Is GIF Sharing The Next Marketing Hack For Mobile Games?
Thousands of mobile games are being added to the app stores every day. While this is definitely giving each one of us plenty of options to keep the boredom at bay, it is getting tougher for these app developers to acquire and keep their players engaged.
As app marketers and developers seek creative ways to up their marketing and optimize their growth, here’s one that came out of the never-ending love for GIFs — GIF capturing and sharing.
What is GIF capturing?
You’ve seen a lot of app users share their in-app milestones of social media. The post is usually accompanied by a screenshot of the same or a static image that depicts the milestone — take for instance, how you were sharing your Candy Crush accomplishments.
With GIF capturing, developers can enable players to record their gameplay easily. This does two things — allows players to record a game session they believe they are good at, and at the same time share their in-game experience with friends in a more interactive way.
Here’s what a typical GIF capture and playback would look like:
Now wouldn’t something like this help you know more about this game that your friend has been recommending? And of course, such a post is sure to stand out on a feed full of thousands of posts.
Identifying and capturing shareable moments
The AHA moment for every player is different and it is absolutely impossible for you to jump in at the right time to record it. That’s why GetSocial’s GIF recording library supports two different ways to record the gameplay:
1. Continuous mode
With this time-based recording, you can record certain frames between the start and stop of an event. You can configure the number of frames to be recorded based on the triggers and milestones within the game, that you want to take a sneak peek at. This one’s useful for games where timing is crucial, like action games.
2. Manual mode
The manual mode of GIF capturing records one frame at a time based on what you specify. This mode is useful for games where player moves tend to be different each time — such as those in board games, puzzle games, etc.
Making GIFs shareable
Recording the players AHA moment or enabling them to do this themselves, is just the first step. The only way to leverage this unique piece of content is to make the GIF easily shareable.
With GIF sharing, you give your player a chance to create unique content for your game, that is exclusive to them. They can share their gameplay in their circle and challenge their friends to come up with a better strategy to unlock a new level or beat their high score. The interactiveness of the content instantly hooks the attention of other players, engaging them for another session and potential players who are intrigued by the gameplay, leading them to download your game.
Imagine if you had to first record, then save and then send something manually to your friends. You’d probably share it twice, but then give up simply because it is inconvenient. That’s why along with the easy recording, we also made sure it is easy to leverage the other features of GetSocial to enable sharing:
1. Easy sharing with Smart Invites
Enable your players to easily share their gameplay with friends and family, across their preferred communication channel. Supporting all social platforms and popular chat apps like the Messenger, WhatsApp and others, GetSocial Smart Invites makes GIF sharing a matter of just a few clicks. A recommendation to download the game from a friend and the shared gameplay, makes a captivating content for the recipient, increasing the conversion to installs.
Also read: Best practices for creating a referral program in mobile games
2. Sharing with the in-game community on Activity Feeds
According to a survey by Facebook, players are 2.7X more likely to stay in-game if they feel like a part of the in-app community. In fact, they are even 2X more likely to continue playing the game if their social connections are around. That’s the power of community and that’s why we enabled GIF sharing with Activity Feeds to make community conversations more interesting.
Apart from the players sharing their own gameplay with their network, even you can use the feature to share hacks with the entire community to complete a difficult level. Simply put, GIF sharing on the activity feeds can increase your game’s social engagement.
3. GIF sharing with push notifications (coming soon on iOS)
Push notifications continue to remain one of the most effective ways to communicate with players — both active and inactive. In fact, they have proven to boost the app engagement rate by a whopping 88%. GIF sharing on push notifications are sure to make these messages even more interactive and engaging.
This is obviously all set to increase the re-engagement and retention of your games, as players pull their friends in with more meaningful, personalized and rich push notifications. Your players record a GIF of their gameplay and use that to challenge their friends by sending them a challenge notification with a GIF.
Getting started with GIF capturing
Getting started with GIF capturing is actually easier than it seems. In fact, we launched our own GIF capturing library software for Unity projects to GitHub.
With the open source project, you get full access to the source code to further modify and use it in any way you like for the game. Apart from the easy plug and play to enable you to record your player’s gameplay, GIF capturing and sharing can then be used to further boost your game virality strategies using other GetSocial features.
Ready to give your game a shot at virality with better player engagement?
Thanks for reading The Marketing & Growth Hacking Publication
Join our Facebook Group. Contact us for a sponsored post. Write for us. Find your next marketing job on GrowthJob.com.
