Get Good PR By Thinking Like An App

17.4 million smart devices were activated on Christmas Day
along with 328 million app downloads (Flurry).

Australians downloaded 32 million apps for their smartphones and tablet computers between Christmas Day and New Years Eve 2012. (Flurry Blog)

During the same period  1.76 billion applications were downloaded worldwide: a staggering amount in just seven days.

Apps have become the new power tool of PR and marketing since Apple began the first standardised app  service in July 2008.

Wikipedia reports:

• The Apple Store stocks 650 000 apps with 30 billion downloaded since 2008.
•  Last October Google Play had around 700 000 Android apps and an estimated 25 billion downloads.
• The Microsoft Windows Phone Store has over 120 000 apps.

Apps have become part of our everyday lives.  They provide news and entertainment, connect us to others, help us bank and budget, improve our productivity and make it easy for us to buy, bet, follow our heroes and manage our diaries. 

Apps are so commonplace we no longer stop to consider the technical wonder behind those little icons patiently waiting to be pressed into service on our mobile screens.  

But while the technology is relatively new, apps work on a proven PR formula:

• Give people information they need or want when they want it.
• Make it easy to understand.
• Ensure information is easy to access and remains timely and relevant.
• Remove barriers and make the content easy to share.
• Deliver that information at the point of personal need. 

The communication simplicity of the app surely must offer lessons in the rest of our PR lives.