AppBoard Tuesday – How To Promote Mobile Apps Through Online Social Media?

Howdy everyone…how are all you guys doing? Most of you must be knowing that our mobile applications have already received close to 850 appreciations on Behance (combined figure – https://www.behance.net/teknowledge). The great thing is, we started out on this channel only four months and a bit back – which makes our present popularity that bit more significant. In today’s edition of AppBoard Tuesday (ABT), we will do a round-up of how mobile apps can be promoted via social media channels in an optimal fashion. At the end of the day, great apps must have great online visibility – or else, they might underperform. This is how you should go about your promotions:

1. Create accounts on the major social networking sites – Facebook, yes…Twitter, of course…Google Plus, absolutely. You may or may not link up your FB account with your Twitter profile (that’s what our mobile app company has). Post regular updates about your apps – both launched and works-in-progress (WIP) – on Facebook. If you have not linked your Facebook and Twitter profiles, you will need to post regular tweets as well. Remember the value of posting detailed pictures, and (less frequently) videos too.
2. Join forums, communities and groups – You will need to invest a bit of time on this – but the rewards can be potentially immense. There are literally hundreds of forums and groups on Facebook related to mobile technology in general, and Android/iPhone app developers in particular. Join the ones which are active (the post dates should give you a hint) and have a healthy number of members (what’s the point of joining a community with 5 members, anyway?). Participate in discussions, post replies (no spam please!) on others’ queries, and promote your own apps – one at a time. Ideally, avoid promoting more than 3-4 apps every week. A FB group can serve as, but is not only, an advertisement channel!
3. Exchange app reviews – Be wary on this one though. DO NOT ever purchase reviews or any sort of backlinks to your website/app page on iTunes or Google Play Store. After you get in touch with others willing to exchange app reviews, take a look at the quality of their mobile applications – before providing a rating. If general people find that you have given a 5-star review to a lousy app – it’s your goodwill and integrity that would be on the line. Authentic reviews can generate considerable positive buzz about the standard of your apps though.
4. Post on others’ walls – Once again, do this with moderation. It’s not feasible (or a great idea, in any case) to join all the forums related to mobile app development on Facebook. On the ones you don’t join, post your app-related updates on the walls of a few members. A look through a member’s profile will give you an idea about the type of mobile applications that person is interested in. Post accordingly – and do not post the same thing on a mass scale to everyone. Mark Zuckerberg and his team will not take kindly to such indiscriminate copying and pasting – and you might soon find your account to be temporarily blocked.
5. Promotions via Pinterest – Okay, now let’s turn our attentions from Facebook, shall we? Your apps will have interesting UI/UX design themes and frameworks (ours do!) – and Pinterest is one of the best platforms to showcase how visually delightful the works of your in-house mobile app developers are. Create separate boards for each of your applications, and upload 10-15 ‘pins’ on each of them. Make sure that the main display screens of your apps are well-presented in the ‘pins’. While writing the description for each ‘pin’, use hashtags (#) to highlight the key terms and features of your app. You will need to start following the Pinterest profiles of others in the same line of business too. That way, you will start getting ‘repins’ over time.
6. Make use of Google Plus – This one works in two ways. Firstly, create a dedicated G+ account for your iPhone/Android application development company. Over there, you can post the latest news, feedback, testimonials and all other pertinent information related to your apps. Share every post to ‘Public’ – to ensure maximum visibility. Secondly, do utilize your personal G+ account as well (if you do not have a Google account yet, it’s high time you got one!). Post the same updates on your own profile, and share them with ‘Friends’ and ‘Public’. To make sure that most people actually view your updates, select the option to send email to friends. Post images, little bits of texts and the like, instead of long, boring articles.
7. A strong Behance presence will help – As we started out by saying, Behance has helped Teknowledge a great deal to grab eyeballs of the international graphic designing/mobile app development community. It is no longer a platform meant ONLY FOR ARTISTS, and in any case, good mobile apps invariably have genuinely creative elements. Use images that are of optimal quality (resolution-wise, properly cropped etc.), and accompany each upload with a short description of the corresponding app (do not make it a hardcore sales copy). Shake things up from time to time, by changing the way in which you upload the images. In addition, join select curative galleries and follow other creatives. The additional publicity would come in handy.
8. Share infographics on Tumblr – You can post images and videos of your apps on Tumblr – but the focus should be on highlighting how well your applications are doing at the stores. Monitor your mobile app analytics (it’s hardly difficult – even Google Analytics provides that option (http://www.google.co.in/analytics/mobile/)). Prepare infographics on the basis of the reports, and share them on your Tumblr profile. In case any of your project has flopped (no mobile app company has a 100% success record), don’t bother putting up details about it. Instead, you can share its UI/UX designing details on Behance.
9. Create videos for YouTube – This is where the human touch comes in. We are creating a series of videos where several topics related to mobile apps (development, testing, marketing, etc.) will be deliberated upon. Depending on the response, we will take it a step further – and start uploading videos for every new app (something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNmYQK_M-no – something we did for a mobile app for kids). Ideally, an individual or a team should talk in an informal manner about the apps. Do not sound too well-rehearsed, that would be a dead giveaway that you are not speaking in an impromptu manner. Keep the videos short (never more than 4-5 minutes). On the web, people tend to get bored very soon!
10. Don’t forget your LinkedIn profile – Yeah, okay, LinkedIn is not the place to upload loads of photos of the apps you have developed. However, in your profile summary and experience section you can definitely highlight the best of your app development projects. Notice how Amber Blumanis, the COO of Teks Mobile Australia, has done this on her LinkedIn page (https://www.linkedin.com/pub/amber-blumanis/96/638/978). Publishing such details will help you in getting more endorsements, and that would surely help.

You should also be present on other popular social networking channels of the geographical regions you wish to specifically target. For your mobile audience, promote your apps via Instagram as well. You can also consider having an active Flickr profile. One thing you will have to keep in mind is that – you will have to regularly monitor each of your social media accounts, simply creating a host of profiles will not be enough. A the risk of sounding repetitive, let me caution you once again against getting into any sort of black-hat strategies for social media marketing of your apps. Making good apps and promoting them well – that should be your objective.

That brings us to the end of the ninth edition of AppBoard Tuesday. Did you notice that there was no issue last week? Another extremely important project had come along, and that made us give ABT a miss last Tuesday. Oh, and talking about important projects, our ‘Talk Nah’ application will soon be launched at the stores. Check that one out!

AppBoard Tuesday will be back on next…that’s right…Tuesday. Stay zapped with apps, till we meet again!