This section goes into detail about how to drive virality and social engagement from within and outside of your app. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is with Facebook Connect and a few lines of code. Note also that Twitter functionality is currently in the midst of a large overhaul in the way Apple handles it in iOS 5, which is examined in more detail next.
Facebook Connect allows you to draw from the hundreds of millions of other Facebook users to connect and compete with your friends. It doesn't have the same type of functionality as a dedicated networking platform such as OpenFeint with forums and achievements and the like, but it is a must-have for adding another viral channel to your promotion campaign.
The best way to implement Facebook functionality is using the Facebook Connect API (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/mobile/). This is essentially the injection of C code into your existing Xcode project that utilizes the Facebook API to access user profiles and share information back on Facebook.
For Twitter, in iOS 5, Apple now integrates directly and natively with the device, allowing any app to be able to tweet events or achievements. With this sort of functionality, it will be important to consider adding Twitter as another share mechanism, just as Facebook traditionally has been.
Let's look at a couple of examples of the ways Facebook Connect has been utilized in games and apps.
“Zynga Poker” exclusively uses Facebook Connect for multiplayer features and chat. Note the locked icons in Figure 10-17, representing all of the things you cannot do unless you log in to Facebook.
Similarly, note how the entire game changes once logged in to Facebook, as shown in Figure 10-18. Of course, the developers purposely de-emphasized the nature of the photographs when not logged in to Facebook as an incentive to sign in (and other notifications and touches in the same vein abound). But, nevertheless, the game is built to be played with friends and on a social network.
An example of an app and not a game is demonstrated in how Amazon's Kindle app functions. As shown in Figure 10-19, it uses both Twitter and Facebook Connect to be able to share excerpts to your Twitter feed and Facebook wall. In Kindle options, users are able to log in to both of the networks.
In the next section, you learn some techniques developers use for maintaining a social community within the app.
When users of an app can share and receive information, or communicate with one another while using it, it increases both engagement with your app, and, because people are always full of surprises, encourages users to come back (retention). Here are some examples of how this can be accomplished:
Though this book isn't designed to go into too much in-depth detail concerning social marketing, some overall tips will help accelerate your online presence and help propel your viral growth. Aside from advertising campaigns, the main ways to do this are within your app (discussed earlier in this section), and externally via the Facebook Fan Page, Twitter feed, and YouTube videos. These last three should be a part of every new app marketing campaign (at least until something better comes along).
Facebook Fan Pages can have millions of fans (those who “like” it), come up frequently near the top of Google searches for various brands, and are excellent ways for users to interact with your brand without going to a separate brand website (as shown in Figure 10-21). The goal for a Fan Page is to provide information to users interested in your brand, thus keeping them continuously engaged. You typically do this by updating it frequently with the latest news about your product or brand.
When a user comes to your page and “likes” it (via the Like button), a notification is placed on his or her wall where other users can see it, thus starting the viral loop. Furthermore, additional content that you post and promote will also appear on their pages. Therefore, your end goal is to get users to “like” your page so that their friends will see their endorsement.
Fan Pages consist of a “landing tab” (which can be configured and will be where users first find themselves, thus making it imperative that this is as engaging and branded toward your app as possible), a wall (where news and user comments can be found that should be updated frequently, along with any other number of sub tabs/pages, including support, contests, quizzes, downloads, and specific information), and interactable pages about different aspects of your app or brand. Finally (and importantly), you can have fan-only content that can be locked until they “like” the page.
There is an art to creating a Facebook Fan Page, and Internet articles abound on how best to achieve it. The following top tips are formed from a combination of the author's research, in addition to the best techniques gleaned from such articles, in no particular order of importance (except for the top recommendation):
With these tips, you should be able to create (or update) a fantastic Fan Page capable of good conversion rates for your brand. Next up is Twitter.
Another large social network with great viral potential is Twitter. Users tend to tweet much more often than they post on their Facebook wall, and with the invention of “re-tweeting” what other users have already tweeted (sort of like forwarding an e-mail to everyone on your contact list), there is a huge potential to get more attention for popular tweets.
Every app or brand should also have a corresponding Twitter feed to reach the most people, and funnel them into your brand's online presence to also include the Facebook Fan Page. Here are some of the best tips for getting more Twitter followers, and maintaining an effective feed for your brand:
YouTube marketing is a powerful and relatively recent technique for bringing in new traffic to your brand. The reason it is gaining in popularity is that users simply would rather watch a video than read text. Videos provide passive engagement where users expend very little effort to absorb your brand, app, or message. They can also be incredibly valuable for search engine optimization via user reviews for your app, and a viral promotion technique if you are able to capitalize on a quality viral video.
Following are some tips for using YouTube to increase your viral k-factor:
One of the most prevalent new powers of social marketing has taken a cue from the Digg.com social news platform — that of endorsing a story with your vote. When a user likes your Fan Page, app, blog post (see Figure 10-22), or article, or anywhere you can conveniently add a Like button (virtually endless possibilities, but most definitely at the top of your Fan Page), what happens is that all your friends are able to see that you publicly endorsed it (with accompanying link) and, if curious, will follow it themselves.
This is effective marketing because it increases brand awareness for free, and even better, each of the “like” posts have a small (but significant) footprint on someone's wall. Finally, clicking the Like button anywhere provides almost no immediate feedback other than the counter going up, so users know they are doing something, but the connection that this will land on their wall is often missed. (There have been blog posts about what clicking it actually does.) Sometimes, the pop-up on the Like button can even be incentivized, such as “Be the first of your friends to like this.”
Similar to the Like button, the newer Google + social network has its +1 button with a counter that works in the same way, and Twitter has a public counter for counting the number of Tweets that a particular page or link received. The +1's from Google are shown in your profile on a separate page, rather than intertwined within your news stream, and because the network is just starting to see significant traffic, it is not yet as efficient a marketing technique as the Like button.
There's another trend that is just emerging in which a friend's recommendations and “likes” play a huge part. It is social-based searching. Microsoft's Bing search engine has introduced a feature named “Social Search” at social.discoverbing.com. As shown in Figure 10-23, whenever you are logged in to Facebook and Bing, search results take into account what your friends have liked and shared.
By now, you've seen several ways in which to maximize your brand presence via viral marketing. Hopefully, your app (with or without the support of a larger brand) can take advantage of some of these recommendations (as well as some of your own) and see significant gains in overall awareness, along with a diverse set of channels in which people can find it.
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