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Mobilize Your Business
Kim Dushinski
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MINIATURIZERS / MOBILE SITE BUILDERS
You need a mobile-friendly site NOW. The fastest way to get that it is to miniaturize your site. This makes your site easily accessible via mobile but does not change the content. Just makes it smaller to fit on a mobile screen. While it is not the ideal solution, at least it is a start.
If you start here you should monitor your mobile site traffic and begin your mobile site development for the long term. If you are already at that stage, skip to the Mobile Platform Providers.
The miniaturizing solution often includes an advertising revenue model. If you are looking to create a business model around generating revenue with advertising these are great options.
FeedM8
Takes your RSS feed and builds a mobile site with your posts. Includes a text alert option so that your site visitors can be alerted via SMS text message whenever you update your blog. FeedM8 is an advertising supported service and advertising will appear automatically on your mobile site. You can get 60% of the revenue generated from the ads, but you must verify your site to be eligible. There is also an affiliate program whereby you can earn money by suggesting FeedM8 to others and get paid when they start generating ad revenue.
The interface is very easy to work with and the mobile site that is created works well. There is a nice selection of mobile banners / widgets you can embed on your site to alert your readers that you have a mobile site. Reports show visitor count only.
There is no capacity for building a mobile site from scratch within FeedM8.
More Info
MoFuse
You can use MoFuse to miniaturize your blog or you can use it as a mobile site builder. MoFuse also offers a piece of script that you can put on your blog that will allow it to serve the proper version of the site based on how any particular visitor is browsing. Mobile browsers will trigger the mobile site to show and a desktop browser will be served the full sized site. (This is a great feature!)
Using MoFuse is very easy and the site builder is fairly robust. You can do a lot with it, creating different types of pages and reordering them easily. The stats program built into MoFuse is basic but it works well. With MoFuse you can create up to 5 mobile sites on one account.
The advertising revenue split on MoFuse is 50/50 and they support AdMob and Google Adsense. You can choose either one. You can also specify whether you want your advertising to show up at the top of your site or the bottom.
More Info
Winksite
WinkSite is a mobile web builder with the ability to build in a community aspect around the mobile site. Although I haven’t been able to see that many folks are actually using the community feature effectively. That said, WinkSite has a lot of cool features you can use to build a mobile site quickly.
Winksite offers its publishers the ability to monetize their mobile sites using Google Adsense, AdMob, mKhoj, BuzzCity, GetMobile, Admoda, Adshandy or Mo’Jiva. Your Revenue Share is 100%. Winksite does not take a share of your revenue that your mobile site generates.
With WinkSite you can also generate your own self-service ads. You can create a landing page, click to call option, link to a video, survey or another mobile site. This opens up the option of selling ads for a fixed price to sponsors or creating your own ads for you own products.
More Info
GetMobile Juicer
This Works for sites, not just blogs. It is not an exact science and your site will not be perfect, but it may be better than doing nothing. The best thing to do is head over to Get Mobile and input your site URL into the Publishers section where you can submit your site to be “juiced.” It will do its best to mobilize your site and let you preview it.
Once you see if the mobile version is acceptable, you can sign up for an account (its free) and then add advertising to your site if you wish. Or just launch your mobile version.
Get Mobile also has a mobile site builder available with templates you can use to jumpstart your site building. As with all mobile site builders you will likely find you want it to do more than it can. That’s normal right now.
More Info
MOBILE PLATFORM PROVIDERS
If you are looking to develop a mobile site on your own domain that is a true mobile media property, you will need a mobile platform. These are services provided to businesses with at least $10,000 available to invest in their mobile site. You do get what you pay for as the mobile sites produced by these companies are fabulous.
iLoop Mobile
iLoopMobile’s mFinity platform is a multi-channel platform that builds mobile sites and has an integrated text messaging component as well. The iLoop platform can also build out a mobile content storefront allowing you to build a mobile site to sell ringtones. iLoopMobile is a very strong option for your needs.
Crisp Wireless
CrispWireless specializes in mobile sites for media companies – newspapers, magazines and television. Their robust mobile sites are top notch and perform well. If you choose to work with Crisp Wireless you are in good hands.
MOBILE WEB DESIGNERS
If you don’t want to do it yourself with a mobile site builder or go with a platform builder, then you are building your site from scratch. In that case I recommend working with a web designer with mobile experience. Here are a couple designers I can recommend.
Fling Media
Brian and Cyndi Fling are the mobile design team at Fling Media. They do excellent work and have great creativity. They also do iPhone app work as well. You can’t go wrong with Fling.
More Info
Little Springs Design
Barbara Ballard and her team in Lawrence, Kansas are top mobile web designers. Barbara has even written books about mobile design and they host a Mobile Design conference. They know their stuff.
Need Mobile Website Help?
Need help with your mobile website strategy? Do you need to figure out how to drive traffic to your mobile site once it is built? Check out my Mobile Marketing Launch Kit which includes a module about creating a successful text messaging campaign.
Not Listed Here?
If you are a mobile site designer, have a mobile platform or have a mobile site builder and would like to be listed, please contact me so I can find out more about what you offer. I am open to reviewing companies worldwide even though right now I only list U.S. companies.
When I saw this video about the Ford SYNC system I was floored. I had seen the commercials on TV but I didn’t really get how totally cool the SYNC program is. The truth is that it makes our cars mobile devices. (Well, Fords anyway.) Check out this video. Doesn’t it make you want that in your car?
Tuesday’s free Gland Slam breakfast was a huge success for Denny’s. Their creative and funny Superbowl spot created lines around the building at locations across the country. The restaurant chain is estimated to have served nearly 2 million of the free breakfasts in this one day giveaway.
But I can’t help but wonder what Denny’s is like the day after the big giveaway? While their business may be up due to more people thinking about having pancakes for breakfast, I am certain they don’t have lines around the buildings today.
Had Denny’s used a text message reminder option, as I mentioned in my Superbowl Mobile Ads and Mobile Misses video, they would have a way to reach millions of people today too (without the expense of another costly Superbowl ad). It might look like this:
Want another free Grand Slam breakfast? Join Denny’s Text Breakfast Club.
Receive a mobile coupon 4 a free Grand Slam w/o the crowds. Reply Y to sign up.
Bingo. Now they would have a nice steady stream of people coming in to get a second free breakfast over the next month (or however long they wanted to extend their offer.) This would get even more free publicity for the restaurant chain because no one else is doing this – YET.
When I say this was a “mobile miss” this is what I mean. The Denny’s Superbowl ad was a huge success. It could have been even bigger and long lasting had Denny’s leveraged the power of mobile.
As I sat down for kickoff on the big day (Superbowl commercial day) I had my phone ready by side. Determined to text in for every text offer, visit every mobile website and consume anything mobile related I figured I would be busy. Not so.
Here is my commentary on the Superbowl’s Mobile Ads and Mobile Misses. In it I award “The Best Mobile Ad of the Superbowl,” talk about which company showed they understand our love of mobile, examine how mobile is a direct response tool and point out the two big mobile misses.
Please share your thoughts about this video and what you thought of the mobile commercials.
Big thanks to Ken McCarthy of The System Seminar for producing this video with me.
My colleague, Cindy Krum of Rank-Mobile will be doing a mobile marketing webinar on January 20th 9am Pacific, noon, Eastern. The $395 webinar, called Ten Ways to Get Started in Mobile Marketing, will include information about how mobile can help marketers reach customers in the most targeted and personal way possible, right when they are making a purchase decision.
This workshop will be great for online marketers, but also with off-line marketers who want to bridge the gap between on and off-line marketing. The focus will be on mobile SEO and development, but also briefly cover SMS and mobile email strategies.
To see a preview video of the webinar, click here.
In the past week I attended two functions which turned out to be very different for one simple reason – Twitter. First up was the first annual Chicks Who Click (CWC) in Boulder on January 10th. Then I attended the Mobile Marketing Association’s Best Practices Forum (MMA) on January 13th in Denver. (See my write up about the MMA Forum here.) Bottom line, both events were terrific and well worth my time. They just felt different.
From the moment I stepped into the room at CWC I started looking around for familiar faces. And I found them. All over the place. Ladies I had seen virtually every day in my Twitter stream. Even if I hadn’t met some of them in person I knew what they did, what their latest blog post was, what they were looking forward to about the conference. When we met in person we started with common ground already in place. It was so much easier to work the conversation around doing business together – the ultimate goal of a networking function.
It reminded me of growing up in a small town. When you went to the grocery store you saw people you knew. Eating out at restaurants was fun because the people at the next table were your friends and neighbors.
By Twittering during the event we got to know each other even better. Throughout the whole day there was constant chatter on the hashtag #cwc09. (See it here.) This extra layer of conversation during the event made it so much richer. As people were learning and networking we were talking about it. It made it entirely possible to talk with everyone in the room and get to know people who were sitting at different tables. It made the whole day dynamic.
By contrast when I walked into the MMA room I looked for familiar faces and found only a handful. The folks I had met in real life at other functions. Of course it was great to see them but everyone else was a complete stranger. I knew nothing about anyone – where they worked, who they were. Nothing. It made walking up to someone to say “Hi” seem uncomfortable. Just like networking used to be all the time.
During the meeting we sat there listening to the presentations in our own island. No one knew what anyone else was thinking about the topic. No one was commenting about how smart the speaker was so that people who didn’t attend the conference could check out their site and make a connection. The people running the event who were trying desperately to get more feedback and input missed out on the natural flow of feedback that could have been there.
For me this is proof positive that social networking is so much more powerful than we give it credit for. It adds a layer to business that feel s like breathing when you are used to it.
If you are interested in learning more about Social Media and how to move yourself forward with this powerful set of tools, please look into the Social Media Telesummit starting next week. I am just one of dozens of great speakers and you will find your business so much more dynamic because of it.
Doing mobile keyword research has been a manual process until now. There was no keyword research tool for mobile sites. Today Google announced to their Adwords customers that their keyword research tool now offers mobile keyword listings and information as well as for the desktop. Hat tip to David Rothwell Adwords Answers for alerting me about this announcement.
THIS IS HUGE!
What this means is that mobile SEO is taking a huge leap forward. More businesses will now be able to launch effective mobile pay per click campaigns and have mobile keyword research for increasing their organic search results as well.
You’ll hear much more from me about this in the future, but for now, here is the basic information about how to find the new Google mobile keyword research tool.
1) Go into Campaign Summary.
2) Choose an ad campaign with a mobile ad. (This is a critical step.)
3) Open the mobile ad.
4) Click on the Keyword tab.
5) Choose the Ad Keywords + sign
6) Then select Add Keywords using the Keyword Tool
7) You will see “Results are tailored to mobile searches“
Viola! You are now using a mobile keyword research tool.
WARNING:
This post will not be popular amongst some text messaging companies.
There is No Free Lunch in Text Marketing
Undoubtedly you have discovered that there are tons of text message companies to choose between when you are ready to dive into text marketing. While there are a large number of terrific options available you may also come across some that are downright bad for your business. This post will help you to tell the difference.
Let me start off with some basic text messaging knowledge.
There are two ways to send text messages – SMS and SMTP. SMS is true text messaging that utilizes short code technology and there is a fee charged for each message that is sent. SMTP is essentially sending an email to a cell phone number and it arrives looking like a text message; there are no fees for sending SMTP messages.
To many people it will seem like the same thing. Using either method a business sends a message and a consumer gets it on their phone. No difference, right? Wrong. In fact, the SMTP method might seem better since there is no fee per message. Free is always better, right? Wrong.
To be blunt, SMTP text messaging is DANGEROUS for your business for three reasons.
1)
Your messages sent via SMTP are likely not getting delivered to your customers.
From the Mobile Marketing Association’s Consumer Best Practices Guidelines:
Carriers, at their discretion, make available SMTP gateways so that subscribers may receive SMS messages originated via email. Example: A mobile subscriber can be reached by sending an email (SMTP) message to [10 digit number]@[carrierdomainname].com. The carriers that support such gateways do so with the intent that they are not utilized for any commercial traffic. To that end, carriers actively monitor and filter against these connections to protect subscribers from unsolicited messages (spam) and utilize a variety of mechanisms to do so, including spam keyword filters, throttling against questionable domain or IP addresses suspected of abuse, and the like.
That’s right. The cell phone carriers are actively monitoring these gateways for commercial traffic and abuse of the system. They can and will shut down your messages with a flick of a switch. All your hard work to build a text message list will be wasted as the carriers shut down your messages.
You will receive no notification that they have done so. You will have no recourse to get things moving again. Your text messaging will simply stop working one carrier at a time.
When your messages don’t get delivered you will see your results plummet and may incorrectly think that mobile marketing doesn’t work. It will be worse if you have signed up for an SMTP service that charges a monthly fee because you’ll be paying money for nothing. A marketing tool that you may be counting on to bolster your bottom line will fail you.
2)
If your messages do get delivered you are opening yourself up to legal action.
Because messages sent by SMTP are sent via email, they are subject to Section 14(b)(1) of the CAN-SPAM act and anyone sending unsolicited messages can and will likely be prosecuted. If you think people are fussy about getting spam in their email, just imagine how quickly they will report spam text messages coming to their phones.
Even if you have gotten permission and think you are not spamming, it is entirely possible that customers will think that you are. Or report you as a text message spammer just because they want to opt out of getting your messages.
Using true SMS messaging with short codes there are systems set in place to protect businesses from unfair accusation of spamming – there are opt-in audit trails and built in opt out mechanisms (support for HELP or STOP commands).
3)
You risk your company’s reputation and customer good will by doing text messaging wrong.
There is no other media that is so personal as the mobile phone. When you send a message to your list you are going directly to your customer wherever they are and interrupting them with a personal message. This is a very powerful communication channel and must be used responsibly. Your customers will not tolerate anything on their mobile device that is not relevant to them and gives them the ultimate control over the communication. SMTP messaging does not.
Bottom Line:
Do not use SMTP text messaging for your business mobile marketing efforts or you will ultimately regret it.
How to tell if a text message company is using SMS or SMTP technology:
Side Note:
Not all of the companies who have built services on SMTP platforms are scammers. They may think they have built a viable service and are offering an affordable option to fee-based text messages. Regardless of the intent behind it, you should steer clear of their services.
Many of the text message companies that are using SMTP technology will have the words SMS messaging spread widely throughout their site. Simply seeing the phrase “SMS” is not enough to ensure you are getting the right kind of service.
The only way to tell if a particular company is using SMS technology is to see if you will be using a short code (a 5 or 6 digit number) in your messaging. It might be a shared short code where all customers of theirs utilize the same number but are distinguished by keyword or they may work with you to lease your own short code.
“What short code will I be using if I go with your service?”
Your messages will come from that code and your customers can send a text message to opt-in to your messages using it. You will pay a fee for each message you send. There is no such thing as free SMS messages. There are some SMS companies that allow you to send messages free, but their revenue model is to include advertising within your messages. Still, not free is it?
Still Confused? Need Help?
If you are not certain if a particular company you are considering working with is using SMTP or SMS technology, please email me and I will be happy to check it out and let you know. I’m also happy to refer you to a selection of text message companies that you can choose between knowing you are in good hands.
Would you please answer a very quick two-question survey for me? I would really appreciate it. It is about your role in mobile marketing. It would help me a lot because I need a clear picture of my readership.
If you answer the survey you can enter a drawing to win a copy of The Mobile Marketing Handbook.
Answer the survey here.
There is a new mobile search directory on the scene. If you have a mobile site, you should submit it to SearchIndex.mobi. They are in the process of collecting mobile links now and will be live shortly.
Submit your mobile link here.
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The Mobile Marketing Handbook by Kim Dushinski
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How to Start and Grow an SMS Text Messaging Business
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