Many businesses are very interested in mobilizing their brands, usually because they simply want more access to their user base, and they see a lot of potential in opening up a new channel of communication through a mobile device that the user is carrying around with them anyway (more often than even your wallet, after all, if you leave your wallet at home, you might not turn around because you can always borrow cash from a friend. But if you leave your phone at home, most people would turn around to pick it up.)
But we’ve identified what we believe is an even more powerful argument for mobilizing your brand: the massively leveraging power of mobile content creation.
So what do we mean by this? Let me start by asking you a question: If only 2% to 5% of your user base is carrying around a smart-phone, does it make sense to put the thought, time & resources into creating a mobile version of your brand?
Your initial answer might be ‘no,’ but we have a strong argument as to why that answer is a resounding ‘yes’.
Let’s start by analyzing a pattern of behavior on the Internet (and in other parts of life too): Typically, most people “consume” content, and few people “create” content. It’s like this with TV, and it’s like this on the Internet. Many fewer people are out there creating the content than the size of the audience that’s consuming it. Let’s call this the 90/10 rule, where 10% of the user base is creating the content, while 90% is consuming it.
Another interesting trend with smart phones is that people with these types of phones, which are basically mini-computers, are much more active on the Internet through their phones than the typical phone user. In fact, even though a vast minority of users have an iPhone, they are big Internet users, because the iPhone has made it easy to browse web pages through the mobile device. The ergonomics here become very important.
So then, these pieces come together. You have very active mobile users within your user base that could be creating very rich, original content for the rest of the passive user base to consume.
And even though those users might be a minority of the entire user base, or might only be in certain geographic areas, the content they make can (and will) still be consumed by the entire audience, and your brand, and site, will be much richer because of it.
This is illustrated very clearly by a “Twitter Vote Report” app that NPR did for the elections (pictured at left, you can also find the link here courtesy of FortiusOne). Although the actual amount of data produced was small – on the order of what appears to be several thousand submissions nationwide, the effect is stunning when viewed on the full desktop experience. And here’s a link showing the twitter comments people were making about their wait times – again it’s as if these mobile users were all reporters, sending in “news from the front lines” that passive desktop users crave.
We encourage you to think about mobilizing your brand in this way: You will get a new channel of localized communication between you and your user base by extending your brand to the mobile handset, and making it easy for current and future customers to interact with you from their phones. But you will also have a tremendous opportunity to leverage the data from this small subset of your users over your entire userbase, so make sure you put some thought into how you can apply this for maximum effect.
