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7 Tips For Going Mobile Today That Anyone Can Do

Written by: Lonny Dunn

Article Overview: Anyone, anywhere can do these tips TODAY to provide mobile content. With more and more 3G, 4G, iPhone, SmartPhone, iPad buyers everyday, what are you doing to provide mobile content? From a mobile infastructure specialist, here are some free tips that you can do NOW to provide mobile content.

7 Tips For Going Mobile Today That Anyone Can Do

5 Tips ( Actually 6 ) Anyone, Anywhere Can Do Today to Provide Mobile Content I am amazed at the number of smart, intelligent, savvy marketers who's emails and websites I cannot read on my phone. When I am being driven to my appointments, I am in the backseat, not daydreaming, I am researching and studying; which generally means glancing over a thousand eMails and 9 accounts from my mobile phone. Over 38% of us read our eMails by phone. By 2012 the number of WebEnabled phones will double to about 90 million, reaching saturation of 92% by 2014. Although some research indicates this may be understating the case. According to Millenia citing Neilson, wireless grew to 73 million in March of 2010. The same report states that it is the Portals and Directories who are embracing mobile, so that should identify the trend. If portals and directories are pointing end users to mobile applications, follow the money.

We stated in a couple of tweets last week, if you are waiting for gOOgle, Yahoo!, MSFT, and YouTube to get into mobile, you are chasing the bus instead of riding it. Friday, Google announced purchase of AdMob, stating, "Last week we discussed Mobile, this week we purchased AdMob" short for Advertising Mobility. There have been false starts to mobile in the past, because of Congress' dithering on the Free Spectrum for 3G Broadband. I studied relentlessly from 1995 to 2001, as editor/publisher of a broadband Infastrusture newsletter and sat by for largely a decade, while mobile creeped along.

Mobile however has reached critical mass. We are at a point, where some small tweaking by the Service Carriers ( the Mobile Phone Companies, and their Technology Departments ) and a unified HTML/CSS/JS coding to the phones themselves at the factory, then many more phones would surf to ordinary sites like yours and mine just fine. One problem the industry has, is there is no one Group or Association and thus no common problem solving, although many inroads have been made. The United States is a huge market, and we demand the best, and we want it now. Mobile browsing has reached a point where we have to catch up with Japan and the EU which has a decade of lead time in infastructure roll out.

The MMA's most recent guidelines for uniformity are from 2009. mmaglobal.com/mobileadvertising One issue, is the tremendous amount of diversity and competing interests and billions of dollars involved. Apple got run over by IBM in the 80's, VHS got replaced by DVD, and if you read between the lines, the 1,000 or so corporations that make up the MMA are behind the technology and they know it. By they time these companies come out with standards, there's 100 new phones on the market! So no clear "winner" will emerge, experience and history tell us only a unified delivery system will emerge, and the MMA is about as close to that as we can get right now.

The tips below work to begin making your marketing plan Mobile Today! No matter what platform the end user is on, no matter what kind of phone they use. Now, the geeks in my armada of contacts call these ideas primitive. But they all agree, we have to go to the lowest common denominator, and achieve ROI and results NOW! Not in 6 months when the latest Android is still only being used by a million people. You as the reader need tips that work today to get your message read by more people across the widest range of devices.

Please don't just put these on a To Do List, and forget about them. Start implementing a mobile strategy today.

Why today? Because it opens up your perspective to start thinking about the 38% of the people your website doesn't reach! It get's you thinking about the way we will all surf the web. If you go mob now, your ability to envision genius thinking, your Edisonian proclivity to investigate, experiment, and achieve will be excersized and your marketing will take on a dramatic metamorphosis by leaping into the 21st Century. And that's just for starters.

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TIPS ANYONE CAN DO TO BECOME MORE MOBILE TODAY

Tip 1Provide a Link at the Top of Each Web Page, or Email thatallows the reader a Text Only or Mobile Version. Why is it at the top? And not the bottom of the page, isn't that instrusive? It is a courtesy, an appreciation, a blessing I show to my mobile readers, that I am willing to go the extra mile, and get that link up there. Doesn't matter if the phone companies are slow, and Congress didn't act to get mobile going, those days are gone. When I don't provide mobile content, my competitor likely will.

Tip 2 Strip the Code. You strip the all the "Word", Dynamic, and Cool stuff from your text, and publish the same exact, identical page in "Plain Text Format" or .txt. This is easiest done ( and yes, even by Editors/Publishers and everyone else ) by simply taking your content, cut/pasting to Word, and then when the clipboard appears, click Text Only. Another way? When you don't have Word? OK, Open your eMail and create a New Email or Compose for instance in Yahoo. Now, Cut/Paste your text into the body, click PLAIN TEXT, then cut/paste your content back onto a page. Now, you have what can be read by about 98% of mobile phones in the US which are Web-Enabled. *See Footnote.

Tips 3 So you saw this one coming, right? Do your eMails in Plaint Text, and if you absolutely, have to do those colorful, graphic eMails, then make sure you link at the top of them to PLAIN TEXT, so that the end user can read them by phone. This hyperlink to a plain text format, can be a web page, or a plain text version of your Blog, and simply link to that blog.

TIP 4 The name of this operation is SmartPeopleMarketing, meaning I don't advocate spending alot of money to do most of things I propose. Along these lines, we want to begin implementing your mobile strategy, now moving forward. Don't go back and try to spend hundreds and thousands of man hours revamping your entire structure. Begin converting pages that are new, that are now, that are current, and substantiative. You might notice a link to Twitter Humor. There were too many graphics, screenshots and artwork in the piece, and frankly, the conversion wasn't the issue. But downsizing all those photos? I could have made them smaller, but I don't think the end user would have been able to see the writing. So unless the page works with just the words and maybe one small, clear picture, I recommend just going ahead with the text. If the page is completely visual, then you have some editing to do. Your call.

TIP 5. Develop a library of video clips that are short, crisp and not alot of movement by the subject. Too much movement and jumping around creates shaky disfunctional streams on PC's but are really bad over mobile. These clips over time become a library of infomercials and commercials and links to mobile applications as you categorize them. Be ahead of your competitors, be ahead of the curve. Moving over to mobile, you might as well shoot for the whole ball of wax. Mobile Video is where it's at! YouTube has more searches daily than either gOOgle or Yahoo! As Search Engine, YouTube is making short, crisp video applications an absolute must for anyone trying to get an edge over their competitor, or stay on the forefront of opportunity and technology.

These tips get you started working on Mobile Content, now. Next Week, in this space, we'll explore more advanced techniques, of course in layman's terms as always, and give those of you who really want to explore mobile in a big way, some more tips. We will discuss how you be able to convert your existing pages without actually touching the pages, how to change the root in your servers, and some other quick tips for the geeks who want to do it themselves. But even some of the geeks can do what I described above, and feel like they are doing more to serve the public by converting eMails to Mobile Immediately.

BONUS TIP: Begin collecting Mobile Phone Numbers you can text to, which will add real results immediately to any campaign. One advantage that text has over eMail? Text has about a 92% "read" or open rate, vs. eMail which is closer to 40% although there really is no way of knowing if it's ever read at all. Also, when you insert helpful URL s into your text message? That is crossmarketing, which is smart smartmarketing. Now, I have found the best results to be local, but so is all politics, and most business, however, this works for the Internet Marketer as well. There is a magic phrase that works here, so get your pen and pencil write it down, put it on your iGoogle TO DO LIST:

"Can I text message you?"

Also, I have a sign up form that I drop off at the local Deli, eating establishment, stores, insurance agents, and other people that allows them to sign up for Mobile Coupons on a "Test" basis. I will go into the permission and legal matters next week, but for now, suffice it to say that these ubiquitous sign up sheets should be everywhere. In your purse, your car, on the table, on your dashboard. You should be leaving these sign up sheets with everyone you meet, including your mom and your pastor. This is creating human networks, and allows you to cross market across a huge, diverse and local market, outside of your usual campaign, and better still? You are providing an invaluable service to these folks. I explain I only have one sheet on me, and could they please run twenty or thirty off for me, put them on bulletin boards, and then turn them in to me in a week...... I'll tell you what to do with them, after you've collected a few hundred names. See you next week in this mobile space.

Footnote: Without getting too technical, the various phone carriers, like Verizon, ATT, Cricket, etc, are supposed to "wrap" the plain text web pages, whether they are designated Mobile or not. Using this plain text format, your pages should be viewable on 98% of phones in the US pursuant to the MMA guidelines linked above in the opening remarks. If you use this method, it is not truly a "mobile" page, by technical definition, but mobile viewable nonetheless. For added assurance, type your content in about 1.5 to 1.75 inch lines, then hit the ENTER key, and type another 1.5 to 1.75 inch line, and keep doing that till you have long, narrow content. Don't worry about what the webpage looks like from your PC, it's to the End User, in the backseat reading his tweets and eMails to whom you must appeal.

Lonny Dunn authored and edited ThesaurusNews, specializing in 3G Telephony Infastructure Stocks, amongst others from 1995 until 2001, meeting his morning deadline of 8am. These days, Mr. Dunn edits SmartPeopleBlog, and Provides free interesting Tips on Social Media, Mobile Content, Writing and Personal Development at both ProNetworkBuild and WorldsBest Tips on Twitter.

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Article Tags: Content, Google, Internet, Mobile, SEO, Text



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