Thursday February 07, 2013

Delighted Users == Viral Marketing

Bas van den Broek is sharing a massive collection of cheat sheets for getting amazing results out of FiftyThree’s Paper app for iPad. Whether you’re a seasoned sketcher or a doodler like me, you’ll pick up all kinds of nifty tricks. It’s a beautiful collection to thumb through. The tools are a lot more flexible than I realized.

This impresses me for two reasons. First, Paper can be a great tool for sketching out interface ideas or even coming up with assets. Some of the techniques in this PDF will come in handy for that.

Second, FiftyThree built an application that gives users the power to do things they really want to do. The users can’t wait to show off their prowess. Sure, social media sharing commands are there tucked away behind a subtle button, but even if there was no way within the app to share, users would take screenshots of their creations and post them to friends from the Photos app if they had to.

There’s a lesson in here about viral marketing. Plugging in “social media” doesn’t create interest out of thin air. Paper is an app that goes out of it’s way to make the user shine. Plugging in “social media” merely reduces the friction for the user to show off.

Your app is the core of your marketing strategy.