How to use Social Media to Promote your App What is difficult is promoting it enough to make people install and then stay active till the app's lifetime.
By Tripti Rai
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Developing apps are easy – even though it takes months of patience and brainstorming on the features, the layouts, and the expected user experience and even though it costs a lot and requires a spot on technical know-how, developing an app is easy. What is difficult is promoting it enough to make people install and then stay active till the app's lifetime. Now that is especially difficult today: with people staying exposed to such great options to choose from in every app category! What has made it this difficult is Social Media with its many platforms telling people what they want.
But what happens with app promotion is that here the medium that took the people away becomes the only medium to keep them engaged. For your app to be remembered and for it to get into a relationship with your users, you need to exploit and rule the place that can be your biggest threat. And this is how you can use Social media down to the T and create a strong brand resonance for a generation that is as fickle as it gets.
Ruling the chart of being the most visited social networking platforms, Facebook should be the first platform when you go about promoting your app to the world. To start with, you should have a page for your app and a list of groups where you will be publicizing your app.
With both the things ready, the next step is to make a series of images and videos for the platform. Here either you can come out with what your app is about from the first visual itself or you can create a sneak peek teasing people about what it is you are going to hit them with.
On Facebook, show people what they will be getting by installing your app in the most innovative way as it can be. The general rule of thumb for the platform is that two things get attention – humor and emotion. So depending on what you are offering, try and blend either one of these in your posts.
The other thing the Facebook world loves is offers! Give them offers, discounts, passes, freebies, giveaways and they will love you.
Use twitter as a platform to interact directly with your users. Tell them your achievements, ask what more they want, and inform them of the update. Unlike Facebook, you can experiment with your image here. You don't have to be strictly fun and tackle human emotions on Twitter, you can use this platform as an inquiry one.
Put competitions or polls on Twitter as well e.g. You can ask the users to tweet their experience and tag you or if you are stuck with the next font or design for your app, create a poll for the Twitteratis and then thank all the voters by name.
Instagram and Snapchat
It's true that both of these platforms are very different from each other, but you can use them similarly to promote your app. Upload two stories on both Instagram and Snapchat every day. It can be anything – your app screenshot, celebrity review of your app, or it can be as simple as an explanation of some feature.
Remember that you will only have 24 hours on both the apps to create an impression on your users, so make the most of it by making attractive, shareable video.
Like all the other platforms, the scope of rewarding your users is present here too. All you have to do is ask them to shoot a story or image with them using the app and you can reward them by sending the news of upcoming updates first on their device and then the rest or by giving them some paid features for free for a month.
These are the two platforms that you can use extensively all before, during and after the launch of your app.
To promote your app to a level that it gets embossed in your users' mind and device, a mastery in these four platforms would be enough. While this article talked only about the basic points, there are so many other ways you can use social media for your advantage. All you have to do is know your audiences' demands and then offer them more than what they expected, creatively.
