These days, almost everywhere you look and everything you see involves the Web 2.0 or, as it is more commonly known, social media.
If it is not a reference to a company’s or product’s Facebook page or a tweet about a new product, social media has garnered incredible market penetration in a sort time span attracting hundreds of millions of adherents from all corners of the world. Consequently, social media is a marketer’s dream.
Viral equals Tough
As someone who has invested much thought, time, and effort into creating the next “big thing” in the way of apps, your next step in launching your app is vital.
In a crowded marketplace where new apps are being launched on a daily basis you must use every trick at your disposal to ensure that your app gets noticed in a very crowded playing field. In a perfect world, your app will gain recognition and go viral – the dream of every app developer, however that will not happen without a lot of hard work and a touch of luck.
It was Samuel Goldwyn though who verbalized the relationship between hard work and luck.
It is imperative that when launching an app that you must succeed on the first try. A successful launch will ensure great rewards but this is the case because the risks.
No matter how good the app, it is virtually impossible to recover from a poor launch so you must get it right from the get go. And that involves using social media to your benefit.
Social Media as your Strategy
If you have thought through your marketing strategy before creating your app, then you have probably created a website, blog, or Twitter account pertaining to the app in parallel to the creation of your app.
This helps to build anticipation, build a community, and also enable followers to give you some valuable input into your product.
The trick is to give sufficient information away to pique interest but not too much information so as to allow others to steal your idea, as just as you have no doubt been monitoring competitors’ blogs and marketing channels, rest assured that they are doing the same thing to you.
Action items to get Started
Most social media is free and that is a great advantage to a money restricted app developer. It will cost you very little to potentially build a community of followers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+ yet it may be worth paying to advertise on these sites to gain exposure – try a well-targeted PPC campaign, or a Sponsored tweet by IZEA.
When you create a page on these sites you must do your all to attract people to the pages.
Targeting bloggers of influence who have a large following can be an instant ticket to building your own community.
Tweet and re-tweet these bloggers. Send them compelling content that they can use to make their own blog more interesting and to attract more followers. If you scratch their back, hopefully they will scratch yours.
Pictures always convey things more clearly than words alone.
If you have the capacity to create a promotional YouTube video then go for it. The more social media avenues you have to attract your community the better.
Link and cross reference these social media outlets where possible so as to create a web of interconnected marketing outlets. The more you are seen and heard, the greater the possibility of you gaining a following.
Conclusion
Creating an app, assuming you want that app to be noticed, involves much more than just the knowledge of creating apps. If you have an aversion to social media then you must either outsource your marketing to specialist firms or come to grips with the fact that the chances of your app ever attaining any form of market recognition are minimal.
About the Author: Yoav Vilner is CEO at www.ranky.co – a team that helps startups grow. After years of assisting startups with their marketing, he now lives his dream of getting startups on the viral highway. Available also at www.twitter.com/YoavVilner
