Archive for July, 2009

More Americans are accessing the Internet using wireless mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops, according to a study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

“Use of the Internet on mobile devices has grown sharply from the end of 2007 to the beginning of 2009,” with 56 percent of Americans saying that have “at some point used wireless means for online access,” the Pew Center said.

The research shows African-Americans are the most active users of the mobile Internet and their use of it is also growing the fastest:

• Forty-eight percent of African-Americans have at one time used their mobile device to access the Internet for information, e-mailing or instant messaging, half again the national average of 32 percent.
• Twenty-nine percent of African-Americans use the Internet on their handheld on an average day, also about half again the national average of 19 percent.
• Compared with 2007, when 12 percent of African-Americans used the Internet on their mobile on the average day, use of the mobile internet is up by 141 percent.

The high level of activity among African Americans on mobile devices helps offset lower levels of access tools that have been traditional onramps to the internet, namely desktop computers, laptops and home-broadband connections.

• By a 59%-to-45% margin, white Americans are more likely to go online using a computer on a typical day than African Americans.
• When mobile devices are included in the mix, the gap is cut in half; 61% of whites go online on the average day when mobile access is included, while 54% of African Americans do.
• Looking across a range of digital activities — some done online typically using a computer and others being non-voice data activities on a mobile device — African American and white Americans, on average, do the same number of activities.

So if you are looking to reach African Americans, mobile needs to be a part of your PR plan.

Sally Falkow

The Proactive Report

A guide to social media and PR

Image Credit:  Jon Tintin Jordan

Image credit: Robert Scoble

Just when you think you’re getting all the social media technology under your belt along comes mobile.

One out of every seven minutes of media consumption today takes place via mobile devices, according to new research from IPG’s Universal McCann and AOL.  That’s expected to grow by 60 percent over the next two years.

The proliferation of smartphones and increases in mobile browsing are key trends for 2009, with smartphone shipments worldwide set to grow by 23% this year.  Companies need to devise appropriate ways to communicate with mobile users  or they risk missing out on huge opportunities.

There are 63 million mobile Web users in the U.S. — 19 million of whom access the Internet on a weekly basis.  44 percent reported seeking news and information on their mobile devices.   So it’s no longer enough just to get your  news seen online and in social media sites, it also has to be available on mobile devices.

The study polled 1,800 mobile users over the fourth quarter of last year and first quarter of 2009 and found that 80 percent of smart-phone users are satisfied with the quality of the Internet on their mobile devices.

Who uses smartphones?

• 74% of iPhone users are over the age of 25  – Forrester
• 31% are 35-49
• 70% of iPhone users are male
• 64% of key decision makers in marketing departments are using mobiles to view emails
• 61% of all smartphone owners have a household income of greater than $70000, compared to just 49% of normal mobile owners

When are they consuming media via mobile?

• 95 percent use mobile media to fill downtime
• 82 percent said they use it at work
• 81 percent while shopping
• 80 percent at home
• 65 percent while commuting to their jobs

Where does all this lead?  Visit your IT department or call your webmaster and find out -

• How many visitors browse your site via mobile devices?
• How can you add mobile-specific functionality to your social media newsroom?

If you do nothing else, start to wrap your wits around this new segment of your website users. They map well with the online news readers.

One company with their fingers in this pie is Fluent Mobile Inc.   They launched with a plan to become Google News for the mobile device – it’s a news search engine and aggregator designed to find only news content that is optimized for reading on mobile devices.

They won’t find your news if it is not ready for mobile.

Image credit: Pandemia

Google Universal Search indexes far more than just web pages – it also indexes news, images, videos  and blogs.

How do you get onto page one?

According to Matt Cutts of Google to get good search rankings you need

1. The keywords you want to rank for in your title tag
2. Keywords well placed on the page
3. Excellent content about the subject you want to rank for on the page
4. Fresh content posted in a blog
5. Links from other sites that recommend your site as an authority on that subject

Why does Google pay attention to blogs?  They are mainly text, they get updated with new content on a regular basis and they have an RSS Feed. That’s the secret weapon.

“Blogs are web site content management systems with additional functionality such as comments, trackbacks and RSS. Blogs are really no different than web sites,” says Lee Odden of TopRank Marketing in his blog.

Google does see some websites as blogs and this has raised questions in the WebmasterWorld Forums. RSS feeds seem to be the common denominator.  A blog after all, is just a web page with a feed.

Using feeds on your web content can increase your visibility and your traffic.  For PR purposes, syndicating news content in feeds is a must.

“Even if it’s something as simple as putting press releases in an RSS feed, marketers will benefit from distributing information via RSS — and receive valuable feedback from key constituents on what types of content they would like to have.”  Forrester Research.

If you are not familiar with RSS, find out what feeds are and what they do

“If you’re getting into blog search results (particularly in Universal results), you’re opening up your site for additional traffic,” says Chris Crum on WebProNews.

So if Google thinks your news page is a blog you get more visibility and traffic? That can’t be bad.

A rose by any other name…