2.82 billion people use social media, opening an average of 9 apps each day. Mobiles have become more and more important to our lifestyles – consuming three hours and 15 minutes of the average user’s day – making social media a necessary inclusion in every app marketer’s overall strategy. Moreover, promoting your brand and growing an online community on social media is even more essential when you are marketing a digital product. In this guide, we will explore how to develop your social media strategy for mobile apps.
Why is your social media marketing strategy important?
With so many users choosing to spend their free time on social media, you have more opportunities than ever before to engage an active audience. While this may be the most popular reason to form a social media strategy for mobile apps, there are several other ways these tools can serve your company goals. A study into why most app marketers use social media revealed that the most popular reasons were to increase engagement (93%), increase traffic (87%), generate leads (74%), improve sales (72%) and to build a loyal fanbase (71%). Other popular benefits include marketplace insights (58%), increased thought leadership (57%) and to find business partners (56%).
In comparison to more traditional channels, there are two key benefits to social media marketing that help with all of the above:
While other channels can be extremely effective in their own right, social media is unrivaled in its ability to offer these advantages. This should also be noted when developing your social media strategy for mobile apps.
Developing your strategy: First steps
Before taking these marketing channels by storm, you need to know how and why you want to form a social media presence. This can be defined by going through the following steps:
Define your social media KPIs
It’s essential that you define your purpose on social media. Whether you’re primarily looking to promote your brand, build an active community or generate leads, knowing how social media marketing aligns with your company goals is the first step to developing an air-tight strategy.
Know your target audience
Just like any other mobile marketing channel, you need to know who you are targeting before your strategy can develop. Creating marketing personas is a great way to help define your target audience, which in turn helps clarify your overall strategy. When using marketing personas to target users on social media, remember that the personas will continue to develop over time. For best results, you should always be learning from fresh data to refine your target audience and stay one step ahead of your competitors.
Establish what you want to share
To successfully drive engagement on social media, you need to know what you plan to share. This is often a trade-off with your audience, whereby you must consider how the content you’re planning to share will be useful and engaging – not just useful to your company. When building an online community, the value of your social media content needs to be in addition to your app’s services. For example, just because a user loves to play “Pokemon GO” doesn’t necessarily mean they need to follow that game on Facebook. However, if the user can see that the “Pokemon GO” page is providing additional value (with updates, tips, events and competitions), they have an incentive to hit “like” and engage with that community.
Develop a unique social media strategy for each channel
Because no two social media channels are the same, you need a unique strategy for each app. This is time consuming, but well worth the investment. Thorough research allows you to understand how users typically interact with each social media platform, which will make a considerable impact on your results over time. To get you started, here are some essential facts about popular social media channels:
Facebook has 2.45 billion monthly active users, making it the largest social media platform in the world. Almost three-quarters of Facebook users log in every day, spending an average of 38 minutes on the platform. This daily usage helps companies establish prolonged engagement with users. Note that 1.4 billion people use Facebook Groups, but only “like” a total of 13 posts each month. This suggests that when building a Facebook community, it’s worth your time to create a group in addition to an official page for your app.
Twitter boasts 145 million monetizable daily active users, up 17% since 2018. However, 80% of tweets from the U.S. come from just 10% of the platform’s users. Usage can vary drastically, with a median user tweeting only two times a month while the most active users tweet 138 times within that time.
When promoting your app on Twitter, note that users have been proven to like brands that are inclusive and straight-forward. Twitter ad engagement is also up by 23% since 2018, while cost per engagement is down 12%. Implementing video ads is a smart choice on Twitter because ads with video are 50% cheaper in cost per engagement.
Pinterest has 250 million users every month, reaching 83% of U.S. women aged 25-54. The social media platform is useful for product discovery, with 59% of millennial users claiming to have found products via Pinterest.
Instagram: More than a third of American adults use Instagram, with 500 million people using Instagram Stories each day. 63% of Instagram users log in at least once every day, and are expected to spend 28 minutes on the platform every day next year.
Instagram can be a great channel for app marketers, with 200 million Instagram users visiting at least one business profile every day. 62% of users claim to have become more interested in a brand thanks to viewing Instagram Stories.
Snapchat: More than three-quarters of Americans aged 18-24 use Snapchat, and 63% of their users access the platform daily. Note that over 65% of users are using Snapchat with audio, giving marketers a big opportunity to connect with users. To learn more about getting the most out of Snapchat, take a look at our discussion with the company’s Lead DR Creative Strategist, Tom Bates.
Quora: While Quora may not be as big as Facebook or Twitter, it should not slip under your radar. The social networking site has 300 million monthly active users, up from 200 million in 2017. JD Prater, Product Marketer at Quora, explains that the site has “a variety of companies leveraging Quora Ads to grow their business” which is “around 60% B2B and 40% B2C.” Companies using Quora Ads have experienced up to 4x more conversions.
Social Media strategy for mobile apps: 4 questions to consider
What is your social media persona?
It’s important to ensure your social media output has a tone that is consistent and in-line with your overall brand image. While this sounds restrictive, it’s an essential measure that must be monitored and adapted for best results. Netflix’s Twitter account is a great example of how a company’s brand image can be leveraged to create engaging, shareable content. At the time of writing, Netflix’s Twitter bio simply reads “Joan Cusack is a national treasure” and the account’s feed includes relatable memes that aim to increase brand awareness and help build the streaming service’s community. The account – which maintains a persona of an everyday fan – currently has 6.8 million followers.
The personality you convey to users on social media will have a considerable impact on engagement and growth. Ensure that you consider the purpose of using each social media channel and develop your tone over time for best results.
How can you leverage user-generated content?
User influence is one of the biggest strengths social media has to offer. User-generated content can be used to gain trust with your community and help your users enrich their relationship with your brand. To add to our Netflix example above, take a look at their Twitter feed and you’ll see that half of their content is generated by fans (in the form of retweets). That’s no small feat when you consider that 90% of consumers say authenticity impacts their decision to like and support a brand.
Along with user content that is generated organically, you can also make this one of your KPIs. For example, if you have a cooking app, you can create a hashtag where users can share how their meals turned out. This gives users the opportunity to share their creativity with the world while also validating your product as a successful product.
How can influencer marketing help drive growth?
Influencer marketing is an increasingly popular way to drive conversions and improve brand image. 17% of companies are spending more than half of their overall marketing budget on influencers. The success of this type of marketing can also be attributed to online users’ quest for authentic and transparent ads they can trust. In his article for Forbes, CEO of Broadsuite Media Group, Daniel Newman, outlined why influencer marketing works. He states that “Influencers may be marketing’s next ‘golden goose,’ as people no longer trust ads, but they do trust people.” This is backed by Tomoson’s study, which revealed that companies are making $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing – with the top 13% earning at least $20. If you’d like to learn more about influencer marketing and how it works, take a look at our breakdown, here.
How should paid ads be utilized?
While marketing an app on social media offers several options to drive engagements without paid ads, this is still a tried and tested method of reaching your target audience. However, implementing paid ads will have a different set of best practices depending on where you are placing them. To get you up to speed, each social media channel has resources designed to help you achieve your most ambitious targets. Here are few must-read articles (from the app developers themselves) for any marketer looking to promote their app on these channels:
If you’d like to learn more about paid user acquisition, take a look at our complete guide. We also have an article on paid UA specifically for the gaming vertical. You may also be interested in learning Moshi Blum’s three rules of modern mobile marketing.
