Social Media Strategies for Mobile

Social Media Strategies for Mobile:
Most businesses nowadays integrate social media as part of their ovearall marketing strategy, but not all of them include mobile in the equation. There are many reports and articles today that address this, and statistic relative to social media and mobile usage are especially interesting. Like, for instance, the amount of social media users that access social media networks from their mobile phone: more than 40%. Or that 70 percent of active online adult social networkers shop online.
Mobile users have access to your business at any time, from anywhere, and they are demanding. Figures say that 80% of mobile users that visit a website that is not mobile optimized, will abandon the search, and what’s worse, 20% of them will turn to a competitor.

So it is essential to have a mobile-adapted website, but also a good social media strategy combined with it. A good social media plan that meets your customers wherever they access your business from will help you boost your business and prevent you from missing out on an ever increasing number of mobile users.
Dave Fleet, vice president of Digital for Canada at Edelman, one of the best public relations companies in the world, shares here some social media strategies:
But how exactly can you engage mobile social media users to boost your business? Here are some tips you can use:

• Mobilize your website. A good mobile experience is essential to build user loyalty. Remember that content needs to be adapted for mobile, images optimized and navigation needs to be mobile friendly (“thumb navigation”). It is more difficult to scroll in a mobile device, so navigation needs to be vertical, and the message shorter.
• Create mobile social media profiles. Google Places, Yelp, Foursquare, Twitter… All these social networks are already mobile, so by joining them, your customers will find your business online more easily.
• Check out Blippar. It is an augmented reality platform that creates interactive, engaging material for mobile social media.
• Use QR codes. They create customer engagement and are very easily created.
• SMS Text Marketing. It improves brand and customer loyalty. If done correctly, SMS marketing will report you great profit: redemption rates go from 20% to 70%. Also, campaigns can be targeted at specific customers, which will improve these rates.

SMS Text Marketing

SMS text marketing is a cost efficient form of advertising that can give you great redemption rates. Over 90% of text messages sent to your customers are opened and read within 15 minutes. They create a unique relationship with customers, because they engage them in a more efficient way than any other way of advertising. SMS marketing also allows you to measure the results and scope of your advertising campaigns and methods, as you can find out in the same day which advertising is reaching your target market.
There are also constraints, like the reduced space available on SMS messages (140 characters), and the loss of visibility. Sometimes you need more space to convey your message, or to include an image, and this is not possible on traditional SMS texts, because you would either need a bigger space or to send 2 or 3 texts with more information. But these setbacks can be easily overcome if you use SMS marketing to send a link to a mobile website.

Targeted customers who are included in these campaigns will receive an SMS with a link that will redirect them to a mobile-adapted website (note that this is important, since they will be viewing these messages from their mobile device). This site can be a fully developed website or just a landing page where you can include the advertising you want, with picutres, click-to-call buttons, discounts, etc.