Build A Social Media App In 10 Easy Steps!

Krishi Shivasangaran Published On April 8th, 2024 Tech Talks

Hello developers! Are you planning to build the next big social media app for users around the world? Well, we are here to help! In this blog post, we will look into the quick and easy steps to build an app for social networking purposes.

Furthermore, we’ll walk you through the key elements, factors, and strategies that will go into creating a social media app that your users will love!

The Market Scenario Of Social Media Apps

It’s common these days to find a social media app coming with any smartphone you buy. In fact, a report by Smartinsights claims that almost 59% of the world’s population uses social media and the average time spent per day is more than 2 hours. As true as it sounds, the numbers clearly reflect the growing landscape of these networking apps and the need for modern features in them. 

In other words, although Facebook, Twitter or Instagram are most commonly used social media apps, users are open to welcome new and modern applications as years roll. The finest examples among them include Discord, Tiktok and Clubhouse that have their own strategy for attracting users with different interests.

So now that you know there is an ocean of opportunities in social networking app development, let’s quickly look into the steps to build one right away!

10 Simple Steps To Build A Social Media App!

Developing a chat app is simple and easy if clearly planned and executed. In order to make the process smooth and effortless, we’ve boiled down the complete development process into simple steps below: 

Step 1: Define the purpose of your social media app

A social media app can be built with different goals and purposes. It can include communication, information sharing, networking or purely entertainment. So, firstly it is necessary to decide on which sole purpose your app will be built for. 

Step 2: Identify your target audience

On deciding the purpose of your app, it is now easy to define the audience that your app will cover. You’ll need to keenly consider the age, interest, demography and various other factors to define the set of customers your app will serve. This ensures perfect clarity and focus on how to build a social media app for the group of users.

Step 3: Perform customer mapping

After defining the type of audience for your app,  you’ll need to prepare a full layout of the customer journey. This way you can identify each touchpoint on your app that will attract and retain a larger user base down the lane.

Step 4: List out the right features

In my opinion, it is best to have a short yet the best list of features on your app rather than having a whole pack of unwanted/unreliable features. All that your app users will need is a good number of interesting and usable features like in-app chat, image sharing, video calling, voice calling, and more.

Step 5: Make the build or buy decision

There are 2 different ways in which you can build your social media apps – you can either build it from scratch or use pre-built SDKs to build a complete app in minutes. You’ll need to carefully consider the pros and cons of both options by relating it to your requirements before arriving at a decision. However, I’d recommend you to go for the latter to add video, voice, and chat SDKs to easily build a social media app with minimal effort and time. 

Step 6: Choose the right tech stack 

Tech stacks are typically the backbone of your apps and that is why it is super-important to choose what’s optimal for your requirement. The right tech stack lets you flexibly scale as your app grows and secure user information at all levels. Also, both the front-end and back-end frameworks you choose must be able to smoothly implement the features you’d include in the future. 

Step 7: Design Your App’s UI

An intuitive and user-friendly interface does half the job of attracting, engaging, and retaining users on your app. You can either use our chat UI Kit or hire a professional visual designer to achieve greater results. On comparing both options, the latter is much more reliable and cost-effective. 

Step 8: Implement Agile Development Methodology

Once all the prerequisites for the app development is set up, it is time to define the process with supreme consistency. So, we’ll call upon the agile methodology to define sprints for each stage and phase. This way, your social media app development will happen without any mishaps or confusion. 

Step 9: Test Your App

No one likes to use an app that crashes. This is why you need to test every feature and functionality of your app before you make it to the big release. 

Step 10: Launch Your App

Once you are done with the testing and know that it is completely error/bug-free, it is time to take your social media app to the world. Go ahead and launch it on the Google play store or Apple App Store and reach millions of audiences around the world.

 

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Tech Stacks For Building A Social Media App

There are various technology stacks you can use to build a social media app. Here are some popular ones:

Backend	Database	Frontend
Node.js with Express.js framework Ruby on Rails PHP with Laravel or Symfony framework Python with Django or Flask framework	MySQL PostgreSQL MongoDB Cassandra	React.js Angular.js Vue.js

Cloud Service Providers:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Heroku

Other Tools and Services:

• Redis (for caching)
• Kafka (for message queueing)
• Elasticsearch (for search functionality)
• MirrorFly (for messaging, video, and voice features)

Smart Ways To Monetize Your Social Media App

Social media apps are one of the most important sources of monetizing brands and businesses these days. In this aspect, you can use your social media app to generate revenue in different ways:

• In-app Advertising: Display ads to targeted audiences/specific groups in the form of banners, sponsored posts, and native ads.

• Freemium Model: Avail basic features for free and monetize the premium features on your social media app.

• Subscription Model: Provide access to exclusive content via a monthly or yearly. subscription.

• Affiliate Marketing: Promote businesses and earn a commission out of it.

Conclusion

Coming to the end, this blog post discussed the steps to build a social media app, the tech stacks needed and the effortless ways to generate revenue out of it.

However, it is important to remember that building a social media app is not a one-time event; it requires constant iteration, testing, and improvement to meet the ever-changing needs and preferences of your users.

Hoping this article helped you, we’d love to hear feedback and queries on the comments below. And, my team and I would be happy to do the necessary research and get back to you with the right solutions!

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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