If you think Facebook apps are all Mafia Wars and Texas Hold’em, you should take another look.  There are several apps designed to engage customers and promote your brand through social networking.

Social RSS

RSS feeds are an easy way to bring fresh content to your Facebook page.  If you have a company blog or personal industry blog, you can pull articles directly into your Facebook status with Social RSS.  Feeds update automatically, and your articles are posted on your wall, as well the homepage of your Fans.  We use Social RSS on our own Digital Scientists Facebook page.   It’s a free app, but they do offer subscription services ($2/month) for prolific bloggers with constant refresh rates.

Bonus Points:  Social RSS lets you import your Twitter feed, as well.

SlideShare

SlideShare made an appearance on Feed Growth! back in 2007, when it was heralded as the “YouTube of Powerpoint”.  Now, you can bring the same slick presentation application to your Facebook Page.   If you already have a SlideShare account, you can import your existing documents – or – sign up for a new account, and start uploading Word docs, PowerPoint & Keynote presentations, PDF’s, and more.   This is a great way to distribute your marketing materials, old sales presentations, and just about any collateral that you have on hand.

Testimonials

Client testimonials are worth their weight in gold.   They fortify your existing relationships and sell potentials on your company and your capabilities.  However, collecting testimonials can be an arduous task – a bit like asking for a handout.   Let the Testimonials Facebook App do the groveling for you.  When you install this app, it gives you the option of leaving testimonials for any of your Friends/Fans who also have the app (ergo, presenting the same option to anyone else that downloads the app).  You’re best bet is to promote the application on your Facebook page, itself, so people know they are always welcome to leave feedback.

Really, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  There’s a slew of Facebook applications for businesses.  Since these apps are developed by third parties, there isn’t much marketing for them, so you’re going to have to do some hunting – and demoing – to find the right ones for your Facebook page.

When it comes to social media, small businesses usually fall in two camps:   they don’t get it and don’t care to – or – they get it, but they don’t have the time or resources to make it worthwhile.

One service is hoping to change all that.   Postling is a new social media management tool. Think of it as a command center, where you can simultaneously publish updates to all your major social sites, including Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr, as well as blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, Tyeppad, SquaresSpace, and Tumblr.  You can even respond to comments on your posts from your Postling account.   Don’t have a blog?  No problem.  Postling throws one in with your subscription.

Postling is pretty simple to setup too.  Choose the services you want to activate and plug in your login information.  Then, choose what you want to do from the main navigation:

• Update your Status
• Create a Blog Post
• Upload an Image
• Share a Link

When you publish on Postling, you have the option of picking and choosing which services you want to include.    This is a nice feature if you maintain a lot of social media accounts (we have separate identities for feed growth and digital scientists).

Postling costs $9/month or $90/year.  They’re currently offering a free 30-day trial. Sure, there are similar services on the market (some are even free), but we think Postling’s ease-of-use sets it apart.   It’s clearly designed and marketed for the small business – someone who would rather pay a nominal fee for a steamline tool than take time away from their business to update a Facebook page or blog.

UPDATE 08.17.09: Postling now supports Facebook Fan Pages!  That was quick guys.

Even the most tepid digital marketer has a Facebook or Twitter page (right?).  One way to get the most out of the experience is to invite your friends and followers to participate in brand-related discussions.

SavorChat is a free service that lets you create group chat rooms and invite participants from your favorite social networking sites.  The idea being, you already have the guest list, you just need a space to throw the party.

Setting up a chat room is pretty straightforward. You don’t need a SavorChat account, because the service works with both Facebook Connect and oAuth (for Twitter).   Once you’re logged in, simply create a new chat room, giving it a name, date, duration, and category.  Twitter users have the option of adding a Twitter hashtag too (i.e. #MyBrandName).   You can also add a room description and privacy settings.  Stealth mode hides your chat room from the public and search engine indexing, and if you choose, you can password protect your room to limit who has access.

Once you save your chat room, you’ll be given the option to invite participants directly from your friends/followers list, publish (or tweet) your chat room, or grab a link to invite users outside of the social scene.  Everyone is herded to a SavorChat space.  A chat remains open as long as you want, so it can be used as a brand message board in lieu of a real-time chat room.

If you’re looking to do some homegrown customer research, look no farther than your own social networks.    Anyone willing to follow your brand is probably game to give you feedback.  SavorChat is providing a free venue; it’s up to you to get the conversation started.

Sometimes, it’s not about what’s new and trendy, but rather, when an established tool or service improves their feature set.  Social bookmarking site, Delicious, just unveiled some long-overdue upgrades, including an advanced search bar.

Most people use Delicious for their personal bookmarking needs (I know I do), but it’s also a great tool for monitoring social content.  A brand that doesn’t perform well in a diluted search market may have several bookmarks on Delicious.  You can also use Delicious to see which sites and bloggers hold the most influence in your industry.

Problem is, as the site has become more and more popular, navigating through the sea of bookmarks is difficult.  A simple search for “social media marketing” yields almost 50,000 results.   With Delicious’s new search functionality, I can filter those results by tag – either choosing tags I like, removing tags I don’t, or looking for tag overlap.  I can stipulate a timeline (e.g. bookmarks only saved from January 1, 2009) or confine the results to bookmarks in my personal network of Delicious users.  Delicious also offers up search suggestions, which taps into parent company Yahoo’s search assist technology.

Using the same example, lets say I want to launch my own social media marketing campaign.  Specifically, I’m looking for case studies and articles about social media strategy, so let’s remove the “web 2.0″ and “blogs” tags.  I’m also going to use a Delicious search suggestion and narrow the time frame to the last year.

Immediately, I shed about 47,000 bookmarks. I’ve filtered out the riffraff and general bookmarks for sites like Mashable and Tech Crunch (sorry, compadres).  What I’m left with is more inline with my original intentions. Since, I’m using a bookmarking site instead of Google, I can further qualify content by its popularity.  For example, 62 people have bookmarked 360i’s Social Marketing Playbook.

There’s actually a lot of new functionality on Delicious, so much that we can’t cover in one article.   Check out their What’s New page for the full rundown.

Charging for content may seem counter-intuitive in today’s blogging free-for-all market, but the trick is investing in the right delivery mechanism.

Social Cord is a service that offers premium content and subscription services via text message.  Not a bad idea, but how about adding Twitter to the mix?   That’s right, you can use Twitter – more specifically, Social Cord’s Twitter TipCup plugin – to distribute and monetize your content.

Here’s how it works:  Create a FanClub on Social Cord.  There is a pre-approval process, and you must agree to deliver a minimum of 3 premium content messages a month.  Since Social Cord is actually the mobile SMS offering, you can offer both text messages and Twitter tweets to your customers.  As long as you deliver the minimum content, you’re golden either way.

Once you’re FanClub is established, you need to signup for TipCup and send a promotional tweet to your followers.  They will be directed to a custom landing page where they choose their delivery mechanism and subscribe for $5.95/month.

Probably one of the biggest selling features of Social Cord and/or TipCup is the fact subscribers don’t have to enter any credit cards or account information.  All charges are billed directly to the member’s mobile account.   Social Card supports all major carriers, including Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Nextel, etc.  The phone carrier makes off with a good chunk of the profit, and after Social Cord takes their cut, you end up with $1.80/month for every subscription.   Even if you only amass one hundred subscriptions, that’s $180 a month for three (140 character or less) tweets.

Twitter has proven to be an effective venue for music sales and promotion.  A service like Social Cord makes sense for a band trying to publicize an upcoming show or offer their fans exclusive material.  It will be interesting to see how businesses and bloggers use Social Cord to promote their content.  Would you be willing to pay $5.95/month for some insider tips from the feed growth! staff?