“The current genre of social media users is more intrigued with influencer marketing which is proven as profitable for evolving brands & businesses.”
Around 83% of customers are desirous to engage with any business, service, or product via social media. From pushing a ‘like’ button to using ‘trending hashtags’, Facebook’s legacy of sharing, engaging, and connecting people around user-generated content has evolved into an open marketplace for creators & celebrity influencers.
The growing usage of the most popular & best social media apps is now infused with ample branding & marketing benefits for small businesses & budding entrepreneurs. Whether you’re a local retailer or a product owner, it’s high time for you to get such social networking platforms for your business.
Well, both Facebook & Instagram need no introduction to social media addicts, contributing to the largest user base and almost half of the revenue generated by the global social networking industry. In the United States alone, there were 302 million social media users in 2022 & this record is projected to reach 327.22 million by 2027.
Needless to say, social media is in full swing & it can do wonders for any business. Want to learn more about the business benefits of social media apps? Let’s start with some statistical detailing first!
Impressive social media app facts & stats you should know
- More than 200 million social media users reach at least one business profile & more than 80% of Instagram users follow at least one business in a day.(LinkedIn)
- 59% or more than half of the global population, is active on social media apps. (Data Reportal)
- Nearly 84% of US adults aged b/w 18 to 29 years use social media on a daily basis. (Pew Research Center)
- An average user visits 7 different social media networks in a month.
- Social media app usage grew at an average rate of over 13.5 new users per second in 2021, according to HootSuite.
- 21% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that they can reach on social media.
- 79% of internet users depend on social media to research products, according to Data Reportal 2022.
- 71% of consumers are likely to recommend a brand to their family or friends upon having a positive experience.
- 91% of social media users access social channels via mobile devices.
- Facebook became one of the most-used social media platforms in the US, followed by Instagram & Twitter during COVID-19, a report by Statista.
Noting these mind blowing stats, we encourage startups to approach the right social media app developers for Android & iOS to reap the business benefits of social media apps.
How To Make The Best Social Media App?
Proceed further to read our step-by-step guide on software product development for startups for social media.
Step 1: Determine The Right Product Fit in the Market
Even if a product idea is originally new but resonates with the market needs then it can definitely beat its existing competitors. Being a startup, you must learn the deep emotions of your target audience so that your product can match the expectations of its potential customers.
For example, if you’re dedicated to the creator economy then your social media development strategy must include everything from reels to personal branding, influencer marketing, & other innovative ways of self-monetization.
The trick is to keep on adapting to the market trends until you discover the right product or market to stand out with your own social media app or marketplace. It’s somehow the same as the way social media apps like Instagram, Twitter, & Whatsapp did earlier.
Startups can learn from big players who began flourishing steadily with the wave of changes in market trends & user behaviors. The key formula here is to identify the right market and target audience at the initial stage of the social media app or product development process for your business.
Step 2: Do Market Research to win over the competition
Although you’ve got your back from experts to simply code & deploy apps for the end users, the probability of its success depends on research work as well.
Not conducting a thorough analysis of your target market and competitors will make you regret it later. Before social media app development kicks off, you must go through in-depth market research around existing apps or products with similar service offerings, target users, & business goals.
By doing so, startups can ensure that their social media app idea is not ‘just another app’ for its potential users.
Step 3: Be familiar with the perspective of target users
The best social media apps are inspired by what users want & startups must be serious about this question.
The feedback of target users matters for every product owner, regardless of which industry or market they belong to. While building a social networking app, you must learn the real preferences & viewpoints of its audience at first so that you can incorporate the most relevant elements of its design & overall functionality.
If you’re engaging with social media developers for Android & iOS then your project strategists will seek direct opinions from intended users. This will help them in keeping a balance b/w UX design & psychology to make your business profitable by:
- Interacting with existing users of the product to attract potential subscribers.
- Conducting interviews to create Customer Journey Map i.e CJM & come up with impactful user personas for a product. The process will guide you to understand the typical behavior & perspectives of the users.
- Using CJM insights to modify the app according to the users’ behavior, mood, actions, and expectations.
Step 4: Pick The Right Revenue Model For Your App
Perhaps, from the result of IQOS888 you’re ahead to getting the best social media app for your business only if it’s profitable. The majority of open social media platforms generate a good amount of revenue, using a profit-making business model that secures their growth in the long run.
Selecting the right revenue model is a crucial part of social media app development strategy, where startups have these two options to choose from:
Freemium model
It allows users to sign up & access its selective yet basic features for free. For exclusive features, one needs to subscribe to premium services.
Facebook & Instagram charge businesses to boost their promotional posts & pages while LinkedIn takes a premium fee for more filtered job searches & related services on its professional social media network.
Ads & premium model
Paid ads are key revenue sources for popular social media platforms including Facebook or Meta and Instagram, generating more than half of all the revenue generated by the industry.
By implementing this model, social media apps use advanced algorithms to use a data-driven approach to promote sponsored posts & pages to the targeted audience. They collect personal details of users including age, gender, interests, location, & other insights that can be used for branding & marketing advantage. It’s a kind of paid marketing campaign that is effective when done smartly.
Step 5: Define A User-centric & engaging Design
The success & failure of a newly launched product greatly depends on the user experience. For startups or small businesses, it’s more than important to capture user expectations with every app interaction.
Let’s talk about Tinder, a dating app that matches users by photos, preferences, location, & other interests defined in their profiles.
The app has modified its dating algorithm by matching people who’re active at the same time. It reduces the possibility of one wasting time while waiting for responses from inactive users
Keeping the best reasons to know why your app needs UI/UX design at priority, you must focus on keeping it catchy, visually appealing, & comfortable to the eyes. A boring & cluttered app design will surely steer away your customers in the first interaction.
In addition to this, social media app developers for Android & iOS must be clear about users’ mindsets so that they can add the right features to keep them engaged.
Step 6: Build MVP To Test Ideas
The next step in building the best social media app is MVP development.
A Minimum Viable Product is a mere skeleton of the app that only comprises its basic features & functions. It’s launched to analyze your app’s performance in the middle of the development stage.
Building MVP shall reduce the futuristic risks as startups can avoid by introducing it at the initial stage. This will eliminate potential product failures due to bad & cluttered design & major technicalities.
While building a social media app from scratch, developers define basic features & prioritize them for MVP development.
And features that are must-haves can be added later in the product roadmap.
All you need is to test your MVP, collect feedback & responses, and make changes accordingly for social media app development.
Selecting the Best Tech Stack To Make A Social Media App
Once you know how to make social media for a business, you’re required to think about the tech stack for design & development.
A toolkit for UI/UX design & development is framed on the basis of:
- Project requirements;
- Budget limits;
- Types & no. of platforms you want to launch your product on;
Still, there are some most used tools for building apps for social media specifically & here are they:
- Programming language: Swift for iOS, Kotlin, & Nodejs
- Framework: Express 4
- Networking: Alamofire
- Chat: Twilio, Socket.io, PubNub
- Database: MySQL, PostgreSQL
- Push Notifications: FCM
- Geolocation: Google Maps
- API: Swagger
- Search: Elasticseearch
- Storage: Amazon S3
Learn how to create an outstanding mobile app UX design for your social media platform.
How Hie HQ can facilitate your business with social media app projects?
Keeping all the business benefits of social media apps, startups admire finding the best product team to handle their projects.
And Hie HQ is the one! Our expertise in being a top-rated product partner for the global business community is dedicated to full-stack product design & development services.
Fanclub is our recent project that entered the league of the best social media apps & achieved global recognition.
We at Hie HQ, are dedicated to co-build high-end digital products for social media & community, Fintech & Finance, Gaming, Fitness & medical health, eCommerce, SaaS, & other domains.
Visit our portfolio to see our latest work & follow our social media channels for more insights.
FAQs
1. What’s coming next for the apps for social media?
Multisensory social media will soon enter the social media landscape in 2023, allowing users to integrate multiple formats of videos, audio, texts, & highly immersive environments.
This will guide users to bring new & more exciting social media spaces for users.
2. What’s the impact of the best social media apps on the creator economy?
Social media platforms including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, & even Tiktok pay popular creators & influencers for their sponsored content. The aim is to deliver relevant & useful content to the target audience while directly connecting with them for personal branding and self-monetization purposes.
