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Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web App?

22 points| danvoell | 15 years ago | reply

I'm interested to hear how people use the Facebook Page to promote and build a community around their Web App. We have a like button on our website's homepage (http://www.gobuzz.com) but it feels like the internet counter from the dawn of the internet. There is no connection between the like button and our fan page. Hence, no repeat connection with people who liked us.

13 comments

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[+] jyu|15 years ago|reply
Facebook Pages are a powerful word of mouth marketing tool, and also a great place to listen to your user's thoughts.

I think it's only really useful when you have a decent number of fans, like in the several hundreds, because only a small portion of fans will actively participate.

I see it being used more like a modern email newsletter. I use it to see how users like my service, and get in touch with individuals. I also have weekly contests and promotions, which increases community participation. If you have a good service/product with a wide target niche, Facebook pages can help you get a bunch of free users. Everything that you post on your wall gets posted to the newsfeed of your fans, which can be seen by your fans' friends.

If you have over 25 fans, you can get a vanity URL for your facebook apge, so instead of http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hackety-Hack/155257947836619?r... you could have something much cleaner, like: http://www.facebook.com/Hackety-Hack

[+] ericsilver|15 years ago|reply
I'd had some good success with Facebook and my last company. We'd had enough Facebook fans that we were able to run regular contests a few times a week and to use it as a platform to talk about what we were excited about. The interaction that's possible means that even if you seed it with the sort of content you'd use in a newsletter you need to have time every day or so to handle the interactions that it generates.
[+] roschdal|15 years ago|reply
I use Facebook quite actively on http://www.freeciv.net/ That might give you some tips about how to use a Facebook Page to promote a Web App. Facebook gives quite a lot of traffic back to the Web App.
[+] tlack|15 years ago|reply
It seems like your app is simple enough to work well inside a fan page tab. Perhaps require the person to LIKE the page in order to use it, generating a viral "discovery story" in their friends' news feeds. We get a lot of requests for that sort of thing from our customers at fanbldr.com (plug!) and it works well.

Some users might also like their matching news stories delivered to them in their Facebook feed, but that is another issue entirely.

p.s. I signed up for your service. Seems like a great resource.

[+] danvoell|15 years ago|reply
Great Idea, I didn't realize you could run the app within the Facebook Fan Page. We are going to try that, I will let you know how it goes. Also I like the referral concept. I assume you saw forkly, when you sign up for their beta it asks you to refer 3 people to get bumped up in their waiting line - www.forkly.com Thanks!
[+] danvoell|15 years ago|reply
Thanks everyone for the conversation today. Through discussions I came upon this article for anyone looking to customize your fan page - http://mashable.com/2010/02/22/build-facebook-landing-page/ - also, I realized we have our website url as the like option versus our facebook page url which would connect our website and facebook communities.