How to get started with Beamer: 5 tips from the experts

Beamer is easy to use, and it's designed to streamline your workflow in more than one way. But even if an app is intuitive and user-friendly, getting used to it might be a daunting task, especially when it offers a big bundle of features. Follow the advice of the experts and learn all you need to know to get started with Beamer in just five simple steps.

1. Make Beamer look like a native part of your app.

One of the central tenents of good branding is consistency. If you're designing a website or building an app, you must provide a complete experience. All parts of your interface must follow similar aesthetic guidelines, giving your users a continuous interaction. A sudden change in branding can break their trust in your company.There are multiple ways to address this issue and give you control over your branding. For example, instead of Beamer's default button or badge, you can set the trigger as an icon or a menu item. This will help you to get more engagement, and to seamlessly blend Beamer with your layout (to learn how to do that, you can find a guide here).But don't stop there! You can get full control over the appearance of your Beamer widget. Use the very easy-to-use options and color pickers, or if you are more code-savvy just copy and paste your customized CSS code. Use a custom color palette, add personalized fonts, and get even further with Custom CSS.

To improve the branding consistency of your release notes page, you can set up a custom domain.Integrate your standalone page with a custom URL that your users can trust (for example updates.yoursite.com - just ask our support chat for help). Make your standalone page a part of your site!

2. Include as many visuals as you can in your updates, and always include a specific call to action directed to a relevant URL.

Studies show that after three days people can remember 10% of auditive information but 65% of visual information. Images matter. Visual updates get more engagement, more users discovering your new features and reduced churn.You can easily add images, gifs, and videos to your Beamer posts. Beamer also supports embedded content from YouTube, Vidyard, Vimeo, Instagram, and many more third-party services. You can even use Wistia to create videos that look like gifs that play automatically and loop, so you can upload longer videos without affecting load speed. Find out how in this guide.

You can use Call to Actions (CTAs) to link your images directly to any content you want. Call to actions are visual or verbal prompts that aim to catch your users' attention and send them to a relevant URL. In Beamer, if you add a CTA to your post, the images will automatically link to that assigned URL. With CTAs you can convert interest into motion, by leading your users to the specific actions you want them to perform (purchase a product, fill a form, read an article or watch a video).

3. Use segmentation to send even more targeted messages to users.

Filtering good content it's hard. Don't get your users drowned in new posts and information. Be direct! Don't just tailor your content to your audience, show them only the updates you know they will like, share, and enjoy. Don't overstate your welcome and notify them taking into account their interests. They will thank you later.Segment by attributes like user role, payment plan, industry, behavior, demographics, interests, and whatever you can imagine, to get even more engagement. Highly relevant messages will increase user engagement with your product and reduce churn. You can target users with filtered posts and segmented push notifications.

Here's a link to our basic segmentation guide available in our Pro plan and our advanced segmentation guide available in the Enterprise plan.

4. Expand Beamer's features with multiple integrations.

Beamer is not just a single app. It can be plugged into multiple third-party services, expanding its features to include more than a thousand new possibilities.Use Zapier to connect Beamer with more than a thousand available external integrations, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more. To start using the Beamer-Zapier combo, just read this easy to follow tutorial. It's easy to implement, and you can manage all your connections in a friendly dashboard.

Do you use Wordpress? By using our plugin you'll be able to save valuable time. Instead of posting twice, share your content directly from your Wordpress dashboard. The plugin will take care of publishing it in your Beamer feed. You can learn how to install the plugin here and read more on automatic sharing here.

5. Never get lost with Beamer's abundant documentation.

As this post shows, we take pride in our variety of tutorials and guides. Beamer is not just easy to use, we are constantly thinking about how to make it even easier. You don't have any excuse for not using Beamer to its fullest potential.

Go to Beamer's Help Center to find answers to the most common questions about Beamer. Use our installation guides to get started on any platform, including HTML,Wordpress,Squarespace,Simvoly and Google Tag Manager. And if you're more code inclined, you can visit our extense Developer Documentation and API Documentation. We have covered almost anything you'd want to do with Beamer in a tutorial, guide or documentation repository. And if there's anything else you can imagine, we are always happy to help you in our support chat. You can find us there, by clicking in the badge at the bottom-left side of your screen.