'App'iness Begins

It's both a play on the new Jonas Brothers album AND a chat about an app. As it turns out, Her Campus does have an app, which I didn't know before setting out to write this post. It's called "Her Campus Events", and it's free on the iPhone App Store and the Google App Store. When you look it up, you find it like this:

"The official mobile app of Her Campus has the following functionality:

• social event feed for every event you join us at
• access to your tickets
• ability to chat with other event attendees right within the app
• detailed info about event, keynotes, sponsors, and breakout sessions
• schedule with ability to create personal notifications and
• ability to sign up for breakouts and keynotes with limited capacity"

The main function of this app is to assist with any events put on by HerCampus. For example, the Her Conference event that takes place in Los Angeles and New York City each week. 

It will show you people who are attending the event and allow you to connect with them. You can look at the overview of the event, the agenda and keynotes for the day. You can click through the different speakers, read their bios, look at their social media, and see what keynotes they'll be speaking at. If they release any announcements, you can click through that as well. 

This app is a great way to stay in tune with a big event like Her Conference. I'm glad I have this app now as I'll be attending the one here on the 22nd. I especially like that you can click through and connect with attendees. It's a great networking tool. 

For someone who likes to stay organized, this app is great for that. I'm always nervous that I'm going to miss a memo or a change when attending this event, but having this app (with the push notifications on!) will allow me to feel always connected and informed. 

The app creation in itself is helpful and fulfills its purpose. Its purpose and function was outlined in the description, and it does all those things. It's aesthetically pleasing and on-brand for Her Campus Media. It's easy to use and welcoming.

The one thing I will say is that it's not very well publicized. I've been following Her Campus since college, and I had no idea that they had an app or what it was used for. I googled it a few different ways, and I wasn't able to find any webpages detailing the app. I found articles written about other iPhone apps on the Her Campus website, but nothing about their own app. They should definitely publicize it better; it's a great app, and so many people could use it. 

It is an app with a very specific purpose, so perhaps they could look into expanding it to reach a wider audience, but in terms of doing what it was intended to do, it fulfills that function nicely. 

In addition, Regina Luttrell talks about apps in her book "Social Media: How to Engage, Share, and Connect." She makes a list of objectives for social apps, such as "add social elements to every strategic campaign to expand company reach and increase engagement", "run promotional campaigns and contests to spread the message", and "let consumers have a say through crowdsourced events or interactive voting." These are all things I think would be great to be doing in the Her Campus Events app, especially as Her Conference approaches. The app does have little bits of these, such as the ability for users to connect, but there are definitely more moves that could be made! 

Altogether, I think this is a great app and it does its job well. I would love to see it utilized more, and I'd even love to see Her Campus Media put out another app for a different purpose!