Can I ask visitors for Google+ or any social click?

[Oimachi2]

I'm developing an adwords tool that will save users hours. I plan on giving it away for free, as long as they give me either a Google+, Twitter, Facebook or any kind of social recommendation.

Is that against Google's TOS?

This could be a way to gain "Social" signals without actually doing link building?

[milosevic]

If it saves hours, people should be happy to recommend you without coercion.

For sure you can encourage people to follow you, or tweet / whatever about you and even perform CRO towards that goal (I'm sure there are articles about encouraging social response) but crossing the line of demanding it seems a bit much to me.

If it really is a good tool, it should stand on its own feet, and maybe you could put a donation button in for those who are really grateful. Just my thoughts.

[Oimachi2]

Hi Milosevic,

Well...I've done some philantropy on the web, and people are usually NOT gratefull at all, they just take.

If it's not against TOS for sure I'll ask for a Google+, a backlinck or something like that with proof also;)

There will be a demo online, try, if you like it you can download for free, but first I would need some of the social rewards.

That would be fine right?

[netmeg]

Fine for whom? Google probably won't care.

Sucks for your users though. Make it paid or make it free, don't play games. The social proof isn't going to make that much of a difference in your rankings to risk pissing off the users.

[Sand]

Isn't asking for a recommendation before they've used it kind of backwards?

Why not ask people to share it *after* they've had a chance to try it instead?

[Oimachi2]

I did some testing on this.

First put a vote poll in word press to ask if it solved their problem.

No input, no results. All votes negative also (6 out of every 500 visitors or so...)

Nothing worked but this strategy:

I made a poll asking if they would be interested in a free tool to solve problem, 9 votes saying yes in about 7 days.

So now I know there is demand for the tool, and I will build it. Once built I'll ask for "social" love and proof of it. Will start a new thread asking how to do that.

How to know who Gooogle + or Facebooked you?