According to Statista, as of the third quarter of 2019, there were 2.47 million Android apps on Google play. Elsewhere, the Apple App store had over 1.8 million applications for iOS. 

In the light of these statistics, it is evident that there are tons of applications for users to choose from, meaning fierce competition for app developers across the planet. Therefore, to cut through the noise and attract as many users as possible, any application available on the market should offer an array of useful features. These provisions will make it a better option among others, thus boosting use, user loyalty, and engagement.  

List of 5 Essential Features for Any Social Media App

What features can you include in your social media app to ensure optimal use and best performance? Here is a round-up of the must-have characteristics for any well-performing application.

Authorization

Whenever a new user downloads and installs an app, it is essential to create an account. It can either be by using email or social media account. The latter is an ideal option if the person you want to sign up is important. It is also an excellent way to go since it is a less time-consuming approach. That being said, your authorization process will heavily depend on how you feel about linking a social media platform to your business/ individual application. 

There are several benefits to implementing social media authorization. One is that it helps businesses acquire users’ networks, thus assisting the brands in avoiding the creation of in-app user networks from scratch. Moreover, this form of authorization enables a business to acquire essential details from users such as email addresses, profile photographs, likes, and so forth. 

Customizable User Profile

Brands that allow their users to personalize their profiles establish better connections. Some of the ways that businesses can facilitate this are by enabling users to write their brief biographies, upload images, etc. 

Allowing users to customize their profiles comes with its advantage. See, by giving a specific user a name and a corresponding profile image, other members of the community will view the brand as more credible. In turn, this will make the brand approachable, thereby increasing the use of its associated applications. 

An excellent example of an application where this plays out is Yelp. By availing images and biographies of its users, this business-reviewing application gives more credibility to any feedback provided on the platform. 

With that cleared out, it is essential to appreciate that customization options should not be limited to the profile. Instead, your users should be in a position to edit other aspects of their accounts, for instance, add/ edit their community, add/ unfriend people, etc. If you want an application with this capability, be sure to hire a reputable developer to create a social network app for you. This way, you can give your app’s users more freedom to tweak their account settings to match their preferences.

“Follow” or “Friend” Functions

An excellent social media application should allow its users to connect. For this reason, you have to provide a feature that enables users to befriend and follow others. Contrary to what you might think, this capability is useful to applications even if they are not meant for socializing. 

Music applications such as SoundCloud and Spotify enable their users to befriend and follow others. In turn, this allows them to share tracks as well as know what tunes their connections are enjoying. 

When your social media application users can make friends and follow each other, they will become more attached to it. As such, they will want to keep using your app over and over. Moreover, by facilitating connections on your application, you get to understand your users better by examining the people they interact with and how they are familiar with each other. After that, you can incorporate a “suggest” functionality that allows your users to make more friends or followers based on their existing networks. 

News Feed

With a newsfeed, you will keep all of your users engaged. See, given that a majority of social media application users want to always be in the know, they will not mind an opportunity to access any content shared by their friends or followers. 

In line with that, if you have an application that helps users with exercise or dieting, you can integrate a news feed feature. It will enable your users to share their milestones, make relevant inquiries, and offer suitable recommendations. By doing this, you will make using your app more of a fun activity than simply watching weight. 

Push Notifications

Some applications perform way better when compared to others since they have features that bring the users back when being closed. These features are what we refer to as push notifications. By integrating them into your social media application, you can reach out to your audience more frequently and also increase retention. 

With this option, you can send notifications to users whenever there are new deals, sales, and so forth. This way, you will prompt your users to open your application. You can also send push notifications when a follower or friend responds to what a user did on the application. Consequently, this will make them either comment or like the response. 

Another thing you can do with push notifications is to remind your users to share your application with their friends or family. This way, you can help your business grow organically. 

Final Words

For success in social media application development, there is a need to pay attention to the features that keep users engaged. You have to conduct exhaustive research to identify the functionalities that most people like across various applications. In this case, it is particularly important to focus on your niche to avoid creating apps that do not appeal to your target demographic. 

To sum it up, the features covered in this article will go a long way in helping you develop the ideal social media application. It is understandable since most of the best-performing applications on the market today have these characteristics in common. So, the next time you want to create an app, or in case you already have one, you should consider integrating these features.