FacebookRunning a Facebook page is an essential part of any online business plan. It’s a great way to both increase the readership of your blog (and or website) and to make extra money as well as keep in touch with your customers. However, a Facebook page is only half of what you need. After all, just adding content to your Facebook page won’t actually get you anything of value as far as your customers are concerned. You need to add apps as well. Here are five great ones:

Facebook Notes

Many people don’t tend to think of Notes as being an app since it’s offered by Facebook. However, it is an essential app for your Facebook page. Notes gives you a number of features that you can’t get when you use the regular updates feature. Most importantly, it lets you import longer pieces of material than you might otherwise put up.
I myself have used the Notes application to add in questions I answered on Yahoo! Answers so that my Facebook page readers would be able to see them as well. You can also use it to import the RSS feed from your blog so that it can be posted to Facebook automatically.

Static HTML

I reviewed this app a while back, but it’s useful to mention it here as well. In essence, this app will allow you to add any kind of HTML content to your Facebook page without having to do any additional programming. This is especially important since the introduction of iFrames version of Facebook pages.

Poll

This is another nice app to get your Facebook page visitors to enjoy and actually spend time at your page. In essence, Poll allows you to do exactly what it sounds like. You could create a poll to get your readers to tell you about what new features they want in your product, what they want to see you write about next on your blog or what they think of pretty much anything at all. It’s free and really easy to use too so I highly recommend adding it to your Facebook page.

Slideshare

I like Slideshare (then again, I like to use other slide show services more, but that’s a comment for another blog post). The nice thing about it is that you can create slideshows which can show off what you know about your particular area of expertise and they can then be distributed and viewed by anyone on the Internet. If you want to add your Slideshare slides to Facebook though, you’ll need to use the Slideshare app on your Facebook page.

Promotions

Want to offer a special deal for your Facebook visitors? Maybe a limited time offer? Then Promotions is an essential app for your Facebook page. In essence, it allows you to create all kinds of contests and offers on your Facebook page which can then help to drive sales and traffic back to your own website (which is after all why you have a Facebook page to begin with).