Do you think you could go a day without using your smartphone? How about a week? If you’re like me, you would most likely say no.
If you’re a business considering harnessing the ever-growing urge to tweet, post, like, fave, check-in and share, you should take note of some staggering statistics from 2012 that were recapped in the article by Brian Honigman in 100 Fascinating Social Media Statistics and Figures From 2012:
- 488 million users regularly use Facebook mobile. (source: All Facebook)
- As of 2012, 17 billion location-tagged posts and check-ins were logged. (source: Gizmodo)
- 50 percent of Twitter users are using the social network via mobile. (source: Microsoft tag)
- More than 5 million photos are uploaded to Instagram every day. (source: Business Insider)
- In a six-month span, Instagram’s average daily mobile visitors jumped from 886,000 to 7.3 million, which is a 724 percent leap. (source: Marketing Land)
These numbers are important truths about the use of mobile phones—and the growing use of social media via mobile phones. Does your social media strategy for 2013 include reaching those users?
It is easier than ever for businesses to reach mobile users. With check-ins and geotagging alone, there is a plethora of content being shared publicly that is waiting for a friendly representative to say hello. If you’re a business looking for a few ways to engage with mobile users in your area, consider these tactics:
Leave Tips on Foursquare Places
It’s a no brainer to open a Foursquare profile if you’re a brick and mortar business, but did you know that even if you don’t get foot traffic, you can still open a brand page? As a brand page, you can use Foursquare in many ways a regular user can.
As a brand, leave “tips” in popular places in your city. A tip can range from a “did you know” fact to the employee favorite dish you order at lunch. This technique is especially effective if your tips can relate back to content on your website or blog. Let’s say you’re a business in the hospitality industry, and you have blog posts about sights to see in your city. Leave tips at all of those sights and link back to your website for the “full story”.
If you want to see this strategy in action, check out what The History Channel is doing on Foursquare:
Engage With Geotagged Instagram Photos
The majority of Intagram photos are geotagged, and they can be viewed by location. This can be done on your phone by clicking any geotag icon on a photo.
Since you have to first find a photo with that specific geotag, this is a cumbersome technique if you want to efficiently explore surrounding areas,.
I recently found an alternative that I love. It is a great tool called, Gramfeed. It is used in a browser, and you can search nearby locations through a map tool. You can then view all the photos shared under that geotag and a unique url is created—you can then bookmark the link. I’m sure your already thinking of all the possibilities . . .
Promote Your Facebook Page Targeting Your City
Say what you will about Facebook Ads. But if you use them right they work. They recently enabled a shortcut to “promote your page”. Much like the “promoted post”, it’s a quick way to get some traction and set a daily budget right from your page. I’ve had great success using this feature to gain mobile fans—more so than promoting a page using the Ads Manager and targeting mobile users.
From your admin panel, you will see the “promote you page” in the bottom left where your new likes are sometimes displayed. If you don’t see it, go to your home feed and come back, or refresh your page. It will pop up eventually (trust me, Facebook wants to make it easy to spend money).
Set your daily budget, and click “promote”. From there you can set your target audience. Select your surrounding area.
The next step is often overlooked, but is the most important part! Now it’s time to go customize the ad from the back end. Go to your ads manager, find the ad you just placed from the list and click on the title to access the stats. From here you can adjust the daily budget, the end date (which cannot be done from the admin panel), the target audience, and you can even add interests to the ad. See all the areas marked with arrows in the sample ad below. Notice that when you use the “promote page” feature mobile users are automatically added to the target specs.
Sources:
- 100 Fascinating Social Media Statistics and Figures From 2012 via @HuffPostTech
- History Channel on Foursquare
- Gramfeed
About Gwen Woltz
Gwen Woltz is co-founder of Wahine Media, a social media agency in Hawaii that specializes in strategically building thriving and engaged online communities for businesses. Together with her business partner Karen Weikert, they are in the "trenches" of social media on a daily basis and have been on the frontline for companies in the healthcare, startup, higher education, hospitality, newspaper, music, and staffing industry. Gwen is a volunteer board member for Social Media Club Hawaii, was a finalist for Pacific Edge Magazine's Young Professional of the Year, and most recently was a speaker for Ignite Honolulu at Punahou School.
