Page 352 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

The paths are

» SMS: This is short message service, also commonly known as text messaging.
A text message is comprised of 160 or fewer letters, characters, and numbers
delivered through the mobile channel. You can send longer messages (called
Concatenated SMS) by linking the messages together. SMS is ideal for the
sharing and exchange of contextually relevant, timely bits of information —
including a brief message to a friend, celebrity gossip, details on your latest
sale, impulse impressions, and thoughts on a product or service. In the social
media context, SMS is popular with Twitter because people update their
accounts (tweet) and/or receive alerts via SMS, even though SMS is just one
very small part of the Twitter experience. Keep in mind, though, that SMS is
permission based. If you’re a marketer trying to reach customers via SMS, they
need to have given you permission to market to them.

» MMS: This stands for multimedia messaging service, which is a unique
protocol for exchanging digital content, such as videos, pictures, and audio via
mobile phones. The term MMS is often generically used for all forms of digital
content, including ringtones, images, video, and so on, even if the delivery
doesn’t follow the proper MMS protocol; more often than not, this content is
sent via the Internet rather than through MMS. MMS works well with an SMM
campaign in which you’re inviting customers to share their own pictures and
videos with each other.
» Email: Traditionally, email had been delivered to a mobile device, such as a
BlackBerry or Palm Treo, through a special email service connected to the
device. Now, regular email can be delivered through mobile applications
(often built in by the wireless carriers or mobile phone manufacturers) or
through the mobile web. iPhones, Androids, and devices such as tablets,
deliver and render HTML emails, as opposed to the text-only versions of old.
» Voice: This can take the form of talking with a live person working in a call
center, who in turn may trigger mobile data services as a response to the call.
Voice can also refer to an interactive voice response (IVR), or automated
attendant, system in which your audience can interact with your service
through various system prompts and menus, such as “Say or press 1 to tell us
what you think of the service.” The greatest opportunity here is with social
media marketing campaigns that start online and invite users to have special
customized voice messages sent to their friends on their mobile phones. For
example, the mobile campaign for the movie Snakes on a Plane encouraged
participants to create customized voice messages for their friends. When the
receivers answered the calls, they heard a message about the movie in the
voice of the actor Samuel L. Jackson. The message also said that their friends
(you could include any name) wanted them to watch the movie together. It
appeared as if Samuel L. Jackson was telling them this. This widely successful

336 PART 5 Old Marketing Is New Again with SMM