Mobile and Facebook: Don't Get Ready, BE Ready

On February 29th, Facebook revealed big plans for the mobile platform, including that the new Timeline format for brands will also be available on the mobile platform. The game changing updates mean that for users of other social media marketing platforms, the message for 2012 will be: we need to get ready for mobile. For users of Wildfire the message will be: I am ready for mobile!

Let’s recap the announcements Facebook made and what they mean for your brand:

  • Timeline for brands will also be functional in the mobile platform (but will be made available at an unspecified date in 2012)

Implications for brands: Where brands can currently launch mobile-optimized marketing campaigns that users can access from their smart devices, soon users will be able to experience the same exact workflow on their desktop as on their smart phone. The new Timeline format for brands, once available on the mobile network, will enable page managers to curate an identical experience for all users, regardless of how they’re accessing branded content on Facebook. This means a big impact on your brand’s reach, especially as we consider that nearly half of the active Facebook user population interacts with the network from their mobile device.

  • Sponsored Stories now appear in the mobile feed as well

Implications for brands: To date, there has been no advertising reach to any Facebook users on mobile devices. In light of the fact that approximately 450 million Facebook users interact with the network using a mobile device, this was an enormous opportunity lost to marketers— until now. Sponsored Story ad units are the only ones being released to mobile Timelines— this means that promoting these “organic word of mouth” advertising units will become a major part of every marketers mission.

In a sense, it’s a bit silly to call 2012 the Year of Mobile because every year since the release of Apple’s ill-fated Newton has been the Year of Mobile. We have always been moving toward computing devices that are smaller, faster, and cheaper. According to research by Morgan Stanley, the number of people who access the Internet primarily from mobile devices will surpass desktop users sometime in 2013.

The shift toward mobile is about to hit social media in a big way. Facebook recently revealed that more than 450 million people use Facebook Mobile on a monthly basis, and more importantly, mobile is outgrowing desktop use 2:1. They have planned a variety of mobile-centric product announcements this year, including Sponsored Stories for Mobile, which will be the one and only advertising channel there.

Marketers who fail to integrate mobile support into their social media plans are in grave danger of being left behind.

Fortunately for Wildfire clients, many of our most popular templates already look great across all viewing platforms. What’s more, we’ve made it a one-step process to design and deploy Facebook page tabs that look beautiful on mobile, tablets, and on the desktop. (See the related press release here). There’s no messing around with multiple content channels and no synchronization issues or duplication of effort between creative teams. All a client has to do is choose a template and supply the creatives; we make sure it looks beautiful wherever it’s viewed.

The linchpin of Wildfire’s mobile platform is the philosophy of responsive design, which employs specific HTML5, CSS, and Javascript technologies to ensure that the same content displays well on devices of any screen size. We believe that campaigns using responsive design will serve to distinguish truly beautiful and content-oriented brands and apps from the merely serviceable.

More advanced clients who want to write their own custom templates can take advantage of our copious documentation, example code, and powerful plug-in framework to quickly build beautiful campaigns that look great whether the customer is viewing on an Android phone or a 27” widescreen.  And our Analytics framework keeps track of mobile statistics separately, so clients can see for themselves the impact mobile users are having on their bottom line. (See the related press release here).





2012 may or may not be the Year of Mobile, but it’s definitely the year mobile becomes a primary channel for the social media experience. Don’t be left behind.

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