Social Samosa Platform Feature - Newsfeed SmartApps

About the Platform

Newsfeed SmartApps is a patent pending product that let's brands post rich, engaging and interactive status updates on their Facebook pages resulting in higher engagement. With Newsfeed apps deploy engaging games, quizzes, surveys, mini-websites, data collection apps, videos or product slideshows with call-to-action and any interactive element right in the newsfeed. Newsfeed SmartApps is a wholly owned subsidiary of award-winning digital marketing agency, alivenow. The best way to understand how Newsfeed SmartApp works is to have a look at examples on the Facebook page.

Whom do we cater to?

We primarily cater to two sets of businesses who love our product and use it on a regular basis - agencies and brands.

We work agencies worldwide: they could be digital agencies, marketing/PR agencies, advertising agencies, creative agencies and even a few consulting firms. Basically any agency that has a social media/digital practice are very keen to use Newsfeed SmartApps for their clients. Some of the agencies we work with include Ogilvy in Singapore, Havas in Chicago and New York, Cheil in London, Starcom MediaVest in Dubai, Edelman in Vietnam, Isobar and 22feet in India, Omnicon in Middle East, Universal Media (IPG) in Qatar and Dubai and many more.

We also work directly with a few brands. There are many instances where brand managers, brand digital and marketing teams work with us directly. Some of the brands that have used Newsfeed SmartApps (directly and via agencies) include Pepsi, 7up, Intel, Samsung, HTC, SanDisk, HSBC, Durex, Ebay, Visa, Dettol, Qantas, Hershey’s, Kraft, Reebok, MINI, Nestle and many more. You can look at the complete list of brands and agencies we’ve worked with on our client’s page.

What do we offer to our consumers?

Building a Newsfeed App is a 4 step process as given below. We offer our services at all 4 stages whether it’s ideation, design or launching. Based on who we are working with and what their requirements are, we cater our offering accordingly.

Step 1 - IDEA: Coming up with Newsfeed SmartApp ideas based on the brief and objectives of a campaign.

Step 2 - DESIGN: Helping a brand or agency design the newsfeed app as per brand guidelines and different specifications.

Step 3 - DEVELOPMENT: Our incredible development team does their magic and builds the Newsfeed SmartApp that can be deployed on Facebook and promoted to fans.

Step 4 - LAUNCH: Once the app is built, we deliver the newsfeed app in the form of a link that can be posted on the page. We never need admin access to any Facebook page that’s launching a Newsfeed app.

What motivated us to start up?

We were trying to solve a problem that brands were facing on Facebook. Brands had spent thousands of dollars to build a massive audience and community on Facebook. But engagement was dropping and users were spending more time in the News Feed and not on brand pages. Traditional Facebook apps were dying because a majority of the users accessed Facebook via smartphones and the traditional Facebook apps (or tabs) didn’t work on smartphones. Knowing that users spend most amount of time on the newsfeed and brand content is also consumed in the newsfeed, we wanted to build a product where brands could create incredible content that’s rich and engaging so users could interact with them right in the newsfeed.

What's in a name?

We wanted to keep the name simple, easy to understand and something that clearly communicates what our product does. The name Newsfeed SmartApps was the ideal choice because it conveyed that this product had something to do with the newsfeed and had the possibility to have app-like performance in the newsfeed itself.

How do we see Social Media?

This is a great question because we discuss this with many agencies and brands that we work with. Social media is here to stay. The only thing that will keep changing is how users spend time on social, how social platforms change and how brands can keep users engaged and stand out in the tsunami of content bombarding users every day. This is where our product comes in as well. Newsfeed SmartApps posts on average get anywhere between 3x-5x more engagement compared to a normal post.

Currently we are....

Our team has grown proportionally to support the growth of Newsfeed SmartApps. Our largest market is the Middle East, after which we work on many projects in US and UK and have recently expanded to Singapore as well. In terms of customer base, over the last 2 years, we’ve worked with just over 50 agencies worldwide and close to 200 brands have used Newsfeed SmartApps.

Our biggest challenge was..

Our biggest challenge was educating agencies and brands about this new product. Many of them couldn’t understand how something like this works and very often thought it was too good to be true. They couldn’t believe something like this was possible until we showed it to them and demoed it to them. One they knew such a product exists they absolutely loved the possibilities of what could be done using such a product.

We want to dominate the world by..

Our plans are pretty simple. We want Newsfeed SmartApps to find a place in every brand’s digital marketing and social media budget. Because it works and delivers results for all the brands who’ve tried it.

We’re making moolah by...

Our monetization model is simple and straight forward. We charge for app development of Newsfeed SmartApps. We also charge for designing if our clients want to use our design services as well. Once we charge for a Newsfeed SmartApp and build it, the brand can use the app any number of times.

Our What The **** Moment

One particular incident that was definitely a WTF moment was when one of the largest global agencies tried to copy what we did. The surprising part was they came to know about our product after we demoed it to them in their offices and mentioned it was patent pending. Later on when we saw that they had copied it, they pretended that they never knew anything about the patent. Thankfully because the law is on our side and higher management in London and New York understood the gravity of the situation, they backed off and removed the app from their client’s page and didn’t try to copy or replicate what we did.

Industry as we foresee

Given that most of our work (90%) for Newsfeed SmartApps is outside of India, we’re unable to share our inputs for this question as it’s India specific. But in general social and digital media as a marketing, communication and engagement tool is maturing and becoming an integral part of marketing and communication plans for every brand in different geographies and all sectors. It’s no more given the step motherly treatment and the pie for digital and social is always increasing.

Lastly, Are you hiring?

Yes, we’re always looking for sharp people to join our team.