Have Network, Will Travel: Merging Social and Mobile Media

No one doubts the emerging influence and opportunity of social media and mobile technology but everyone questions their ability to take advantage of the opportunity.  The answer may lie in creating a symbiotic approach to both.

In January, the mobile analytics company Flurry, reported that social media apps were visited more frequently than any other category including news and games.  Remarkably, these social media apps were visited over 20 times a month far outpacing second place news category.   Flurry attributes the social media appeal (double the attraction of news and four times that of game apps) to a user experience that can be more relevant than the news and more entertaining than entertainment.

So if the integration of social and mobile media is the wave of the future, how do you avoid being a paddlepuss?

First, recognize that mobile socialites aren’t looking for a dissertation on your cause.  They consume short bits of information on a frequent basis—which may explain Twitter’s explosive growth.  So, make it relevant, keep it short, and keep it coming.

Next, use your social media assets to drive compelling content to your mobile supporters.  Why recreate the content wheel?  Use the mobile web to push your existing content out to a mobile audience.  In turn, find opportunities to drive your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter crowd to your mobile web apps or mobile web sites.  These opportunities might include a call to action—make a donation for a special appeal—request for feedback via a quick survey or get more information on how to push legislative action.  In many ways, mobile can empower these networks to act with immediacy and as a collective.

Finally, there are also some interesting alternatives to the usual social media suspects.  The mobile arena is also fostering the emergence of several mobile-only social networks like BrightKite.  These emerging pure plays are taking advantage of mobile attributes such as GPS and instant photo publishing to make local connections on the fly.  These players create some interesting possibilities for volunteerism, events, and local crowdsourcing.  If you really want to brand the network experience, you can also take a look at what some consumer brands are doing: launching their own social networks.

Regardless of what you do, don’t wait.  Be creative…be strategic…and keep it simple.   And it certainly wouldn’t hurt to keep coming back to the Ring of Fire!

[Via http://kaptivate.wordpress.com]