Facebook Shares: Optimizing organic growth by sharing high quality stories from your game

Optimizing organic growth by sharing high quality stories from your game

Optimizing organic growth

As stories are shared directly to a player’s timeline, it is vital to build a high quality, transparent and intuitive sharing flow into your game while also complying to our platform policies.

Increase your distribution by following these best practices:

•  Custom Message: Stories featuring a custom message by the player are driving higher engagement and installs.

•  Upsell permission: Highlight that your game is only publishing stories with the players’ consent.

•  Transparency: Players need to be aware of which stories are published on their behalf

•  Policies: Make sure to adhere to our platform policies to provide a great user experience. (see slide 4 for more details)

Links to Documentation can be found on slide 15.

The Facebook newsfeed represents one of the most valuable channels to drive high value installs to your game.

5 steps to a great sharing experience

1.  Allow players to add their own custom message to stories that are shared directly to their timeline

2.  Provide a clear UI that always enables players to skip the sharing step, for example by having a prominent “X” button on each dialog

3.  Enable sharing of key events in your game that would also raise interest of the players friends, especially those that are not yet playing the game

4.  Include customized content, e.g. the players’ score, level and name

5.  Use Insights to track the success of each shared story and iterate to see which content resonates best among your audience

Sharing done right – Give people control All app behavior must be expected and agreed upon by the person using the app. Apps should not post stories without a person’s explicit consent and all content in the user message parameter must be generated by the person using the app.

Policies: •  2.1: Obtain consent from people before publishing

content on their behalf •  2.2: Use publishing permissions to help people

share on Facebook, not to send people messages from your app

•  2.3: Don’t prefill captions comments, messages, or the user message parameter of posts with content a person didn’t create, even if the person can edit or remove the content before sharing (video: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review/prefill)

Sharing Overview Stories can be shared to a players’ timeline in many different ways. See below for an overview of when it’s best to use which feature, its benefits and draw backs:

Advantage Disadvantage

Feed Dialog, Share Dialog

•  Requires no write permissions •  Easy and fast to implement, only a few

lines of code necessary •  Requires no write permissions

•  Share dialog also supports open graph

actions

•  Two step flow which adds friction •  Full screen sessions are interrupted •  Developers have no influence on design

of the dialog

Explicitly shared open graph stories

•  Enables seamless sharing •  Developers have full control over the

design of the sharing •  Full screen sessions are not interrupted •  Structured stories appear on a players’

timeline

•  Requires write permissions •  Requires more development effort than

sharing via dialogs

Interesting examples caught on Facebook

•  An image and description of the story is shown to the player

•  The “Share” button transparently indicates that content will be shared

•  A player can close and skip this step via the clear “X” button on top of the dialog

•  Players can share key events in the game which usually raise a lot of interest from their friends, e.g. winning a game, signing a new player, etc.

Game: Top Eleven Be A Football Manager

Frictionless sharing via the APIs

Frictionless sharing using explicit Open Graph

Game: Farm Heroes Saga •  Players have the ability to brag after finishing a level, a clear x-out button lets players skip

this step

•  The story is based on the custom “complete a level” Open Graph action

Frictionless sharing using explicit Open Graph

Game: The Last One •  The sharing flow is neatly integrated into the mission overview dialog

•  The Last One is best played in full screen mode, sharing the message won’t interrupt this

Game: Stormfall: Age of War •  Stormfall is a great example of telling rich and engaging stories:

•  Stories raise the interest of friends as they include great eye-catching titles and descriptions

•  Stories represent the action the player took really well. This means that players are more intrigued to share events that they are most proud of (e.g. levelling up or winning a battle)

Frictionless sharing using explicit Open Graph

Sharing structured stories using the Share dialog

Game: Cookie Jam

The sharing flow is different based on whether a player has granted the ‘publish_actions’ permissions or not:

‘publish_actions’ not granted: Players can share via the Share dialog ‘publish_actions’ granted: Stories are

shared directly via explicit open graph

Sharing structured stories using the Share dialog

Game: SuperCity •  Players can share that they reached a new level, completed a quest, etc.

•  The story itself is based on the “reach a level” open graph action •  The Share dialog lets players tag friends, add an emotion and message

•  The stories appear with rich context on a players timeline

Sharing using the Feed Dialog

Game: Slots Farm •  Players can share the event of reaching a new level with a clear option to skip the share

•  The story text and image highlights which level was reached •  There is a clear call to action for friends to play the game as free coins are rewarded on click

Sharing using the Feed Dialog

Game: Diamond Dash •  Reaching a new high score prompts the player to share

•  The shared story is personalized as it includes the players’ name and also the points reached

Facebook Documentation

Please find below the link to our documentation to help you integrating the products presented

in this document:

•  Sharing Guide For Games: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/games/sharing

•  Sharing Best Practices: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/games/sharing#bestpractices

•  Share Dialog Reference: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/reference/share-dialog

•  Feed Dialog Reference: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/reference/feed-dialog

•  Explicit Sharing: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/using-actions/v2.1#explicitsharing

•  Open Graph Guide: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph

•  Review Guidelines for Open Graph Stories: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review/opengraph

•  Platform Policies: http://developers.facebook.com/policy/

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