During the renowned Mobile World Congress in 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt asked the audience to think “mobile first” (PR Week, 2010). This is surely a strong inclination for where the public relations (PR) industry must head.
Mobile phone uptake has increased at such a rapid pace that the penetration of cellular phones has now overtaken that of landline telephones and even exceeds the level of televisions. But why is this? What makes mobile phones so popular and why have we become so attached to them? More importantly, how can PR professionals use them to meet objectives?
I’m not going to bore you with tedious discussion about the history of mobile phones and countless stages that it has been through. Instead, I have selected a fantastic video clip which illustrates the growth of mobile technology with some rather mindboggling statistics.
Mobile telephones are becoming more and more a part of people’s everyday life, a necessity to have with us at all times. I myself encounter a feeling of emptiness when I don’t have my phone with me, especially when alone. This is because a phone is a very personal item, one that holds great attachment to its owner. In contrast, when I have my phone with me, there is a sense of comfort because all my friends and family are at the touch of a button. Isn’t that magic?
There are now over 5 billion mobile phone connections globally (BBC, 2010). That is approximately 71 per cent of the world’s population. Not only is this staggering, it also presents the PR industry with a wealth of opportunity, governed by mass consumption.
Mobile communications within PR campaigns
As last weeks lecture discussed, the Internet has made PR campaigns more interactive. Mobile phones on the other hand have the potential to make campaigns more direct, through mobile websites, RSS (really simple syndication) feeds and blogs.
The rise of mobile Internet, stimulated by the omnipresence of devices such as the iPhone and Blackberry, is drastically affecting the way people access information and communicate. Thanks to smart-phones we now live in a ‘hyper communications environment’ where we are constantly in touch with one another through a range of different media platforms. Mobiles are always switched on and users carry them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Thus, ‘always on’ media, offers more opportunities for communication when other methods are not available (Balasubramanian, Peterson, and Jarvenpaa 2002). However, as mentioned earlier, the mobile phone is a personal tool. Therefore, PR practitioners must be careful not to include tactics which are seen to be invasive. From my own perspective, I know how irritating it is to receive text messages from organisations in the form of advertisement. Nonetheless, mobile Internet has presented the PR industry with a goldmine of opportunity.
607.5 million mobile users will be using social networks by 2013 (Maxwell, 2010) which means that PR practitioners will have to start making their online campaigns mobile friendly. Content aimed at mobile devices should be customised to the correct specifications to allow for easy access and use. This can be achieved in a number of ways:
- Purchase a .mobi domain name and create a mobile website to launch your PR campaigns from.
- Develop Apps for smartphones.
- Launch a mobile website blog using text messaging (SMS) to directly interact via your site.
- Conduct surveys to gain insight into market trends and important customer opinion. Websites such as surveymonkey.com are compatible with mobile and feed nicely onto social media sites such as Twitter.
- Incorporate messages onto social media sites to keep consumers informed and interacted.
- RSS feeds.
Journalists and their mobile
Journalists are accessing content such as press releases from their phones, whilst on the way home or to a lunch meeting. Therefore, “PROs need to change the way they write releases. They must be shorter, with bullet points rather than long descriptions” (PR Week, 2010). How are PR practitioners supposed to inject flare, charisma and fluency into bullet pointed information? Moreover, press releases serve to provide reporters with a rounded, almost complete story, one that is already ‘framed’ and ready for publish. Remember it is said that around 70 per cent of news articles are originated from press releases! This certainly poses a challenge, and one that needs to be addressed and re-thought purposefully. If PR professionals begin losing their influence over client information it will be a serious problem for the practice.
On the other hand, according to a survey by PR Week, 71 per cent said mobile communications had made PROs more responsive to their needs (2010). For example, picture yourself at a big opening for client A, and you get a call from client B who tells you one of its products is being recalled. They demand that you stop the media from running anything about the recall until all communication points are written and approved. Imagine the consequences if you weren’t able to send emails from your mobile device? PR demands constant connectivity and mobile phones support this requirement (in particular smart-phones).
Foursquare for PR
Conclusion
In conclusion, the popularity of mobile phones and especially smart-phones is increasing by the day. By 2014, mobile Internet should take over desktop Internet usage (Mashable, 2010). Thus, the way people excavate information and communicate is changing, and the PR industry must follow suit. PR practitioners must recognise the great potential of mobile phones and incorporate them into their traditional PR campaign strategies to achieve maximum outcome. Simply, it is time for PR to get mobilized.
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