Are you in the app business?
It’s been years since the phrase, “There’s an app for that…” was uttered on commercials and everywhere else.
And if it’s been a few years since that I don’t know where we are now. There are apps for everything including apps for apps. It’s kind of crazy, but there are many people around the world that don’t go more than a few minutes without opening some kind of app on some kind of device.
That’s why today’s company had me really intrigued. When you’re in the business of apps it’s good to have knowledge of what’s going on in the industry. And that’s exactly what App Annie provides.
App Annie has the knowledge that app executives need to make decisions and to optimize their app for maximum sales and maximum profit.
You can track information about your app competitors. You can track lists of popular apps in app stores and a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s pretty cool.
This type of business has obviously existed before in other industries and marketplaces, but as the app industry has grown this has become a need for those involved. And App Annie seems to be doing a great job.
But today I’m going to look at their blog. And as you would expect, they have a lot of great information they can share with their target clients and they seem to be using their blog to become a beacon of expertise in the industry.
Here are a few of my thoughts on their blog.
1. Sharing The Vision
I think one of the most important things companies can do is share their vision for the future. Doing so lets the entire community around the company know what to expect. That includes employees, stakeholders, clients and those that follow the company including influencers and those just kind of paying attention on the fringes.
App Annie released its State Of The Union for 2015. This is a great way to share what’s been going on with the company. People are programmed to look for this kind of information on the blog. They look for it on the About page, but also on the blog where more up-to-date information can be shared.
App Annie discussed how things have changed with the company including a recent round of funding, but they also shared how that investment will allow App Annie to grow and provide new things for users.
Those involved with App Annie now can feel comfortable in knowing what’s coming and this type of post can also attract those that may not have heard about the company. A great example of a post that every company could do in some for each year.
2. Interviewing Industry Experts
Here is a great post from App Annie. We’ve covered interviews as blog posts before in our analysis of other blogs, but I wanted to bring it up again here because this is a great interview.
What App Annie has done is find a topic that its readers are very interested in. Many apps rely on advertising for revenue and finding out the best ways to optimize those apps and ads is critical to the bottom line.
So bringing in an app ad and mobile ad expert is right on point.
I especially like the questions about the biggest mistake mobile advertisers make. The mistake is about localization. So if you’re promoting your app with an ad you have to really put in effort up front before you run the ad to make sure you get the most bang for you buck.
Those kinds of questions within interviews – mistakes, tips, etc. – are valuable to the reader. They educate the reader and give them something to act on.
3. Guest Posting
Guest posting has gotten a bad rap over the last couple years. The reason was that people were exploiting guest posting to simply get links to improve their rankings on Google search results.
Well, that was never the reason for hosting a good guest post on your blog. And it was never the reason to write a great guest post on another company’s blog.
The reason to host a guest post on your blog is to provide useful content to your readers. It’s good to mix in a different voice sometimes on your blog. If you’re thinking about hosting a guest post always ask yourself if it will answer a question that your reader has.
The tradeoff for the person providing the post is that they get exposure to your blog audience. It’s not about links or those things. It’s about getting the opportunity to be an expert in front of a target audience.
Done right, guest posting is a win-win for each party.
And App Annie accomplished that with a recent guest post. I can definitely see how the topic and title would be appealing to those that manage apps. You want to avoid negative reviews and that’s what this post is all about. There is a lot of great information in the Lessons Learned sections in this post.
4. Blog Graphics, Partnerships (And Sharing Data)
Here is a post that shares an infographic.
My first point for this section is the great job App Annie does with blog graphics. Each post has a unique graphic at the top, which is usually called a Feature Image. They all look great and make you want to read the post.
Then you have this post, which is an infographic. Infographics may have become a bit overused the last year or so, but they’re still a very valuable tool. So don’t shy away from them. People still love them.
And this is also an example of a partnership. App Annie partnered with GMIC Silicon Valley to create and promote the app. Partnerships are great for business and they’re great for blogs. When you have two parties involved in the content you have a bigger audience to promote too, which helps both parties.
And finally, I was waiting for a post where App Annie shared some of the data from its collection. It’s something that a lot of data companies, like eMarketer, do well. They share little helpful snippets of data. People can use that, but it leaves them wanting more, which is found if you signup for the service.
5. Indexes
App Annie has a variety of indexes as part of its service. This allows you to track an industry and see who the leaders in the space are. They announced one of those with a blog post on the music index. And you can see who the leaders are in the index for that month.
I like that App Annie goes into detail explaining the index. That information answers the questions readers would have about how the index is compiled. This gives them confidence when they’re making decisions based on the information in the index.
Final Thought
There is a lot of great information on the App Annie Blog. As you can see, they’re doing all kinds of things with the blog to help them become a leading community for app professionals. They publish what seems to be about 6-8 posts each month. There is always room for growth. According to HubSpot, 82% of marketers who blog daily acquire a customer or user using the blog. To do that you always look for the common questions your target client, customer or user is asking in relation to your industry and provide the answers on the blog.
App Annie is doing that already along with other types of posts that are great for any business blog.