Connections, Context & Content, Part 13: final thoughts

Go Forth & Mobilize

In many respects, mobile remains an emerging communications and media channel. While consumer adoption of mobile has reached a critical mass and features such as mobile messaging are tightly integrated into day-to-day use, use of the medium as a channel for corporate and brand communications is still at a formative stage. Marketers are integrating mobile into their tactical toolkit, but the public relations discipline has yet to take the same step in any real and meaningful way.

However, mobile’s characteristics of being ‘always on, always with and always personal’ offer public relations practitioners the ability to connect with stakeholders in ways that can aid them in meeting their communications objectives. If public relations is the practice of executing programming that earns public understanding, acceptance and support, then the permission-based nature of mobile coupled with its ability to provide contextually relevant content that can drive action-oriented response should make it key touch-point for stakeholder engagement. In previous posts in this series, we have explored how mobile can aid in brand communications, community building, media relations, assessing public attitudes and crisis communications. We have also seen how mobile can empower consumers in ways that will impact how public relations practitioners manage their organization’s reputation and response to external circumstances.

Mobile is a two-way communications channel. Just as the technology enables consumers to engage the world around them, it also allows communicators to manage relationships with their publics. Careful attention to contextual relevance and creating programs that add value for the consumer can go a long way in building and strengthening relationships. The thoughtful communicator can use mobile to pro-actively establish conditions that are favourable to their organization’s messaging and that enhance reputation. Communities of interest can be established, engaged, measured and mobilized. Crises can be controlled.

For the public relations practitioner, the opportunity to use a communications channel that is so pervasive and personal should be a powerful call to action to examine how their strategic objectives can be met by mobile. Their publics are mobile. They should be too.

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