Social media integration can mean a lot of different things for mobile game developers. Discover some considerations and potential benefits social media integration can give you, your team, and your game development.What Does Social Media Integration Mean to Mobile Game Developers?One of the great things about social media integration is it can fit any of several definitions. For mobile game developers, social media integration can mean using social media:
As a marketing tool
To create, build, and foster a community around your game
As a central hub for all activity concerning your game
To add social features to your game
To take advantage of the platform’s analytic and growth tools
Social media integration can offer your mobile game a plethora of built-in benefits you can leverage in a number of ways. These days, the largest social media organizations want you to integrate their platforms into not just your game, but the entire ecosystem surrounding your game.To this end, many social media companies have tools at the ready to help you market, manage, collect data, and make things easier for your users. Even without implementing social media integration directly into your game, you will still likely use one or more social media platforms for your game and your game’s community.What Does Social Media Integration Bring to the Table?Your social media integration will look different from the next developer’s. However, you can easily see what social media integration at every level can potentially provide.Social Media Provides a Platform to Communicate and ConnectThe number of people who use social media around the globe number in the billions. A large chunk of the US population uses social media. Even better, many of those people go online through their mobile devices, so your potential audience is already right where you want them.Through social media, you can find an audience of interested people and easily engage them. You can connect with people everywhere who may want to know more about your game, your brand, or you.Use social media as a platform to connect to people and have people connect to your game. In some ways, the platform can become an important aspect of your game. You can integrate that social media platform into the game itself so you or your users can seamlessly bridge the gap between the game and its platform.You can also use social media to bridge other gaps by using social media integration everywhere. For example, you can connect your website or blog to your social media platforms, and have them all connect to your game in one way or another. You and your audience will have a means of communication not hampered by disparate channels.Social Media Provides Incredible Marketing OpportunitiesMany social media sites offer highly niche or specialized audiences, which can help you find those special people who will become your core market and ideal marketing targets. Social media platforms and features provide people with a way to share your game and information about your game with others.As you fine-tune your marketing strategy, your core audience can spread the word about your game. Just having a presence on the right social media platforms can increase brand awareness and reach.Many social media platforms also offer diagnostics, analytics, and other tools to help you make sense of the audience you gather on the platform. These tools will give you what you need to figure out how to leverage the platform best. You can sometimes integrate these tools into your game to give you even more insight into your game’s users.Social Media Provides the Means to Make a Better ProductThrough social media, you will have a close relationship with your audience. You can use these social media platforms and tools to grant better customer satisfaction, as well as to take in customer feedback. Incorporating these features into your game can also help you gain valuable information about user experience, sometimes in real time.With the feedback and communication, you can learn what your game uses really want, shore up issues with your game far quicker, and generally deliver a better gaming experience. You can also use social media to give people what they want.For example, many social media platforms feature streaming and video functions. If your users want an easy way to share their gaming victories, then integrating one of those video-sharing features can help to keep them happy and playing.All these things can help you gain and retain users, do more with your monetization efforts, and build a better game. Social media integration for development, marketing, or as in-game features can do a lot for mobile game developers, but these features are only a part of the bigger picture.Xsolla partners with mobile game developers from indie to enterprise to build, market, integrate, and monetize their games. If you want your game to reach the right audience in the right way, contact us today.
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