Mobile is social and social is mobile

Blog by Jon Pollard, Founder and Director of Digital Strategy at BrocklebankPenn
www.brocklebankpenn.com Twitter: @BrocklebankPenn

It’s hard to imagine how great the impact of social media would have been without the huge growth of mobile access. Every week, there seems to be a new statistic about the rise in mobility – be it app downloads going crazy or smartphone penetration exploding – and none of the industry pundits seem willing to suggest a slowdown anytime soon.

The connection between today’s mobile world and social media is highlighted by the number of social apps available for every mobile platform. App developers understand their audience, just as social media channel owners do. Just think, three quarters of Tweets never touch twitter.com, meaning that they’re generated through apps. Even allowing for a proportion of desktop Twitter apps, that’s a lot of mobile Tweeting going on. To be sure, much of it may be about the queue in the bank or how terrible the trains are, but if you’re the bank or rail company, that neatly captures the challenge that ‘social mobility’ poses.

Because mobility equals immediacy, the filter between thought and speech – and the delay between experiencing a brand and talking about it – have largely disappeared. Wanting to communicate something to the people we know (and the random followers we’ve somehow managed to pick up along the way) is not as simple as just saying it. The trick is finding a way to turn the challenges of a talkative, mobile audience into messages that make real business sense.

Of course, how you go about it will depend on the kind of business you’re in. If you’re a retailer, or have the kind of premises where customers may linger, like a café or bar, you could offer wi-fi. That way, you’re enabling the mobile habit and creating a positive brand image in their minds.

In fact, if you’re a retailer, this becomes a bit of a no-brainer. The stats showing how frequently people browse and compare products online while actually in a shop are growing all the time. So, as long as you’re happy you’ve got your Last Ten Feet under control and customers shopping from your premises won’t be lured elsewhere, why not let them use the same wireless to tell their friends about your great service and products before they leave?

In fact, you can even make it easy for them to do that whether providing wi-fi or not: location-based check-in services became a bit of a craze a little while ago, and although the buzz has quietened somewhat, they’re (mostly) still there. Amongst others, FourSquare, Gowalla, Facebook and Google’s location features give users the ability to open their lives to browsers and businesses to gain a little visibility, making it easy for their visitors to tell everyone they’ve been on the premises.

If your locations don’t have FourSquare listings, why not set them up yourself? That way you can make sure minor details like your address, phone number and URL are actually correct, and every time your customers take advantage of that, it puts your name in front of their followers. Everyone wins.

Winning is a big concept in the checking-in world, and it works on a couple of levels. The ‘gamification’ process is turning activities like checking-in, watching a film or TV programme or voting in a poll into ‘virtual competitions’. Becoming the FourSquare Mayor of a place can lead to a virtual status gain that represents one level of win; the second is when a business capitalises on the gaming mechanism for self-promotion.

FourSquare began the process of linking social/virtual activity to real world marketing with location-based promotions. “Free coffee if you’re currently our Mayor” and “3 Offers Nearby” define the location-based world. “We know where you are and we’ve got stuff for you” is the message.

Maybe you could, or should, be one of these ‘stuff-offering’ businesses. Taking advantage of the plethora of Mobile:Social applications may be difficult, especially when some could be five-minute wonders, but as they establish themselves they should keep providing opportunities as well as challenges.

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