Create a Mobile Social Computing Strategy

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Create a Mobile Social Computing Strategy

Many of your prospects may not have regular access to computers or the Internet, and others may prefer mobile devices for their daily social media use. You may want to create a non-Web-based social comput­ing strategy to leverage:

• Smart mobile phones
• Tablets such as iPads and Android pads
• Texting

Mobile social computing is becoming a very important way users are interacting with social media. According to Facebook, in mid-2011 more than 250 million people were using Facebook from their mobile devices every month.[10] That represents a growth of 384 percent in less than two years, as there were just 65 million^[11] users of using Facebook Mobile^[12] in September 2009.

In fact, a recent study^[13] by Ground Truth found that US mobile users spend almost 60 percent of their time on social networks.

Percent of Time Spent on Mobile Internet Usage by Category

MySpace and Facebook were the top destinations cited in the study, which brings up an interesting point: Mobile users may not be the same demographic as computer-based social media users. Facebook has many times the number of members as the fading MySpace, yet MySpace was the most popular dest­ination for mobile users, followed closely by Facebook. No other highly-popular social media sites were in the top 10 in the study.

MySpace’s demographic skews young, with a generally higher proportion of high-school-age and younger users. However, with the sale of MySpace in mid-2011, you may want to watch carefully how the site evolves with new owners.

So if you want to reach mobile users, you’ll need to adjust your approach and your messaging.

There is even research that indicates that mobile social media use is more popular than computer-based usage. A study by Ruder Finn in February, 2010^[14] found:

• 91 percent of mobile phone users go online to socialize compared to only 79 percent of traditional desktop users
• Mobile phone users are 1.6 times more likely to bank online compared to traditional desktop users (62 percent versus 39 percent)

Based on these statistics, you may find that you need to create a mobile social computing strategy that is slightly different from the rest of your external strategy. Since many social media sites are not optimized for the restricted bandwidth and small screen size of mobile phones, you may want to concen­trate your efforts on sites that better-support these devices. Facebook has been a leader in this area.

Next up: The 10 Commandments of Social Computing, pt 1