Mobile Strategy: 5 Ways To Get Your App Shared On Facebook
Social media is crucial for any mobile strategy. The problem is that most app developers just don’t know how to take advantage of it. In this post I’ll share with you our 5 Tips For Getting Your App Shared On Facebook.
Why Facebook?
Facebook is the home to over 1.06 billion active users, and without going into too much detail, how many of them would own a mobile device? I rest my case…
That makes Facebook a great place to market your app. And what’s a better way of marketing your app than to get your users to market it for you? It use to be called Word-Of-Mouth marketing… now we call it ‘Sharing’.
Here’s the problem though (you just knew there would be a problem didn’t you?), most app developers don’t know how to implement sharing features in their mobile strategy in a way that’s attractive and gets results. In fact, most of them don’t even think about it!
Simply making the option to share on Facebook available doesn’t mean that anyone’s actually going to do it. Right? I mean, how often do you share apps on Facebook? My guess is ‘not very often’. So we have to give them incentives.
Here are our 5 tips and how to implement them:
1) Give a little, get a little
Straight off the bat, one of the easiest ways to incentivise facebook sharing in apps is by giving them something that they want.
For example, in many of our games we use in-app purchases as the primary monetisation strategy. We build a lot of value around the in-app currency used to pay for the available packages. And as an incentive for them to share our app on Facebook we give them some free in-app currency.
Not a lot. Just enough to make it worth their time.
We’re not actually giving away anything real, and it doesn’t cost anything. But it means something to the user, and the result could be another 10-30 downloads.
Out of that, if we get even one Perfect User then it’s totally justified. Because one Perfect User could have a life-time value of $5-$10. Is that a fair trade-off?
We usually add this little feature in at the ‘Level-Summary’ screen when the player has just finished a level, at which point they’re fiending for more in-app currency to upgrade their character, etc.
2) Arm them with bragging-rights
If the player successfully completes a level they’re normally pretty chuffed with their accomplishment. Capitalise on this opportunity in your mobile strategy by giving them the option to share their score on Facebook. This one isn’t as effective as the above but it still works well when they do share it.
3) Exclusivity
Of course not every mobile strategy is a game but you can still incentivise sharing. For example, make the user feel important by giving them exclusive access to certain content within your app. Then let them share it with their friends. I know this totally defeats the purpose of making it exclusive in the first place. But it’s the reaction we’re aiming for and this tactic can evoke one of two emotions:
a) A desire to share this seemingly valuable content with the people the user cares about.
b) A rebellious need to share information that you’ve made exclusive to them.
Either way, you get your name out there.
This works particularly well for services like Luminosity, who are a Desktop and Mobile service.
4) Make The User Look Good
Let’s talk about the power of viral marketing. The way viral marketing works is that we, as humans, have a ‘need’ to feel accepted. The opposite of this is called “rejection”, and no one wants to feel rejected. By sharing content that get’s a strong response from our network, we get to feel ‘accepted’.
You can use this to your advantage by making it available for people to share information that has the propensity (that’s a big word) to be reshared.
So what kind of content gets shared a lot?
Literally anything that makes us look good in a way that matters to us. For example, information that makes us seem smart in front of our peers. Anything that lets us feel proud. Something that we think is funny. Almost anything along those lines works a treat.
Find a way to incorporate that into your app and you’re sitting on a social-media-marketing gold mine.
5) Include other networks (Twitter, etc.)
Not everyone uses Facebook. So keep an open mind to Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin and Google+ which are all great in their own ways. Consider your target audience first and identify where they hang out, Then choose your sharing site accordingly.
Also make sure you track this activity within your app so that you can optimise how often users share. The more the better. Period.
The Wrap
Facebook is one of the most powerful sharing tools available. I make it a goal for all my apps to get people sharing on Facebook. Use my tips as a guideline, but feel free to get creative. You’ll get a higher sharing rate if you’re unique so don’t be afraid to try new things.
If you have any app promotion tips you would like to share here, please feel free to post them in the comment section below. Alternatively, if you want more great app development and marketing insights like this then grab a copy of our app development toolkit below.
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