen steady growth during the period of the campaign, but nothing drastic.

TurboTax’s Gaming for Good

Goal: Page Growth, Product Purchase, Network Exposure, Engagement

Method: The Gaming for Good with TurboTax and Toys for Tots game allows users to both engage with the company’s product, while helping to donate a toy to a child.

Core Mechanic: The Like-gated app has three levels, in which users will match items that are tax deductible. Every time a user matches all of the items, they are told how much the items would cost as a tax deduction. Every time a user finishes one of the three rounds, they are asked to post their score to the feed, and on the final round they may either save their score or learn more about TurboTax’s products.

Impact: Thus far, about 6,200 toys have been donated (that is to say, the same number of users have completed three rounds of the game). And the Page currently boasts 158,100 Likes. PageData shows the Page has experienced recent surges of growth.

Want to learn how top brands are designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of hundreds of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.