Although mobile integration has long since been an important aspect of all things social, only recently has it become so painfully obvious how without mobile, the social media we know today wouldn't exist. We are constantly on the go, managing multiple tasks at once and with the advances in mobile technology creating a seamless blend of work life and social life has never been so easy.
The use of social media is consistently growing and changing, but what is also changing is how we use social media as consumers and as brands. As you can see in the infographic below, Facebook's mobile usage has climbed significantly in the past year, with 68% of its users now using Facebook on Mobile Only or in a combination of Mobile and Desktop.
As brands we have to be aware of these ever-changing behaviors, filling the gaps with little to no downtime. Being aware of how your target audience consumes your content allows you to effectively market to them.
This is as simple as creating a responsive website that has code that can be manipulated depending on the size in which the site is being explored, allowing the same look and feel across a variety of devices and platforms.
The other day I saw a contest run by a local organization float through my news feed, their call to action was "visit our website and enter" and being on my desktop I simply entered the URL into my browser. Once the website loaded it was plain to see that the website was built for "mobile" use. I actually went so far as to go back to the facebook page it was posted on and say "this website is not desktop-friendly!" which is a rare occurrence for me.
In most instances the opposite situation generally happens, we click on a link on our mobile app/browsers and it takes us to a wide format, bulky website that is text heavy and far too small to read when live on our smart phones. With a bit of pinching and tilting you might be able to get it to work, but generally in our current "technologically consumptive society" we're more interested in having things just work right the first time. Hence, responsive web technology.
Obviously this goes both ways. We want the same site to work as effortlessly on a mobile phone as on our google chrome browser. By not having a desktop-friendly website, that organization has lost countless lead-gen opportunities due to probably significantly higher bounce rates than normal. Why? Because they're not catering to an audience, however mobile-friendly they might be, who are at work, at home, at a hotel conference, using a PC instead of their smart phone. When something isn't appealing generally people aren't going to stick around long enough to figure out how it works these days.
So my advice? Be on the leading edge. Adopt responsive technology on your website, so no matter HOW someone gets there, they're more likely to stay there.
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