Mobile Does Not Have to Be Expensive: How to Leverage Mobile Technologies on the Cheap

Part of a Special Series Developed in Partnership With MobileActive.org

Mobile technologies are slowly becoming a critical component of health marketing communications efforts. Fortunately, for smaller organizations, developing and deploying a mobile campaign need not be expensive. The secret to success is to start small.

In addition, for organizations that serve people from communities of color (e.g., African Americans and Hispanics), mobile can be an ideal way to reach these populations. The Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that people from these groups are more likely than white Americans to use mobile technologies, particularly text messaging.

MobileActive.org suggests that one way for organizations to begin dabbling in mobile is to start with Twitter. Twitter is easily accessible at m.twitter.com on mobile phones. Organizations can have several Twitter accounts on a variety of topics. In addition, to Twitter, many popular social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have mobile versions of their sites.

When ready to expand beyond Twitter and other networking sites, organizations can leverage a number of free mobile services. MobileActive.org recommends the following services:

Txtmarks is a free, low volume messaging service. Organizations can send text message updates and conduct interactive chats with small groups of users.
Set up online widgets to drive constituents to subscribe to text message updates and information (click here for an article on how to use widgets).Send bulk messages. Many desktop bulk SMS applications can send mass text messages. MobileActive.org recommends that people in countries that lack SMS services and vendors pursue this strategy (see MobileActive.org’s review of different SMS applications).

Following are a few more recommendations from MobileActive.org on how organizations can leverage mobile technologies in inexpensive ways:

Conduct polls: Poll Everywhere is an inexpensive tool organizations can use to conduct mobile-powered online polls
Get information that will speed the development of a mobile version of your site: Using tools like mobiforge, organizations can check to see how their sites look on various mobile platforms, which can help decrease development and optimization time associated with mobile Web site production.

Additional Resources:

MobileActive.org Article: Based on Low-Cost and Low-Barrier: Five (Grassroots) Ways to Get Started with Mobile, September 19, 2008, http://mobileactive.org/low-cost-low-barriers
Pew Internet & the American Life Project, Mobile Access to Data and Information, March 5, 2008, http://www.pewinternet.org/Press-Releases/2008/Mobile-Access-to-Data-and...

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