The State of the Media: Social Media Report 2012 by Nielsen shows interesting facts. In 2012, people accessed social media accounts from their Smartphone as compared to previous years. While Facebook mobile access increased by 85 percent, Pinterest mobile users increased 4225 percent; in the same way, Twitter and LinkedIn mobile users increased by 140 percent and 114 percent respectively.
In other words, Internet audiences are using mobile phones to access Social Media accounts. In Business terms, this translates into a lot of potential for online growth. If you can target mobile users and convert them for your business, there is nothing like it. In this article, I give you few ways to scale up Social Media Marketing efforts for mobile users.
Here’s an interesting image I got from Marketing Sherpa.
1. Optimize Website for Mobile Viewers
Your current website is made for desktop and laptop users. Put in equal amount of effort to create a mobile-friendly website. When you share information on social media, you intend to bring visitors to the website, right? If the visitors have to wait minutes for the website to load or have a hard time reading the content or navigating, it is your loss, not theirs.
For example, check out Huffington Post on your Smartphone device. Notice the kind of optimization. There are no ads, just two or three categories to explore current news and then a detailed footer to gain access to all their site content. In other words, it is a site optimized for mobile viewers.
Hence, optimize the website for mobile users. Hire a designer or do-it-yourself. The graphics should be legible and the user interface easy to navigate.
2. Test Mobile Website
The work doesn’t end with creating a mobile-friendly website. You also need to test the same on various common mobile platforms to see how the page loads, how the graphics are displayed, and other things. Test as a user and then only you can enhance user experience. Don’t forget that creating a website for mobile users is filled with intricacies to be handled before going live.
3. Be Sure When to Post
A report by SocialBakers.com says that when anything is posted on Facebook, the first 30 minutes brings around 50 percent of user engagement. After that, the post vanishes into news feed.
In other words, you need to have some idea when your users are going to be online and click on postings. The same works for other networks. You need to put in some time to analyze which social media networks work for you and how to maximize its potential. There is always a debate among marketers on this point but it is worthwhile to review when your target market is online and when not.
4. Add Main Social Media Buttons
While your desktop based website can have all the social media buttons you desire, the mobile optimized website should have minimal usage. You can only add Facebook and Twitter share buttons or you can also add Pinterest if its an image based website.
There are various WordPress plugins which helps to add social media buttons. Do trial and error with multiple ones to select the fastest loading plugin. You won’t want to keep the visitor waiting for social media sharing buttons, right?
5. Modify Apps or Create one of your Own
Mobile applications are one of the best ways to connect with readers. There are the ever popular Facebook apps but on Smartphone screen, the user has to tap or pinch and enlarge the app size for better visibility. While this is better than showing an error screen, it hinders the user interaction process.
Therefore, if you have the budget, create a social media app for the business and optimize it for mobile users only. Alternatively, you can modify existing social media apps with prior permission as well.
Mobile Social Media Marketing is a relatively new way to gain better return-on-investment (ROI). In short, you need to deliver the business website or blog on a Smartphone screen and make it seamlessly share-worthy. If you can do this, you are ready to grab the Smartphone wielding social media user base.
Great post dude.Yes it is very important to target mobile social marketing as most of them on mobiles mostly seeing the add.
Hey Satish very interesting article dude, Yes you are absolutely right we have now a days target all the mobile users. As many of them are working from mobiles due they busy schedules.
Hi Satish, Great post dude.Yes it is very important to target mobile social marketing as most of them on mobiles most of the times.
Hey Satish to make one’s blog ready for smartphones , they have to opt for responsive themes or templates which adjust according to the smartphone’s screen size.Thanks for sharing your insights
You are right Joel. You need to invest in a good responsive theme and make the mobile version very clutter-free.
With overwhelming increase in mobile users, it is a wise move to target mobile social marketing efforts.
That’s really alot of people.
Mobile optimization is getting more and more important.
Yes.
I was surprised to see the stats. Thanks for commenting here.