Sunday, September 23, 2012

How can Apps help build up your Social Currency?


In my last post "3 Phase Strategy in Digital Commerce", I brought up the potential ways in which:
  1. Apps could act as outposts to consumers and build up communities.
  2. Social messaging platforms and content marketing could engage with your consumers.
  3. Commerce in general is bringing in the social engagement and recommendations to the online and mobile space as consumers are increasingly on-the-go and expect value from differentiated offers.
Wikipedia definition of social currency for your business states that it constitutes the entirety of actual and potential resources which could arise from the presence of your business in social networks and communities - digital or offline.

So how do mobile apps come into the picture in helping to build up social currency for your business? Growth in on-the-go consumers and mobile content consumption are changing the ways in which consumers are putting their attention and mindshare on business and marketing news. In southeast asia markets, whilst largely feature phone driven, smartphone growth are fast outstripping the growth of feature phones in the recent 2 years with the availability of low cost affordable smartphones. Internet access via low cost tablets and wifi enabled cafes are also helping the fuel internet access and content sharing. Have a look at my initial take on the Southeast Asia mobile and internet market (I will be updating this in another post) and you would see the potential reach of apps in Southeast Asia markets. Should you look into getting a piece of this channel? Yes. Is it worth your while? YES!



In developing the app strategy for your business, you would need to understand that in today's world of on-the-go consumers and pervasive mobile internet access, the market landscape for the consumption of business and marketing information is changing. No longer static in nature, there is a shift of information sharing and communication from static documents in your PCs to browsers and now increasingly via apps in smartphones, tablets, feature phones and more upcoming screens.

Here is a slide on how mobile apps: 

  • could be used as experimental outposts to reach your consumers 
  • to seed and incubate concept messaging, 
  • and build up specific vertical communities for businesses. 
Open declaration here: the apps DishPal, StyleTag and StARCALL are from SK Planet where I currently work in.



By nurturing your communities, engaging your users with the all-important relevant content calendar, you start to be able to mine and garner value for your business from your interactions with your consumers through the profiling of your community users.

Referring back to my previous post on the the 3 phases in Digital Commerce, the social messaging platform when coupled with nurtured communities and consumer profiling from apps, will grow richer with more relevant consumer and business context.

Let's discuss further - in subsequent posts or reach me directly.

I look forward to hear from you.

Nelson Wee
LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nelsonwee
Twitter: @nelsonwee
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.com/nelsonwee 

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