Think Mobile, Talk Mobile & Know Mobile
It’s hardly news that web access is increasingly moving to mobile devices. Yet the speed of the move from desktop to mobile access is quite astonishing. Website TechCrunch published some figures earlier this year which put claimed that 14% of all visitors to their site arrived on a mobile device. While 14% might not sound like a lot, we should bear in mind that this represents a staggering 702% increase on the figure from a year before.
The move to mobile access is happening with even greater urgency in social media and the internet is full of statistics to show the speed of adoption of social media by mobile users. Twitter’s CEO recently claimed that 40% of all tweets were now being composed on a mobile device: that’s over double the number for 2010. Facebook’s figures tell a similar tale. According to data recently released by the social media giant, over 350 million people access Facebook from a mobile device every month and it stands apart as the single most accessed mobile destination in the UK. Our own statistics, taken from the CEM4Mobile platform show us that, for mobile users, social media apps are accessed around 20 times per month on average.
Everywhere you look, statistics point to the increasingly close relationship between social media and the mobile web. Yet perhaps the most notable thing about this incredibly rapid adoption is that it signals a process that has barely begun. If we look at forecasts we can see that even the most conservative predictions talk of a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20%. According to ABI research this will put us in a place in 5 years time where at least 1.7 billion people use the mobile web as their main platform for interacting with social media.
What all this suggests is that brands need to support their social media efforts with a well planned mobile social media strategy. This means developing content that’s designed and tested specifically for mobile users. The problem here is that most companies (80% according to some reports) aren’t equipped to properly plan and test content across mobile devices. There are numerous social analytics platforms and providers available on the market, yet by and large they lack the detail and insight that a dedicated mobile analytics platform provides.
As companies increasingly shift their customer relationship focus to social media, they also (perhaps unwittingly) shift it to the mobile channel. As mobile web adoption grows it becomes increasingly important to be able to access granular detail about a user’s mobile habits. This includes the standard metrics such as time on app, page views and so on but also extends to identifying unique users with their online nicknames. And, it means that businesses need to consider how to integrate their web presence with social media platforms.
Traffic that originates from social media platforms needs to be analysed in order to determine the effectiveness of social media marketing campaigns. Businesses can initiate campaigns and activity from social media sites and then use mobile analytics solutions to determine the success of such programmes as traffic reaches their site.
A coherent and integrated social media presence means a “mobil-ized” social media strategy and a suitable mechanism for monitoring activity – otherwise, investment will be wasted and opportunities lost. As more and more companies incorporate social media marketing into their promotional campaigns, it will become increasingly competitive. To maintain an edge, companies require insight into where traditional desktop and mobile interaction differ so that they can optimise for these very different channels. Monitoring social media activity increasingly means monitoring mobile social media activity and that’s going to be a major problem for companies who rely on traditional web analytics solutions.
