

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

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.
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jyu
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...](http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hackety-
Hack/155257947836619?ref=ts) you could have something much cleaner, like:
<http://www.facebook.com/Hackety-Hack>

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ericsilver
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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roschdal
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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danvoell
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...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/analysis_what_are_the_webs_top_sources_of_referral_traffic.php)
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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tlack
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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danvoell
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!

~~~
tlack
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: tlack@fanbldr.com.

~~~
danvoell
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...](http://thinkdiff.net/facebook/how-to-detect-fan-of-a-facebook-
page/)

~~~
tlack
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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danvoell
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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steveklabnik
I just have a page for Hackety Hack: [http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hackety-
Hack/155257947836619?r...](http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hackety-
Hack/155257947836619?ref=ts) 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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enko
<http://cl.ly/8be68ace3c7b91dc8772>

escaped zoo animal?

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

