Earlier this month, I wrote about the expected growth trends for mobile advertising asking if your brand is ready to leverage the medium. Today, I’m asking a similar question – is your brand ready to leverage mobile social networking?
According to a study by ABI Research, more than 140 million mobile subscribers around the world will use social networks through their cellular phones by 2013. That projection is actually very small in comparison to projections made by other research companies. Juniper Research estimated in a report released a year ago that approximately 600 million mobile subscribers will use social programs through their cellular phones by 2012, and Pyramid Research estimated earlier this year that the number would be closer to 950 million by 2012.
eMarketer predicts a higher number, too – 800 million by 2012 to be exact. According to eMarketer, in 2007, only 2.7% of mobile phone subscribers use social networking tools through their cell phones, but in 2012, that percentage will increase to 18.8%.
Taking into consideration that these projections don’t include pay-as-you-go mobile users, the case can be made that not only is mobile advertising a medium marketers need to include in their budgets but so should experimenting and learning how best to leverage social networks both online and through mobile access.
Is your brand prepared for the mobile trends? If not, you need to make mobile marketing and social media marketing priorities and start developing a plan. Doing nothing is the worst decision.
Image: Flickr
Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye
Susan, you’re talking about right things – today each company that looks towards the future definitely needs to be involved in social networking. But why do you consider that prepaid mobile users don’t need to be included? In many countries these may constitute a large share of all subscribers.