Creating a Social Media App in 2022

Want to create a social media app but don’t know where to start? Before asking this question, you should ask yourself if the public needs this app. This is one of the most burning questions that could make anyone change their mind about creating an app or change the idea they have in their mind.

If the answer is positive, you can begin looking for how to make a social media app from scratch. Vizteck is guiding you step by step in creating a social networking site and addressing your related concerns.

Let’s dive into the steps required to follow for creating a social media app.

What is your app idea? Elaborate on it and make sure that it is making sense if launched in the market. To ensure this you should have a complete understanding of the idea itself and then do in-depth market research.

To create an app from scratch, you should understand the competition that is there in the market. You are required to know the quality your competitors are offering and how you are going to be on top along with identifying your potential users. Look for features your audience likes and things your competitors lack in their apps.

Since you have thoroughly studied your app idea, done the competitive analysis, and identified your target audience, you should start working on analyzing the requirements, studying your target audience, and identifying key performance indicators which you want to achieve. This will help you develop a unique niche for your app. In this step, also devise certain strategies that you will use to grow and engage your audience.

Also Read: How To Make An Android App From Scratch

For creating a successful social networking app, it is important that the app is well-received by its users and has the potential to be profitable. For doing so, you are required to choose a business model for your app that ensures the long-term growth of your app and profit generation. Two of the commonly used model for creating social media apps are:

Premium Model

This type of app model allows its users to sign up for free along with access to multiple standard features. However, certain premium features are available too, giving access only to paying members. LinkedIn is an example of a freemium model app that gives access to its certain features to paying members only like InMail and job-matching services.

Advertising Model

This model is for those apps which rely on advertising to generate revenue. Examples of such social networking apps are Facebook and Instagram. In such apps, the strategy is to increase the user base and use a data-driven approach to target the audience with ads relevant to them.

Social media apps collect users' personal information like name, age, gender, location, and interests to be attractive to their advertisers. However, the amount advertisers are willing to pay to an app owner is dependent on their traffic volume.

Once you start working on your app, there come a lot of ideas to your mind about features and functions that you can implement. To get practical, you are expected to check your budget, your limitations, and your development skills before doing so.

For that, you first need to think about what you want your users to do on your app. Some ideas related to it are:

• Do you want your users to post updates on their profiles? If yes, then decide who can post on the news feed. If all the users will be getting this feature or selective ones?
• Do you want to provide your users with options to like, comment, and reshare posts to enhance engagement?
• What kind of content will you allow your users to post? How will users get to see that content?
• Is your app going to be a private app or anyone with access to the internet can download and use it?
• What security measures will be taken by you to ensure the online safety and security of your users?
• Will you link your app to any other social media platforms to increase your reach?
• Will your app allow its users to create their profiles?
• Will you utilize geolocation features to ensure a more personalized experience for your user?

Also Read: How To Make An IOS App From Scratch

Once you are done outlining all the main features of your app, now is the time to start designing and developing your social media app. There are several steps to it:

Sketching

This is the outline for your future application. It accesses the future logic of your app, the screens it will have and the interaction between them.

Wireframing

It is an important step in designing your app and is known as the skeleton of an app and helps in visualizing how your social networking app will look. It provides you with a structured app view and the experience it will give to its users.

Read More About Wireframing: What Is Wireframing And Why You Need It?

Prototyping

The prototype is a working model of your app which works for users as well as the developers in understanding your app properly. The reason to do prototyping is that editing an idea is easy compared to editing an app after its coding is done.

Design Skins

This is the step where you will convert the wireframing of your app into a social app design. Here, you will be studying existing solutions, going through current market trends, and UI/UX design.

Once done with designing your social media app, now is the time to start developing it. In this step, you are expected to take into consideration if you are creating a social media app available for iOS or Android users or both. It is because both of these operating systems use different technological stacks.

If you are using a SaaS solution, there is no need for you to worry about this step. However, if you are making a social media app from scratch, the development stage is going to be very time-consuming and expensive. To avoid too much expense and time consumption, it is required you to make your outline and design as clear as you can.

Also Read: Agile Scrum - A Methodology Guide For Developers

To provide your users with a seamless experience, it is a must for your app to be bug-free. To ensure this, quality assurance engineers are there to conduct complete testing of your app. If any bug or error is found, it is packed into a bug report by them to send to the developers to quickly remove them.

Here comes the time when you will publish your social media app and reach a wider audience, start thinking about your marketing needs. How will your app get available to its users? How will they download it? What will be your approach to ensure that your users get to have the best time? How will you promote it?

There is a wide range of analytical tools available to you which will help you access your app's success. While doing so, you must look into how much time your users are spending on your app, how much time they use it in a week, what their engagement level is, and so on.

Analyzing these areas will help you in the future to do changes required to enhance user engagement on your app.

Also Read: Best Databases To Use For Android, IOS, and Web Development

How Long Does It Take To Create A Social Media App?

There is no such definite amount of time to create one. However, it could roughly take 0 to 12 months with an approx of 450 development hours to include features. The times could even vary depending on the skills and expertise of the developer.

Can I Create My Social Media App?

Anyone can create a social media app but to have a successful one, it is required to have a unique idea that does not exist in the market. At Vizteck Solutions, we can work to provide you with our services for new ideas or add-ons to existing web versions.

What Ensures The Success Of A Social Networking App?

The best and most successful apps are those which are straightforward to use in terms of posting a picture, sending a message, or resharing something.