I’ve got to be honest with you: the fact that we can now speak to our phones and they’ll not only obey us, but also speak back, is (1) slightly ridiculous and (2) well, a little creepy. At least to me it is. And since I’m blogging, I can opine. Take that, news writing.
It seems the IQ of phones is increasing by the day, now performing tasks we only thought possible in The Jetsons or Star Trek. They have become the very lifeblood of some people, Facebooking, tweeting, emailing, checking weather and stocks (and ski reports if you’re anything like me) and reading news everywhere they go.
The smart phone revolution began as an effort to get the Internet into the hands (literally) of the everyday Joe, so he could access all his favorite content anywhere he wanted. According to a study done last fall, “44 percent of Americans said they got their news through one or more Internet or mobile digital sources.” (Sept. 11, 2010). Even more significantly, the survey reported that “69% of those with some post-graduate experience got news through a digital source.”
In a survey of 300,000 mobile consumers, 88% of whom owned a device running one the five most popular smartphone operating systems, more than 30% said that mobile is the “most important medium” to access breaking news, narrowly followed by:
Just over half (56%) of respondents said they expect to use their mobile device to access news and information more frequently in the next year, while 42% said they plan to use it roughly the same amount. Additionally, Apple just announced a couple months ago that on August 23 of this year, the 15 billionth app was downloaded. It might just be me, but I think people are using mobile devices these days.
With these trends indicating changes in people’s behavior, we as Internet marketers need to be changing as well. If that’s what our audiences are doing, we had better keep up with them. The answer is simple: include coding for mobile versions of your websites and other online marketing content (developing apps for your online and electronic products should not be far from your mind at this point) so when people access your company on their mobile devices, they can have the same great experience they had three hours previously on their computer or in your store. Admittedly, putting it into action is a bit more complicated, especially for me, since I might be the very antithesis of a coder. We’ll leave that to the techies out there.
Additionally, when considering your social media marketing plan, make sure you take into account that some content posted on Twitter and Facebook is not accessible on mobile devices. Successful brand development depends largely on your ability to ensure your customers’ experiences translate from one medium and channel to the others. Consistency is key with all the different media out there.
So, while I do still think it’s outrageous that I can talk to a metal box and it will actually retrieve information and perform tasks for me, I concede that I’m pretty sure these droid-like devices (totally unintentional pun — really) aren’t going to be disappearing anytime soon. We had better adjust and start adapting our ways to welcome in the newest recruits to our online PR and marketing strategies or we just may find ourselves up a creek not too long from now.
About the author
As a Star Trek fan, I’m looking for a phone that can scan goods and tell me their quality level, reliability, chemical composition, etc. (Tricorder, anyone?) Honestly, we might see such phones not too long from now. And when we do, it will make a big difference in marketing.
In fact, we already kind of have phones like that: you scan a product’s QR code and get all kinds of info about it. Then you’re a few clicks away from positive and negative reviews.