by Jeffrey Walker | May 16, 2014
Email campaign management . . . check. Landing page creation . . . check. Mobile marketing strategy . . . what? Wait a minute! Your small business doesn’t have a mobile marketing strategy in place? Okay, any small business or startup today absolutely has to have their mobile base covered. In case that’s not clear, here are a few stats to substantiate the critical importance of mobile for small businesses (or any sized business for that matter!) Over a year ago, SteamFeed, included the fact that in the United States, 37 percent of internet usage occurs on mobile devices. Another interesting study — about U.S. smartphone users — was sponsored by Google and found that 67 percent of smartphone users in their survey said they are “more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site.” These trends are only going to continue to grow exponentially.
One of the biggest draws for Mobile are Facebook Ads, not surprisingly. In fact, the social media giant recently hit a major milestone with 1.23 billion monthly active users, including 945 million mobile users. These numbers are quite staggering but what it essentially means is that every business should have a Facebook marketing strategy in place. What this essentially means is that all of your business content, including advertising, has to be mobile friendly and easy to read. Mobile-first is simply no longer an option for startups and small businesses.
Fortunately, there’s a great solution out there designed precisely for helping businesses manage their Facebook presence and grow their customer base. The name is ShortStack.
ShortStack is a custom iframe tab designing tool that allows you to create custom, professional-looking Facebook apps on the fly. With ShortStack you can create Facebook promotions, such as video, photo, and voting contests, and then easily manage those promotions. The list of the features on the ShortStack platform are impressive as their website here shows:
Multi-functional
Totally Customizable
Publish Your App to Any Page You Admin
Quick Publish
Custom Publish
Apps are Viewable on Mobile
Smart URLs Work on Facebook for Mobile
Embed your Apps on your Website
Cloud-based Reliability
Fast, Accurate Support
One account for Many Pages
Preview What Your Fans Will See
Mobile Preview
QR codes for Mobile use
Keep your Apps Organized
Media Library
What’s more is that with ShortStack you can connect your apps directly to the services you already use, like your blogs, videos, newsletters, Twitter, and more.
One of the real value adds of ShortStack is their new Smart URL feature. Smart URLs are custom URLs that might look something like: https://a.pgtb.me/ctrG. The primary value of this new functionality is that whenever a visitor clicks on a Smart URL in your Facebook app, ShortStack detects whether the user is accessing the app on a computer or on a mobile device, and adjusts the app accordingly.
ShortStack also offers a great deal of resources to help guide development of your creative Facebook apps. The Tips, Tricks & Ideas page is filled with instructions on everything from integrating ShortStack with MailChimp to developing your Facebook App on a budget to best practices for setting up a Timeline contest. These aren’t just short shrift items either. The ShortStack + MailChimp document is a dense 5 page PDF filled with clear guidelines on how to increase your Facebook fan base and email subscriptions. One example offers step by step instructions on how to display a printable coupon when a Facebook user likes your Facebook page.
The takeaways here are simple and straightforward: mobile is the future of commerce, your business needs a mobile first strategy, Facebook is the face of mobile advertising, and ShortStack helps you create and manage your Facebook fan base.
Check back here tomorrow for additional marketing tool recommendations that any business can use right now to grow like a startup.
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