Being heard above all the social media noise

Following on from my previous blog, I’m sure we can agree that there is now so much noise in social media and general communication channels being generated, that being noticed is not easy.

To figure out how to get your business or product noticed, it’s essential to understand response rates to various communication alternatives.

Recently when advising an international media company, I noted that their experience in connecting with readers, subscribers and customers via email resulted in an open rate of around 30%, meaning that for every email sent, 70% were not opened. This is actually a very good open rate, and can be attributed to people actually being interested in their publications. Usually email open rates are around 22%.

For SMS, we know that around 90% are opened and read within three minutes. Moreover, more than 99% of SMS’s are read. When was the last time you didn’t read an SMS?

A mobile app works very similarly to SMS except that it can readily open to the part of the app that you want to direct the customer to.

If you’re thinking that the answer is with mobile internet – think again. Mobile apps have it all over the mobile internet experience for a range of reasons.

First of all, an app is faster and provides a better user experience. But don’t just take my word for it; ask any sports enthusiast how they get the updated scores to a game of football, basketball, tennis, etc. They use an app because it’s quicker and easier.

For you as the master communicator for your business, you need an app for another reason – you want to maximize your effectiveness in connecting with your customers. If your customers look at your mobile website, you don’t know about it. And what’s more, you can’t communicate with them (other than with SMS if they have registered, and that can be expensive).

If you have a mobile app you can send them an alert and it should be for free. Don’t worry – you won’t annoy them as a good app allows customers or clients to set up the exact type of alerts they want to receive, for example, advance notice of sales or event cancellations.  

So a win win!

But just sending an alert won’t work either. Why spend your time promoting a ‘message’ rather than a ‘place’ that makes sense for all your content to live.

The key is to link all your communications together and have a central place for your customers to go to. In my view, the app makes most sense. Don’t believe me? Let me prove something to you – when did you last see and read every tweet of someone you are following? Only if you specifically go into their tweets. When did you last see and read every LinkedIn message of someone in your network?

My view is that you should link them all so that when you send an alert it becomes a tweet, it becomes a LinkedIn message, a Facebook update and any other form of social media you want to add. 

So how do you do that?

Our apps are set up to do this as a standard feature. We believe that AppsWiz are the first in the world to do this – hopefully others will follow so that customer effectiveness in communicating is maximized above the other noise.

In my next blog I’ll cover off the productivity fundamentals you need to understand before deciding on an app for your business. Stay tuned.

Dennis Benjamin is the founder and chief executive of mobile apps specialists AppsWiz and the Informatel Group. He is an expert in the areas of mobile trends, mobile apps, apps for businesses, entrepreneurship, and startups.