Promotion Best Practices
From Facebook Developer Wiki
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Facebook Platform Best Practices: Promoting Your Application
We know you’re excited to promote your application to users. A key feature of successful application promotions is clarity, both in what your application provides users and in your relationship to Facebook.
Advertising
You’re free to advertise to users in any capacity, whether on or off the Facebook site. We’ve seen a variety of promotional activities for applications, including advertising campaigns, newsletters, promotional events, direct marketing to users, etc.
Many developers have run advertising campaigns on the Facebook website itself. You can run banner ads for your application or target a sponsored story on Facebook, both of which can link directly to your application. And don’t forget to check out Facebook groups. If you already have a sponsored group on Facebook, posting about your new application is a sure way to alert interested users about it. You should also check whether groups relating to your application or company have cropped up organically. Engaging (respectfully!) with those groups is a great way to publicize your application.
Of course, you’re welcome to promote your application to people who aren’t yet on Facebook. We’ve created express registration to offer people who aren’t yet on Facebook a streamlined way to sign up on Facebook and immediately start using your Facebook application.
Informing the Press about Your Application
You are permitted to publish a formal press release about your application, which enables you to publicize your application to a large audience. However, if your goal is to generate direct user engagement with your application, marketing directed at potential users (like targeted advertising, blog posts read by your users, or notifications to your existing users) may be more effective.
The Facebook PR policy includes guidelines for drafting a press release and recommended copy for that release. You must get approval from the Facebook Corporate Communications team before publishing any press release.
If you would like to write a blog post or conduct outreach to press about your application, we suggest you also read the Facebook PR policy. It may help inform the way you communicate about your application, and give readers a clearer understanding of your application and your relationship with Facebook that’s consistent with the way we describe them.
Cross-promoting Your Application
Cross-promoting your application with other applications developed by your company or trusted partners gives you the opportunity to get your application in front of users already involved with a different application. You can cross-promote almost anywhere in the application workflow, whether by combining functionality from multiple applications in a profile box or canvas page, notifying users about related applications during an application addition process, or advertising multiple applications together.
In order for cross-promotion to be successful, the application combinations must make sense to the user. For instance, cross-promotions with unrelated applications work less well than cross-promotion for complementary apps or applications built by a specific developer / company.
