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Mobile Apps

Tips for an Effective Content Strategy

Once you get your mobile app up and running, it might be tempting to move on to the next big initiative for your organization, but we'd say, "hold on a minute...what's your strategy for keeping your audience engaged in your app?" The app creation and promotion stage is largely completed, now it's time to develop your content strategy.

Engaging content is going to make up a large part of your strategy for maximum engagement with your audience, here are a few tips for getting started:

1. Know (or come to know) your Audience

You might think this one is a given, but have you really considered what your community's mobile habits are? What about identifying common pain points that you might be able to address with helpful content? 

Going through a few exercises can you help you both nail down your audience's mobile habits, and find out what kind of content would be most relevant to them. Using your existing tools, like website analytics can help you answer some of these questions. Also, once you start to see some initial engagement in your app, our new and improved analytics in the Subsplash Dashboard will give you great visibility into your community's behaviors in your app!

2. Be Consistent

It can take some time to ramp up interest and adoption for your app. If you want to see continued growth for downloads and impressions it's important to remain consistent with the content you share. One helpful way to keep track of this is in a content calendar. There's plenty of free templates out there to get you started. You might want to start small with one blog post per month, and then scale it to three or four over time. But consistency is key. Publishing something on the same day of the week gives your community something to count on and look forward to. 

Once you start to learn what kind of content resonates best with your audience, you can start creating and sharing helpful blog posts, podcast episodes, and other great resources, and use your app to put them at your community's fingertips. And don't forget to leverage push notifications to let your community know when something new is live in the app!

3. Choose Quality over Quantity

Sometimes consistency can come at the expense of quality, but your audience has so much content at their disposal, and limited time. To help your community gravitate towards your content, you have to earn their trust by providing high-quality resources and on-brand messaging every time.

We'd love to help you get your mobile strategy off the ground. Get in touch with us about creating an app for your organization! And stay tuned for part 2 of this series!

Engage your Community this Fall

When church attendance declines during the summer months because of heavy travel, churches implement different strategies to keep their congregations connected. Having a strategy in place can help keep communities engaged and connected to the life of the church.

Something that is equally, if not more important, is having a plan in place for when attendance starts to rise again in the fall. As new people come through your church doors, and members return, there are new opportunities to help people feel connected and engaged right away.

“Going mobile” with your communication strategy can add numerous benefits to your church, and creating a mobile app can help you can engage your community in new ways. As attendance rises and people want more information about your church, here are some features you could include in your app to help people feel connected before they even set foot in the sanctuary:

1. Include an “Information” or “About Us” tab to help people learn about you before they even attend a service

 
 

2. Help your congregation track along with the week’s events with a “Weekly Bulletin” feature

 
 

 

3. Let people familiarize themselves with your church’s team by including a “Staff Directory” feature

 
 


4. Make sure newcomers can quickly and easily get to your church with a “Maps” feature

 
 


These are just a few of the many customization options with the Subsplash Platform. Upload all of your media that your members may have missed over the summer. Include a blog so that you can communicate with your community regularly even if they have missed a couple of services.

With technology changing the cultural landscape, meeting your community where they're at involves providing them with the digital resources needed for your church to stay relevant and engage audiences where they are spending most of their time.


Are you wanting to take your church’s communication strategy to the next level? Get in touch with us! We’d love to chat about your needs and how you can engage more people this fall.


5 Ways Technology Enhances Our Lives

Technology has undoubtedly become a fixture in our society–where most everything that we do and interact with during the day involves high-tech in some capacity. It might be nice to occasionally unplug from our technology-saturated world and just enjoy the simplicity and nostalgia of life off the grid; but the truth is, technology has brought about countless societal advancements and benefits that we might not even realize, or take advantage of. Here is a short list of some of the ways technology enhances our lives:

1. It Promotes Education

Multiple studies have been done in recent years that have proven that kids have an easier time engaging with technology, when learning new concepts, over any other method. The use of digital tools in the classroom has increased significantly in the past year, and many schools have seen an increase in their students’ overall performance thanks to the use of mobile devices.

2. It Helps Us Stay Safe

Natural disasters are devastating no matter what precautions are taken, but the recent development of mobile technology might help keep more people safe, and in some cases, even save people’s lives in the wake of events like hurricanes.

With power outages being a common occurrence during big storms, mobile devices can step in where regular news stations aren’t able to. Using your device to receive news updates and even watch videos can be supremely helpful during times of crisis.

3. It Saves Lives

Mobile health apps are becoming increasingly popular and are proving to be a vital asset to families in Africa, where resources are scarce and access to healthcare is difficult at times. For women all over the country, having a free and easily accessible tool like a maternal health mobile app can mean the difference between life and death for themselves and their children.

With the rise of exceptional maternal health mobile apps, the quality of life for moms in developing countries continues to improve.

4. It Keeps Us Connected

We live in a very unique time in history that is marked by interconnectedness and information. You no longer have to wait to hear about your childhood best friend’s engagement thanks to social platforms like Facebook, and you can find out what is going on halfway across the globe in an instant with up-to-the-minute information from online news sources.

Staying connected to the world around us can help with things like keeping the right perspective about what’s going on in your own life, and maintaining relationships with people you wouldn’t otherwise be able to. These advantages can be great for finding a job, reconnecting with old friends, and much more.

5. It Makes Life More Fun

Because of advancements in mobile technology, you can enjoy various types of entertainment like books, movies, or games instantly. In fact, you can store everything from news articles, to TV shows, to word puzzles, on one small device and take it with you wherever you go.

The dilemma of not having enough sources for entertainment is a thing of the past. The only decision you have to make now is what exciting, new thing should I choose to engage with next?



What are some other ways technology has enhanced our society? How has technology personally improved your life?

Does Your School Have an App?

In today’s world, mobile and tablet use is rapidly growing and becoming more integrated into our everyday lives.  With over 6 billion mobile phones worldwide, 195 million tablets sold in 2013, and “nomophobia”- the fear of being without a mobile device- being a common occurrence in today’s culture, this growth is no surprise.

So what does this mean for today’s schools and educational communities?

Android Tablet on The Church App Platform

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Introducing Android Tablet to the Subsplash Platform. Last year, Android tablet accounted for 61% of all tablet sales. And today, there’s a tablet in nearly 2/3rds of every US household. There are more ways to engage people today than ever before, and tablets have become a preferred avenue for experiencing media. With that in mind, we’ve thoughtfully spent the last year developing a rich and intuitive experience on Android tablet. Every detail in our apps are crafted with the end user in mind. From incredibly fast speeds, visually stunning media delivery, and a new robust sharing experience tailored to each unique user and their desired sharing outlets.

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Android Tablet on the Subsplash Platform:

+ Available on a plethora of devices including: Nexus 7, Nexus 10, Samsung Note, Samsung Note, Samsung Galaxy and many more. + We wanted to build something that displayed media beautifully. Leveraging the capabilities of the Android Tablet UX, your media experience has never been better. + Video experience improvements. + Audio experience improvements. + Updated Now Playing experience. + Your large high res artwork looks brilliant within the app. + We've revamped the download experience. Managing and viewing your downloads is simple and intuitive. + Our improved sharing experience is delightful! Your audio and video content can now be shared from more places within the app than ever before, and to all of your social networks.

Available for download in the Google Play Store.

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Are you ready to go mobile? With the Subsplash platform, you can now offer your own customized app on iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Windows Phone, and Android Tablet. Sign up for the Subsplash Platform today.

Already one of our wonderful clients? Upgrade to add Android Tablet to your suite of apps today.