It’s true the existing social giants like- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat or WhatsApp are leading in the social realm with a bucket of features that are addressing the user’s needs to stay connected and enticing them like nowhere. These numbers are staggering without showing any sign to cease. It’s an alarming situation. Don’t fret!
Taka Strava- the social media platform is the best instance, which is created exclusively for athletes and that has scored amazing success with tens of millions users in a short duration.
There is a question- what’s the definition of building the social app rightly as stated in the above description? Well, it holds a lot of significance in it. The social media app is like a climate of the internet that keeps on changing with new trends and user preferences. It’s essential to stay relevant and offer the users what they are looking for, that’s plausible by analyzing the project’s pre-requisites before squarely hopping on to the app development bandwagon for making space in the crowded social media sphere.
Explaining everything is implausible in this piece of content, so we have just touched the tip of the iceberg in illustrating how the tips can help you create a successful social media app from the scratch. They are:
Realize the competition to adopt social climate
One thing rings true in the competitive space that great artists never copies, but create their own style or pattern. Here, the role of app developer’s role becomes vital in analyzing what the top-runners are offering and how in the app, they can implement the same features to create a difference in the market, which lets the app thrive in the long run.
This is the way Facebook has maintained its superiority in every segment and at the same time other social apps have enjoyed the popularity, but after a while, their existence was not even felt by the users. For example, Facebook reinvented the Snapchat’s popular feature of story launching and Instagram’s selfie filters with a simple twist and introduced them to their platform.
It indicates every time, it’s not necessary to discover and implement a new feature in the app to make it unique while adapting and integrating the same features with a small tweaking can help you.
Know your audience and then strategize
The past has witnessed many social apps got off the grid abruptly because they tried to interfere with the standards in an effort of improving the user engagement, but that has impacted user journey. The failure is not due to the attempts made, while it’s so because,during experimentation, they did not care about whether the innovation is infuriating the user experience, influencing app performance, making on-boarding difficult, or creating glitches in the app browsing.
It concludes don’t repeat the history to become a mystery. Come up with the new ideas to integrate, but don’t implement them unless you know how your target audience interacts with the app? what are their preferences? and does your ideas make the app intriguing or uninteresting? Once you are clear with these points in your app strategy planning, it’s time to roll over the app development.
Choose the right technology stack
The features and functionalities included in the app signals what type of the platform the app needs to get built on the top of it. However, the hints won’t work as the technology evaluation is a big task which cannot be ended as a guessing game. Here, the app makers have two choices- either they hire a technology consultant to get the best advice or get into the DIY mode by doing the necessary research.
The latter option demands a lot of time and effort investment in the preparation of the app’s technology needs and matching them with the available platform offerings. Also, there exists a risk of choosing the platform that’s not fulfilling the unrealized or future needs of the app. Make the selection that’s a perfect fit.
In addition, you need to figure out what technologies the competitors are using to learn and analyze which set of technology and resources bring issues or opportunities for the app.
Give some space with private chat
Traditionally, the social media apps are built to enhance the public user interaction experience through public posts, Newsfeeds, and others. But, this is not the case always, there are times when users like to chat in a private window, and if the app is not providing the service to communicate securely in private, they certainly move to other messaging apps.
According to a research, “The teenagers spend the average of 200 minutes of time weekly on the WhatsApp.
It elucidates when you don’t want to lose the major share of the audience, it’s important to understand the significance of messaging apps and implement it considering it as another form of social interactions altogether.
Besides, the private channels are the medium to retain the users with group conversation. The app makers can use third-party services to enable real-time chats or they can build their own messaging channel like Facebook has created the Facebook messenger.
Enable interaction with third-party services
At first, no social app can be a one-size-fits-all solution because there is a ton of social media apps out there covering different niches. One app cannot compete with all the specific niche and that’s where integrating your app services with existing networks is a smart decision. The cross-posting across the social platforms increase the app’s fame and bring more users to the app.
For instance, to create different types of relationship networks, distinct social channels can be used like- for personal networking: Facebook, for dating services: Tinder, and for professional networking: LinkedIn. To allow users share media across networks, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube or Snapchat can be integrated. To provide social publishing platforms, tying up the app with Twitter, Tumblr or Medium helps.
By creating the app that has wide-ranging appeal, the users get a little lost and perhaps, find it difficult to connect with your app. So, launch your app in the market with limited features and provide third-party services integration to let the users feel connected to the social networks they were using previously.
Go creative to engage the audience with feeds
The designing activity stream is the driving force behind the success of every social networking platform. A constant stream of content like- memes, animated GIFs, audios, user-generated stories, photos, or videos show up on the feed. Sharing the feeds gives the users the reason to keep browsing the app. Mainly, the user-generated content appears in the feed fall into three categories.
In the first category, the users share the post regarding updates which can be- the current location, check-in hotel, or the latest discovery. Another type of feed is about self-expression where the users express themselves by posting on the timeline. Such content is unique, tagging-in specific users and describe what the one is feeling at that moment. The last is self-esteem where the users share the content related to the events or moments that are special to them like- photos of getting rewarded at a ceremony, photos of celebrating organizations’ platinum anniversary and others.
In all types of feeds, one thing lies in the essence that they generate a kind of interaction on the social app. The interactions can be getting likes, reviews, comments, shares, or highlights on the post uploaded. Also, notifying the users about the interactions through push notification is a must-have, which keeps the user updated in the real-time about social interaction and prompt them to open the app instantly.
Establishing a connection mechanism is imperative
You launched the impeccable social media app and managed the users to download the app. That’s great! But, how will you make the app users connected and interact with one another? The content sharing and interaction, and apt designing helps in forming new connections among users. It can be accomplished in the following ways:
Design the search mechanism where the users can easily find their friends or individuals they are interested in connecting with them. Ensure, the users don’t need to write the full name, complete username or other parameters to get the results.
Create groups that have become a focal point for the users to get connected with a community of like-minded people. The group-oriented networks fuel up the interaction and draw the attention of a large audience.
Provide personalized recommendations to the users just like Facebook to connect the people of similar interest, location or profile. Furthermore, the connections can be extracted from other social networks, if users give the permission.
Conclusion
Believe it or not, there is a lot more efficiency required to develop such an app. With the right app development partner it will be process where you take more informed decision about deal. All of us have trust in our app ideas, but this is not enough. A lot has to be done, in order to gain an edge in the war of social media apps. Identify your community, go with the right technology stack, concentrate on the essentials and integrate the features that engage users to build a social media app whose success is inevitable. However, it’s advised that before getting into the game, you should start with an MVP and then work your way for widening the app’s acceptance with fewer risks.