Best Practices Part 6: Media

Media concludes our best practices for reaching and engaging your audience. Whether they’re on a morning run or commute, you can easily connect your audience with your media anytime, anywhere. We really did save the best for last!

Media

So why media? As both mobile app use and media consumption continues to rise, delivering media through your app enables you to meet your audience directly where they’re at:

• Mobile apps account for 52% of digital media consumption

• Mobile video will represent 69% of all mobile traffic by 2018

• App use makes up 88% of total time spent on mobile in the U.S. 

With weekly recurring media content, utilizing the media tab provides an effective medium for expanding the reach of your content beyond the Sunday service. Not only can users instantly access your sermon collection, but they can download for offline listening wherever they are. Many churches have seen a strong increase in sermon downloads through their media tab alone!

The media tab is the most robust way to present your media on a mobile device. Built and designed for multiple devices and operating systems, the Subsplash Platform enables you to deliver a beautiful and intuitive cross-platform media experience. Easily customize the artwork and display of your media with multiple layout options, making the user experience more delightful and catered to your brand.

As our series comes to a close, these are a just a few ways we’ve seen churches use their apps to increase engagement and enhance their communication efforts. Your app should not only be a tool for presenting content, but also an effective way to directly remind, notify, and encourage users to engage. If you’d like to add any of these features, or would like to get started with your own Church App, we’d love to help!

The Mobile Revolution and the Church

7:00am hits, phone alarm goes off. Eat breakfast and check Twitter for morning news. Play your favorite Spotify playlist on your morning commute. Check notifications on your lunch break. Pay for coffee with the Starbucks app. Text family about dinner plans. Watch the hilarious Jimmy Fallon video your friend sent. Snap a pic of the breathtaking sunset. And much more in-between.

Sound familiar? Maybe the details differ for everyone, but one thing is the same for us all: mobile has become woven into our daily lives. With mobile passing the TV as “America’s first screen”, and people spending almost 2.5 hours daily engaging with apps alone, content consumed on a mobile device isn’t something to brush off as a passing trend.

In fact, we say with confidence that mobile has become vital. With the revolution of apps, mobile devices can now sync our daily, necessary, and leisurely activities all in one control center. People are relying on their devices to consume and communicate what is useful, helpful, and empowering in their daily lives.

[Enter the Church] These are the people that make up your congregation. These are the people that are actively seeking how to use their devices in greater and better ways. These are the people that can greatly benefit from your church’s resources beyond the Sunday service. With the global reach of the app stores, churches and ministries now have an amazing opportunity to enter the space of mobile technology and use it to provide a vital function in their congregation’s daily lives: hearing the Gospel, and staying connected to Christ’s Church.

This is a call to action. An action that we’ve seen countless churches use to fulfill their mission to spread the good news of Jesus, and use technology to be an active presence in the lives of those they shepherd. From more app downloads than members in their congregation, to increases in sermon downloads, to increases in giving, we’ve seen churches like The Village Church, Elevation Church, Fresh Life, and many others find great success through The Church App Platform. By making sermon archives, blogs, push notifications, giving, and other resources instantly accessible, apps can help you meet your audience in their context, on their time.

Think about the people that work weekends and can’t make it to Sunday services. Think about those that need your pastor’s weekly blog post to encourage their spirits. Think about the people who will share sermons via their social channels and will reach their friends and families as a result.

While there are a lot of overwhelming and uncertain ramifications that may accompany the mobile revolution, we challenge you to look at the great and powerful ways technology can be used for good. Here at Subsplash, we are passionate about using technology and delightful design to help make the most of your Gospel content. We want to see the Gospel shared to the ends of the earth. With The Church App Platform you can easily create and manage your own mobile apps, putting your content in the hands of a wider audience. We’d love to help you get started.

Your App: Now Available in the Amazon Appstore

Kindle

The Subsplash Platform is now available in the Amazon Appstore! The Amazon Appstore can be accessed by both Kindle and Android devices.  Amazon has spearheaded its major global expansion phase, and the Amazon Appstore is now present in nearly 200 different countries. We are very excited to be a part of Amazon’s large-scale mobile movement.

Amazon Appstore Breakdown:

• 25 million app downloads every month.

• Over 200,000 apps in the Appstore (almost tripling in the last year).

• Available in nearly 200 countries including United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany and China.

• Available in China, while Google Play has restrictions.

Our expansion into the Amazon Appstore is driven by our desire to help reach as many people as possible on the most popular platforms and devices.  With app use continuing to dominate user’s time spent on smart devices, we’ve poured our efforts into making the Subsplash Platform widely available across various mobile phones and tablets. By adding Kindle Fire, the Subsplash Platform is now available in all major existing app stores including the Google Play Store, Windows Phone Store, Apple App Store, and the Amazon Appstore (running across all iPhone, iPad, Windows Phones, Android Phones and Tablets, and now Kindle Fire devices).  With these app store giant’s global reach, we can’t wait for our users to experience delight on our Platform regardless of their device.

Android Tablet on The Church App Platform

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Introducing Android Tablet to the Subsplash Platform. Last year, Android tablet accounted for 61% of all tablet sales. And today, there’s a tablet in nearly 2/3rds of every US household. There are more ways to engage people today than ever before, and tablets have become a preferred avenue for experiencing media. With that in mind, we’ve thoughtfully spent the last year developing a rich and intuitive experience on Android tablet. Every detail in our apps are crafted with the end user in mind. From incredibly fast speeds, visually stunning media delivery, and a new robust sharing experience tailored to each unique user and their desired sharing outlets.

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Android Tablet on the Subsplash Platform:

+ Available on a plethora of devices including: Nexus 7, Nexus 10, Samsung Note, Samsung Note, Samsung Galaxy and many more. + We wanted to build something that displayed media beautifully. Leveraging the capabilities of the Android Tablet UX, your media experience has never been better. + Video experience improvements. + Audio experience improvements. + Updated Now Playing experience. + Your large high res artwork looks brilliant within the app. + We've revamped the download experience. Managing and viewing your downloads is simple and intuitive. + Our improved sharing experience is delightful! Your audio and video content can now be shared from more places within the app than ever before, and to all of your social networks.

Available for download in the Google Play Store.

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Are you ready to go mobile? With the Subsplash platform, you can now offer your own customized app on iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Windows Phone, and Android Tablet. Sign up for the Subsplash Platform today.

Already one of our wonderful clients? Upgrade to add Android Tablet to your suite of apps today.