Social game strategy for Indie Devs
For most developers on a budget here's some timely advice to market and expand your social app.First off especially if your just starting out focus on the biggest social platform which is Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is great if you have a contextual based social game like mafia wars and not an avatar based game like farmville.Create corresponding pages or faces as I call them for you various brands.Also Yahoo has a Developers kit which allows you to post your game to it's Game page.This is especially useful because Yahoo is in a position where it's trying to expand it's listing of social games.I've heard from sources that contacting them directly through there dev page is a great way to get some free exposure for your game.Another great site to use is orkut which is googles social platform which is really ignorned by the tech media but it boasts over 20mil members mainly in the Americas which is staggering in it's own right.You have to understand the bigger players use there muscle to dominate on Facebook so as little guys you have to use a broader strategy.Focus on getting your app on as many social platforms as possible.Another strategy to use is to expand rapidly to international markets.There are major SNS platforms in Asian countries that are looking for American branded social applications.Case in point I just got approved to port my social app to Mobage which is a Japense SNS owned by Dena.So you might be thinking why Japan,well because on average they spend about $20ptc on in game purchases while Americans spend an average of $3.00. Porting your game and game translations is quite easy to accomplish.There is another one in China called RenRen,Ive reached out to RenRen also.Please learn to be patient with these foreign companies because of logistic issues it may take up to a month for them to ge back to you.So don't be discouraged use your creativity and expand aggressively into international markets and you have a great chance of reaching the scale of your larger competitors.
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