7 things you need to know about mobile communication

By Matt Wilson - Ragan.com  01-19-11

 

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Welcome to the year of the smartphone.

In March, Nielsen predicted that more people in the United States will own and use smartphones than so-called “feature” phones, a.k.a. standard cell phones, by the end of 2011. Other studies have shown that smartphone users are using the devices more and more in their daily lives, for purposes such as shopping.

Meanwhile, analysts expect that sales of tablet PCs such as the iPad could more than double in 2011, from about 10 million to more than 24 million.

What does all this mean? “Everybody has to get into mobile communication,” says Shel Holtz of Holtz Communication. “If you’re not developing a strategy now, you’re late.”

As you develop that strategy, here are some key tips from Holtz and other experts:

Your regular website won’t cut it.

“The price of admission is getting a website mobile-ready,” Holtz says. He said the number of websites you can now go to on a mobile device, yet aren’t optimized for mobile users, is “discouraging.”

In addition to mobile sites, apps are becoming more and more important, he says: “We’re moving into a world that’s going to be dominated by apps. You’re going to have to be able to manage an app development project.”

What you include in that app may be different from what’s on your website, Holtz says. Content in apps is made to be consumed quickly, he says. You also have to know what users will want from your app, says Michael Gartenberg, a partner with Altimeter group.

“Applications, by definition, provide value to consumers,” he says. “Apps that are just ads or commercials aren’t going to do it.”

You have to define how you’ll provide that value, Gartenberg says, whether it’s informational, commercial or a service. “Not everything is going to be an app or should be an app,” he says.

Everyone else is doing it.

“If you’re going to go the application route, you’re talking a market that’s now filled with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of applications,” Gartenberg says. “What are you going to do to get your stuff standing out so the consumer sees, engages with it, gains value from it and wants to use it?”

The way to do that, he says, is to focus on who your users are going to be. Will your audience use your app at home or in the office?

“The nature of mobility mean there’s a number of settings that the consumer can use this,” he says. “What context will your application—will your message—make the most sense for the consumer?”

For example, finding out what movies or shows are playing on TV at home is a different experience from trying to find the nearest coffee shop when you’re on the go and craving caffeine, Gartenberg says.

Joe Ciarallo, director of communications for Buddy Media, focus on a single element and deliver it well. “Think about what is the one thing they will come to your app or site to do, whether it's checking a sports score, the weather, comparing a price of a product or something else,” he says.

Go where your audience is.

Users may want to look at your mobile website. They may want an app. They may want to get text messages from you. Or they may want you to alert them based on where they are. You have to give them all those options, Holtz says.

“The consumer is in charge of deciding what platform they want to use, and you want to be in those various places,” he says.

That may include location-based services, augmented reality (which allows users to look at what’s in front of them with computer-generated, informational graphics) or QR codes (the bar codes smartphone users can scan to obtain information or a service).

It won’t always be a free lunch.

“Consumers should expect that over the next decade, free access to content is going to go away,” says Norman Birnbach of Birnbach Communications, who blogged about the importance of mobile in 2011.

With the growth of apps, the pain of paying may not be so sharp, he says.

“Subscriptions via apps could fare better for three reasons: The experience can be better, people are already accustomed to paying for apps, and app stores—like iTunes—provide a much more consistent expectation,” he says.

Phones and tablets are different.

Phones and tablets are both mobile devices, but they’re not created equal.

“In the case of a phone, you may assume the user is on the go and is looking for something, is referencing some type of information,” Gartenberg says. “On a tablet, they may very well be using the Web instead of an application. They may be using the Web the same way they use it on a computer; they may just be using it in a more casual way.”

Magazines and other publications are more likely to flourish on tablets, which many users are taking on trips rather than bulky laptops, whereas the phone market may lean more toward location-based features.

One thing they share, however, is that static text won’t cut it, Holtz says. “Having a PDF of your publication may have been fine, but that’s not going to work on a mobile phone,” he says. “That’s not going to work on a tablet.”

RSS isn’t going away.

Some observers have declared RSS dead, but apps such as Flipboard, which aggregates content for people to read on their mobile devices, are proving that contention wrong.

“They’re all RSS driven,” Holtz says. “As infrastructure, it’s still vitally important.”

Values are changing.

Where an ad or an article in a magazine may have gotten through to several people in a household by passing the publication among themselves, families aren’t all looking at the same content anymore.

“In the digital, mobile future, you can't be sure that anyone else other than the subscriber is reading your ad or your message,” Birnbach says. “Sure, a subscriber may e-mail an article, but pass-along as a concept is dead.  If I'm reading an article on a Kindle or an iPad app, I can't easily lend the entire magazine issue to anyone else, unless I lend you my actual iPad or Kindle.”

 

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