Web optimization will never be the same! 

RIMC 2011: Social marketing goes mobile

The next session in the social media track is called social marketing goes mobile and concern how people are now interacting with the internet instantly and everywhere via their mobile phones. 

The first speaker in this seminar is Cindy Krum from MobileMoxie.  Cindy starts by linking mobile social media to Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs – as it has been used for safety, social interaction and many of the other basics of all our lives. 

The beauty of mobile social is that people can instantly interact – for example by being prompted to ‘friend’ a shop in order to get discounts instore.  This can be done instantly and easily. 

Social media are a workaround for those wanting to boost their mobile presence from scratch.  In fact social profiles tend to rank better in mobile search than they do in traditional search — and at the same time, creating a dedicated mobile site can be expensive and time consuming.  If you don’t have a mobile website, don’t forget that your Facebook page is automatically mobile friendly.  Why not simply use Facebook as your mobile website? 

The number of Facebook mobile users went up by 300% in the last year.  And people can SMS “like [username]” for free to automatically like a page.  This means they can like things instantly without forgetting to do it later. 

When updating your Facebook page, keep mobile in mind.  For example by adding apps and promotion codes that people can use instore. 

Moving on to Twitter, the fixed website is still by far the most common access point; but the number of people using Twitter mobile is increasing sharply. 

The next speaker up in this session is Gillian Muessig, president and co-founder of SEOmoz. 

Iceland is the global mobile leader with the highest internet and mobile phone penetration in the world — but on the other side of the Atlantic Gillian explains that AT&T stopped their unlimited internet packages because people are now using their smart phones differently and bandwidth usage was rocketing by thousands of percent due to things like YouTube video streaming.  In 2010 more smart phones were sold than PCs for the first time. 

AT&T predicts that the sales of smartphones will peak in the coming years and grow more slowly thereafter, but that the apps revolution still has a long way to run.  With oil as expensive as it currently is, people are increasingly not going to multiple physical shops; preferring internet shopping instead. 

Mobile net browsing is much quicker than traditional browsing.  We consume snippets of hyper-local info in a short time.  It is not a sit-down medium.  Having said this, the user engagement of mobile users is much higher and the conversion rate too.  This applies to restaurant bookings, shopping decisions and even the purchase of airline tickets while stood queuing in the airport! 

The mobile innovation does not stop there.  What about digitally test driving an Audi?  Or scanning the strawberries in the shop with your phone to track them to the particular independent farmer who grew them?  Both of these are already a reality. 

When developing apps, make sure they are sticky.  Sticky, in this case, means offering users a reason to come back again and again.  At the end of the day, it is all about relevance!  You can try SEOmoz for 45 days free with the code RIMC2011! 

At the end of Gillian’s presentation, the floor was opened to questions from the audience.