Greg Hickman, Mobile Mixed Podcast
Greg Hickman is the host of the Mobile Mixed Marketing Podcast. He is here today to talk about the importance of putting mobile first as we create content. Greg got started in mobile in 2005, and saw that there was a great opportunity. He also has the Mobile
Check out Greg’s website and podcast or connect with him on Twitter.
What are some the major aspects of mobile for people to consider?
Most social networks, podcasts, email, etc are done on mobile devices.
Even for a brick-and-mortar store, you need to realize that your customers are using mobile.
How should we approach the mobile experience as we get started creating content?
Mobile-first means to think about the mobile experience first. This way you are thinking about the limitations first and creating for that. As you move from mobile to desktop, you can expand as needed for that medium.
Mobile-first forces you to focus on the most important message to give to the customer.
What are your thoughts about responsive design vs creating a mobile-specific website?
- Fully responsive – a site that displays differently based on the screen size, making it much easier to view and interact with on mobile devices.
- Mobile-specific site – a second site that is just for mobile devices.
- Mobile-responsive – hybrid between the two. It uses a second site that is responsive, and slowly makes the mobile-responsive into the full responsive site.
What are some SMS strategies?
Greg has written the SMS Marketing Handbook that covers a lot of great things regarding SMS and MMS marketing.
Responses with text messaging is much higher. People are much quicker to check their text messages, and may be more likely to respond.
There are still many people that don’t have smart phones, but they still have SMS available.
If you are wondering if SMS could work for you, ask “what is your objective?”
What are your thoughts about QR Codes?
There are a few good ways to use them, but most don’t use them correctly.
One obstacle to QR codes is that many people don’t know how to use them. Those that do know, may find it a hassle to properly scan it. Many people could type in the web address faster than scanning a QR code.
Another consideration is to make sure that the address it goes to is mobile-friendly. Don’t make people pinch-and-zoom!
What are some thing that we can do optimize their sites to improve the speed of their site?
Image size, the number of redirects, and server calls are the three common things that you can minimize to help the site to load faster.