5 Mobile Social Media Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Business

#1: Connect With Prospects On LinkedIn Mobile

The LinkedIn mobile app brings a streamlined version of the desktop site to your smartphone or other mobile device. You’ll have access to all the key LinkedIn features, including updates, your profile, messages and groups.

An example of the LinkedIn home screen on a smartphone.

From your LinkedIn home page, tap on your profile photo to access your profile screen to see who has viewed your profile recently. If someone has viewed your profile, it’s a good indication that they might be interested in hearing from you.

With the mobile app, you can reach out to them from your phone or tablet. Justtap on their profile photo and say hello to them via LinkedIn.

Allowing the app to send you push notifications is a great way to stay in touch with your LinkedIn connections, even when you’re away from your desktop computer.

#2: Build Your Brand on Instagram

Many people think of Instagram as nothing more than a photo-sharing app for personal use, but you can also use it to promote your corporate or personal brand.

In addition to sharing photos of his own travels, Dave Kerpen, author of Likeable Business and CEO of Likeable Media, uses Instagram to build brand awareness by posting pictures of the Likeable foam hand at baseball games around the country.

A picture of the Likeable foam hand from Dave Kerpen’s Instagram feed.

Shelly Kramer, founder of integrated marketing firm V3 uses humor to extend her brand’s personality when she shares Instagram photos with her clients and followers.

Shelly Kramer posted “More evidence of my really bad, terrible, horrible day.”

When you post images from your mobile device to Instagram it can help youform a strong connection with your audience and build a visual representation of your brand. Consider using similar tactics to promote your brand and build awareness through this popular social platform.

#3: Use Promoted Tweets to Target Mobile Users

Did you know that 55% of users who log into Twitter every month do so at least once using a mobile device? You can reach these people by using Promoted Tweets todisplay your tweet to users who access Twitter from a mobile device.

Sprint uses promoted Tweets to capture the attention of potential customers who are using Twitter from their smartphones with a tweet that offers $100 to people who switch to Sprint as their mobile carrier.

Sprint’s Promoted Tweet is surfaced only to users viewing Twitter on a mobile device.

Mobile targeting on Twitter will let you tailor tweets to appeal to prospects and customers who use smartphones. You’ll want to keep this tactic in mind as mobile usage continues to grow.

#4: Drive Traffic to Mobile Sites With Facebook’s Promoted Posts

Unlike Facebook Ads or Sponsored Stories, which display in the right sidebar,Promoted Posts are visible to mobile users because they display in the Facebook news feed.

Below is an example of a Promoted Post that drives traffic to a landing page on the company’s mobile website. The image on the left shows an ad that’s integrated into a user’s Facebook stream. The ad drives prospects and customers to a landing page on the company’s mobile website, as shown in the image on the right.

Use Facebook’s Promoted Posts to show ads in the news feeds of mobile users.

Retailers, e-commerce sites, mobile app developers and traditional businesses have all used Facebook’s native advertising to acquire new customers cost-effectively.

#5: Use a QR Code to Increase Your Social Audience

Research indicates that 27% of all smartphone owners have scanned a QR code. And, while QR codes aren’t going to be around forever, they’re still a great way toconnect with people using social media on their mobile devices.

Use a QR code to grow your Twitter audience.

Here’s a simple technique you can use to get more Twitter followers using QR codes. Copy the URL and visit Mobile-Barcodes. Paste the URL into the QR code generator and hit Submit. Instantly, you’ll have your very own QR code, which can be saved to your desktop.

Now you can add the QR code to any printed materials—business cards, brochures, posters, even T-shirts. People who scan the QR code will be driven to your Twitter page, where they can follow you from their mobile device.

Go on, grab your smartphone and scan the code.s

Mobile Marketing Conversion Optimization Tools & Code Tricks

Getting the mobile experience wrong can be deadly to your bottom line. You don't want to turn off customers with a bad mobile site and lose them to a competitor. Use these tips, tools, and code tricks to enhance the mobile user experience and drive more conversions.

The Consequence of Getting Your Mobile Experience Wrong

Schottmuller shared two staggering stats:

• 43 percent of consumers are unlikely to return to a slow-loading mobile site.
• 40 percent of consumers are going to turn to a competitor's site after a bad mobile experience.

So when you're doing conversion tests, and you're saying, "how can we get a 5 or 10 percent lift on specific pages?" And imagine that 20 percent of your traffic is coming from mobile; if they don't get a mobile-optimized experience, there's a huge opportunity right there.

How to Approach Mobile Conversion Optimization

You need a plan.

A simplified layout for mobile is really the biggest thing, according to Schottmuller. Design your landing pages for mobile first and make sure they're simplified and focus on only one product or service on the page.

Mobile is dead. Schottmuller believes there's no such thing as mobile.

You can walk around with a laptop or MacBook Air that's not plugged into anything, and it has Internet access, allows you to accomplish your tasks, explore, etc.

The biggest difference is touchscreen vs. non-touchscreen, which is one of the key things to consider when thinking about mobile conversions.

Screen size is important as well. Keep in mind that there shouldn't just three or four general sizes you're creating pages for – soon the market will be flooded with different types of screen sizes, whether it's in your rearview mirror in your car, or in your refrigerator in your house. You should plan how you fit those different width ranges, so that you're not perpetually always playing catch-up.

Can the user make phone calls from the mobile page? Phone calls are one of the top actions for mobile users. So make sure you present the phone number as a call-to-action – you can do this by using jQuery on the page (more below), and use CSS to style it appropriately if you want it to look like a button, move it around on the page, etc.

"Content is Only King…in the Kingdom of Context" 

Given all of these different areas to focus on for mobile, you need to adapt your strategy.

What is the context for your user? Not just the device but their surroundings (i.e., where they might be when you're asking them to take one of your conversion actions.

If you come across a website that is executed nicely on mobile, then take a look at how they did it by examining the code on their page, Schottmuller recommended.

Mobile Mini Toolbox

Here are three great bookmarklets to view a site's source code from your smartphone:

• Snoopy
• ViewS
• View Source

With these tools, you can see how they're executing on mobile (e.g., if they're running jQuery, Google Analytics, Wordpress, etc.).

Here's a tip for taking a deeper look at the site's code on a larger screen: use one of the bookmarklets and click anywhere in the code, Select All and Copy the code; then email it to yourself so you can open it on a desktop or laptop. From there, dump the code into an HTML editor so you can start to dissect it.

What are some other things you can do to understand your mobile users?

Detect "mobile" devices. There are a lot of different factors to consider when it comes to mobile.Detect Mobile Browsers really covers the different platforms, languages, browsers, etc. that you're going after.

Mobile Analytics

Schottmuller noted that when it comes to Google Analytics, Webtrends or SiteCatalyst, at least 25 to 40 percent of mobile traffic still isn't being covered by those tool sets.

What we need to do for measuring mobile is deep diving into server logs, and the above-mentioned tools just aren't digging fast enough. So she highly recommends exploring other mobile tracking platforms. Here are three options:

• Bango
• Percent Mobile
• Amethon

Schottmuller said she has had some really good experiences with Bango and thinks it's solid in terms of how much data it's able to capture. So if you've been contemplating building a mobile app or doing anything with mobile, for that matter, and you really don't know how much mobile traffic you have, put this on your site for 30 days, to get an understanding of what's the reality.

Mobile Design Tricks

Schottmuller said jQuery is your friend. If you have any Flash on your site, you should set it's life expectancy date and kill it and never let it come back again. jQuery can do the following: slide shows, any type of animation, reset the size of different components for different mobile screens, etc.

Here are some useful jQuery responsive plugins included in her presentation:

• FitText, which allows you to achieve scalable headings
• FitVids for fluid width video embeds
• WooThemes FlexSlider toolkit
• Photo Swipe image gallery for mobile and touch devices

Mobile Call-to-Action Tips

Avoid using too many calls-to-action on a mobile page – keep it simple. Also, if you have a rainbow of colors on your site, you need to evaluate how you can neutralize those pages. 

Schottmuller likes to use a "conversion color wheel clock" where you take your primary color on a site (e.g., a blue background) and look at the opposite color on the color wheel (e.g., red or orange). Using a tool like this helps you find contrasting colors so that you can place a button on your site that really ends popping out on the page.

Smartphone users are very task-oriented, whereas tablet users are very interactive-oriented, so they'll be interested in sites that actually have the gestures and movements, etc.

Desktop users are more benefits-oriented and typically have a little more time, have larger screens, they're interested in looker deeper.

If you have mobile pages with a call-to-action that's far down on the page, and you want to engage the user, one tactic you can use is setting the expectation for the user at the top of the page. So you can say something like, "Fill out the form to win a new iPad3".

They might not be able to see the how long the form is and how far down they have to go, but they'll get a sense of what they're asked to do from the beginning, which can help increase the amount of people that engage and ultimately convert.

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IAB study reveals 54% increase in mobile optimisation amongst top 100 brands

Research released this week by the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB) shows a significant increase in the top 100 brands optimising their websites for mobile in the past six months.

The second wave of the IAB’s mobile optimisation study reveals that 57% of the top 100 brands now have a mobile optimised site, up from 37%. 

This represents a 54% in six months.

The research revealed that the sectors with the most significant percentage increase in mobile marketing over the last six months are FMCG (up 267%), media (up 150%) and tech & telecoms (up 150%). Looking at the sectors with the greatest degree of mobile optimisation,  FMCG again comes out on top with 79% of the 14 sites listed being optimised, followed closely by automotive with 73% of the 26 sites listed being optimised.

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14 intriguing ways to use QR codes

Whatever your opinion on QR codes, you have to admit they have permeated the digital space with a vengeance. They are somewhat controversial, but remain a hot topic, especially among digital marketers. 

The question is, how should we use these enigmatic little blobs of code? 

 

The boring examples include scavenger hunts, restaurant menus, wine bottles, T-shirts, rewards, free downloads, links to websites, and more. But here we are going to explore the more unusual and creative uses of QR codes, from brands and organizations alike.

QR code campaigns that actually worked

QR codes are now a common feature in marketing campaigns, though many people are often sceptical about their value. 

This scepticism is often justified as, though we have seen some creative examples, QR codes are often used very badly. 

Also, while it is easy to find creative examples, brands and marketers aren't always forthcoming about revealing the stats around campaigns. 

So here are six examples where we have some stats, and where QR codes have been used effectively... 

MyToy.de

German retailer MyToy.de built QR codes using Lego bricks to drive customers to their online store.

Users were then able to buy the bricks used to make the QR code.

While it is a very creative use of QR codes, the execution wasn’t perfect as it linked to a desktop site.

But it was still a huge success, as 49% of visitors to MyToy.de came via the QR codes while the campaign was live, and twice as many brick boxes were sold for the Lego models included in the QR adverts.

Heinz

Last year Heinz put QR codes on ketchup bottles in US restaurants to promote its new environmentally friendly packaging.

It linked to a mobile site where users could win prizes by answering a green knowledge trivia question.

                                          

Heinz reported that more than 1m consumers scanned the codes.

Emart

This is another example of a retailer being creative with QR codes but also achieving excellent engagement.

Emart, South Korea’s largest retailer, created a shadow QR code that only became visible when the sun was at the correct angle in the sky between midday and 1pm. 

It was all to promote a ‘sunny sale’ mobile site that gave access to special offers, coupons and a download for the e-commerce app.

As a result of the campaign Emart sold more than 12,000 coupons, membership increased 58% on the previous month and sales increased 25% during lunchtime.

However it’s important to bear in mind that the use of QR codes is far more common in South Korea.

And, unlike the UK, they get sunshine. 

L’Oreal

During New York Fashion Week L’Oreal put QR codes in taxis that linked to how-to videos featuring Yves Saint Laurent and Lancôme beauty products.

Viewers could also buy the products from the website.

While a moving taxi isn’t perhaps the most convenient place to try and get 3G access, L’Oreal was guaranteed a captive audience and drew attention to the codes using calls to action within the cab.

L’Oreal reported a 7% overall purchase conversion rate from the QR codes, while downloads of the app increased by approximately 80% during the five day campaign.

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