Nokia Developer - Promoting your app

You built it, but will they come?

Your shiny new app is ready. The concept is great, you've done a stellar job bringing the idea and the user interface to life, and you have your business model in order. Now what?

Even the best app needs help gaining visibility and awareness. If people don't know about the app, they aren't going to try it. Smart marketing can help your app cut through the clutter and increase its chances of success.

A marketing campaign including in-store promotion, good metadata, and out-of-store promotion can be the difference between your app taking off and being used by millions – or staying stuck on the runway.

Give your app the best possible chance of taking flight in Nokia Store with our guide to app marketing.

Getting your application into Nokia Store is the first step.

Once it's there, your marketing campaign can start. Before looking outside, be aware that there are ways of promoting your app inside the store, and this is a great starting point. Web banners, spotlight placements and more are now easier than ever with the Online Marketing Tool.

Metadata

Marketing optimization starts before you hit the store

First things first. When you upload your application to the Nokia Publish tool, it's important you provide adequate, relevant details in your submission, so the right users can find your application and easily understand its benefits. The Nokia Store Publisher Guide is filled with tips on this (link) , Here are some key things to remember:

Be descriptive with your display name. People need to instantly see what your app DOES
Provide sufficient details in your description, but keep it compact. Be efficient with your words – is every word adding value or can you condense?
Use images and screen shots that visually demonstrate what your app does, including the user experience.
When specifying the country distribution, make sure you select "Global" unless you need to limit the distribution to specific countries.
Specify more than one device for distribution if your application can work on additional devices.

Create spotlight assets

Apps can be featured Inside Nokia Store within promotional placements called 'spotlights'. Your app can only be selected for a spotlight if it has the right creative imagery (also referred to as 'assets').

We have made the task of creating assets much simpler with a new tool that is free to use, called Online Marketing Tool.

The cost-free, professional-grade assets you create with Online Marketing Tool conform to Nokia Store requirements, and position your app as a candidate for spotlight promotion.

Once your assets are created, simply upload them with your app when you are submitting your app to Nokia Store. If you have submitted your app without Online Marketing Tool assets, you can add them after the app is published.

Get started with Online Marketing Tool

Create web banners

Once your in-store promotion is set to go, Online Marketing Tool can help you create assets for promoting your app outside Nokia Store. Using the tool you can quickly and easily create display advertising placements (banners) to be used in online advertising campaigns you may wish to run for your app. Within minutes you can have agency-quality creative material in an entire range of standard sizes, all without spending a cent.

When you're satisfied with your new creative assets, Online Marketing Tool provides you with "cut and paste" code and the finished image files you need. Simply place the code or images on any web site or blog where you'd like to promote your content or provide the files and code to partners or ad serving services you partner with for your campaign.

Get your banners, leaderboards and island ads sorted now – http://snac.nokia.com/omt

Social media versus the press release

Free publicity and promotion can be obtained if the right person or channel takes your message and passes it on to a wider audience. Traditionally, distributing a press release was the most likely method to achieve this purpose. If the right journalist picked up your press release and based a story on it, you had achieved your goal.

Social media has changed this, and now represents the best opportunity for your app to gain promotion and publicity.

Nokia now encourages developers to announce app launches and any other significant company news through social media channels, instead of relying on press releases.

Social media is the fastest, easiest and most cost-effective way of publishing your news for a global audience in a highly visible way. It is now commonplace for companies to host their own blogs and maintain social networking accounts on multiple platforms. Here are some examples of how you can promote your company's apps using social media:

Post a blog entry about the success of your app, including metrics around number of downloads, number of countries the app has been downloaded in, and reviews or awards won.
Tout your app's availability through Twitter. Your message may be multiplied to large numbers of potential customers if it is retweeted by the right people.
Create and use a Facebook Fan Page for your company, so you can further promote your success. To maximize exposure, link to your app; mention success achieved in Nokia Store; and add links to app reviews on the Wall of your Facebook Page.
Create rich media to add to your blog posts and link to in your tweets or Facebook page. These can include YouTube videos, photo streams or screenshots.
If an independent reviewer has published a strong review of your app, promote the review via social news sites such as Digg.
Submit your app to the My Daily App blog. To be considered for a review on the blog, DM @nokiadeveloper on twitter.

Nokia press and PR

Developers should not expect Nokia to do press or PR work for them. We do not send out press releases about third party apps in the Nokia Store, except in special cases. If you want to issue a press release and pitch your app to journalists, the use of Nokia properties such as logos and boilerplate text requires written approval from Nokia Communications.

Tips for being an app marketing pro

If you are blogging about your app/s, here are some tips:

A compelling blog post usually includes interesting supporting materials such as images or video, trackbacks to references, and a concise flow.
Be creative with the title – many readers only see headlines.
Your blog post title is also your search engine optimization – include words users are likely to search for when looking for apps in your area
Try and keep the post short, concise and to the point: 300-500 words.
Don't be overly boastful – Avoid adjectives like "excited," "thrilled" or "pleased," maintain a humble and conversational tone and stay away from PR/marketing speak.
Link to other sources to support statements - Trackbacks draw traffic back to the blog; link to other bloggers. Use images and high-quality video to help tell the story. Images can replace excessive text and showcase app features.
Ask for feedback through comments or via a suggestion board.

Twitter Tips:

When posting links on Twitter, use a URL shortening service like bit.ly to save space in your tweet, and to track clickthroughs.
Create your own bit.ly account so you can track the traffic that your shortened URLs are driving to your website, blog or Nokia Store profile.
You can view metrics for any bit.ly link, even ones you didn't create yourself by adding "+" to the end of the link.
When you log on to your account, you'll see two numbers associated with each shortened URL. The bottom number is the total number of clicks from all shortened URLs coming from the source page. The top number is how many clicks your shortened URL has received.
Clicking the "info" button below each link shows you where those links are clicked on (your blog, Twitter account, etc.) and on what dates.
Be sure to add the #Nokia hashtag to your Twitter messages, so that other fans of Nokia applications and your fellow developers in the Nokia Store community can more easily find and learn about your successes.
When someone retweets your tweet, it adds extra characters to the total length of the tweet (eg RT @Nokia: Tweet Tweet….) Make sure your tweets are short enough that they don't get cut off when these extra characters are added.
If you don't have a Twitter account, create one. Make sure that you add a link to your company's homepage and your Nokia Store publisher page in your Twitter profile. Then follow the above steps.

Facebook Tips:

Opt to have your Facebook Page updates exported to Twitter. You can specify either everything you publish on the Fan Page or only select items like status updates, photos or events.
Add images that showcase your app. Find a picture to post that represents the brand or app being promoted.
Describe what is being promoted. Write a short description of the company, app or brand.
Describe what is being promoted. Write a short description of the company, app or brand.
Don't forget to complete the Info tab. Click the "Info" tab toward the top of the profile page and add information such as a founded date, website URL and more to fully explain the page and the website.

Other Social Networks:

While Facebook is currently the most popular social networking site in many markets worldwide, other social networks should not be overlooked. There are several sites with strong regional or national audiences that may be the dominant player in the market that your company is targeting.

India, China, Brazil, Germany and Russia are examples of markets where social networks other than facebook occupy leadership positions.

Google+

Google+ is a growing social networking and identity service, operated by Google. Google+ provides features to define custom groups, and to share video and text content with these groups.

Tencent QQ (a.k.a. QQ): – The largest IM and microblogging network in China.

Generally, the site does not present opportunities for developers to market themselves, with the exception of the Groups feature.
It is possible that developers could find niche chat groups to discuss their applications, but keep in mind that most users use QQ purely for socializing and entertainment – not for buying decisions.

Renren: – China's top social networking site, primarily among college students.

The site's layout, feature set and APIs are closely based on Facebook. Many of the above suggestions for Facebook will also work on this site, but there are still many differences between the two sites in terms of functionality.
Developers can customize the theme for their company's profile, an additional method of promoting their games or apps to RenRen's users.
Applications on RenRen's platform are heavily skewed towards games

Orkut: – A Google-owned social network that commands large audience shares in both Brazil and India.

Orkut's interface includes the standard elements of status updates, an activity stream and group creation/communication.
In addition to the standard account promotion tools, blog RSS feeds can be imported into Orkut.
There are several third-party applications available for Orkut that allow synchronized status messages across Facebook and Twitter.

Hi5: – This network has a strong presence in Peru, Portugal, Romania, Thailand and Mongolia.

Cyworld: – The largest South Korean social network, with over 18 million users.

Cyworld organizes its pages around a "minihome" (homepage) which includes a virtual home for users' avatars, as well as blogs, online sketchbooks, etc.

studiVZ: – Along with its sister site meinVZ, this is one of the top German social networking sites. Also has large groups of users in Austria and Switzerland.

studiVZ is based on social networking between students, while meinVZ is focused more widely on general social networking.
Both sites follow the design of Facebook closely and offer some of the same functionality.

VKontakte: – The most popular social networking site in Russia and the Ukraine, reaching 59% of the total online population in Russia.

The company's interface follows that of Facebook very closely, and offers most of the same functionality.

Mixi.jp: – Is at the top of Japan's highly-fragmented social network market. The company reached about 18% of the country's total online audience as of April 2010.

Skyrock: – Is ranked as the world's 7th biggest social network with 21 million visitors worldwide. It is most popular in France, Belgium and Switzerland.

Social news tips

Social news sites such as Digg are online communities that allow users to submit news, blogs or rich media content to a group page where other users can vote on the "newsworthiness" of each item.

A news item's success on these sites can lead to dramatic benefits for content producers and publishers in terms of page views, search engine visibility and conversions. Every social news site is different. While topical news with widespread consumer appeal may succeed on one site, other communities are more technology-focused.

Typically, these sites provide limited opportunities for promoting your company directly – content and users that are deemed too promotional in nature are often "voted down," "buried" or otherwise blocked from widespread circulation among the community.

Tips

Create a profile that identifies you and your company. Upload a profile photo and fill out the personal information section make your profile more appealing. Link your account to your Facebook and Twitter accounts if possible
Participate. Each social news site is a unique entity with its own membership and priorities. With regular participation in these communities, you will begin to understand how each site works, what types of content are most popular and how to write an entry that will be well-received. Use these insights to guide your decisions when it comes to submitting news and interacting online.
Be honest. Do not attempt to artificially inflate your vote count in any way. These actions typically lead to the removal of your links from the site, banned accounts and a strong negative impact on your brand reputation.
Integrate social news into your blog and other content. Add a button for your preferred social news or bookmarking site on your blog posts to encourage readers to share your news with others.

Top Social News Sites

Digg: – The most popular social news site by far, Digg is one of the most visited websites in the U.S. and receives hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

Digg and its users are sensitive when it comes to spam or users gaming the system. Make sure the items you post will be of interest to the community.
Digg's stories are organized into categories like Technology and Gaming. Make sure you are submitting your news items in the correct category.

ShareThis: – ShareThis makes it easy to share ideas and get the good stuff posted online. ShareThis reaches over 400 million users across 130,000 sites across the web.

ShareThis is available as a sharing widget that allows users to share your content through email, 50+ social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and through text message and AIM.
You can customize the ShareThis widget on your site as well as register for a dashboard that will track share events and provide reporting.

Reddit: – A social news site is similar to Digg, but tends to have more tech-centric content.

A simple, streamlined submission process and minimal features means that having an interesting title and a good description for your submissions are both key.
This site typically hosts quite a bit of conversation in comments.

Slashdot: – One of the oldest and most tech-centric social news sites, Slashdot is run by an unconventional system of randomly-chosen moderators.

This community generally focuses on software and technology news. The more technical and detailed articles that may not work on the mainstream social news sites might be more successful here.

DZone: – A social news site that caters to the developer community.

Yahoo! Buzz: – This social news site features top stories on the Yahoo! News homepage, lending mainstream credibility to user-submitted content.

Mixx: – Another popular online news site.

Tips for Rich Media:

Video

Quality cameras provide quality video. A higher resolution camera will result in higher quality video.
Be brief. The average viewer will watch your video for only one minute.
Include links. Always put all relevant links into the description field for your video including your Twitter account, Facebook page, blog URL, Nokia Store publisher page, etc.
Catchy titles work, but remember to keep the title relevant and brief.
Use tags. People use tags to discover videos through keyword searches. Tag your videos with keywords such as Nokia, Nokia Store, etc.
Write detailed descriptions. Use descriptive text to help people discover your content.
Make sure to 'favorite' other people's videos. 'Favoriting' increases visibility and marks your company as interested in contributing to the community. It will bring the videos more viewers.

Top Video Sharing Sites

YouTube: The world's most popular video sharing site. Increasingly being used as an outlet for marketing materials, TV shows and even full length movies. Contains tools for easy uploading and embedding, and offers a broad range of metrics via its Insights package.
Viddler: – Vidder is a simple solution for video that emphasizes not only the high quality of the video as it appears on the site but also the distribution it makes possible for those videos.

It can be syndicated to iTunes, through RSS or using Viddler's customizable, embeddable video player.
Tubemogul: – Works like just any other video upload sites but instead of hosting videos itself it serves as a distribution point to many other video sites.

In addition to distribution, Tubemogul also offers standardized metrics including tracking of 'unofficial' versions of a video that third parties have uploaded to YouTube, or elsewhere, in order to provide a well rounded view of who's watching the videos.

Pictures

Don't just post images of screenshots. Take pictures of events, customers (with their permission) and employees to put a face to the technology.
Enable employees to add relevant pictures taken at events to the photo stream.
Use tags. As with videos, people use tags to discover photos. Tag your photos with keywords such as Nokia and Nokia Store.
You can also join like-minded groups of photo enthusiasts on these sites. Groups exist for everything.

Top Photo Sharing Sites

Flickr: – Flickr is one of the premier photo-hosting sites on the internet.

A favourite among online influencers and high-end photographers.
Groups created around an idea lets people share photos and discuss them.
Metrics are available for free and pro accounts. Free accounts will only provide information on how many times a photo has been viewed. Pro accounts provide more depth with demographic and geographic information.

Picasa: – An online service for photo storage and display with a strong integration between it and Google's blogger service

No secondary or premium account level
Users can 'like' or 'favorite' or become a 'fan' of the photos.