Prepare to Promote New Content to Your Visitors

Modified on Wed, 5 Feb at 3:41 PM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Review your content before making it public
Create and test deeplinks for your new content campaigns
Understanding how the mobile apps sync your newly added content
How sync updates can negatively impact content launches
Requesting mobile app updates for new content launches

Congratulations! You've prepared your first content in Driftscape, and you're ready to go promote new POIs to your visitors! We recommend allowing 2 weeks between the date that you make new content public and when you begin promoting it to your visitors. The reasons for this are explained in detail in this article.

It's important to understand how the Driftscape product makes your content visible to users in both the Driftscape for Web and the mobile apps, to ensure that your public launch goes smoothly and gets the best possible exposure. This article will help you prepare to promote your newly added content to your visitors.

Review your content before making it public

Before you make your content public, it is very important to review it, and ensure it is high quality and free of errors before you go live. Whether it’s your first public POIs or a new campaign, this is an important step. Read these articles for best practices and tips on this:

Create and test deeplinks for your new content campaigns

Driftscape Deeplinks are the best way to promote content to your visitors, and can be used on social media, your website, email campaigns, and printed QR codes. Ensure all deeplinks have been tested before using them to promote your content. Here are some articles on deeplinks for best practices and tips:

Understanding how the mobile apps sync your newly added content

Generally, you don’t have to worry about ‘syncing’ your content to the Driftscape mobile apps: when you add new public content, it will be visible for all users of the Driftscape apps.

But, this sync process can take a bit of time to happen, and, if not properly planned for, can impact the performance of your content launch campaigns. It’s important to understand how the Driftscape mobile apps synchronize your content so that you can plan your launch campaigns accordingly.

Here is how the mobile apps complete a sync update:

When you open the Driftscape apps, or every 5 to 10 minutes of activity, a sync update will happen in the background.
Until that sync completes, the user is seeing only the last ‘snapshot’ of content on their device, and will not see newly added POIs.
All content is synced to a user’s device. It is not dependent on user-applied content filters.
The sync does not complete and update until the app is in one of the main modes (map, list, AR mode). If the user is viewing another part of the app (like a POI, tour, or category view), then the sync completion is paused until the user returns to one of the app’s main modes (map, list, AR).
If the user leaves the app before the sync is completed, then the update is abandoned and restarted the next time the user starts the app.
Sync updates can take anywhere from 5 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on the internet connection speed, amount of data to update, and when the last sync occurred.
All of this means that your content could take a while before it shows up for any Driftscape user, which if not planned properly, could lead to a poor experience with some launches and campaigns, especially when deeplinks are used to promote specific content.
It is important to note that only new organizations and POIs are impacted by sync updates: existing POIs that have been edited will always open and display properly.

Now, the good news is that the Driftscape apps include a ‘built-in’ version of all of the data that needs to be synced, so that when you install and open the app initially, you see the newest content immediately without any sync delay. We generally update this internal content every month or two from all public content in the CMS, so that users downloading the app for the first time do not experience any sync delays.

How sync updates can negatively impact content launches

Now that you know the technical details about how the Driftscape mobile apps update the CMS content, it’s important to be aware of challenges that can result with new launches:

You might create a marketing campaign to promote your amazing new content, possibly with deeplinks or QR codes that open that content.
These might have worked flawlessly on your device, because you tested the POIs in trial mode, or your device had already completed a sync.
A user installing the app for the very first time could end up having a different experience, if the content is not there yet.
If the deeplink references an organization or POI that is not yet synced in the app, then they will get a message noting that a sync is completing and the content will be displayed momentarily:

Even though the deeplink action will happen eventually, this could lead to a poor user experience, especially if the sync update is slow.

Requesting mobile app updates for new content launches

The answer to this challenge is to plan your content launches and promotion very carefully, giving us time to prepare accordingly:

We require customers to wait for two weeks from first making any new content (POIs or organizations) public, before they start using deeplinks or otherwise launching campaigns.
This is in effect a ‘soft launch’ window of two weeks while the content is publicly accessible, but not being marketed.
This primarily gives time for existing Driftscape installations to sync up and a greater chance for the new content to become visible and accessible.
If you provide two weeks’ notice, then we can prepare your content into a mobile app update that includes your new content so the deeplinks work right away for users who have just installed the app.
Since we update the mobile apps frequently (for bug fixes and new features), including your new content is straightforward.
Both Google and Apple have a manual process for approving app updates which can take a week to complete, so we require two weeks’ notice to ensure everything completes smoothly.