Connections, Context & Content, Part 9: Mobile and Community Relations

Mobile & Community

The practice of community relations is another area where mobile can play an important tactical role. Enhancing public service campaigns, providing information services, and mobilizing support are three excellent examples of tactics that can be enhanced by integrating mobile. “Mobile offers communicators a tool that’s both responsive and personal. When the public is using mobile to communicate with a brand or organizations, it’s because they’ve bought into what that organization is saying,”says Brady Murphy.

There are two primary starting points for community engagement via mobile: a database that has been built by the communicating organization or an awareness campaign that drives opt-in. With an established database, communicators have an audience of stakeholders that they can influence through value-laden content. The US-based not for profit Do Something uses mobile as a tool to mobilize volunteers. After signing up, participants receive one to two text messages per month featuring volunteer opportunities that match preferences established at the point of sign up at http://www.dosomething.org/textme. Encouragingly, Do Something recognized that ensuring the content was relevant to the recipient greatly improved the chances of the program’s success.

The same practice could be applied to any organization that needs to be in regular contact with its stakeholders. Service outages, environmental conditions, community building events, public forums are all types of notification content that could be delivered to stakeholders via mobile. Within the text messages, practitioners can also include opportunities for subsequent communications. From the message, stakeholders could click on a link to call an information hot-line or be directed to a mobile web page which has additional information.

The user experience can also start with consumer opt-in. The Partnership for a Drug Free America has launched a mobile public service campaign for “parents interested in learning how to start and maintain conversations with their kids about drugs and alcohol, and teens who may be experimenting or using. The partnership is running banner ads on mobile Web sites that drive to WAP (mobile internet) sites where parents can sign up to access tips, tools and advice from the Partnership’s “Time to Talk” program.”

Communities of interest can also be mobilized from more traditional communications collateral. QR codes, basically barcodes that can store lots of information and can trigger actions on a mobile phone, can be included on printed material. Consumers with the proper devices and software can scan the code and be driven to related destinations. For example, a newsletter focusing on a park clean up effort could include a QR code which, when scanned, triggers a mobile web browsing session that allows the user to find the park closest to them and other relevant details about the event. The website could also include volunteer sign up tools and methods for informing other interested parties. Not only is this environmentally friendly, it also deposits key communications material onto the handset where it can be referenced and easily shared among the users peer group.

Once again, mobile serves as a channel to engage communities that are important to the organization, provides valuable and relevant information, creates circumstances to motivate action and strengthens the organization’s reputation.

Next Up: Mobile as a media relations tactic

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