Building a mobile app for your business can be a game changer as it gives you the power of reaching out to your customers with bigger possibilities of informing, educating, and engaging. Whether you are an app development agency or a freelance developer with big ambitions, if you don’t have social media buttons in your app, you are missing out on a great marketing opportunity.
According to a survey by TechCrunch, smartphone users spend over 3 hours on mobile apps, and over 80% of Facebook’s advertising revenue comes from mobile apps. This shows that integrating social media in apps can help you stay ahead in the competition and unleash the power of social platforms.
Why Integrate Social Media in App Development
Social media integration can enhance the app functionality by allowing users to login with their Facebook account. The app pulls data from their social media accounts and uses it to connect them with like-minded users.
Social media integration enables features like adding favorites, creating a wish list, and marking likes to add more credibility to favorited or liked products. You can include in-app sharing by integrating social feeds directly into the business app.
So your app users can see Facebook, Twitter and other linked feeds that inform them about upcoming events, promotions, latest stories and so on. This offers a two-way benefit – firstly you inform your users with social media feeds and secondly you stimulate them in using your app more.
The ability to login to an app using a social media account is an added advantage as no one likes to fill out the sign up forms. It cuts down the login steps to just one easy tap. Just login with your Facebook credentials, confirm access to your Facebook details and you are done!
By integrating social media in app development, you can increase the chances of your target market stumbling upon your app’s download link in their social media feed. Once they download the app, they can see friends who like your business and purchases made by them. This can be the much-needed push that encourages them to hit on the “add to cart” button, thus increasing your overall sales.
How To Integrate Social Media Platforms Into Apps
Now that you are convinced that integrating social media in app development is the way to go, here are the specific steps to follow:
Include clearly visible click-to-add (CTA) social media buttons on your app so that users can see them and share posts/ articles directly from the app. Allow visitors to access your app by using their social media accounts to avoid lengthy sign-up forms.
This also helps you create a mailing list and increase conversions. Integrate your app with social media feeds so that your users can engage and see that their friends use your app and even make purchases from you.
Social media is the best place to find new users for your app so come up with some fun and interesting ways to invite people into downloading your app. For example, offer an extra discount, gift, or voucher if they use mobile apps to buy your products.
Once you build a good user base, you can work on more engagements. Encourage them to make in-app purchases and offer rewards for inviting friends to try out the app.
How To Effectively Promote A Mobile App With Facebook
Each advertising strategy includes Facebook as a suitable medium of promoting, mainly because of the reasonable cost and efficiency but also the fact that it includes tools that can be used for free Facebook advertising.
If you use Facebook and Twitter integration to just collect fans and do nothing about them then you are wasting your resources. It’s time to wake up and engage your social audience to promote your brand and increase sales.
Here’s how you can effectively promote a mobile app with Facebook SDK:
Facebook offers a Software Development Kit (SDK) that contains eight effective tools to help businesses to improve their app functionality, get more downloads, advertise on Facebook for free, and monetize with Facebook ads. It offers a great way to increase your user base and get the most out of social app integration.
Here are 8 tools:
- Facebook Login ensures users that their information is safe with a trusted company
- In-app sharing allows users to share images, videos, and links with Facebook friends from within the app
- Graph API enables you to post short engaging stories that may go viral • App links that enable you to place direct links to your app from posts on your Facebook page
- Allow users to send app invites to their Facebook friends to get everyone on board
- Easy analysis of trends to see how people use your apps and design your events accordingly
- App ads to help you promote your mobile app in the Facebook feed to get more downloads
- Use Facebook’s ad network called Audience Network to promote your products and increase sales Conclusion Creating an amazing app for your business is not enough.
You need to raise its visibility and increase user engagement with social media. This way you can allow users to share interesting stories, videos, and links to promote your app and drive more installs.
Mobile app owners:
Researches say that organic and paid efforts perform better when they are together. Let’s sign up to the App Samurai dashboard and start creating ad campaigns to acquire qualified, engaged users as well as promoting your mobile app on social media platforms!
Conclusion
Integrating social media in app development is an effective way to increase your customer base, maximize your business returns and improve the user experience. We hope that the information provided in this article will give you valuable insight and encourage you to take some effective steps for your future or present app development and social media integration project.
About the Author
Rilind Elezaj is a thought leader in app development and digital marketing, with extensive experience in the industry. Rilind has a strong entrepreneurial mindset and has devoted his career to enhancing the sphere of app development and digital marketing.