When I finish a movie and the credits begin to roll, I can’t get my phone out fast enough. Why? Because I’m practically itching to inform my large follower base (also known as a few of my friends) on Letterboxd that I watched a new movie. Letterboxd is a social media app dedicated to movies — a place to track your watch history, add movies to watchlists, post reviews, and sometimes, argue with random strangers on the app about those reviews. Letterboxd falls into a category that has seen a surge in popularity in recent years: hobby-tracking apps.
For you, it may not be movies. You might prefer to record your workouts, the books you read or the new restaurants you try. Whatever your hobby of choice, there is an app waiting for you to record and publicly share your every move and thought related to it.
Why do we like these apps? For me, hobby-tracking apps are appealing for the same reason I document anything through social media: to create a digital diary that I can reflect on in the future. Many users enjoy how the apps provide a sense of accomplishment. On Goodreads, users can strive to complete their numerical reading goal for the year or cross books off their “want to read” list as they complete them. Restaurant lovers can review restaurants on Beli to climb the app’s city-wide leaderboards. Runners, bikers and hikers have no shortage of goals to chase on Strava, where they can earn achievements for logging personal best performances or outpacing others on Strava segments.
Hobby-tracking apps also attract users because they bring people together. One of the easiest ways to bond with someone is through common interests; on a hobby-tracking app, you share an interest with every other user by default. For users, this gives the apps a tightknit community feel; even if they don’t personally know others on the app, users feel connected to each other. For brands, the high concentration of like-minded people on these apps has another appeal. If the brand aligns with the hobby that the app is dedicated to, the app provides a ready-made target audience.
Brooks, a running shoe brand, recognized this appeal when it became the first-ever title sponsor of Strava’s Global 5K Monthly Challenge. The challenge pushed 60,000 Strava users to join the Brooks Run Club through the app to participate in the challenge and earn rewards. By sponsoring the 5K challenge, Brooks made an especially smart move, as many users participating in the challenge were likely new runners who are still searching for their favorite brand of running shoes.
Goodreads offers book publishers and authors easy access to bookworms who are always searching for their next read. Authors can enter their books in Goodreads Giveaways before the book’s release, building buzz for the book as the lucky winners post their exclusive reviews on the app. Authors can also create profiles where they comment on Goodreads reviews and answer “Ask the Author” questions submitted by readers. This helps authors build a community with their readers and foster public conversation that generates interest in their books and enhances the author’s image.
As apps devoted to niche hobbies continue to grow in popularity, brands should be on the lookout for apps where they can neatly fit into the conversation. Rather than shouting over the online noise, brands can go where the noise already revolves around them.
