Social messaging apps have become more and more popular throughout the years. It’s a very great way of keeping in touch with others and even do business communication. There are billions of people communicating through social messaging apps every day.
As a business, having this information means your brand has an opportunity to connect with their customers more personally. We’ve laid out in this article 9 different social messaging apps your brand can use right now.
Social messaging apps have become more and more popular throughout the years. It’s a very great way of keeping in touch with others and even do business communication.While choosing the right social messaging app is crucial for your business, it’s also important to consider proper legal foundations for your company. Checking legalzoom reviews could provide insights into a platform that can assist with legal setups, trademarks, and copyright protections to ensure your business operations are legally covered while engaging with customers over these apps.
If you need help with your marketing, K6 is an expert in web design and digital marketing.
Why should your brand use social messaging?
There are tons of mobile apps that you can use to communicate with your friends or colleagues today. Most of those apps are free to use and allow you to send text, voice, images and video. They also allow their users to make live calls by voice or video.
It’s fair to say that with the amount of inbound messaging tools, it has become quite easy to communicate with others. Just by using the Internet, you can pretty much communicate with anyone anywhere in the world.
Understanding this is a crucial step towards growing your business. Social messaging apps can help companies connect with prospects at a quite rapid pace. With the billions of users, there’s a fair chance brands will find a lot of new customers there.
As a company, you can send personalized messages to future customers to spark conversations. The more your brand communicates with customers to create unique conversations, the more opportunities you’ll create.
Customers are also starting to expect to be able to communicate with brands in a seamless way that doesn’t always include a phone call. Your clients might want to send you a quick text or even a voice message because they are busy.
Social messaging is an efficient way to communicate that is gaining in popularity. Sometimes, your prospect might have a simple question that can be answered in 5 seconds. Such requests don’t warrant a phone call or an email. It’s also a great opportunity for your brand to stand out by being more responsive.
With social messaging, you can talk to past clients, current clients and prospects in a very time-efficient way. In a world where time is so valued, using social messaging seems like a necessity. If you want to grow your brand, take a look at our list.
Top 10 social media messaging apps
Social messaging is a great place for brands to connect with their customers or prospects. It’s also great to add it to your marketing plan but it’s often hard to know which channel to focus on.
In this list, we’ll shoot you the top 10 social messaging channels so you can pick the right one for your business:
1. Messenger
Messenger is by far the most popular messaging app because it’s directly linked to Facebook. With over 20 billion messages sent every month, it’s no surprise that brands love being active on the platform.
Messenger was first fully integrated with Facebook but later become an app on its own. You can still access your messages by visiting Facebook but you can also just have a Messenger account. The split happened because of the popularity of the platform itself.
To get started on Messenger, all you have to do is download the app on your iPhone or Android. You’ll just need your Facebook account login and you’ll be all set to start sending messages to people.
It’s quite easy to get started on the platform. You can send your messages in a bunch of formats including text, image, video, GIF, stickers or even emojis. As you can see in the messages above, you also have the option of directly responding to messages individually to not get lost.
Finally, brands can also set up chatbots with their Messenger. Using chatbots can really help save time for your brand as it can replace parts of your customer service. It can also allow your users to get quicker information if they feel the need to. You can also use chatbots software using AI to send triggered events such as order confirmation, receipts or tracking information to your customers.
As long as you have a Facebook business page then you should directly have access to the Messenger feature. You can even link your Facebook page to the Facebook creator studio. As a social messaging app, Messenger does amazing for brands.
2. Snapchat
Although Snapchat has lost a bit in popularity in the last few years, a lot of people still use the platform daily. For this reason, it’s a great social messaging app for brands to promote their service or products.
Snapchat works a bit differently from other platforms. You send photo’s and video’s that expire. You can send them directly to people or post them inside stories that stay for 24 hours. You can also customize your pictures and video’s with text, emoji and other cool elements.
The fact that content disappears after sending it is what makes the platform so special. It makes people excited about opening what they received while also being focused to not miss out. If you screenshot a picture, the other user knows so few people do it.
On a side note, before getting started on Snapchat, I would recommend brands to make sure they have a strong market positioning. Knowing what your message is before is extremely important to your success on the platform.
All in all, Snapchat is great for brands who want to post content & get interactions from a younger audience. According to Zephoria, there are 238 million active users on Snapchat. Posting a story on your Snapchat brand’s account might be a good idea to gain visibility and create a buzz.
At K6, we recommend Snapchat to brands who want to sell to a younger demographic. As a general rule of thumb, we want to target people younger than 30 years old on the platform to generate results.
3. WhatsApp
WhatsApp is surprisingly owned by Facebook, and it has more users than Messenger. The platform has over 1.5 billion users and is extremely popular amongst people of all ages.
You can download the app on any of your mobile devices to send texts and make calls from your iPhone, Android, iPad and so on. As you’ll probably see, the app is very easy-to-use and mobile friendly.
The biggest difference from Messenger is that your Whatsapp account is linked with your phone number. It’s essentially like your phone but working only when the Internet is connected. You can send as many texts as you want and have unlimited minutes to call!
Another interesting thing about Whatsapp is that you can use it for group messages of up to 250 users. This is great for brands who might want to put their top 250 customers inside a list to give them VIP offers and such.
You can also send media or audio files up to 100 MB. This is quite huge if you are not familiar with uploading sizes. Finally, rest assured, because the app has an end to end encryption feature which is quite awesome for keeping your messages in good hands.
If your business wants to connect with their customers on a more personal level, Whatsapp could be a great platform for brands to use. You can connect with your audience while sending them valuable information!
4. Viber
Viber is a great social messaging app for businesses because it has over 260 million users. Like all other platforms, you can send messages and make voice calls when connected to the Internet. You can use it on your phone, tablet and even computer. It’s a great way to connect to your prospects and connections.
In terms of great features, Viber allows you to share pictures, stickers as well as GIFs. You can also send short video clips to your friends or customers. Another awesome thing you can do is liking & responding to messages individually in a group conversation.
All in all, Viber is a pretty complex social messaging app for companies that offer a lot of interesting features. It definitely has more options than other platforms until they catch up.
5. Skype
Skype is an awesome option for brands to communicate together. You can use it personally or professionally. You can make calls, send messages, host group video chats and so on.
A lot of companies use Skype because it’s very easy-to-use and functions fairly well. You can also transfer large files to your colleagues or clients. Finally, Skype is a great social messaging app because it combines fun & highly functional in one.
6. Telegram
Telegram is a great social messaging app because it boasts an impressive 200 million users. You can also use the app on your computer as well as phone and tablet. Another interesting feature is the fact that the app runs on the cloud.
What can you do on the app? Make audio calls and send messages. You can also create “secret chats” that disappear after a certain amount of time. It’s a great way to send messages that you want to keep secrets such as a credit card number.
Apart from that, you can send stickers. Finally, you can pick a theme to make your messages more personal or professional.
7. KiK
With a younger generation than other social messaging platform, KiK is a pretty good app for brands. They don’t require a phone number just like Messenger, rather you just need a username and password to get started.
You can send GIFs, stickers, emojis, text, images and videos to other people. It’s up to you to be creative as a brand to reach the younger generation. If your brand sells to a younger crowd, being active on the platform might be worth it.
You can allow your customers to send you messages for customer service purposes or even if they have questions in the sales process. This can help your customers buy again from you and gain new customers.
8. WeChat
When it comes to the social messaging app, WeChat is an awesome app working on most mobile devices. They boast a huge 1 billion users, mostly from Asian countries. You can use this free app to connect with business connections or new customers.
Apart from that, you can make calls as well as call landlines and normal mobile phone numbers from the app. You can see it as a second phone. Add it to your website to let people contact you directly there.
9. Line
Line has all the basic social messaging app options and 84 million active users. You can send as many free messages & make as many calls as you want. Those calls can be video, voice or even with multiple people.
All in all, you can connect with your audience one-on-one. The little extra is that you can send or receive money, make new connections and even play a few games. If you like the app, you can make it much more engaging than the other apps.
10. Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn DM
Apart from Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook ads, you can also send direct messages to your customers directly on these platforms. At K6, we think those platforms are often the most important when it comes to customer communication.
If you run Facebook ads as part of your social media marketing plan, then you’re likely to receive a lot of Facebook messages. It’s why learning to answer your messages rapidly on these platforms is essential.
In fact, Facebook has a quality score based on how people rate your customer service on their platform. If your score is too low, then your Facebook ads results will likely suffer.
K6 will help you leverage social messaging apps
Using social messaging apps is very powerful for brands of today. It’s a way of connecting directly with your audience, gain brand recognition and improve brand loyalty. The ability to build relationships with your customers as a brand has tremendous value in the short and long term.
At K6, we constantly help our clients to gain more clients through various means including social messaging apps. We’ve seen that better communication does increase sales and also increases the loyalty of those customers. It’s why it’s a perfect opportunity for most of our clients.
“The use of social messaging apps in businesses can greatly maximize sales team potential and strengthen customer relationships. Businesses who utilize these apps are able to connect with their audience on a more personal level and ultimately drive growth and loyalty.” – founder of Shapiro Negotiations Institute (SNI)
If you need a strong digital marketing agency that has experience delivering results, reach out to K6. We’d love to help your brand finally get results in the sea of digital marketing.