Twitter vs. SMS.  Which one wins for business communications?

By Jen O’Connell – Voice of Wireless

In my travels, I came across some folks trying to determine if Twitter competes or is complimentary to SMS and how the two could live together within the same social media campaign. 

Both platforms offer the instantaneous opportunity to communicate in small sound bites with Twitter having 120 characters and SMS using 160 characters (although some wireless carriers allow for more characters in their SMS).  Both have the feeling of being very personal in nature yet I am reminded of the fact that when using Twitter and SMS, your message should be treated much differently when both are considered as a means of business communication.

Twitter is very much a communication in the moment.  You “tweet” and then it’s gone.  Depending on how you collect and monitor your tweets (perhaps you may use TweetDeck to monitor all your “friend” activity) on a busy day, your update may be replaced quickly by other tweets.  Often times, I like to refer to Twitter as an “internet billboard”.  Maybe you’ll see it while driving down the highway or maybe you won’t.  Either way, it’s behind you as you move on in life.  It’s great for branding and maximizing exposure but not considered as efficient a communication medium as others.

The end user who receives an SMS will have it stored in their phone until they decide to open and read it.  I tend to think of an SMS more like a piece of mail that sits on your desk.  You can always take it with you when you leave home.  (In fact, better than a piece of mail…since it goes with you by default as long as you have your cell phone in your pocket).

When a business is looking to distribute a coupon or other promotional offers, especially if it has a code that needs to be redeemed at the point of sale, I would strongly encourage using SMS.  You customers can always refer back to it at a later time, and as a business you’ll know it was delivered to 100% of your opt-in base.  Twitter, on the other hand, would best be used to reinforce the delivery of the SMS by reminding people to check their phone for an SMS coupon, to be used at a later time.

A final word to the wise, although Twitter and SMS are a casual medium where persistent updates are often encouraged, remember that if you are representing your business, be sure to maintain an element of respect.  You never know who’s watching (or reading your “Tweets”).  At least with SMS, you know who will get your message and have the time to properly craft your message with thought and logic in advance.

Mobile is Personal and Limitless

By Jen O’Connell,  Voice of Wireless

I was reading an article that rang true to something I had always thought about but was never able to articulate into words.  Here are the words that found a voice… “whenever we get our hands on a new medium we tend to use it like older ones.  Early TV broadcasts consisted of guys sitting around reading radio scripts because nobody had realized yet that TV could tell stories differently” (wired magazine).  The early days of the internet before social networking were nothing more than displaying generic digital brochures.  Now there’s Mobile and we are learning how to play, with the best of our abilities, in this space.

What we have with Mobile is a set of opportunities where we can play off our desire to speak directly to another person, request information, make decisions based on our location and share our personal preferences with others.  It’s as if our phones have become an extension of ourselves, which is why we covet this technology and keep it so close to ourselves at all times.  With great opportunity comes great responsibility.  The expectation of what is worth our while continues to grow when we, as consumers, become more aware of the true power our cell phones have over our lives and the interconnectedness we have with it.

As Mobile Marketers, we must protect the privacy of each consumer – which is why the idea of “opt-in” is so important.  But once you’ve demonstrated value to your consumer and they are interested in what you have to say, then comes the responsibility of saying something in a way that goes beyond the “new medium” trap. 

Avoid the natural instinct to make Mobile be nothing more than a lighter and more portable 1-way internet connection.  Stretch farther before distributing static content by integrating the next step of personalization.    See what information you can use to make the interaction between your consumer and your product be a unique experience…and a time sensitive one.  Today in the U.S., we are seeing Customer Care organizations using Mobile to send timely updates on account activity and Banks keeping consumers informed of their financial transactions via confirmation SMS, as required by law in India.  Smart Homes are using Mobile to turn the lights on in their homes so their driveways are lit and the heat is turned on, all before they arrive.  And smart businesses are using Mobile to create a personal connection between their products and the consumers who love them, in a very personal way. 

The sky’s the limit…and is no longer dictated by the limitations of the previous technology.  Stretch as far as your imagination will take you and your consumers will follow when it sings true to them. 

I was just reading an article on RCR Wireless about political text messages, Obama’s in particular. In it, author Colin Gibbs writes, “But in the course of a few weeks, Obama’s text-messaging effort has grown from a national curiosity to a bona fide new way to register volunteers, create stickiness with potential voters and keep supporters in the loop.” This got me to thinking.

In two weeks the election will be over. Someone, Obama or McCain, will emerge the victor. Afterward, there will be no more campaigning, no more debates, no more rallies or fund raisers. In short, there will be nothing more to receive a text message about.

But does it have to be that way?

What if, instead of receiving text messages from a presidential candidate, we received text messages from the President of the United States of America?

After all, just because the election will end doesn’t mean that everything else will. There will still be events of national importance that we should hear about. There will still be television broadcasts that we should watch. There will still be calls to volunteer and donate that we should answer.

So shouldn’t we get text messages about those things, too?

In the article Gibbs made a comment about Obama’s text message campaign that I think we should consider on a grander scale. He said, “The Obama messages made me feel engaged and informed, and gave me the opportunity to get involved with the campaign by contributing or showing up at a rally.”

Couldn’t that just as easily be “The president’s messages made me feel engaged and informed, and gave me the opportunity to get involved with my community/city/country”?

What if we all felt engaged by our president? What if we all became more informed about our nation and our government? What if we all felt like we were a part of a community, a part of something bigger than just ourselves?

On November 4th, after months of watching the debates and reading the articles and discussing the issues, we each will cast our vote. And then it will be over. Either John McCain or Barack Obama will be president. The confetti will be swept away and the yard signs will be pulled up and the patriotic fervor that pulsed through the small towns and the big cities of this great country will disappear for another four years.

But what if it didn’t?

And what if all it took to keep that spirit alive was a simple text message?

Just a thought.

Of course the best way to do this would be to

1. Go to a Doc in the Box and be diagnosed with near-death syndrome.
2. Visit a pharmacy and pick up my prescribed cocktail of antibiotics and cough syrup to be taken twice a day for four days.
3. Awake from my haze just in time to rent a giant duck suit from a costume shop so I can waddle my way to a Halloween party.

But no. That would be the easy way out. Instead I sat on the floor amongst fabric and foam watching someone who has even bigger problems: The Starter Wife.

If you don’t know, The Starter Wife is a television show enjoying its second season on USA. It’s about a woman who finds herself suddenly ex-wifed in the glamorous yet vicious world of the Hollywood elite. It airs on Friday nights, but luckily for me it reruns on Sundays. So while I’m surrounded by voluminous bolts of brown feathery fur and an incomprehensible sewing pattern, I get to watch the mayhem that ensues after Molly’s journal has been stolen and all of her frenemies’ secrets are leaked to a gossip website.

About fifteen minutes and seventeen stickpins into the show, I look up just in time to see “Text SOMETHING to SOME NUMBER” disappear from the corner of the screen. After I angrily yelled at the television, I began monologuing/ad-libbing from Air2Web’s Best Practices of Mobile Marketing:

If you’re going to promote a mobile campaign on television, leave the keyword and short code on the screen long enough for me to read/remember it. Grr. I mean, quack. Whatever.

Twenty minutes later though, USA promoted the keyword and short code again, offering a chance to win a pair of Tom Ford sunglasses.

(Also from the Best Practices: The more times/places you promote your mobile campaign, the better. And, boost participation with incentives such as coupons, rebates, or prizes.)

So as I dug through the pile of fabric, paper, and stickpins to find my trusty RAZR, I said to myself, “SUN to USATXT, SUN to USATXT, SUN to USATXT.” (USA has obviously read the Best Practices guide which says to not only to use short keywords but also to use a different keyword for each venue/event, hence SUN for Sunday’s show and probably FRI for Friday’s.)

After I dutifully texted USA, I received this response:

TSW: Thx! U have 1
sweeps entry. Std msg
chrgs aply. 4 rules go 2
starterwife.usanetwork.co
m. Enter again nxt wk! 1
entry/wk. Want more?
Rply WIFE Txt STOP 2end.

Of course I want more, I thought. I’m Miss Mobile! W-I-F-E.

(By the way, that response followed 4 guidelines from the BP: 1. Always state “standard rates apply” in the initial message. 2. Provide the legal rules for sweepstakes on a website. 3. Ask users if they’d like to opt-in for future messages. 4. Give instructions for opting out in the first message.)

In response to WIFE, I received this message:

TSW: Thanks! You’ll get 5+
msg/week including exclusive
msgs for Verizon users.
Std msg chrgs apply. Reply
with WET if ur on the East
Coast, WPT if not.

I replied with WET and assumed that I’ll be reminded to watch the show a few hours earlier than the folks on the west coast. Pretty cool, I thought as I finally began cutting out the pattern shapes.

As Molly’s hour-long saga wrapped up and was put on hold for another week, I realized that mine was just beginning. After six hours, I was sicker than ever and I still had a twenty piece fabric puzzle waiting to be stitched and stuffed into the likeness of a human-sized Mallard hen. But at least thanks to The Starter Wife, I might win a pair of fancy sunglasses to wear with it.

“Verizon Wireless said today that contrary to reports last week, it has not decided to increase per-message text fees for content aggregators from 1 cent per message to 3 cents.

“The prospect of an increase is just one proposal and Verizon could not act unilaterally to implement it, a company spokesman explained this morning.

“Initial reports last week cited a letter from Verizon to aggregators in which the wireless operator said the increase is effective Nov. 1.

“That was a misstatement, the nation’s second-largest wireless operator said today.”

According to the article on RCR Wireless, the carrier said that “the new fee was necessary to cover the carrier’s overhead in delivering MT messages.”

The fee will apply to standard and premium programs but not to free-to-end-user, mobile giving, or non-profit organizational programs.

That’s all, folks. For more information, check out the article.

According to Nielsen, “the average mobile subscriber in the US sent and received more SMS text messages than mobile telephone calls during Q2 2008.” And on top of that, this is apparently the second consecutive quarter in which this has happened.

According to the table below, mobile users in the 13-17 age range sent 1,742 texts but made only 231 calls this quarter. Kids under 12 sent 428 texts and made only 137 calls.  My age range, the 25-34 bracket, sent an unimpressive 331 texts and made 239 calls. I guess that sounds about right to me. I text a lot, but I talk a lot too.

Here’s the table. Enjoy. Read the article on eMarketer if you’d like some expert analysis.

I couldn’t care less that it’s football season, and that’s kind of scandalous if you know anything about me. I really should care about football—I’m from a football-crazed family. And I really should care about Alabama football—I went to UA as an undergrad and played a pretty big role in the team spirit department.

But the thing is, I was always more interested in watching the half-time show and never gave a rip about what came before or after it. And despite the fact that everyone who knows me knows that I don’t care, I still hear the question “What did you think of the game?” and I never know what to say.

What’s the point, you ask. The point is that I just signed up for ESPN’s sports alerts. Why? Because now I can find out who won without actually watching any football at all.

The ESPN alert program allows you to pick the sports, teams, and types of alerts you’d like to receive. After signing up as an ESPN.com member, you can go to http://proxy.espn.go.com/mobile/alerts/signup and sign up for team scores, breaking news alerts, NASCAR alerts, and even fantasy news for the sport of your choice. It even lets you set the time frame in which you’d like to receive the alerts, so you’ll never get an alert at 10pm, that is, unless you want it.

The program offers alerts for MLB, NFL, NBA, NCAA Football, and NCAA Basketball. This is pretty cool for me, and it’s probably pretty freaking awesome for someone who’s actually a sports fan. So if you are, check it out.

And now, a note to my family: please don’t disown me.

Now that’s probably because I’m not a national park kind of girl. But if I happened to find myself in one, you can bet your deer tail that I’ll want the ability to make a call in case there’s an emergency. But at the same time, I don’t want some tourist yapping their trap while I’m trying to commune with nature.

Apparently Yellowstone National Park has similar concerns. According to the Associated Press, it’s “attempting to balance competing demands for cell phone service and preserving the park’s tranquility.”

The park has developed a plan that would increase cell coverage while keeping the negative effects on the animals to a minimum. And the tower near Old Faithful would be moved to a less visible site at a nearby water treatment plant. (Read the article here.)

Seems like a good idea, Yellowstone. May I suggest disguising the towers as trees? That might help. Although the birds might get confused.

I just read an interesting article on RCR Wireless about the class-action antitrust lawsuit filed against the top four US carriers, which alleges that the carriers have “conspired to fix, raise, maintain or stabilize prices of text-messaging services.”

According to the article, the lawsuit questions the rise of the text messaging costs which doubled from 10 cents to 20 in just a few years.

But what I found most interesting was the article’s conclusion, which provided a juicy mobile statistic:

According to mid-year figures by industry association CTIA, 75 billion text messages are sent every month. Overall, CTIA said wireless operators generate $27.5 billion a year from wireless data, a big chunk of which is generated by text messages.

75 billion messages–that’s a lot texting. I think my sister is responsible for at least a 800 of those.