According to the Pew Research Center, 91 percent of adults in America own a cell phone. Of those, 56 percent own smart phones capable of accessing the internet and receiving multi-media messages. This incredible growth in the adoption of mobile devices points to social mobile marketing as one of the biggest untapped resources for many business owners seeking to expand their reach and grow their customer base.
Mobile applications marketing is a rapidly growing industry that you can leverage to your benefit – but simply having an online presence isn’t enough. Read on to discover four ways you can use social mobile marketing to achieve vastly improved brand exposure.
Getting Seen on Facebook Mobile
Facebook Mobile has been a tough nut to crack for many business owners, in particular because of the historical lack of native mobile apps. Whereas it’s easy to target market on the desktop version of Facebook, it’s been nearly impossible to do so on the mobile version. This doesn’t mean you have to throw in the towel. It just means you have to get a bit more active in your efforts.
The first step is to consistently create valuable content. In other words, don’t just post status updates for the sake of doing so unless you’ve got something interesting to share with your followers – information they can use, and that in turn can garner you many shares and likes. Never leave out your call to action. Asking questions that elicit responses is another powerful way to get your audience engaged. Although recent news from Facebook has also announced the eventual rollout of native mobile ads, it’s best not to wait. Try the above mentioned tactics to get your business noticed now.
Tweeting Your Way to Visibility
“Twitter was born mobile,” according to Twitter’s own blog. It makes sense. The 140-character limit seems tailor made for contributors and readers on the go. For this reason, if you haven’t already incorporated Twitter into your mobile marketing plan, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. According to the aforementioned Twitter blog, mobile Tweeters account for 60 percent of the social media platform’s users. You can leverage this easily by doing a few simple things. For one, choose a Twitter handle that’s representative of your brand. Next, learn how to be brief. The more concise your Tweets, the easier it will be for others to respond and re-Tweet you. Most importantly, understand how hashtags work. Hashtags are very useful for helping people find you and can lead to a wealth of new followers – but if you include more than three, you could just muddy up your message to the point where it’ll be difficult to decipher.
Get the Picture with Instagram
Instagram is one of the most underutilized social mobile marketing apps. The fact that it’s wildly popular among consumers should be plenty of indication, however, that this is an area ripe for exploitation by businesses. The fact that Instagram plays well with both Twitter and Facebook makes it an even more valuable platform for promotional purposes. The trick is to take interesting photos that are relevant to your brand and that won’t come across as tasteless or – even worse – embarrassing to your business. The rollout several months back of Instagram Video has also opened up a new world of possibilities. To get started, create an Instagram account for your business and cross-link all images and videos to your business Twitter and Facebook pages. This will let your followers know you’re on Instagram, and in turn they’ll follow you there as well.
Create an App
Not every business owner has an idea for an app that will be useful to their customers. This is all the more reason for you to put some long, hard thought into a smart phone application that would be both useful and enjoyable for your customers to have. If you have the desire to pursue an app, your first step is to contact a mobile app developer. In many instances, throwing around ideas with a professional who’s done it before could inspire you to come up with an ingenious idea. Don’t know any mobile app developers? No problem. Check out Artisan Talent, where you can reach out to freelance professionals who can help flesh your ideas out and then take over the duties of actually making it work. To get a better idea of how Artisan works, contact us today to learn more.
