Social Networking
Are Mobile And Social Best Practices The Same?
by David Berkowitz, 360i, Tuesday, November 2, 2010, 2:15 PM
It’s getting clearer by the day that mobile marketers can learn a lot from social marketers. This never struck me as much as it did last week while watching OMMA Mobile’s keynote speaker, Andy Graham, who leads mobile strategy at Adidas.
On occasion I worry that I embody the adage that when you just have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I am coming from the vantage point of someone responsible for both social media and mobile marketing strategy, so it’s natural that some similarities will stand out. With Graham’s presentation though, while he was talking entirely about mobile, I could have easily assumed he was referring to social instead.
Below are his five best practices for mobile marketing, with my thoughts on how they apply to social marketing. Graham’s list is from my notes rather than direct quotes, but they should be true to the spirit of his talk.
Here are Graham’s top five mobile takeaways, and why they’re my top five for social:
1) Offer unique, personal, functional value: Mobile devices are extremely personal — Pew Internet & American Life Project reported this year that two-thirds of adults sleep with their phones on or next to their beds. Yet what’s more personal than your social graph, the web of everyone you’re connected to? Social marketers need to respect that and elucidate the value exchange between the consumer and marketer. Or, in layman’s terms, always ask, “What’s in it for the consumer?”
2) Gain individual consumer insights and trust: I’d argue these are two very different points fused into one. Consumer insights, especially those culled from social media, should inform any marketing program. Building trust is a major goal for any program that involves a two-way dialogue with consumers.
3) Enable end-to-end service journeys: Mobile is that proverbial bridge between online and offline experiences, so this takeaway is especially important for mobile. Yet marketers using social media shouldn’t just think of social experiences that involve consumers who happen to be accessing Facebook or Twitter or a blog at a given moment. Marketers should think about how consumers discover their products or services, research information and competitors, decide on the purchase, share their experiences with others, and consider when and why they would repeat the experience. Social media can fit in with all of these stages.
4) Engage in ongoing one-to-one brand conversations: With both mobile and social, literal one-to-one marketing doesn’t scale well, but the potential is even better for social, where marketers can talk to consumers as individuals and address their specific needs. While marketers can treat channels like blogs and social networks as broadcast media to blast out messages, marketers should embrace the conversational nature of social media to encourage brand advocacy.
5) Make your key objective lifetime, valued relationships: Not every mobile banner ad will achieve this, nor will every tweet. The overall goals need to be set higher though, and this will put all these other best practices into context. When you tap consumer insights to provide value through end-to-end journeys built on engaging one-to-one conversations, you have to measure the long-term results of those relationships.
I’m still left wondering if Andy’s really a social marketer in a mobile marketer’s body. Or maybe there’s a lot more we can all learn from each other.
Mobile Users Prefer Mobile Web not Apps
Even though mobile apps seem to get all the attention these days, consumer sentiment towards the debate between apps vs. the mobile Web show preference for the latter, in a big way.
eMarketer came out with data yesterday detailing a poll by Keynote Systems for Adobe that shows overwhelming consumer preference for mobile browsers to access virtually all mobile content. Games, music and social media were the only categories in which users would rather use a downloaded app than browse the mobile Web.
The retail category in particular shows an overwhelming preference for mobile Web access across nearly all mobile shopping tasks mentioned. Whether it was researching product and price info or sharing that information socially, mobile users would rather fire up a browser than a dedicated app. Interestingly, When the Adobe survey asked about a preference for using regular or mobile-optimized websites on their mobile device, they preferred regular sites in both the consumer products-shopping and media-entertainment categories.
According to the report, this preference suggests “a low awareness of optimized experiences for the mobile web,” but users could also be frustrated with the limited functionality many mobile-optimized sites provide. These results fall in line with most marketers in the retail space who say mobile apps don’t make sense for brand retailers. For example, during his keynote at the Mobile Shopping Summit in New York recently, a Kenneth Cole executive said that — especially with the rise of HTML5 — his company’s focus is on the mobile Web going forward.
“Looking at the mobile sites of mass merchants, look-up sites and brand retailers, they are all using different design templates and tactics to get their message across,” said Tom Davis, vice president of ecommerce at Kenneth Cole Productions. “This year we put our toe in the water, but we expect sales driven by mobile devices to be bigger than some of our bricks-and-mortar stores.
Comscore: Mobile Content Usage
This must be unofficial Appalooza week. With new reports from Nielsen and the Pew Research Center on mobile apps already this week, comScore weighed in Wednesday with its own quarterly findings on mobile use, including apps.
The Web measurement firm found 31.4% of U.S. mobile users had downloaded an app for the three-month period ending July, up from 29.8% the prior quarter. Those figures correspond closely with the data Pew released yesterday, showing 29% of mobile users had downloaded an app in the last month. The comScore sample is a bit broader, including cell users 13 and older as opposed to only adults.
But the small uptick in app use tracked by comScore didn’t come at the expense of Web browsing. One third (33%) of mobile subscribers went on the mobile Web, up from 31.1%, as of April. Other mobile content categories saw slight gains as well. People accessing social networking sites or blogs via handsets increased from about 20% to nearly 22%, while the proportion of mobile music listeners went from 13.8% to 14.5%. The mobile gaming population remained flat at just over 22%.
Texting remained by far the most pervasive non-voice mobile activity, with two thirds (66%) of mobile users exchanging messages.
Looking at U.S. market share among smartphone platforms, comScore provided further evidence of Android’s rapid ascent, with 17% share, up from 12% in the previous quarter. The increase cut into the share of Apple’s iOS, which slipped to 25.1% from 23.8%. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile also lost ground, dropping to 11.8% from 14%. Palm remained the same with a 4.9% share and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry OS remained the top platform, with 39.3% share, down from 41.1%.
Gartner last week predicted Android will overtake BlackBerry as the world’s second largest smartphone operating system by year’s end and by 2014 will have a nearly 30% market share, rivaling that of Symbian. For now, rising smartphone sales continue to benefit all players.
In the U.S. 53.4 million people own smartphones, up 11% from April, according to comScore. That amounts to 22.8% of mobile users with high-end phones. Nielsen has projected smartphone penetration will surpass that of regular phones by the end of 2011.
When it comes to phone manufacturers, Samsung remained at the top, with a 23.1% market share, up a percentage point from April. Second-place LG was roughly flat at 21.2%, followed by Motorola, which fell to 19.8% from 21.6%, RIM, at 9%, and Nokia at 7.8%. The Finnish phone giant took a big step toward turning around its sagging fortunes in the U.S. with the hiring of former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop as CEO. Nokia Chairman Jorma Ollila said Tuesday he’ll step down in 2012.
Marketing to teens
Teen social media influencers—defined in the study as the top 15% most active and most engaged teens in the myYearbook community—are more likely than other teens to engage in various digital activities:
- 97% spend over two hours a day on social media sites (vs. 79% of other teens).
- 95% update their status at least once a day (vs. 67%).
- 91% have more than 500 friends in their social networks (vs. 61%).
- 88% send more than 3,000 texts a month (vs. 63%).
- 61% have organized a special social event or Web/fan page for friends (vs. 19%).
Just 16% of teen social media influencers say they use a location-based mobile application, such as Foursquare or Gowalla.
Below, other findings from the Social Media Teen Influencer Survey.
Offline Activities
As active as they are online, teen social media influencers are nearly 40% more likely than other teens to have attended a party during the previous weekend and 20% more likely to have had a friend visit them at home in the previous week.
Active, Influential Consumers
Teen social media influencers also like to talk about what they buy: 87% say they share information about the products they use with their friends, compared with 50% of other teens.
Such teen influencers are more likely than other teens to have recommended a wide range of products and services in the previous six months, such as clothing (84% vs. 68%), cosmetics and skincare products (63% vs. 47%), and electronics (87% vs. 74%).
Looking for real, hard data that can help you match social media tools and tactics to your marketing goals? The State of Social Media Marketing, a 240-page original research report from MarketingProfs, gives you the inside scoop on how 5,140 marketing pros are using social media to create winning campaigns, measure ROI, and reach audiences in new and exciting ways.
Marketing to Teens
Overall, teens are more likely to read and pass along content that’s funny (88%) or shocking (77%).
Interestingly, most teen social media influencers prefer interaction from brands to be clear and straightforward: Only 47% prefer a humorous approach from brands.
Teen influencers are also 41% more likely than other teens to be interested in celebrity news.
Born Multitaskers
When watching TV, teen social media influencers are more likely than other teens to simultaneously use their phones or computers: 88% say they text while watching TV (vs. 74% of other teens) and 79% say they are online (vs. 66%).
Overall, however, teen social media influencers spend less time watching TV than they do on the Web: One-half spend 3+ hours online per day; only one-quarter spend that amount watching TV.
Age Matters, Especially When Friending Parents
Overall, younger teen influencers (age 15-17) are the most engaged online, with activity among 18- and 19-year-olds dropping slightly, likely due to increased face-to-face socialization after entering college or leaving home.
Younger teen social media influencers don’t want to be friends with their parents on social media sites: 56% of those age 13-14 say they “hate it” or are “nervous” or “annoyed” when their parents friend them on social media sites, whereas only 27% of older teen social media influencers (age 18-19) say the same.
About the data: Findings are from the Social Media Teen Influencer Survey, conducted by myYearbook and the Ketchum Global Research Network from May 5 to 11, 2010, among a representative sample of 10,000 myYearbook.com members age 13-19.
Top mcommerce trends for 2010 – what’s hot and what’s not
Mobile commerce trend No. 1 – Investment
Mobile commerce trend No. 2 – Mobile couponing
Mobile commerce trend No. 3 – Location
Mobile commerce trend No. 4 – Social
Mobile commerce trend No. 5 – Analytics
How age, income and ethnicity affect time spent social networking
The Nielsen Company reported in June that, on average, the global consumer spends about 1 in every 4.5 minutes online on blogs or social networking sites. According to a report by market researcher Morpace, among US Facebook users time on Facebook rises to 1 in 3 minutes spent online.
Unsurprisingly, despite Facebook’s growing appeal to older users, 18- to 34-year-olds spend the most time on the site per week, at 8.5 hours out of 22.4 spent online. Weekly Facebook time drops to 4.6 hours among users ages 55 and older, representing a lower proportion of that group’s average of 21.5 hours per week on the internet.
Broken down by race and ethnicity, Morpace found Facebook usage heaviest by Asians. Not only did that group spend the most hours per week on the site, but they also devoted the greatest percentage of their weekly internet time to Facebook (39.6%, compared with 35.1% among blacks, the second-highest group). Hispanics spent the fewest hours on Facebook, and even compared with their low average time online came in last.
In Q1 2010, comScore found that the visitors who spent the most time on Facebook also spent the most money online. Targeting users who not only spend large amounts of time on the site but also devote a large proportion of their total online activity to the social network could translate to going after the most lucrative portion of the audience.
