Facebook Cookbook - Jay Goldman [164]
The final recommendation that I would make is to keep refreshing the content of your app. Users will tend to come back more often if they expect to find new content. Taking the SceneCaster app as an example, our landing canvas shows you the top users and creations of the day, every day. We also update our catalog once a week; that way, users who create content expect to find new objects to work with every week. Finally, you want to establish a sense of relationship with your users. Again, using the SceneCaster example, we asked one of our best designers to be the community leader. He selects the user of the day and the scene of the day every workday. He also maintains a blog that is frequently updated and posted on the landing page, so that we are constantly communicating with our users to keep them abreast of what is new.
Monetize, Measure, and Market with SocialMedia
Problem
I need a toolkit of services and opportunities to earn revenue and attract users to my app.
Solution
SocialMedia Networks offers a whole platform for app developers to monetize, measure, and market their applications on Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, and hi5. You can find more information and sign up at http://www.socialmedia.com.
Discussion
SocialMedia shares a lot in common with other ad platforms for social networks, such as Cubics (see Social Network Advertising with Cubics). SocialMedia’s platform is divided into three pieces, as shown in Figure 10-5.
Figure 10-5. SocialMedia’s Three-M platform (from http://socialmedia.com/developers)
Monetize
SocialMedia has developed a number of innovative ad formats for display inside of your applications that are designed for Facebook Platform, not just the Web at large, including Canvas (645×60 pixels), Television (300×250 pixels), Interstitial (600×500 pixels), and Leaderboard (728×90 pixels). You simply need to register, specify one of your apps, and paste the generated fb:iframe tag into your page.
Measure
Once you have a SocialMedia account, you’ll have access to their dashboards and Appsaholic app-tracking tools (see Which Types of Apps Are the Most Popular? for more info on Appsaholic). The dashboards offer most of the same information that you can find in Facebook Insights, but also lets you compare your performance against other, similar apps.
Market
The flip side to monetizing through SocialMedia is buying ads in other apps to promote your own. SocialMedia has built a useful little viral calculator (http://socialmedia.com/?q=market) that will help you get a sense of how far you can stretch your budget in terms of new user acquisitions.
WARNING
If you’re running an ad blocker such as AdBlock Plus in Firefox, you’ll have some trouble browsing SocialMedia’s website. Most ad blocker blacklists have something like *.socialmedia.com/*, preventing the site’s CSS and images from loading. Make sure to disable it or add some better filters so you can learn more about their services.
Social Network Advertising with Cubics
Problem
I keep hearing about Cubics as an alternative to AdSense or SocialMedia. What is it?
Solution
Cubics is a platform for inserting ads into social networks, including Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, and hi5. They both buy and sell ad inventory, so you can work with them to monetize your app and promote it into other apps.
Discussion
Cubics and SocialMedia are fairly closely related, in that they’re both ad platforms for social networking sites (see Monetize, Measure, and Market with SocialMedia). In Cubics parlance, you’re either an Advertiser (you have purchased ads to promote your app or product) or a Publisher (you have an app in which you host Cubics ads). You have the option of doing either CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or CPC (cost per click) campaigns, and they have a bunch of targeting options, as shown in Figure 10-6, that are quite similar to Facebook’s (see Attracting Users Through Facebook Ads).
Figure 10-6. Cubics targeting options
WARNING
Again, if you’re running an ad blocker such as AdBlock