How to Create a Social Media App: The Crucial Guide for All

Communication has always been the basic need of humans. With the help of communication and interaction, humans have always succeeded in exchanging ideas and expressing their feelings. However, the recent global pandemic has completely changed the scenario of communication. The world is now witnessing a big change in the way humans interact. Face-to-face communication today has no significance, rather virtual platforms for communication are booming. The entrepreneurs of today are unveiling innovative ways on how to create a social media app?

What boosts the demand for social media apps is the Covid-19 crisis. With restrictions in face-to-face interaction, every individual, along with businesses and entrepreneurs have shown more reliability on social media apps. It is during this pandemic; social media have witnessed a growth of 10% in its user base. In 2020, the global total social media users were 3.6 billion and it’s expected to rise even more. If you are looking to innovate social media apps, this is the best time to put your money into social media app development. This editorial will explain to you how to create a social media app without any challenges.

Further, many entrepreneurs have already grabbed the chance to invest in this evolving social media market. If you are wondering how to build a social media app from scratch, you should not waste any more time and get started with your plan. Read this full guide, as it will lead you to create your own social media platform and successfully launch it in the market.

Current Scenario of Social Media App Market

The global social media users stand at 4.14 billion right now. That’s not the end yet! The number of mobile social media users is also 4.08 billion. These figures imply more than half of the global population is staying active in social media every day. The digital atmosphere is lush greener than ever before. Several social media applications are revolutionizing the social media market. With improved new features and better ways of interaction, some social media apps are dominating the app market.

As an entrepreneur or app developer, if you wish to survive in the market, it is important for you to be as unique as you can. You must create your own social media app that can actively fight to retain a place in the app market.

On the other side, several market professionals are also debating that social media is at its saturation level now. If you are being misled by such information, you may want to research more. Mainstream social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are still witnessing growth in their user base. The growth may be slow, but there are no such signals of saturation at all.

Professionals also predict that, with millions of android and iOS apps in the apple store and play store, it is becoming hard to lead users to download a certain type of app. When the professionals are making such projections, they are involving a general definition of all apps. However, apps in the stores come categorized into many types. Some categories of apps already have thousands of them, while some have few of them. Thankfully social media comes under the category, where you can find a few of them. So, it is indeed a great time to invest in social media app development. With the dominance of new networking apps like Snapchat in presence of Facebook, you must realize that you still have plenty of chances to get into the ring for a battle! Let’s get started with how you can create your own social media app.

How to Build a Social Media App?

Creating a social media app from scratch involves many ideas and stages. You must know the stages to successfully launch your social media app without any flaws. Here are some important steps for social media app building.

Examine your idea and identify your audience

Before getting started with your social media app, you must be clear with your intentions. That means; deciding the type of social media app that you want to build comes in the first place. There are several types of social media apps that are present in the market right now. Some of them include social media sharing apps, while some are social media networking apps.

Further, social media apps also include review networks, forums for discussions and many more. Thus, you need to decide what type of social media application you want to create. If you already have an idea, you must examine its efficiency. Always ask yourself, whether it is unique and robust enough like Facebook to compete in the market.

You can also discuss your idea with social media app developers and professionals. With their years of analysis, they can guide you to make social media app filled with potential. If necessary, professionals will also integrate their ideas.

The next important job is to know your audience. Make an audience analysis and find out what kind of social media apps users are most indulged in. You can also find out what new uniqueness and features users welcome. Compare the analysis findings with your idea to determine the strengths and drawbacks of your idea.

Social media app creation is like 21st Century town square. In a townsquare, you get several people ready to participate in an exciting event. However, before participating they would also want to discover what’s exciting. Similarly, in the case of social media app creation, you can get excited to launch your social media app, but you must be aware of your potential users. Knowing about potential users and their wants will always help you include necessary features in your social media app.

Roadmap planning

After deciding about the idea and intended users, you must strategize a blueprint for creating your social media app. It includes deciding every possible thing like:

• Platform for development
• Features to include
• Technologies employed in development
• QA
• Monetizing
• Publishing
• marketing

In road map planning, selecting a platform and determining the budget are the two most significant needs.

There are many platforms to develop your social media apps. Low code platforms can be an option, that may allow for changes in looks and the feel of the app. You can also go for open-source platforms that come without any cost. You can easily download and render them on your servers. But, its not always wise to decide and select these things yourself, you must speak to a professional developer or development firm to help you with these decisions.

Developers would always suggest you create your social media app from the beginning. Creating such an app from the beginning with the inclusion of all original ideas will give you full control and project you more uniquely. Once you are clear with your roadmap, come up with a definite budget and hire a trustworthy social media app developer.

Design

After becoming aware of features, platform of development, and technology implementation, you should now start creating a design for your social media app. The design planning starts with defining the user’s journey. In simpler terms, you can address it as steps taken by users to interact with your app. Defining this journey will make your design clear to users. Then the next process is to select the design for android and iOS.

Tech innovators who want to start from scratch must plan for a wireframe of the app. A Wireframe is the skeletal model of your social media app that lets you understand how your app will function. The subsequent step in designing would be prototyping. Prototyping will help you get a working model of your potential app. With a working model, you will get a clear vision of your app’s functionality in Android and iOS.

Designing the app skin is the following step after prototyping. In this stage, you must closely analyze the existing social media apps and come up with a UI for your wireframe. Studying all the latest trends and features in the contemporary app helps you make a user-defined UI/UX.

Development and QA

The process of development and designing usually goes hands-on hands with each other. Once you are confirmed about your design, you must start working on backend, APIs, databases and servers. This must be led and decided with help of professional developer or development company. The development starts with choosing right programming language and putting right engineers with required skillset on your project.

The testing of the app further allows you to determine the efficiency of the app. The testing also let you know that despite being unique, your intended users can also find your UX and UI simple to use. While working with developers, make sure to include the latest trends in technology in your process.

Trends like IoT, AI, Big data, and augmented reality will always give you a better opportunity to grab the attention of users in the market. So, make sure to most of all the suitable trends as a part of your social media app development to create an updated app. You should also aim that your social media app is compliant with all platform standards, guidelines and technical requirements.

Deployment

After quality assurance of your social media app, you should work on its deployment. The most critical aspect of this stage is working on the back-end and finding out the methods of app store approval. Every ready-to-go live social media app deployment asks you for consistent hardware and scalable software backend to support your growth. In the deployment, you should choose cloud provider that would best suit your needs. Cloud offers you maximum flexibility for rendering your data storage. There are many great cloud providers including (but not limited to) Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud to name a few.

Besides, if you wish to create a platform-specific app, the deployment to the apple app store and Google play store also has its own requirements that you need to consider. 

Go Live

The last step of social media app development is making it live with all the promotional materials. It will always include screen guides, video guides and content that speak about your social media app. While making it live on the Google Play Store, or Apple App store, you should also optimize your app content and images to make it stand out amongst the potential users. You should also not forget to examine the metrics that matter. It will help you make future changes soon. 

Trends that may make a difference

AR and face filters– The recent era of social media is ruled by trends like AR and face filters. In well-liked social media interfaces like Snapchat and Instagram, you can discover users making unique posts and content with AR filters. It engages more audience in your app if you have some unique AR face filters.

Live streaming- The dependency on Live streaming has increased incredibly during this pandemic. Rather than having in-person social meetings, several organizations are creating live streams to connect with prospects. Businesses are utilizing the live stream characteristic to connect with a mass audience.

Short video content– Short Video contents are in rising demand. More users are getting engaged with short videos. It also helps users express themselves to others. So, you must take in all these features to construct your app more unique.

Social Media App Revenue Model

Most social media apps are free to download for users. But you can still earn great revenue with a proper monetization strategy working for you. To start with monetization, you would require comprehensive marketing. The more you promote your app, the more users you will find. With a growing user base, you can attract brands to use your platform for advertising.

However, despite advertisement, there are also several other ways of monetizing your app. You can push users to make an in-app purchase with many striking in-app elements. As a social media app creator, you can also start direct selling of third-party platforms. This will allow you to gain commission.

You can also allow brands to sponsor your app or collaborate with you. Take advantage of your audience and bring in brands that are more relevant to your users. With virtual events and the promotion of other platforms, you can easily earn good revenue. With a handful of content, you can also appeal to users for getting a paid subscription to your platform. However, Data monetization will remain to be the greatest way of earning revenue.

As a social media platform, you will collect some user data. You can easily keep this data anonymous and offer it to developers to let them know the user’s behavior. 

Marketing your social media platform

Now that you have developed all features and deployed your social media platform, you need to market it. To gain users and grow, you need to strategize your marketing to bring more users. Here are some marketing methods that will assist you get better results.

• Includes interactive ads and banners to your website or the app store downloading page; as it will attract more users
• Use content marketing to attract users with CTAs.
• Promote your social media app with existing social media influencers who are famous in other social media stages

Cost to build a social media app

The cost of your social media app development depends on the path you choose for development. This implies, the social media apps development also does not come with a fixed price. The price fluctuates depending on what features you are including in it.

In addition, any app would also demand some built-in features like a Camera, GPS, Google Maps, and many more. You can also expect a variation in cost when you decide whether it would be a cross-platform app or a native app.

So, if you are wondering how to create successful social networking app, you should always decide what features to include. The cost of developing social media apps can range from $40,000 to $200,000 for only development. Are you willing to create a social media app, and want to know the cost? JumpGrowth offers you the most feature-rich social media app development in this competitive market. Contact us to leverage your social media app development and get a quote now!