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Chhavi FiraniHow to Plan a Mobile App Efficientlyobject(stdClass)#4248 (59) { ["id"]=> string(4) "5549" ["title"]=> string(36) "How to Plan a Mobile App Efficiently" ["alias"]=> string(36) "how-to-plan-a-mobile-app-efficiently" ["introtext"]=> string(54) "Mobile Apps are ruling the modern businesses.
" ["fulltext"]=> string(10826) "Today, the revenue generated by Mobile Apps stands in competition with some of the biggest businesses in the world. Instagram, for example, generated $14 billion in revenue in 2019.
It’s equally true for MSMEs and small enterprises. By 2020, a great chunk of the business processes have been digitized and companies are fast adopting.
Food and Fintech Apps are the fastest to grow whereas the Travel and Retail have also grown considerably.
There’s no doubt that mobile apps are driving growth in all sectors of business wherever they’re deployed and new businesses are aiming to add them to their digital products.
But for most businesses, planning and budgeting mobile app correctly becomes a hassle in no time.
This is true because Mobile App Development has too many factors involved that count when you’re balancing needs with wants.
Therefore, we have created this guide that will help you navigate through various things that factor in while allocating funds to a mobile app project and how to make it impactful without crossing the budget.
Factors to Consider While Planning a Mobile App
In all projects, the top 5 factors that contribute to the decisions regarding the budget and planning of the mobile app are as follows.
- Use Case
- Target Audience / End-Users
- Technology
- Project Phase
- Business Model
1. Use Case - What problem are you solving?
| Uber solved the problem of getting around the town without having to
hunt for a cab.
Uber’s Use Case was
- Cabs On-Demand, wherein, users could book a cab from their mobile apps using map data.
Uber’s Key Objectives were
- Making cab bookings accessible to the user’s location.
- Distributing a cab booking to multiple drivers in that location.
- Generating a fair ride estimate.
Later on, Uber added a ton of added functionalities to their app, but to begin with, this is what they focussed on.
Having a clear use case that you can put in a two-line description is a good starting point for the Mobile App. Add a couple of Key Objectives around it to lock your vision around the idea, and you’ll get the foundation to start developing your mobile app.
Use Case is intrinsically related to the budget. The more complex use case you’ll target, the higher the budget will be. It’s similar to solving a math equation - the more variables you have, the more difficult it gets to keep track of things.
Examples of Use Cases
Simple - News, Mobile Tools, Photo-Editing, Survey, Lead Generation
Medium - Messaging, E-Commerce, Loan Calculator, Search, Support
Complex - Cab Booking, CRM, Mobile Wallet, Camera, Social Media
You can check out examples of each use case in our project portfolio section to get a better idea.
2. Target Audience / End-Users
| Snapchat’s target audiences are millennials and Gen Z who are between the ages of 15-34 and like socializing on the internet.
With use case comes the target audience. Because Snapchat is a social media app, it specifically targets the behaviour patterns and needs of the generations that like socializing on the internet.
This goes a long way in deciding what features a mobile app will include and which all will be discarded.
So, the first step after you have decided what problem you’ll solve is to find out who all are facing that problem. This is also called User Behaviour Study.
There are a lot of ways to conduct User Behaviour Study but we are not going into that in this article. The objective is to churn out required and desired features of the mobile app alongside the budget for each feature.
Here is a quick example.
Suppose you’re building an app that helps people shop shoes online. You have shortlisted these four User Behaviour points.
- Shoppers spend an average of $50 on shopping shoes online.
- 1 in 5 shoppers returns the shoes due to size misfit issues.
- Shoppers like exploring new brands in the market.
- Shoppers like trying shoes before they buy.
Using the above points, you create a Desired and Required Feature Table.
3. Technology
| BBC America uses Wordpress for their website because it’s easier to manage content with it.
Next comes the choice for technology. Thus far, the two dominating technologies for mobile app development are Android and iOS. A third special category is Hybrid Mobile App Development that can do both iOS and Android. Hence, the choices are;
- Only (Native) Android Mobile App
- Only (Native) iOS Mobile App
- Both (Hybrid) iOS and Android Apps
Native Mobile Apps cater to complex use cases well both in the case of iOS and Android. If you have a Use Case with too many variables or high-performance expectations, it is better to go for Native Mobile App Development.
Hybrid Mobile Apps cater to the simpler use cases that do usually perform one action at a time. These apps can be deployed to both Android and iOS simultaneously at the same time using a single code base.
4. Project Phase
| Slack which is a $3 billion company today started off as an outsourced software project.
What the above line means is that Slack didn’t have enough developers in-house to make their product come to life. They relied on IT outsourcing providers for help to complete their project. It actually is one of the smartest things to do for app development today.
Most startups first develop a Minimum Viable Product which demonstrates the core functionalities of the app with basic UX optimization to lure investors and release the full functioning App much later in the project.
Therefore, it’s necessary to Phase Your Project according to the supply for capital. Don’t go all guns blazing right from the start and believe in incremental upgrades to the project so that you can manage the costs efficiently.
5. Business Model
| Whatsapp was sold for $17 billion even when most of its users never really paid Whatsapp anything.
The business model is the melting pot of all the points we have covered so far. It includes balancing the costs that you have spent with the revenue streams you have decided for the app. The technology and project phase are all integrated into it.
Common Examples of Mobile App Business Models
- Sell Advertisement Space
In-App ads are one of the most widely used revenue models by individual developers as it is fairly successful. It works on the idea of publishing free-to-download apps that gather a large number of users over time, which establishes a sizeable advertisement space.
- Freemium Apps
The next best thing that you can do while keeping the app free to download is offering Freemium apps. This is the second most popular model used by developers and companies alike. You can offer the basic functionalities free for use and encourage users to opt for advanced features for a price.
- Paid Download Apps
Paid download apps simply mean selling your apps for a fee to the user at the time of download. The process is mostly regulated by App stores such as the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
- Apps as a Service
A number of apps are designed to work as a service for the users where they can carry out real-world trade or transactions. This model basically provides the apps as a platform to the users, wherein users pay for utilizing it.
Conclusion
Obviously, there is a lot more to explore in the mobile app development domain but reading up on the above points will give you a great advantage. You can plan in a much better way and make sure you don’t burn your capital too quickly and end up building nothing.
For more detailed advice, you can always contact us. We have built 50+ mobile apps and counting!
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Patrick TanEveryone Loves A Winner & Cryptocurrencies Are Winning Againobject(stdClass)#4253 (59) { ["id"]=> string(4) "5542" ["title"]=> string(60) "Everyone Loves A Winner & Cryptocurrencies Are Winning Again" ["alias"]=> string(58) "everyone-loves-a-winner-cryptocurrencies-are-winning-again" ["introtext"]=> string(190) "With the steady rise in cryptocurrency values in 2019, 2020 was a promising year for institutional interest in the nascent digital asset class.
" ["fulltext"]=> string(20010) "As prices of cryptocurrencies have risen, so has interest in investment.
When Adam Derschowitz was seven, he learned some hard lessons from his father, lessons which he could not understand at the time.
Derschowitz senior was a middle manager at a large oil services company located along the long oil-laden Gulf of Mexico but before that, he was a pro-football player for the now defunct Houston Oilers.
Derschowitz senior had been on the precipice of both sporting and financial glory before he was plagued by a series of injuries that saw him eventually sidelined and dropped.
Relegated to the drudgery of corporate middle management Derschowitz knew firsthand what it was like to be forgotten.
So when Derschowitz’s only son, Adam, showed some talent at football from a young age, the elder Derschowitz pushed his son in a manner that only someone with experience in professional sports could — hard and relentless.
And over time Adam started to resent his father for the constant browbeating, drubbings and strict adherence to discipline and schedule.
After a particularly grueling training session one day, the seven-year-old Adam, his body bruised and battered, choking back his tears, asked his father why he was so hard on him.
“Because this world only rewards winners. It only pays attention to winners. I could lie to you and tell you that it’s fair. It’s not.”
“People only care when you’re winning, they don’t care what you had to to do to get there. The sooner you learn this lesson, the better.”
Spring Thaw For A Crypto Winter
Which is why the present seems to be crypto’s moment again — because it’s winning.
While financial institutions were quite content to dance around digital assets over the last few years, put off by reputational risks, a lack of regulation and volatile returns — a spell of consistently better performance is piquing their interest in cryptocurrencies yet again.
Cryptocurrency funds dedicated to digital assets returned over 16% on average last year, according to a survey from Eurekahedge, versus traditional hedge fund strategies which delivered 10.4%, according to data from HFR.
To be sure, there were outliers in terms of performance across the board and averages can be misleading. But considering that cryptocurrency hedge funds focusing purely on digital assets deal in some of the most volatile assets on the planet, their returns far outshadowed those of their more traditional brethren, for which a far greater variety of risk-management tools exist.
And because Bitcoin now has a longer trading track record than say perhaps in 2017, it has consistently demonstrated a higher return on time horizons from 1 year to 10-years compared with any other asset class.
Yet these stellar results have not pushed financial institutions to jump in head first into digital assets — in particular because they’ve been here before and gotten burned.
Been There Done That Bought The Bitcoin
During the initial rush into cryptocurrencies in 2017, a move which saw Bitcoin rocket to over US$20,000, a plethora of banks launched projects to explore applications for Bitcoin’s underlying technology, blockchain as well as set up exploratory teams to investigate if eventual trading desks could be constructed around these nascent digital assets.
And while many of these initial projects stalled after the cryptocurrency crash of 2018, some such as JPMorgan’s JPM Coin persisted — JPM Coin allows blockchain-based internal payments between the bank’s clients — no financial institution has yet to set up a dedicated desk to trade cryptocurrencies on behalf of clients.
The reticence by legacy financial institutions to trade digital assets for clients led to a gap in the market, one that was quickly filled up by startup cryptocurrency hedge funds.
But these startup cryptocurrency hedge funds were faced with their own challenges — low levels of assets under management (AUM), forced founders to stump up many of the high hedge fund startup costs and the lack of adequate service providers proved just as challenging when trying to raise AUM.
Difficulties with procuring professional and financial services exacerbated the problem as well — access to fund administrators as well as auditors and accountants, who had yet to fully discover how to mark-to-market the nascent digital assets made the job of fledgling cryptocurrency hedge funds that much more tricky.
Then there was the issue of the undeveloped custody industry for cryptocurrencies as well — one which has seen a patchwork of solutions which till this day are evolving, but none of which are entirely satisfactory.
Not Ready Yet
To say that the piping to facilitate large scale adoption of cryptocurrency trading by financial institutions has been laid is premature, but it is certainly developing.
And as prices of cryptocurrencies rise, the plumbing that supports the traditional fund management industry has also risen to support this novel asset class.
According to one fund manager of a traditional hedge fund based in Hong Kong, which is exploring digital assets,
“What we’re seeing is increased client awareness that these assets can’t be pigeonholed to using the same set of services that we’re used to.”
“New assets call for new infrastructure.”
Already, new digital asset lending startups and those established by cryptocurrency mining rig manufacturing companies such as Bitmain, Ebang and Canaan have already moved into the emerging digital asset financial services space, offering a suite of products more commonly associated with Wall Street then Silicon Valley.
“We’re seeing crypto lending, crypto custody and perhaps eventually, the advent of the custodial service offerings found in financial markets — so that traders and investors need no longer site their digital assets with crypto exchanges, but can leverage custodized assets.”
And legacy financial institutions are taking notice, especially as digital assets start creeping into the traditional asset space.
A Deutsche Bank report published last month, noted that cryptocurrencies have “numerous advantages compared to traditional assets, which could lead more and more people to use (them).”
The German bank went even further, adding that plans by the People’s Bank of China, the Chinese central bank to issue its own digital currency could “erode the dollar’s primacy in the global financial market.”
The opinions expressed by the Deutsche Bank report stand in stark contrast to legendary investor Warren Buffett’s description of Bitcoin as “rat poison.”
But digital asset markets are not easily navigable, which is why it has led to substantial advantages for those with both access and expertise.
Professional Use Only
In early 2018, an employee at a large electronic trading firm claimed his company made as much as US$8 million a day, from capitalizing on price discrepancies in digital asset markets, where individual retail investors were pitting their wits against some of the most sophisticated electronic trading firms on hundreds of unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges.
But the high speed trading firms don’t always win out.
According to one cryptocurrency trader,
“There’s enough opportunities in the market and it’s decentralized enough that someone sitting in their parent’s basement in his underwear has just as good a chance of beating out someone sitting in Wall Street.”
Given the as yet untamed landscape of digital asset markets, that observation is still valid for now and is likely to persist for some time as unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges continue to play cat-and-mouse with regulators, jumping to more favorable jurisdictions at the drop of a Bitcoin candle.
And because cryptocurrency trading has been electronic from the get go, it was a natural fit for computer and algo-driven trading firms that make profits from buying and selling at speed.
High frequency trading (HFT) firm DRW for instance, established a dedicated cryptocurrency trading arm called Cumberland in the very early days, while other HFT powerhouses like Jane Street, Susquehanna, Flow Traders and Jump all followed suit soon after.
To be sure, to classify cryptocurrency trading as HFT would be misleading.
Most centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have rate limits that prevent excessive speed and trading volume to crash their servers and then there’s the issue of liquidity as well — there just isn’t as much of it to support HFT operations as there is in traditional financial markets.
For the most part, HFT in the cryptocurrency markets is more akin to “HFT-ish” and many HFT firms actually make their profits through market making, especially in the most liquid digital assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple and of course the world’s most favorite stablecoin — Tether (which is supposedly backed by dollars).
The Future Is Short
Adopting a “hybrid” approach to what is a rapidly evolving and developing market, veteran CME Group launched the world’s first regulated Bitcoin futures on a Bitcoin index as early as December 2017 — a factor which many suggest was the catalyst for sending Bitcoin prices soaring past US$20,000.
But the euphoria of institutional participation in digital asset markets in 2017 was premature — CME’s Bitcoin futures were cash settled, creating zero actual demand for the underlying digital asset they represented.
And worse, CME’s Bitcoin futures allowed traders to do something in a regulated space that was hitherto unavailable — short Bitcoin.
Considering that Bitcoin has no underlying asset to back it, except the very code which it is built on, traders saw the opportunity to short Bitcoin, which quickly sent the cryptocurrency’s dollar value plummeting, leading to 2018 becoming what many in the industry termed “crypto winter.”
Until CME’s Bitcoin futures came out, family offices and private individuals who were holding onto Bitcoin were lending it out to hedge funds to make short bets and charging handsomely for the privilege.
But when CME’s Bitcoin futures product came out, that carry trade quickly evaporated and for hedge funds waiting to short Bitcoin, it was off to the races.
Yet if 2018 was the so-called “crypto winter” then 2019 would be the “crypto spring.”
Because as large trading firms started expanding into cryptocurrencies, trading patterns started shifting as well.
Instead of arbitraging pricing inefficiencies and discrepancies, HFT-ish firms were now looking to supply prices to exchanges where most retail clients were trading and to make money from the BID / ASK spread on cryptocurrency exchanges — in other words, market making.
And to maintain those large amounts of liquidity for cryptocurrency exchanges, these market makers often negotiated deals for Bitcoin privately among themselves, in the opaque OTC or “over-the-counter” markets.
Some market makers are even known to share liquidity pools, allowing them to operate more efficiently.
If It Looks Like A Duck And It Quacks Like a Duck
For many ex-foreign exchange traders, cryptocurrency trading resembles the foreign exchange markets of the 1980s. According to one Singapore-based forex trader,
“There’s a lot of fuss over Bitcoin, but if you look at the trading pairs, they’re just like typical foreign exchange pairs.”
“BTC / USDT, ETH / USDT, resemble dollar / yen and dollar / pound.”
“The market may not be as developed as forex, but that’s why the profits are there. Forex isn’t what it used to be.”
The observation pans out because although costs for services such as custody have come down, as have trading spreads, they are still much higher compared with the markets for traditional financial assets.
But gaps in digital asset trading services still exist, such as the absence of clearing houses and affordable insurance, which has put off some mainstream financial institutions.
“What we need is a paradigm shift. We can’t expect to fit new assets into old molds.”
“Things like custodians, clearing houses — these are based on the assumption of a centralized financial market system — but the very nature of digital assets is decentralization.”
“The system infrastructure should embrace decentralization, using it as a means to reduce friction and cost, instead of raising new and unnecessary barriers.”
But the involvement of centralized intermediaries may be hard to avoid, at least in the medium term.
As bank profits start to become whittled away through low interest rates, increasing automation and thinning margins, it’s only a matter of time before they spy for themselves an opportunity acting as intermediaries between digital asset brokers, clients and market makers.
And while most investors recognize that the heady days of thousand-plus-percent returns from cryptocurrency hedge funds is probably over and unlikely to be repeated, many still see plenty of opportunities.
According to one family office manager,
“We’re looking at high double digits, maybe even triple-digit returns.”
But as time goes by and more institutional investors pour into cryptocurrencies, it’s only a matter of time before returns start to “normalize” to levels similar to other asset classes.
For now at least, most managers agree that there’s a good three to five years of very profitable trading, anything beyond that lies in the realm of clairvoyance.
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Kevin GardnerHow To Protect Your Cell Phone From Cyber Security Threatsobject(stdClass)#4726 (59) { ["id"]=> string(4) "5539" ["title"]=> string(58) "How To Protect Your Cell Phone From Cyber Security Threats" ["alias"]=> string(58) "how-to-protect-your-cell-phone-from-cyber-security-threats" ["introtext"]=> string(159) "Most people use their cell phone without much thought of security. That’s because it’s not really a topic of conversation until something happens.
" ["fulltext"]=> string(4305) "It’s easier to comprehend security issues with a laptop or PC than a cell phone. As it turns out, there are nearly as many threats to your cell phone as there are any other device. As a result, you’ll need to take measures aimed at keeping your phone safe.
Antivirus Software
Antivirus software serves the purpose of protecting your phone from an attack that can occur when browsing websites or downloading apps. It’s possible for your phone’s operating system to be infected if there are weaknesses that have not been protected with antivirus software. Depending on how many devices you have, it could be worth your time to find an antivirus software package that protects multiple devices.
When doing your research, steer clear of antivirus software that’s fake and aimed at making you think you’re protecting your phone when you’re actually creating a vulnerability. The use of 5G technology can also help. What is 5g technology? It's fifth generation wireless cell phone technology that was designed for greater speed and security.
Screen Lock
Most people are familiar with screen lock, even if they don’t use it. While it only takes a few seconds to add and use a screen lock, some people find it inconvenient. This is a mistake because those few seconds can save you a lot more time that will be spent if your phone is stolen and all of your personal information is compromised. If you already use a screen lock, make sure your password is complex. The number of people that use codes like 1234 or 3333 might surprise you. The goal is to make sure the code is not easy to crack.
When setting your screen lock, you should also enable the remote tracking app, which is available on most devices. If you have an iPhone, it’s called ‘Find my iPhone.’ If you have an Android, it’s called ‘Find my Device.’ This feature can be a lifesaver when your phone is lost or stolen. You'll also be able to disable your phone so that it cannot be used.
Download Features
As the number of people using smartphones have increased, so has the amount of malware. As a result, when downloading apps, you’ll have to be careful. There are apps available that can examine what you are about to download and provide alerts when there is a potential problem.
Remote Data Wiping
Imagine someone stealing your phone and then you all of a sudden realize that they now have access to all of your passwords and personal information. Then imagine being able to wipe the data out remotely so that they have the phone but not your personal information. This can be a lifesaver and provide you with peace of mind that can very easily be lost when a complete stranger has sensitive information.
Storage Features
If you really think about the power that’s contained within your phone, you’ll probably find it amazing, because it is. Whether you have an iPhone or an Android, you have a small computer in the palm of your hand. Most devices can carry a significant amount of data and that information can be easily compromised if you don’t take the right measures.
It’s best to protect your data by using software that will encrypt your folders and files. This means you would have to use a password to view certain files. While it will add a few seconds to the amount of time it takes to view files, it’s well worth the extra time since it can prevent the theft of sensitive information.
In addition to having the right apps installed on your phone, you must also have good habits and practices. Although you can store a lot of information on your phone, that doesn’t mean you should. It's best to store data from your phone using cloud technology.
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That’s because it’s not really a topic of conversation until something happens." 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Vasilii ChekalovWill Virtual Reality Travel Kill the Travel Industry?object(stdClass)#4727 (59) { ["id"]=> string(4) "5535" ["title"]=> string(53) "Will Virtual Reality Travel Kill the Travel Industry?" ["alias"]=> string(52) "will-virtual-reality-travel-kill-the-travel-industry" ["introtext"]=> string(219) "Traveling the world is a dream for many of us. It broadens your horizons because it allows you to interact with a completely new culture. Unfortunately, it’s also a costly exercise and so not always possible.
" ["fulltext"]=> string(3186) "What if you could have the same experience without leaving your living room? What if you could take a virtual tour instead? Would you spend the money on the plane ticket and accommodation and battle the crowds? Or would you opt for private tours that offer a more personalized experience?
In this post, we’ll discuss whether or not virtual reality travel could kill the travel industry.
How the Tourism Industry Uses VR
It’s hard not to think back to the holodecks on Star Trek when considering virtual travel. We’re nowhere near that level of technology yet, but perhaps we might be one day. For now, businesses in the tourism industry have to stick to VR programs and virtual tours on a smaller scale.
Currently, the hospitality industry is starting to use VR in its marketing. This could be in the form of showing off their facilities or showing off a major attraction in the city. It’s a very powerful form of marketing because people can see what they’re getting.
The Case for VR Travel
- The primary benefit would be a reduction in costs. You don’t have to worry about food, accommodation, or buying gifts for the people at home.
- It’s not crowded. A VR tour of a museum, for example, would be filmed in optimal conditions when the museum is quiet. You don’t have to wait in line for hours for tickets or for your turn to see the Mona Lisa.
- You don’t need shots or pills. Instead of dosing yourself against malaria before your African safari, you can relax and enjoy the experience.
- The weather is always perfect. Tours filmed out of doors will also be shot in the best conditions.
- There are no long flights to endure and no rushing to catch up with tour buses.
- You can enjoy a more dangerous experience safely. Say, for example, that you wanted to see Syria. At the moment, it’s a no-go area because of the war. Now, granted, the scenery now would be horrific. If you’re interested, though, you could “travel” there without leaving home.
The Case for Real Travel
VR travel is appealing but is it really a replacement for the real thing. Yes, you’ll get to experience the sites, but in a fairly boring way. Bad weather, unexpected delays, and comradery all help to enliven the travel experience.
VR can’t possibly trump the thrill of experiencing the smells and sounds of a new city. It can’t replicate the vibe out amongst the people. VR can let you see another culture in action, but it can’t let you be part of it.
Will VR Kill Real Travel?
Looking at the way the industry is heading, we’d say it will enhance it. Tourists today are looking for authentic experiences. They’re working with private tours so that they don’t have to have the same experience everyone else does.
A VR trip might be convenient, but it’s going to be too generic. Overall, therefore, it’s unlikely that VR will kill real travel at this stage. If anyone ever comes up with a functional Star Trek holodeck, though, that could well change.
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It broadens your horizons because it allows you to interact with a completely new culture. Unfortunately, it’s also a costly exercise and so not always possible." 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Vasilii ChekalovThe 7 Secrets of Viral Marketingobject(stdClass)#4728 (59) { ["id"]=> string(4) "5534" ["title"]=> string(32) "The 7 Secrets of Viral Marketing" ["alias"]=> string(32) "the-7-secrets-of-viral-marketing" ["introtext"]=> string(206) "Professional poker players don’t win every hand; they don’t even win half the hands they take part in. But they are long-term winners. So how do they do it?
" ["fulltext"]=> string(10991) "Long-term winners know their statistics and have honed their strategies in such a way that makes the random seem predictable.
The same goes for virality. No one can predict what will go viral and what will not. However, those who can deconstruct what virality is, and examine how viral content works, have a higher chance to become viral.
Enter viral marketing - and its seven secrets.
1. Stay Ahead of the Curve with these Tools
Tools are important, so it’s time to upgrade your toolkit and know what is going around the hood.
So here are a few tools to get you started!
Well, have you ever wondered what could be trending right now? I think we got the answer for you. In fact, this is not only about marketing trends but what people are into right now in general.
Focusing closely on why something is going viral will play a big role in your viral marketing success.
As Douglas Van Praet -author- wrote in Fast Company:
The most startling truth is we don’t even think our way to logical solutions. We feel our way to reason. Emotions are the substrate, the base layer of neural circuitry underpinning even rational deliberation. Emotions don’t hinder decisions. They constitute the foundation on which they’re made!
This is a Viral News aggregator that has news that is mostly shared on social media. If something is shared on social media, then probably you, as a marketer, need to give it your attention.
It does not matter if it’s silly. Content like that is exactly what your viral marketing campaigns need.
Similar to the website mentioned above, Popurls is a news aggregator that features the most shared pieces of content from all the major news platforms.
Undoubtedly, video is one of the dominant content forms right now.
According to video producer Garth Haley, 87% of online marketers use video content.
The video format is the king of formats right now - and will probably stay that way for the next few years.
Snip.ly is a very sneaky way to be in the spotlight and boost your own viral marketing campaign at the same time.
So, first, you have to find some Viral content. Then, you can promote said content, but what Snip.ly does is adding a CTA button that leads back to your own content! Wow.
2. Figure Out & Segment Your Target Audience
Viral Marketing means finding the “right” people, who like the “right” content so much that they want to share it with their friends. Therefore, in the beginning, you need to focus on segmenting your customers. Remember, it takes no more than a smaller number of think-alike people to ignite a viral-boom.
You can base your segmenting according to parameters and qualities such as:
- Demographics
- Geography
- Type of customer
- Psychographics
- Lifestyles
Try experimenting with those and see what works best for you and your business.
In fact, you can:
- Post different times throughout the day
- Experiment with different pieces of content & promotions of your product
- Use features like Global Pages on Facebook
- Use paid ads
With good research on your industry, metrics from all the above, and a little bit of intuition, you will be ready to start injecting virality into your life - or rather let the right people inject it.
3. Use An All-in-One Viral Marketing Platform
Is there such a thing as a ‘viral marketing platform’? Yes, there is!
Viral Loops is the most popular platform which made viral itself for the first time in Product hunt, where it took place among the top tech products (the other ones being slack & Snapchat).
So what does Viral Loops do?
Viral Loops allows you to build quickly and easily referral campaigns. These campaigns come in the form of sweepstakes, giveaways, and competitions. It is these campaigns what incentivizes people to share their participation via social media, Messenger or email and get their friends into the fun as well to increase their chances to win
It’s a great tool for mouth-to-mouth campaigns, and it’s also known for its user-friendliness, its customizability, and its insights and reports it can give you.
4. The Skyscraper Technique
If you know about SEO, you know Brian Dean.
Brian Dean and this team at Backlinko are responsible for some of the most thorough guides and case studies in the marketing and SEO world.
One of these case studies was back in 2016 called The Skyscraper Technique. It’s one of the best case studies out there, and it’s about Brian managing to generate 17,584 visitors in one day with Viral Marketing.
Two years later, he came up with The Skyscraper Technique v2.0.
In short, the technique involves finding a successfully published piece of content and then proceed to:
- Upgrade with it other sources as well
- Add your own value & experience
- Change the visual(s) of the content to match your own style and identity
- Different title based on keyword research
- SEO optimization
There are many ways you can do this, but I would strongly suggest going for the following tools that you might recognize - especially if you are an SEO freak. These tools will help you find the most shared content, keyword ideas, etc.
- Buzzsumo
- Google Search (duh!)
- OpenSiteExplorer
For example, in the case of Buzzsumo, you enter the keyword which you want to aim for, and what you get are the most shared content pieces. Then, you can crossover your results with Google search and even use a backlink explorer, like Moz or Ahrefs, to see which keywords some sites ranked for.
5. Emotions can be as Sweet as Coconut Flavored Chocolate
Emotion brings attention, and attention brings virality.
There are a plethora of emotions, such as:
- Amazement
- Curiosity
- Humour
- Interest
- Admiration
People are more likely to share emotionally-charged content. But what if I told you that you could emotionally charge someone not only by the content itself but also through the way you present it?
One of the best ways to achieve that is through headlines. Be creative with your titles, and try to make your audience feel something. Also, keep in mind that a lot of people share a piece of content just by the headline - and without even opening it.
A study from the Washington Post reveals that 6 in 10 people will share a piece of content just by reading the headline.
Most of us do judge a book by its cover, it seems.
6. Distribution & Timing
Distribution of the content is as important as the content per se.
Increasing your reach organically or otherwise should be a top priority.
There are 3 time-based criteria:
- Time of day
- Specific Day of week
- Around Certain Eventful periods
The folks over at TrackMaven have an amazing guide, which sheds some light on when to post and give tips that brake down to 75 industries.
Last but not least, when it comes to distribution, remember to always use all possible channels and outlets. There’s more than Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram:
- Email Marketing
- Social
- Widgets within site
- Paid Advertisement
- Affiliates
- Communities
7. Make your Content Downloadable
Ok, we all get that our content needs to be shareable. If you use Wordpress, then you can find a lot of plugins that can help you with that - with share buttons and the like
But why does your content need to be downloadable in the first place?
Giving the option to users to download and share your content via PDFs can be a powerful lead magnet. This becomes even more important if your content has the potential to go viral.
Not only that, but you can use PDF downloads to grow your mailing list.
Conclusion
Viral Marketing is, in fact, something that we all aim for, whether we are in the B2B or B2C sector. Time has changed indeed, but word of mouth is still alive and kicking. So you better know how to take advantage of that.
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