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

Posted by danvoell on Monday October 04, 2010 @10:02AM
from the ask-hn dept.

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 | 22 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by jyu on Monday October 04, 2010 @03:43PM (#1757041)

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

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by ericsilver on Monday October 04, 2010 @04:48PM (#1757359)

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.

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by roschdal on Monday October 04, 2010 @10:39AM (#1755750)

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.

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by danvoell on Monday October 04, 2010 @10:54AM (#1755812)

Thanks for the tip. I was reading this article on read write web last night. - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/analysis_what_are_the_w... We have received the majority of our traffic from Twitter so I was trying to figure out what we can do better with Facebook.

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by tlack on Monday October 04, 2010 @04:31PM (#1757275)

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.

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by danvoell on Monday October 04, 2010 @05:57PM (#1757650)

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!

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by tlack on Monday October 04, 2010 @08:06PM (#1758091)

I saw that but I felt it was a bit too overt and pushy. A regular "Like to interact"-style feature is pretty common on FB and easier for a user to wrap their head around. http://www.facebook.com/oreo to see some examples. Holler if you need any help: [email protected].

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by danvoell on Tuesday October 05, 2010 @06:47PM (#1761886)

Maybe you knew this already but if anyone else is reading here is a really simple example of the like to interact code - http://thinkdiff.net/facebook/how-to-detect-fan-of-a-faceboo...

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by tlack on Thursday October 07, 2010 @04:19PM (#1769338)

Great link, that really sums it up. A note, though: some people report that fb_sig_is_fan does work. Worth at least trying out before you switch to <fb:visible-to-connection>

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by danvoell on Monday October 04, 2010 @08:37PM (#1758148)

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.

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by steveklabnik on Monday October 04, 2010 @12:44PM (#1756318)

I just have a page for Hackety Hack: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hackety-Hack/155257947836619?r... I have a box for it at the bottom of http://hackety-hack.com/

It hasn't been really useful for promotion yet; since I'm still pre-1.0, I haven't been working on the PR machine.

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by enko on Monday October 04, 2010 @11:15AM (#1755888)

http://cl.ly/8be68ace3c7b91dc8772

escaped zoo animal?

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Re:Ask HN:How do you use Facebook Pages to promote your Web ... by danvoell on Monday October 04, 2010 @11:23AM (#1755930)

Thanks for the comment. We are trying to keep it fun/professional. You can search for Mergers and Acquisitions or Zoo Animals, your choice.

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