How Mobile-Social is Helping Brands Connect with Consumers

Update: Click here to watch a video of the session.

Yesterday at Social Media Week,we moderated a panel session that explored how brands are using mobile-social to connect with consumers. David Berkowitz, Senior Director of Emerging Media & Innovation, led the talk, which featured a lineup of service providers and brands:

• Noah Elkin, Principal Analyst, eMarketer
• Craig Davis, CEO, TextualAds
• Tom Dorf, Director of Advertising Sales, Mocospace
• Adam Mirabella, Global Director, Digital Media, Nokia

David Berkowitz kicked off the panel with an overview of six types of mobile social media, which you can read more about in 360i’s Mobile Marketing Playbook. They are:

1)   Online social networks on mobile devices – Facebook, for example, has 200M mobile users.
2)   Sharing content via social channels, or updating your social networks via mobile sites and apps
3)   Mobile social networks, such as MocoSpace, who we heard from later in the session
4)   Sharing and streaming content from platforms like Flickr or Ustream
5)   Social gaming – Utilizing game mechanics to inspire activities while on the go (like SCVNGR)
6)   Location-based check-in services – Players like Foursquare (who we heard from immediately before our panel), Gowalla and Google Latitude.

Noah Elkin, Principal Analyst at eMarketer, delivered a mobile industry outlook in which he outlined the immense opportunities for marketers in the mobile-social space.

“Mobile is inherently social,” he said. “The difference the way in which we communicate. Where we used to call, we now send text messages, use IM and increasingly communicate via social networks.”

Elkin argued that social networking has changed the way we communicate and that mobile has become “core to the social networking experience.”  There were 5X more mobile social users in 2010 than there were in 2008, and that number is expected grow.

From a marketer’s perspective the “next between mobile and social” has become vital for brands who want to connect with their audience. One of the biggest opportunities, he said, comes with location-based services. This is a “core vanguard,” even though it is yet to breakthrough to the mainstream.

Berkowitz argued that mobile-social is in fact mainstream depending on how you define it (look at Facebook mobile usage numbers for example – 200M), but sometimes consumers are turned off by negative perceptions of mobile-social networks that arise from privacy concerns (i.e. “I don’t want people to know where I am.”)

“Institution of localization isn’t going to happen overnight, but it is going to be a part of the future of marketing,” he said.

Tom Dorf cited Mocospace’s 16.3-million member strong community of young, multicultural mobile users as a testament to this point. TextualAds CEO Craig Davis also noted that SMS remains a core piece of the puzzle, as virtually every mobile device comes with the ability to send and receive text messages.

So how should brands approach mobile-social? Elkin urged marketers to look beyond the check-in – that initial action a consumer takes – to see what else is there and how much you can deepen the relationship beyond that first step.

Adam Mirabella, Global Director of Digital Media at Nokia, outlined three trends marketers must understand in order to succeed in mobile-social. The first, he said, is the movement from monologue to dialogue. Second is social responsibility, and the increasing importance of providing value to consumers. Third, is the marked shift in who owns the conversation. Marketers, it’s not you, he said.

And where do hardware manufacturers like Nokia fit into the equation? Mirabella says Nokia is working with developers to build out apps and its own app store so the company can provide a “fully integrated experience for consumers.” Adding social aspects to their devices is something Nokia continues to focus on, he said.

Elkin added that you can expect to see other hardware manufacturers begin to make more efforts to differentiate themselves by providing more content that integrated into the product interface.

Have a follow-up question for any of our panelists? Send us a tweet or leave us a note in the comments below.