You can say that these days too many people concentrate their attention on the developing social media apps. And yes, it’s surely true. But we would also add that the need in various social media applications will not go anywhere and it’s just getting stronger and stronger. So, as we see here, it’s a win-win situation.The market won’t be full anytime soon and so, the growing interest in this industry should not prevent but encourage you to create a social media app.
The other thing is how to create a social network app that will be taken well by the global market. It’s not just the issue of how to build it or how much does it cost or which development company to choose.
These are important questions, no doubt, but before you get to these issues you should answer one more question, the essential one. Instead of asking how to make a social media app, you should first ask yourself what you can give to the customers what others can’t? How your app will differ from all the others?
To answer these questions and, in general, to make things more clear we have prepared this piece about social media app development. Hopefully, this may serve you as some basic guidelines on your development journey, tip you some way out or just inspire you on new creative ideas. So let’s see what we got there.
Profiles
We would like to start our guide with a few essential steps for the profile development as the most crucial element of your work. And here is why we call it so. The majority of the social media center their entire work around the personal profiles.
This means that the social media application development should use the database of the users’ personal information as its core, and so, pay it the higher attention. Not to mention that a well developed and cool looking user’s profile increases your chances of success. So let’s see what we mean by a well-made profile.
First of all, you need to create an environment inside the app as personal as possible. In a way that by opening the app your users would feel like they have returned to their very own personal space. This connection between users and application should be so intimate that they would feel a true personal attachment to the app space.
Although that is not easy to build and to achieve as you will need to work hard on the personal customization of the profiles. How can you do that? Well, we believe there are few ground rules you need to follow. Let’s have a brief look at all of them.
Integrate with other social media
Allow your users to connect through your app with other social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, to name at least few. That will save time for the developers during their work as well as for the users since their authorization process will be reduced to a minimum number of steps.
Make it memorable
First of all, you need to design some specific app’s color themes so it will have its distinguishing feature. As for the profiles themselves, you will need to think of unique backgrounds, some opportunities to personalize them to the users’ tastes, let them pick colors or maybe download pictures instead of the standard look.
Basically, you are doing two things at a time here. You creating the design that will help to differ your app from all the others and allow your users to modify their profiles as they want to do it, which make it more personal for them.
Free the way for imagination
Work on the style of the profiles’ layouts. Think carefully where to place all the necessary content, profile photos, important personal information, etc. As we have mentioned before, most of the social media applications center their work around the profiles, meaning the profile picture is always in the center of attention. Think if you want to keep it or bring some new trend. Plan on how your new layout will look on different devices and platforms, either it’s iOS or Android.
Prioritize features
Highlight one or two features of the profile you want to be the essential ones:
- Photos/videos/audio;
- Status updates;
- Personal interests and hobbies;
- Relationship status;
- Professional activity.
By prioritizing some of those sections you will send a clear idea of what your application is about and what aims it sets: sharing your life updates, searching for a romantic partner, creating a business network, etc.
Full exposure
Including the space for putting links on other websites, blogs, social media, etc, is definitely a must when you are building a social network application. These days those things are the way people introduce themselves so they are pretty important. If a person is able to connect his or her profile to space they are proud of sharing with others, you should give them such an opportunity.
Keep in mind this crucial thought – people use social media and work hard on filling in their profiles because it’s their way to express themselves, to introduce themselves to others and to interest other people. So the more space you give to your users the more likely they are to return to your app.
Communication
The core function of any social media app should be its ability to connect people, make them feel closer to each other. That’s basically the number one reason why we keep downloading and using more and more of those apps. Therefore, at your social networking app development, you need to create a solid platform and a nice environment for their communication.
A starting point of this stage should be picking one of the possible ways of online communication. Is it going to be a type of communication where you reaching out others through the status updates or maybe this will be not verbal but a photo/video sharing type? There are plenty of opportunities and all of those types are a great way to keep the feed filled with the news.
Just remember, encouraging the content sharing in the news feed is crucial for keeping your app alive. There are numerous ways people can share their thoughts, opinions and general news about their lives. Creating an environment where people would feel free and safe to share those personal things will be your one more step to the success story. Therefore, your task is to think what should be a dominant version among all of the communication types in your app and strengthen its positions by sending to the users a clear message what kind of content is expected from them.
Since we have established already, a news feed feature is the biggest motivation for people to keep returning to your app. Opening profiles and checking if there are any new comments to your posts or if anyone tagged you on some photos. Those are the thoughts that motivate people to keep checking the screens of the smartphones every few minutes or hours. People posting stuff to get the feedback and, this way, to engage in communication.
So how do we keep the communication engaging and open for everyone? The answer was already briefly mentioned. In order to create such an engaging atmosphere within the app, you need to give users opportunities to tag people, leave comments, message each other, etc. In general the more inside links they can use the better.
Audience
One more thing before we will wrap it up. So far we have analyzed the common tendencies among the social media types but what is worth mentioning is also the different types of the audience. Think ahead what kind of audience you want to bring to your social media app. Are you trying here to build a social network app for teenagers or for a more mature people? Maybe you would like to reach out elderly people? Why not, this niche is definitely not fulfilled yet.
Secondly, of course, it is time to discuss the platforms you want to go with. For instance, you can develop a social media app for Android users only but what the point in that when you are immediately crossing out the half of the population since everyone who has iPhones is left behind (obviously, the statistics might differ depending on the region you want to reach). It seems ridiculous to consider what we have just discussed about communication and engaging, doesn’t it?
Therefore, our recommendation is to go with the both platforms or with the cross platform product. This way no one will be left out and the net of friends in the app will be growing equally among users of all the platforms without any meaningless separations.
Summing things up
In the end, we would like to reassure you that there are no universal wrongs or rights about such a thing as social media app. The industry is full of bright examples to follow and yet the market is still open and flexible to the newcomers. Therefore, if you are really interested in this topic but yet still have your worries and questions about how to create a social media app, our company is always happy to help you find the way out.
We are providing our clients with a wide range of services: from consultations on costs and general information to the custom development and the support of the released project. Reach us out and hire our team if you are ready for entering the global market with your new social app idea.