This is an excerpt from my live blogging of a SMX Melbourne presentation by Gillian Muessig, President of SEOmoz.
Mobile is here to stay. If you haven’t already investigated how to use mobile marketing, you are already way behind.
Why do you want a community platform? Social commerce is a subset of electronic commerce. Gillian mentioned LivingSocial.com – already in Sydney, very big in the US. It’s a way to get deals / coupons for things in your community. Also Groupon.com is a similar thing. These ideas are similar to @square, which is a way to pay for things using your cell phone, popular in the US and hopefully coming to Australia and New Zealand soon.
You can make your own QR code at www.qrcode.kaywa.com – download the QR code to your mobile for coupon / discount / offer / invitations / news. Mobile coupons are about levels of offers therefore all about social status.
You can also play games with QR codes. Send hints / clues / instructions etc. Data has come full circle and now gone offline. You can get your codes offline now, from billboards, physical stores etc.
Should you or shouldn’t you jump on the .mobi bandwagon? Gillian says no. It was always a stop gap measure. But DO create mobile-friendly pages. Search engines will use transcoding to auto show your page on mobile devices. Make sure your pages provide value and are designed for mobile and put them in folders on your site.
Cindy Krum is a mobile marketing evangelist and the world’s foremost authority on the subject. Gillian suggests looking at Cindy’s mobile directory list.
If you can blog, you can build an app. You don’t need a huge audience, you can make a mobile app just for your biz or your few customers.
For application building, try AppBreeder. Also, Hunch.com launches tonight – it’s a mobile community builder that allows you to build your own mobile local app on the fly. It’s a brand new service that Gillian thinks will take off after launch.
Mobile is easy, it’s out there and now is your chance to grab the opportunities in mobile marketing before your competitors do.
