How to Use Social Media for App Marketing Strategies

When it comes to planning your app marketing strategies, it is important to consider all avenues in order to achieve the best outcome. With huge competition out there in the app industry, it can be difficult to make your app stand out amongst the crowd, especially on a tight budget. That’s where social media comes in.
 

Social Media is a readily available and free to use tactic that can help you increase brand awareness, identify your key audience, generate downloads and build engagement. Whether your budget is big or small this is not something you want to overlook.

What Social Networks Are Available For App Marketers and Developers?

• Facebook

With 1.79 billion monthly active users Facebook is undoubtedly the biggest social media network available to promote your app. With Facebook, you can simply set up a fan page to create a buzz around your app organically, or you can use paid engagement using Facebook ads to expose your app to your target users.

• Twitter

Twitter is great for connecting with your target users and for reaching out to any influential individuals within your sector that could boost your campaign with a simple retweet. With Twitter, you can give and receive instant direct replies and so it is often used as a simple form of customer support. Providing public customer support will help you build up a trustworthy and reliable brand image.

• Instagram

When used to its fullest potential, Instagram can prove just as effective as Facebook and Twitter. Using relevant images and hashtags you can gain a lot of interested followers and potential app users. Instagram also provides the opportunity for paid advertising. However, 90% of users are younger than 35 which may be useless for your own target audience so this is important to keep in mind when deciding what social networks to use.

• Google+

Google+ is particularly powerful as it can improve your SEO ranking. Getting active on Google+ and engaging with relevant businesses and groups will lead to higher Google rankings and a great reach with potential app users.

• LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site designed specifically for the business community so would be particularly useful for app marketers targeting other businesses or people within a certain profession. With paid advertising on LinkedIn, you can choose who you want to see your ad and get your app in front of those who are most likely to benefit from it.

Top Tips For Marketing Your App on Social Media

• Update often

Don’t be a ghost page that hasn’t been updated since you joined in 2011 This will only put any potential customers off. By providing your social media followers with valuable content on a regular basis you can create a strong online presence and build brand credibility before they have even used your app.

• Respond to any comments or queries

Whether positive or negative (especially the negative) it is important to acknowledge your user feedback. When someone makes the effort to tweet or post something nice about your app it’s only manners to respond, even with a simple thank you, because technically this works as free promotion for your app.

However, unfortunately not all feedback is going to be positive. But don’t throw your toys out of the pram and delete the comment. That will only add to the frustration of the user and indicate that you don’t care or value your customers’ feedback and have no intention of trying to solve the stated issue. Instead, try and address these comments as best you can and offer to speak to the person over private mail so as to take the discussion away from prying eyes.

• Get creative

Social media provides you with the opportunity to use any creative skills you or your team may have. Create interesting, eye-catching high-quality graphics and videos that show off your app and encourage your users to share these with their own network of friends to help increase your brand awareness.

• Offer incentives

This is a clever method of marketing your app as the chance of being rewarded will encourage them to talk about your app. A simple like and share competition on Facebook for a prize can boost your page likes and brand awareness like you wouldn’t even imagine. Offer your users a weekend break away or a pair of concert tickets. Keep it simple! I mean, I’ve yet to win any of the hundreds (maybe thousands) of Facebook competitions I’ve entered but I personally would be ecstatic with a 12 pack of Krispy Kremes… 😍😍😍

• Understand your audience

Different target markets require different types of content. Understand what works for your target consumer. Do your research and don’t be afraid to check out what your competitors are doing and gain inspiration that way. With paid advertising on social media, you can target your audience by location, age, gender, work, relationship status, education and more, so knowing your audience will ensure your ad gets in front of the correct people if you do decide to go down that route.

• Be interesting

Although you might think it’s great how much your app is achieving, and want to tell everyone your monthly stats… chances are, your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram followers don’t care too much. Keep your social media interesting but still light-hearted and fun. Users will respond much better to updates that are written in a human tone rather than the usual marketing approach.

Humour works wonders too. Take a leaf out of Innocent’s book. Despite being a healthy drinks company, their social media feeds are full of entertaining, witty posts and images completely unrelated to what they do. But with 250k Twitter followers and over half a million Facebook followers, it works and gives the brand a quirky, light-hearted image.

• #Hashtag

Use relevant hashtags to help other users who may be interested in your content find you. Note the word ‘relevant’. Very important. Don’t start hash-tagging every little thing that comes to mind, that will only irritate your current followers and result in pointless exposure to the wrong target market. I would suggest keeping between 1 and 8 hashtags max!

Social media is just one of the many tools available to you for marketing your app. For a more detailed guide to the different stages of app marketing feel free to download The App Marketing Guide for Dummies. If you have any other questions don’t hesitate to send me an email via emma@hurree.co.