Facebook is great place to connect with people and one of the prime ways to use social media to promote. Your friends, acquaintances, people you went to high school with who you never really knew…when you’ve got an app, it’s a built in market. But as I’ve found out the hard way, you’ve got to be careful with how you use it.
In order for you to make that BIG SPLASH ON LAUNCH DAY, you will need their help. All the early “success” I’ve had, it’s all because of them.
The first thing you need to do? Make a Facebook page for your app.
You want to separate your personal Facebook goings on with your product. This is for two reasons:
1) Your friends won’t be subjected to a constant bombardment about your app. Most likely they added you because they are your friend or co-worker…most likely they don’t want to be promoted to all the time.
Obviously you will want to post a link on your personal page to invite everyone to LIKE and follow your app page. That way if they want to, they will, If they don’t, they won’t.
To ensure people get your info, you can message your friends directly with info on the app, or your app page, etc. Just to note…Facebook only allows you to send messages to a certain number of people at once…but fails to tell you when you’ve reached the limit. I thought I had sent out a message to the majority of my friends…and most of them didn’t even get it. So I ended up sending personal messages to most of them instead. Which actually I ended up enjoying as I got caught up with some people I hadn’t spoken to in a while. I think people will be more receptive if you at least try to interact with them instead of just copy and paste your spam…I mean, app info.
Use your app page to promote all your successes with the app. Post as your app climbs up the charts (hopefully), or when it doesn’t (likely).
Post links to reviews and online mentions.
This will keep also your personal page become one big ad for your apps…as I found out when it was pointed out to me that my personal page was filled with the same image of my app as people were liking and sharing it.
2) Don’t take this the wrong way….but people who want to stay in touch about your app don’t want to see photos of your kids, your cats, or what you had for breakfast that morning. Nor will any personal posting you make about news events, religious beliefs, etc, be tied to your app. Very easy to offend a potential user, so you need to be careful.
I still post on my personal page about my app, but have tried to limit it. “Tried” being the key term there. 🙂
USE YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK, BUT DON’T ABUSE THEM…
People can only take so much promotion. If you overdo it, people will start blocking or just stop following you. That obviously isn’t what you want.
You can’t avoid it though…some people will get tired of hearing that your app is in the top 100, or the top ten in Cambodia…or that things aren’t going so well.
The quickest way to have this happen is to direct message someone more than once about your apps when they clearly aren’t interested. Sending one message, no problem.
Even those that are interested will only accept so much.
Some will tell you straight out when you’ve crossed the line into annoying territory:
“Noel, if I share your app one more time people are going to start blocking my posts.”
and some will do it anonymously…
This Batman meme was sent to me from an anonymous yahoo account from someone who I guess has had enough of my promoting. I have no idea who this person is, but I had a few laughs about it.
Depending on the type of person you are and the amount of good Karma you’ve built up, you might have a core group of followers who are willing to do anything to help you.
And defend you ! One of my Facebook “fans” made that in reply to the anonymous Batman meme post.
While I don’t approve of the method of delivery (no matter how annoying Robin is)…Batman DOES make a good point. People can easily chose to NOT follow you. So you can decide for yourself how far you want to go with this.
SAY THANK YOU!
I also think it’s important to says thanks to the people who have helped you out. If someone shares a post or gives you a like on Facebook, thank them. They took the time to help you out, it’s the least you can do, and it shows you appreciate them. And when it comes time that they need something for you, you better damn well reciprocate and LIKE and SHARE their stuff. Well, unless it’s something like inviting people to join a crazy cult or something.
I’m really happy that 6 months after this, I don’t appear to have lost any of my Facebook “friends”. Now, I have no idea how many have BLOCKED me from their news feeds…but I can’t control that.
HOW TO GET BANNED ON FACEBOOK
Again, I somehow manage to get banned for posting information not directly related to my photo apps.
In my attempts to latch on to a viral craze, I created a video of my photo assignment apps leading all the photo apps on my iPod doing the “Harlem Shake”.
I put quite a bit of effort into it, and came up with something pretty cool.
I also created a “behind the scenes” video showing how I made it (again, trying to be helpful, not just promoting everything!)
So of course I began sharing it. I’ve seen more than a few funny videos on the various Facebook groups that I’ve joined, so I started posting them there.
And soon got the….
Your account has been suspended from posting on Facebook groups for 15 days due to posting material that has been deemed spam. Further attempts to do so may result in your account being permanently disabled.
Awesome. Considering that, learning from my previous Twitter banning experience, I wasn’t continually copying and pasting quickly and I mixed up the wording, I knew that meant one of the groups had marked my post as spam.
I tried emailing the “appeal center”, but never even got a reply. While I have no issue with people deciding they don’t want my links, I found it surprising how easily it appears to flag someone as a spammer. Someone with vendettas against someone could make short work of someone’s social media life…
Sigh. That night my wife Joanne asks me how my day was. I tell her my facebook drama. She says “I can’t believe I’m married to a spammer…”
Happy to say the ban was lifted 15 days later, and I was able to post to groups again. If you are looking at posting to groups, you might want to contact the admin of the group first before posting the info…but that won’t stop others from flagging it.
I haven’t posted the link to the videos since on any groups, because I am afraid Facebook will do me in for good. But most likely it’s going to happen again, since I will be rolling out updates soon, Android version and maybe even Blackberry. So stay tuned!
Noel
PS-Help out a fellow developer! Download the free versions of my Photography Assignment Generator Apps and let me know what you think!
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