How to Make an App Go Viral -

How to Make an App Go Viral

If you’re creating an app, whether it’s a news app, a social app, or a game app, your key focus has to be to make it go viral. By going viral we mean, to have it reach the maximum amount of people so they can gain interest in it and use it.
And the only way your app will be getting a lot of downloads, and a lot of people will be using it only if it has something unique to it. It needs to be engaging and need to be different. It must attract people to download it, and also use to in the long run.
Every person who designs an app wishes to have his app go viral among people so he can reach maximum customers who would download it.
However, the key importance of making an app go viral is as follows:

  • It engages a lot of people who keep sharing your app over and over again, presenting a larger target audience to start using your app
  • You profit a lot as the downloads of your app increases in Play Store or App Store
  • You get a sense of achievement that you’ve successfully created something which interests and attracts the human mind!

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5 TIPS TO MAKE YOUR APP GO VIRAL

At this point, you’re probably wondering how you can make your app go viral, similar to apps like Facebook or PokemonGO.

Well, here are simple 5 tips which will help you a long way to making your app go viral.

Social Sharing & Encourage People to Use It

Social sharing means promoting your app on other social media sites. Every person we know uses at least one social media site. So on your app, you’d prefer having some social sharing buttons which will help people share what they read, and liked, on another social site. People will catch attention this way, and will be inclined towards downloading your app.
During a global survey, it was found that about 46% of the people share content from apps on their social sites and over 70% of the total US users shared content on social sites, which will help your app go viral.
Through social sharing you benefit in 3 ways:

  • You benefit your customers
  • Your brand
  • And your marketing team

Peach was a good example of social media effect. Twitter helped Peach to reach thousands of people and increase its downloads. As Tony Sampson, a professor at the University of East London, stated: “Having an entire focused community all in one place [in this instance, Twitter] helps things spread faster,” he said. “It means people hear about it from other people more times in a shorter period, increasing the likelihood it catches on.”
Once social sharing has been done, you need to have content which is engaging. You need to encourage people to download your app and use it. Prefer explaining in blog posts about why your app may provide to be useful for them!
You can easily encourage people to use your apps by:

  • Writing about your app on a blog
  • Share your content on other social media
  • Create an engaging video etc

 

Use Burst Campaigns

Burst campaigns can be used to increase the ranking of an app. After spending some money, it allows your app to go to the top of the charts, hence increasing the number of downloads for the app. We all know that there is no such thing as one-night success. It is all about the efforts you made for hundreds of hours. Yes, you created an amazing app by allocating a huge effort, time, and money. Now it is time to present your precious! However, as we talked along this article, competition doesn’t allow you waking up as a Top 10 app in some morning. But, wait. Why not? Why not your app becomes the next PokemonGO if it is qualified enough for this? Well, burst campaigns give you this opportunity. By ranking at top via burst campaigns, you can have a chance to go viral.
The creator of Dolphin Play states that he ran three burst campaigns in the first 90 days of his app’s launch, and received a 175% increase of organic installs overpaid installs.
Today, mobile marketers would prefer using burst campaigns for both a newly released app or for a significant update to the app.
These campaigns should also be run during special days like holidays, engaging a lot of people.

Touch Emotions

Emotional arousal plays a great role in making an app go viral. It has been proved that whenever a person is feeling good, he’ll tend to share a lot more of the posts he reads on social media sites, etc. At the same time, people react to different emotions with different actions. You don’t need to make them happy. You may want to create a controversial to let them speak you.
Also, don’t forget, people prefer to share information to which they can relate. If it helps them feel good about themselves, or if it reminds them of a happy moment, you’ll get more shares. Hence, try putting the content while keeping the target audience in mind.

Work on User Retention

If you want your app to go viral, then user retention is probably more important that getting new users. It shows the amount of users which have been using your app over a period.
As a report of 2015 shows, about 75% of the users turn away from the apps after downloading it, within 90 days.

A good retention rate, other than mobile apps may include 20% through 90 days, and a 25% is what you must strive to achieve to make your app a success!
Source: http://info.localytics.com/blog/mobile-apps-whats-a-good-retention-rate

Reward Users

Of course, we’ve already discussed how social sharing is going to help your app go viral. But are you just going to fool your users into sharing? I’d rather you didn’t.
Prefer giving your users a small reward every time they share your app or your content. This may build up a sense of loyalty, and more users will want to share your app with others.
Also, studies have shown that 84% of the people prefer using apps which give rewards. 40% people are more excited to use such apps, and rewards generate 31% more users than do ads!

Hence, the whole discussion in a nutshell. Of course, creating apps and making them go viral is beneficial for the creator in itself. However, you can do so by increasing the retention rates of your users. Try encouraging people to use the app, share through social sharing, and once shared, prefer giving out rewards to others. Your app will gain popularity, and soon will be on top of the charts if burst campaigning is used as well!


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