Six important characteristics offered through mobile

Saturday, July 31, 2010  //  0 Comments  //  Blog, Emerging Trends, Mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Recruiting, Mobile Trends, Recruitment, SMS

Glenn Gutmacher, Vice President for Arbita’s Consulting & Education Services (ACES) division, recently pinged me regarding a great article posted by Liz  Myers at Adobe.  In her post, Liz cites a recent Gartner report in which they predicted that “mobile web use will outpace desktop browsing by 2013″.   If you are an avid mobile enthusiast and follow the trends then you will agree that Gartner’s prediction is not far off from becoming a reality.  Although Liz’s article was written primarily for mobile developers, she presents some fantastic information that I believe is equally relevant for any organization considering a mobile recruiting strategy.

Here is a recap of the six important characteristics offered through mobile:

1.  Mobile devices are deeply personal. The phone is something that belongs to just one individual. It’s private, personal, and likely to be carried with you everywhere you go. We like to customize our phones and they have become a symbol of social status. The phone I carry, and the content I have, become part of my personal brand.

2.  Mobile devices are hyper-social. The phone holds all of your contacts and allows you to do much more with them. Basic communications include voice calling, text messaging (sending a message of 140 characters or less. SMS or Short Message Service was the first Twitter), multimedia messaging (sending video or photos along with text messages), and e-mail. Beyond the basics, you may want to consider online presence, physical proximity, or relationship strength, to allow for more “contextual communications.”

3.  Mobile devices are location-aware. Even if you don’t know exactly where you are, your phone does! It can also help you discover what is located nearby, get directions, or even interpret what is right in front of you. If your friends opt-in, you can display their present location. This is one of the most powerful features of mobile devices and one that, until recently, was reserved for native applications. However, the most recent versions of Fireworks, Chrome, and the Android browser, now have location APIs as well.

4.  Mobile devices promote quick focused usage. Assuming that one is on the move, I will stop to navigate my phone when I need a vital bit of information like my shopping list, current traffic, flight arrival times, stock prices, or recent messages. The exception to this is entertainment. More and more, mobiles fill those empty spaces when we’re standing in line, waiting, or sitting for long idle periods — we reach for our phones to watch our favorite podcasts, scan tweets, listen to music, or immerse ourselves in a good film.

5.  Mobile devices are sometimes connected. When planning your mobile offering, it’s important to develop for both the online and offline scenarios. Sometimes your users will be riding the subway, on a plane, traveling abroad or otherwise unable to connect to the Internet, their home network, or both. Although unlimited data plans do exist, they’re not as prevalent as you may think. So if you want to avoid costly phone bills you need to consider how users will engage with your content when they’re offline.

6.  Mobile devices support a spontaneous lifestyle. Carrying all of your PIM (personal information management) data means you can respond to events as they unfold and share new data in real time. For example, if traffic is blocked, I can meet my party at a different restaurant. If I’m standing in line at the cinema and tickets sell out, I can quickly locate an alternative and have my friends meet me there.

[Source: Liz Myers , Adobe: "Getting Started with Mobile"]

Liz presents some pretty compelling points about mobile. You don’t have to be a mobile app developer to realize that mobile media and communication offers a huge advantage. Today’s technology now enables each of us to easily tap the mobile channel for engaging our target audience, anytime and anywhere. Integrating a mobile solution into recruitment doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s within reach. The key is to start by understanding the basics of building a mobile campaign and keep it simple.

Developing a mobile strategy is fast becoming a necessity. If you’re still trying to determine whether mobile is a fad or the future, consider this:

“Mobile is in fact, the fastest-growing Trillion-dollar industry in the economic history of mankind. That is why Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Dell etc are all interested to get in. The fastest-growing Trillion-dollar industry ever.”

[Source: Tomi Ahonen, Mobile Consultant & Best Selling Author]

Are you or your organization positioned to take advantage of the mobile recruitment channel? There are a lot of options today. Mobile app, mobile web, mobile messaging, mobile barcode, mobile social, and the list goes on. Interested in building a mobile recruiting solution but still not sure how or where to start? Contact me and let’s talk…