It turns out Mobilista is no longer my number one baby!  That’s right, I’m on maternity leave, due to re-emerge around the middle of 2010.

I’m always keen to hear from people with opinions to share & stories to tell about our local mobile industry, so if you have an article you’d like to contribute to Mobilista, please drop me a line and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, go forth and multiply your mobile activities and give me some juicy activities to write about when I return, with a vengeance, later in this year of mobile.  (Did you know 2010 is the year of mobile – again!??)

The first article is from Jonny Schneider, a Melbourne based mobile-web Producer, currently working on Yellow Mobile.  In this article Jonny talks about the differences between Online and Mobile SEO and the importance of developing a differentiated strategy to ensure that finding your mobile site is easier than finding a needle in a haystack!

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So why do I need Mobile SEO?

It’s easy to throw the term SEO around, and now that mobile web has arrived, there’re a lot of people asking what Mobile SEO is all about. A good place to start is to get right back to basics, what is SEO? Don’t dig too deep, just think about the acronym ‘SEO’ for a moment – it stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It deals with optimising your content to increase its find-ability through search engines, which brings more exposure to your product. Okay, easy. So Mobile SEO is about optimising mobile content for mobile search engines.

If you already know what SEO is, stay with me, in this article, we’ll discuss Platform and Context; why it matters for mobile content; and how this might influence your SEO strategy.

We’ve already established that SEO is basically about making content play nice with search engines. If you’ve got simple, text-heavy content published for web and you’re targeting people searching for specific information through mainstream search engines, then it’s a pinch – you can employ one of the tried and tested optimisation techniques and watch your organic traffic gradually increase in response. If your mobile content has similar structure and is targeted in the same way, then some of those techniques can be modified for mobile and may yield some results.

However, mobile content doesn’t usually have many similarities with online content. That’s because the context is different. Mobile content might be more concerned with things like location and immediacy. I need something near me, right now. Or perhaps you’re after something specific to a particular device, like a ring tone, application or game. We’ve now got the complexity of non-standard content along with a new context to consider. Here’s an example: if your product is targeted at a geographic region, is it possible to optimise your site content to give a higher rank when someone does a search while physically occupying that geographic region?

Mobile as a Platform brings another layer of complexity.

Let’s start with coding standards for mobile web. Basically, there are none. This is not for lack of trying, it’s got more to do with the hundreds of handset manufacturers producing devices according to their own specifications all handling web browsing in their own unique way. This creates complexity, and means that mobile web content that is suitable for everyone is often restricted by the lowest common denominator.

Then we have the confusion created by mobile search engines and more specifically how they determine what’s ’mobile’ and what’s not. Let’s not go into detail on that now but you might want to read the full analysis in this article.

What if you have both online and mobile content? For example, a strong online presence supported by a cut-down mobile version. Or perhaps you have mobile ad campaigns using mobile landing pages that advertise an online brand. How can you stop your mobile content from ‘competing’ with it’s online equivalent in search engines and how do you make sure mobile users don’t get the online content and vice versa? Next generation devices like Android and iPhone are making this even more difficult as the lines between mobile and online are blurred further.

By now you can see there are as many similarities as there are differences when talking about mobile and online content. No doubt, your content is also different to your competitor’s. These factors combine to suggest that SEO can’t be store bought – it has nuances and the best solutions are tailored to consider your content, your platforms and your target audiences.

If you’re just getting started though, here’re a few useful things to get you on your way:

MobiReady

MobiReady is an automated analysis tool designed to help you understand potential problems on your site that may hinder search engines from finding and classifying your content properly. It’s not focused specifically on SEO, but it does give an indication of the suitability of your site for mobile devices. Generally, the more mobile ready your site is, the easier it will be for a search engine to index.

MetaTXT Discoverability Standard

In simple terms, MetaTXT is a set of instructions used to help search engines to understand the relationship between an online and mobile site for SEO purposes. These instructions help search engine indexers find the mobile version of your site from the online version and vice versa by giving information such as the location of sitemaps, and target URLs for both online and mobile sites in a single file. It’s quite straight forward, and you can find everything you need to implement it at http://metatxt.org/.

Go Mobile SEO Tool

In April 2009 Visibility Mobile launched the first ever Mobile SEO tool in Go Mobile SEO. It’s aimed at the DIY audience and offers a range of optimisation tips and techniques based on automated analysis specific to your site. It’s a per-use service, and the toolkit is designed to get your site ready for the major mobile search engines.

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This article was written by Jonny Schneider as a guest on Mobilista.   You can read more from Jonny on his blog Rogerwilco and he’s also available for Mobile SEO consulting if you’d like to delve a little deeper into the area.

MEGA (mobile enterprise growth alliance) is a programme that brings together industry & government with entrepeneurs to build our local mobile industry.  The supporters of MEGA reads like a who’s who of the mobile industry in Australia.   Dozens of local mobile practitioners with a broad mix of technical, creative and business skills have volunteered their time to teach and mentor MEGA participants over the duration of the 4 month programme. The culmination is a pitch day, when participants have the opportunity to lay out their business plans in front of potential investors and business people.

The closing date for applications is this Friday and participants will be selected based on their background, experience, project ideas and above all their passion and enthusiasm.   Passion was a key theme of the info session actually.  The inimitable Justin Brow is a walking advertisement for passion, and his enthusiasm had rubbed off on everyone by the end of the session.  I think this is a genuinely exciting programme and one I am proud to be a supporter of.

You can’t beat the opportunity to be guided by industry experts and introduced to high profile business leaders in your field of interest.  If you have a mobile idea, or just really want to get a foot in the door in the mobile industry, this could be the opportunity you’ve been looking for.

You’ve got til next Friday to apply, so get onto it ASAP!  And, if I can give you a little hint – I heard it said at the info session that if your application is overflowing with nothing but passion & enthusiasm – you’re a sure thing to be selected!

The original document is here AIMIA Mobile Advertising Guidelines and see launch comments below from AIMIA:

“Mobile advertising is the placement of advertisements (currently display and search are the most commonly used) on mobile internet sites – both on the carrier portal and off-portal. Mobile advertising has the potential to deliver highly targeted, highly personalised advertising to a majority of the population – all those that have a mobile phone. Brands, publishers and agencies have begun to use mobile advertising for a wide variety of marketing motivations including customer acquisition, revenue generation, brand awareness and distribution.

Following extensive consultation with carriers, publishers, content aggregators and content providers here in Australia, and with industry bodies internationally, the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group has formulated Mobile Advertising Guidelines to support the professional growth and development of Mobile Advertising in Australia. The guidelines have also been endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Australia. This is intended to be a living document, growing and changing as the mobile advertising industry grows and matures.”

Given AIMIA intends for this to be a living document – I thought it would be good to have a central place to encourage discussion on its future.

Things move very fast in this industry, and no sooner is a document published than new handsets, browsers and standards emerge.  If you have an opinion on the AIMIA Mobile Advertising Guidelines, or thoughts on where future guidelines ought to focus, please comment below.

I’ll also update this post with links to any discussions elsewhere if you send them through.

This latest report is based an about 100 mobile campaigns, from Amethon’s global customer base. All of the data comes from developed countries with similar mobile penetration and is normalisd by population. Given this, and the fact that Amethon is an Australian company, I would suggest the data is fairly relevant to Australia.

The report ‘Mobile Advertising – After the Click-Through’ focuses on user interaction for mobile campaigns AFTER clicking on a banner ad.

Some of Amethon’s findings

• Mobile Sites (including Telco & off-deck) make up 23% of all mobile campaigns
• Automotive, Movie and Alcohol categories make up 44% of all mobile campaigns
• 50% of Movie category campaigns and 38% of Alcohol campaigns have a downloadable component
• Page views per visit were almost identical for campaigns with/without downloads
• Average page views per visist is 1.53
• Bounce rates for mobile campaigns sites are very high – 67%
• Excluding bounce visits (leaving after 1 page) average page views is high – 4.15%
• Only 33% of consumers venture beyond the first page of a mobile campaign site
• Mobile Services are the most common campaign type (22%) however these have below average page views per visit (1.35)

I thought the report successfully highlighted the current failure of our industry to deliver campaign microsites that offer a compelling, engaging experience.

Bounce rates (the number of people who leave after the first page) are significantly higher than online, where you might aim for 20 – 30% as an ideal. This highlights just how badly we as an industry are using ‘micro-sites’ in my opinion. While Mobile Advertising boasts higher than average click through rates, advertisers are clearly not optimising their campaigns to hold on to customers once they have clicked through.

Another observation made by Amethon is that campaigns have little ‘made for mobile’ content – ie. they are repurposing TV ads, movie trailers and the like. In my mind this is closely linked to the high bounce rates.

Mobile is a unique medium with obvious advantages for interaction, conversation and engagement. If we squander this opportunity by throwing old, re-used content at mobile users, we should expect little more.

Mobile Advertising is not just about getting the click throughs – it’s about what happens next, and it makes me tired to see the same old strategies being trotted out time and time again. It’s actually been years now. Let’s try something different!!

So what do you have to do to bring those bounce rates down and pick up average page views per visit?

• Clearly communicate the benefit of clicking on an ad – and don’t disappoint the customer once they arrive
• Use your mobile destination to create a MOBILE specific interaction by taking advantage of the unique properties of the medium (location, context, identity, mobility, immediacy)
• Don’t repurpose content from another medium – unless it makes perfect sense to do so (Movie trailers are an example that work. TV Ads are generally not)
• Use a mobile specialist to build your mobile site / micro-site / landing page. They know how to work with the small screen and optimise for different handsets. An average (or crappy) user experience does not encourage your customers to stick around.
• Think about mobile at the beginning of your campaign plan and integrate with online & offline components, with mobile to tie it all together.
• Be creative (please???)

Mobile is not ‘the little web’. It’s something else altogether – a whole new medium. Use it that way, and you WILL see results.

Now let’s cross our fingers that Amethon’s report this time next year will show a prettier picture and prove we’ve learned our lessons and moved on from here!

For more information and to request a copy of the report, visit Amethon.

It’s now time to up the stakes and create a new, more professional home on the web.   So welcome to the brand new Mobilista, full of all sorts of mobile industry goodness for Australia!

The centrepiece to this site is my blog about mobile advertising and marketing in Australia, but there’s more to it than that.  I hope to provide a valuable resource to the Australian mobile industry by consolidating links, articles and information that will help businesses work with the mobile channel in Australia.

The launch of this site marks phase 1 in a rebranding of my consulting business as well.   Over time the blog has grown to become core to the business, and so “Mobilist” is in the process of becoming “MobilistA“ as well. No more confusion!

Take a look around and please let me know what you think.  The site and content are a work in progress and I am very keen to hear suggestions on what else to include.

I’m also open to hearing from contributors who have an opinion about our local mobile industry.  If you already write about mobile stuff, please drop me a line with links to your content – I’d love to reference it.  If you’d like to write about something that is relevant to the audience of Mobilista, get in touch and I’d be happy to invite you to write a guest post here.  And finally comments on all posts are very welcome, whether you agree with the opinions or not.  It would be great to get some discussion going on some of the current issues facing us all.

The site also includes  information about the consulting, training, speaking and mobile advertising services that Mobilista offers.

Thanks to everyone I have met over the last few years, and for all your encouragement and support in making Mobilista a viable business.  Getting to this point would not have been possible without the awesomeness of groups like Mobile Monday, the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group and all of the passionate individuals that make up our  strong and vibrant mobile community down under.

I hope to see, speak, tweet, comment, facebook, email, chat or hear from you soon!

Emily

1. Everybody builds an App Store

Everybody will want an app store in 2009.  The iPhone App Store has had more than 300 million downloads globally, with more than 10k apps available as of early December 08.  

The appeal of the iPhone App Store is the large, consistent user base, the built in business model and the ‘one-click’ path to getting an application onto a mobile handset.

The iPhone App Store works because:

• It’s dead easy for users.  They just get it.
  
• Apple’s marketing machine has guaranteed enough users to warrant the effort that goes into building an application
• All of the users have the same handset, which means the application only needs to be built once.
• The significant user base is distributed globally, so the development community that can be encouraged to build for the App Store is also large, and global
  
• There is a built-in revenue model for sales of applications through the App Store and plug-ins to immediately enable advertising revenue
  
• Apple controls the quality of the applications that are created AND provide the tools to make it easy to develop software to their standards
  
•  There is a comprehensive SDK (software development kit) including tools, simulators and an active developer community online, all of which make the iPhone easy to build for
  
• It’s cool, and companies / brands / developers want to be seen there!
  

2009 will bring a variety of me-too App Store experiences, some of which we will see in Australia.  Major handset manufacturers will launch their alternative, similar models. (Palm has already launched a software store, RIM is set to do so in March).  Some will fail, but others will find their niche.  In Australia one or more of the telco carriers will jump on the bandwagon, and depending on their approach, will almost certainly fail. 

No Australian telco has enough (any?) of the advantages described above to make a completely open App Store work.  Assuming the Telco can find local developers, provide sufficient incentives to build for a local audience in a fragmented handset market, while funding the internal resources needed to nurture the community and monitor, test & approve the applications being produced…. then some success may be seen.  But I doubt it!

2. Mobile Web Usage Tips Over (almost)

I’ve seen a number of articles about the Mobile Web explosion we had last year.  Maybe in the US or Europe, but I don’t think we saw it in Australia.   In 2009 we will finally see Australia reach the (almost) tipping point for mobile web.  It’s fair to say we won’t ALL be browsing the internet from our mobiles, but by the end of 2009 it will be at least as common as MMS is now.

We will see a rush of Australian online properties make their first forays into the mobile channel.  In the face of this increased competition, those who are already there (News, Fairfax, NineMSN, LP, ABC, CarSales, Sensis) will make a lot more noise.  The classifieds space will start to wake up to the possibilities and we’ll see a lot more from employment & real estate. Carsales & Drive are already there, and Sensis’ Trading Post mobile launched late in 2008. 

With local properties acting as a magnet for the channel, users will find themselves exploring mobile further and discovering the wealth of content & applications available globally.  Mobile search engines will contribute to this growth.  Where there are users there are opportunists, and we will see a barrage of content suitable for mobile being published in the latter half of 2009 to take advantage of this eagerly awaited surge in usage.

Applications will play a big part in this usage surge and mobile site owners will take advantage of the trend with ‘bookmarklets’ – pseudo apps that effectively place a button on your handset that loads a mobile website.

The iPhone and other smart devices won’t do usage any harm of course, and further improvements to data plans from Telcos will see us begin to drift away from the horrors of bill shock. 

2009 will see usage, content, devices & telcos all coming together to make the mobile web truly relevant in Australia.

3. We Hear a Lot More about Mobile Ad Networks

Users + Content = Advertising. 

In Australia to date a small number of major players have controlled most of the mobile usage and thus the revenue that can be earned from advertising.

The telcos (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, 3) along with Fairfax, News & NineMSN own the properties that earn the bulk of targetable Australian mobile traffic.  Major brands like Google, Microsoft & Nokia pick up a fair bit and have their own advertising solutions.

The rest of the traffic is spread across the very long tail of global & independent mobile sites.

Each of the telcos sells advertising on their mobile portals as do the major publishers.  Advertisers can buy Google Mobile Adwords targeting Australia and at least one global mobile ad network (AdMob) can be used to reach a significant amount of off-deck / long tail traffic in Australia. 

With the exception of one or two independent mobile site publishers, these have been the Advertiser’s only options to reach mobile users in Australia to date.

With usage and content growth expected in 2009, we are set to see one or more of the following mobile ad network moves:

1. Telcos extend their mobile networks to include (more) independent mobile sites.

     Telstra’s MediaSmart has already tested the water, extending its mobile network beyond the Sensis & BigPond family.  I suspect we will see a lot more of this in 2009.

2. Online Ad networks extend coverage to include mobile properties.

Online Ad Network Max Interactive have launched Max Mobile, initially only offering advertising on the 3 portal – for now.  This is the start of things to come though.  After all, if online networks do not embrace the mobile versions of web properties they represent – who will? 

3. Global Mobile Ad networks look at Australia

Globally there are a number of big mobile ad players (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft) and numerous niche mobile ad networks (eg. AdMob, DeckTrade, Smaato, AdModa, Buzz City) many of which already offer targeting of Australian mobile traffic.  To date
ion st=”on”>Australia has seen little focus from these global players, other than AdMob who has a significant amount of Australian traffic already.  In 2009 will see some activity here.  Google will add more Australian publishers to their mobile content network and some of the niche networks will pick up local partners or publishers.

4. Local Mobile-specific Ad Networks emerge

In 2009 we will see one or more start up companies launching in Australia with the goal of aggregating ad serving within mobile content.  More mobile content means there could be a genuine need here, but the real opportunity is in building the network, thus becoming an acquisition target for the larger global mobile or local online ad networks.

4. Australian Ad Industry puts Mobile on The Radar

With all this activity and advertising opportunity, 2009 will be the year our local agencies start to take mobile seriously.  The advertising industry will start to consider mobile more often and earlier in the planning process (but not yet often enough or early enough for my liking!).

Digital agencies will realise they are not truly digital if they don’t offer mobile services, and we will see mobile experts being hired and trained with increasing frequency.

Media planners will be expected to know what’s available in mobile media buying and mobile specific agencies will flourish while digital and traditional agencies figure the space out.  Mobile specialists will either do well or be absorbed / acquired.   Advertisers will start to ask for mobile and in some cases will even know what it is they are asking for!  

Unfortunately 2009 will also be the year of the “Epic FAIL” mobile campaign.  Agencies & advertisers will go it alone, believing they know what works (It’s just the web on a small screen right?) and spend money on campaigns that don’t deliver. 

Tacking on mobile at the last minute will be rife and we will see horrible mistakes like SMS campaigns pushing full screen web URLs, QR codes that are too big/small/fuzzy to scan and downloadable apps that cost $150k to build and get no usage. There will be talk of mobile being all hype and no reality. 

But we’ll also see some really smart & innovative mobile advertising. This will be the year we move beyond ‘banners and brochureware’ and see mobile integrated across digital & traditional channels and applied in scenarios where it’s undeniably perfect – direct, targeted, measurable, interactive conversations. 

The global economic downturn will be good for mobile advertising, as it costs less to reach the right people via mobile. Where the target audience makes sense, many advertisers will sacrifice broadcast media for direct, targeted campaigns with mobile integrated.

There will be a mobile story in every issue of every advertising & marketing publication in Australia in 2009.  Yes, everyone will jump on the mobile bandwagon (and don’t I love it!)

All in all 2009 will be an industry defining year for mobile advertising in Australia.

Thinks I’d like to see, but probably won’t just yet:

- Everyone stops caring about getting on the carrier / telco deck

- Consistent Mobile Advertising Guidelines are adopted by all the major publishers & carriers

- Brands start building content & sites for mobile first, and not the other way around

- Mobile Search becomes as ubiquitous as online search and takes over from portals

- Australian mobile content developers make a lot of money (sorry it’s not this year guys)

What other people think

 I put the word out and got some input from a few other notable Aussie Mobilistas.

Shane Williamson, Founder, Mobile Monday Sydney

• 2009 will not see a decline in mobile sales overall in Australia as the GFC will not effect the market greatly. Mobile devices are too important to people to get the chop.
• With the maturing of Unified Communicatons, smartphones will be the driving force of higher end mobile data use into the enterprise.
  
• A key factor to uptake will be fixed to mobile convergence (FMC) of voice services to mobile devices. This is the ability to use mobiles to access traditonal enterprise PBX services and applications.
  

 Tim Parsons, Founder, Mobile Monday Sydney

• channel confusion, some people will be e-mailing from their iPhone/Android/WindowsMobile/Blackberry, while others will still be SMSing. Expect some missed rendezvous while we decide what asynchronous messaging channel we should be on to connect with each person.
  
• on-deck revenues continue to rise, for perhaps another 18 months – 2 years, and then sharply decline as all the fun off-deck becomes too much to ignore
• the rise of uncapped data-plans and simultaneously super-social apps like ‘instant chat’ and xumii
• brands are starting to get serious about targeted marketing; mobile marketing will probably grow a bit faster and be more innovative this year.
  

Luke Janssen CEO TigerSpike

• Companies will go bust..
  
• Mobile Internet will become a no brainer..
  
• and much more on Luke’s blog
  

Tim Elwin, CEO, ToyPhone media

• MIM (Mobile Instant Messaging) is going to get bigger
  
• Mobile measurement will finally be a reality in Australi
  
• and a hot tip from Tim….. “..ensure that all staff, especially client facing staff in agencies are properly trained up on general mobile interaction”
  

A Few More Opinions with a Global Perspective 

MobHappy- Russell Buckley’s 2009 Predictions (1, 2 and 3) (4, 5 and 6) (7, 8, 9 and 10)

From MocoNews - How the big mobile stories of 2008 will play out

MTrends – Rudy de Waele’s Mobile and Wireless Predictions for 09

Chetan Sharma’s Mobile Industry Predictions 2009

MoMo London founder Daniel Applequist’s 2009 Predictions

The good news is that 48 people have signed up to the Facebook group for Mobile Advertising in Australia. That’s a great start and I plan to fulfil my part of the deal in the coming weeks, and share some of the recent mobile advertising activities in our industry.

My head is buzzing with future blog posts and I’ve made a commitment to keep them coming, short and sweet but far more often, as I do have a tendency to write an essay!

Watch this space in the next few days, and if you have any news to share, campaigns you’ve seen or run, products & services launched or companies doing interesting things, please drop me a line at emily@mobilist.com.au

Don’t forget there are many mobile people already ‘micro-blogging’ every day on twitter. My twitter name is emilyfreeman if you’re keen to join the conversation. If you’re already up there, why don’t you pop over to the Facebook group and add your twitter ID on the discussion board so the local community can find you (otherwise I may be forced to ‘out’ a few people on here for the benefit of all!)