ZoSocial [review]
POS:
Probably the best way to run a contest on Facebook ever.NEG:
A little costly for an initial investment however given that there is no monthly fee in the long run you will actually save money.Today Im doing a full review of the ZoSocial Facebook app platform. While many of use refuse to believe it fan pages and apps on Facebook fan pages have been loosing there effectiveness steadily for a while now. Even your most loyal fans almost never visit your fan page. In fact around 97% of your […]
Today Im doing a full review of the ZoSocial Facebook app platform.
While many of use refuse to believe it fan pages and apps on Facebook fan pages have been loosing there effectiveness steadily for a while now. Even your most loyal fans almost never visit your fan page. In fact around 97% of your fans will never visit your fan page. They interact only through the timeline.
Contests and sweepstakes have been a great way to promote your brand, increase your engagement and build an email list. The problem is that since most people are only interacting through their timeline / newsfeed doing these with apps / tabs on your fan page is becoming a real struggle. Add to the fact that fan page apps dont work on mobile devices and it is easy to see why fan page apps are rapidly loosing their effectiveness.
ZoSocial solves all of the problems with fan page apps by letting you run contests right inside of the timeline / newsfeed. Lets take a look at a very popular contest type, the photo contest, and see how each one compares when running it as a fan page tab and in the timeline.
So its easy to see that running a contest inside of a timeline is far superior to running an old style app on a tab in your fan page. So now that we know and understand that timeline promotions / contests are the future of Facebook marketing lets see if ZoSocial is the software to get us into this space.
First off ZoSocial is a membership site, you access it via your web browser and log into a members area to manage your contests. I personally like membership sites because there is only one reason why a software maker would choose to make their software online. Its because they want to be able to easily update it. No business in the world wants to host everything for you. But by doing this they are able to very easily add new features without requiring the user to download and install a patch. This is actually the reason why most of my own software is membership sites. It allows me to provide a better service to my customers. So when I see a software that is hosted and accessed through a members dashboard I take this as a good sign.
The site itself is very easy to use. It lets you run different types of contests such as Photo Contest, Caption Contests (where you post a photo and people have to try to make up a caption for it), Trivia contests and Sweepstakes. Each type of contest comes with a ton of different features and options.
When testing I noticed that their where a lot of advanced features put into it. Its these touches that just screams of its professionalism. For example if I wanted to run a trivia contest where people respond to a question as a comment I could tell the software to automatically search through the comment text and only let people with specific key words in their comments have a chance to win. So for example lets say I asked “What color is the sky?” , I could then tell the software to search through all comments and only let people who have the word “blue” in their comment text have a chance to win. This is just one example of the advanced and automated features that ZoSocial has.
One thing you should keep in mind is that all of this happens right inside of the timeline. So all of these actions and interactions between the Facebook users and you are being automatically shared with everyone’s friends. This gives your contest a very good chance of spreading viraly. For instance if I ran a caption contests, where I post a funny picture, and ask people to give their best caption in the comments, every time someone does this their friends would automatically get a notice “XXXX posted a comment on Bretts photo”, and then the post would show under that. By simply participating in the contest, and doing nothing more, people are spreading it! It does not take much thought to see how powerful this is.
One thing that people always wonder is if they can trust the integrity of the company that creates a product. Well I want to show you something that I think will help answer if you can trust Wilco and ZoSocial.
See that help and support tab on the right hand site? Looks a lot like what I use on my own software right? Well thats because it was my idea. You see last night at about 1am Wilco’s time I was testing the release version of ZoSocial and I noticed that there was not a very easy and obvouse way to get support. I sent Wilco a Facebook IM hoping he would read it when he woke up. Well to my surprise he answered very fast, from his mobile, and told me he totally agreed and thought it was a good idea to add a more easy way for customers to get help if they needed it. But what he did next was the really awesome part. He didn’t say he will put it on his list of things to do, he didn’t say he would add it in the morning. Instead he got online, and added it right there on the spot. No excuses, no nonsense and no waiting. To me that says a lot about this guys character.
After he made this addition we started having a bit of a chat on Facebook. There where several more things he said that made me really like and trust him but I want to share one particular one with you.
Wilco the owner and creator of ZoSocial does not like when people quickly pound out software because it leads to poor quality products. This is 100% true and the fact that he said this only solidifies my trust in his integrity. Im 100% sure that Wilco is the real deal, a true professional.
Ok so what about price? At $197 it seems a bit costly however when you think about it this really is not the case. This fee is a one time, unlimited use, for life charge. Thats right no monthly fee required and you can use this for clients. When you think of it like that it really is a steal. Heyo is $150 a month, still uses the old / less effective page apps, and limits you to 15 active campaigns. This is unlimited, lifetime, with no monthly fee for just a little more than 1 month of less effective Heyo. Thats a bargain when you think about it.
Click the link below for a full demo on ZoSocial. It is an amazing product and if at all possible you really should not miss out on it:
NO LONGER FOR SALE
A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.
About the Author
I am looking seriously at ZoSocial. I need to know where anyone is getting the prizes that they will be giving away through the contest, sweepstakes, etc. Of course, we need prizes to make this system work.
Thanks,
Jim
Jim I answered your email, but Ill answer here as well. Im not sure you mean by “where anyone is getting the prizes”. If you mean where do the actual prizes for your contests come from, then you as the person running the contest need to provide them.
Brett… thanks for the review but you make quite a few spelling a grammatical errors in your posts. May I suggest that you correct this in order to increase your credibility?
If you think that spelling or grammar has anything to do with my knowledge as a marketer or as a developer then you are mistaken. I do use spell check for spelling but grammar is a different animal. I will try to be more careful however I’m a professional software developer and a successful marketer not a writer. Most people are more than willing to look past some poor grammar to get professional insight. Im sorry if my lack of writing ability offends you or if you feel it in some way has a bearing on my knowledge of the IM space.
Brett, how does this compare with your own TabEngine product? Does TabEngine have this functionality already?
No Tab Engine is fan page apps. These are timeline apps. See the info graphics for a direct comparison between the two.
Peeple who post about spellling mistaks reely crak me up LOL
Have you tested the software vs other types of contest pages?
Seems good in theory, however it will only prove its usefulness when compared to similar systems, especially less costly ones.
Well there is a 30 day money back guarantee. So test it for 29 days. If it does not meet your expectations request a refund. There really is no risk.
Hi Brett! great review, BUT, why do you say its an “unlimited use” when to do that he charges 47 a month to use for clients and says that the 200 bucks is only good for one autoresponder.??
are you saying we should just setup multiple getresponce lists to serve each client to avoid the monthly??
You can create unlimited campaigns and you can use this with any fan page you are an admin of so just 1) Set up a different list on your AR of choice for each client, and just have your clients make you an admin of their fan page. The upsell is $47 a month for an agency style access (where multiple people can access the system). Honestly I would not pay that myself. Though the one time price is a good deal.
LOL, I like Brett’s and the other Craig’s spelling, If you want credibility, just purchase one of Brett’s products and you will understand. Besides, It tells me he’s a real genuine person. Thank you for another great review!
Since I’m not very concerned about automatically picking a winner, if I’m already using Social Lead Wizard, do I have a reason to get ZoSocial? It seems highly similar in the core capabilities I am looking for:
– Mobile Friendly (first and foremost)
– Sweepstakes.
– No app permissions needed (correct?)
…any thoughts on if an upgrade is worth it? I’m looking at about $500/mo in ad spend on FB to put it in relative context. I was (highly) considering ContestBurner as well, just to see if the ability to track who referred a winner (and thus give them a prize too) was worth the extra layer.
Thanks. I appreciate your reviews.
Social Lead Wizard is not even the same kind of animal as this. It uses flash to put ‘squeeze pages’ on the timeline. I actually did something similar and included it for free in Tab Engine. Honestly there are some real problems with this kind of thing though.
1) It uses flash, so the user has to actually ‘play’ the post
2) There is no interaction in the post from the user, that is they are not commenting, posting, liking to win, so no viral spread (this is the major point)
ZoSocial is about adding contests in your timeline that require engagement with the post which does 2 things (besides collect emails) it really helps spread the post viral since all that engagement generates notices to peoples friends 2) Since people are engaging the pages affinity score with the page goes up so you get an edge rank boost. Honestly Social Lead Wizard is not even in the same league as ZoSocial. There is really no comparison.
Doh. I meant “Social Mobile Press”. )(@#%*. All these launches and I screwed up the name. I knew it was one you’d recommended. After your reply I went back and double checked the name. Sorry.
…So thoughts on the gains this offers over Social Mobile Press? : )
Social Mobile Press is TAB apps. So everything I said about timeline apps being better than tab apps applies (see info graphic). Timeline apps are simply better.
Perfect. Thanks.
Hi,
Great Review – I see the doors are now close so we could expect a monthly charge in the new roll out correct? As he done with videosk.in
Also you mentioned “Tab Engine is fan page apps” and according to the info graph, fan page apps “Loser” are you indirectly saying that using your Tabengine is not good to use anymore? As the info graph depicts we wasting our time using Tabengine – Correct me if I’m wrong here please?
Does this mean you will be updating Tabengine features perhaps to keep the product top notch?
As much as it pains me to say it Tab Engine style apps are not very effective for fan pages anymore. In fact they are only really useful anymore if you are willing to spend money on Facebook ads to get people to the actual app on your fan page. People need to keep in mind however that the apps you build with Tab Engine also work on websites. You can build deals, contests, sweepstakes for your websites. Tab Engine is not just a Facebook platform.
As for if I will be updating Tab Engine .. if you mean will I be adding Timeline (ZoSocial style) functionality to it, then the answer is no. Thats not what the Tab Engine platform was designed for. Trying to do that would be like trying to ‘update’ my car to make it a submarine. They are totally different it would not be an update it would be a complete rebuild from the ground up.
Brett, only came across your ste through your association with Notification Pro. About that later. Like your honesty and style. Also like the low down on ZoSocial. Was subscribing to Wilco but in an effort to clean out my inbox of the other overloaded selling from others included wilco in the list. However might add him back again. Looking at FB Auto Connect and ZoSocial they have great advantages. You’ve already highlighted the ZoSocial ones here, the FB AutoConnect has the notification option to facebook which is like sms is to mobile. 2 quick questions-does ZoSocial do the notifiers so that you can notify people anytime of any offers you may have and use a url to send them to the landing page or facebook, or would I need a notifier like FB AutoConnect. (If ZoSocial does just as good a job then ZoSocial would be the one to purchase). Notifciation Pro was around for a couple of days then the offer “expired”. Any more news on it or is it too similar to FB AutoConnect Pro. Thanks
I cant comment on FB Auto Connect anymore since I now have a competing product (Im not associated with Notification Pro, I own and have developed it). I will say it is a decent software, but Notification Pro was designed to improve on it. Also you are correct the special offer for Notification Pro has ended. Sorry you missed it. I dont do ‘fake scarcity’. Limited time really means limited time for me.
Brett thanks for the update. I had seen the offer through an affiliate(a relaible one) and unfortunately his email was in the spam folder which caused me to be late to the offer. Let me know when you are opening the offer again as it is, on viewing the video and comparing the features, the best of a few notification products out there and a must have tool in the I.M. toolkit.