Setting up a Competitor App Review Channel in Slack

Monitor your competitors' app reviews

I initially created AppReviewBot so that app developers like myself could easily monitor and respond to app reviews left by their users on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. I now refer to this as use case #1: Monitoring your own app reviews using Slack.

Change the way you manage app reviews using the power of Slack.

Once I was set-up and taking full advantage of use case #1, I realized there was more I could do now that adding app review feeds to Slack was as quick as searching for an app and choosing a Slack channel to send them to. Which brings me to use case #2: Adding my competitors' apps to a new Slack channel titled “competitor-reviews”.

If the benefits of easily monitoring all of the user feedback being sent to apps in your category don’t seem obvious, here are a few:

1. Instantly multiply the amount of relevant user feedback to your app.

2. Know what users love and hate about other apps in your space.

3. See what features users are responding to in your competitors’ apps.

Setting up competitor review feeds in Slack

Step 1 - Know your competition

For the sake of our example today, let’s say we are the developers of a new camera filter app. We will start by tracking 3 of our competitors' app reviews. Depending on the popularity of the apps, you may want to add more than 3. I would advise starting slow so that you have a manageable amount of information to monitor and add more apps to the channel as you get a feel for the type of feedback coming in.

I think most app developers are keenly aware of their competitors, but if you're having trouble identifying other apps in your space, here is a quick way to find some: Search for your own app and see what apps appear above or below you in the App Store listing.

Here are the apps we will add to our Slack competitor channel:

1. Facetune

2. AirBrush

3. FaceApp

Step 2 - Create your competitor channel in Slack

Click add channels in Slack.

Name your channel. I suggest competitor-reviews.

Click Create.

Step 3 - Add competitor apps to Slack using AppReviewBot

Head over to AppReviewBot.com and search for the competitor apps we listed in Step 1. Let’s start with Facetune.

Click on Facetune from the drop down list.

Add the email you use for your Slack account. Then click Add to Slack.

Next, select the competitor-reviews channel we created in Step 2. Then click Allow.

Step 4 - Sit back and watch the competitor reviews roll in

Repeat step 3 for the rest of the apps on your competitor list.

~~1. Facetune~~

2. AirBrush

3. FaceApp

That’s it! The insights you gain from monitoring this user feedback can help you make educated decisions about where to take your app next. Head over to AppReviewBot.com get started.