Mobile Monday - You Must Integrate Your Content Properly

One thing that really sucks about mobile Monday is I can't take screen shots from my Droid2 to show you visually the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It is also true that things that frustrate me with mobile could possibly be because I have not been taught or discovered a feature. Consider me the Bridge. I am not a techie. But I am not afraid of tech. I am pretty darn good at figuring things out. I do not know HTML. It's why I use Blogger. Wordpress is too complicated for me. 

The reason I say this is because consider me a hybrid between a techie and the average Joe and Jane on the street. I want things easy. I don't want to have to think. If it isn't easy for me, and if I can't figure it out, the average person won't and they would just give up. Remember that when you decide how you wish to use Mobile Technologies for your business.

I will write in greater detail about various subjects that entail ease of use or limitations for various reasons over time. But I want to discuss Social and Mobile here in relation to my post last week about formatting. LINK

I use Huffington Post and BBC APPs. They are free and they work really great. They are formatted tightly and are very easy to use. But now I wish to share a news story. It is very advantageous for the BBC and Huffington Post to want me to share a link. Especially if the people clicking my tweet are on a full sized computer screen using a traditional browser.

They get: 
1] Page Views.
2] Digital Ad Revenue if opened in a full browser from my Tweet (assuming they don't block ads).
3] Potential for ReTweets so the article is shared with others.

All great reasons to make this easy. But it doesn't work so easy when it comes to integration with Twitter for Android and Hootsuite Apps.

First of all, they do make it pretty easy to start sharing with one button popping up a list of choices from SMS Text to Twitter. BBC will shrink the link on Twitter. But not Hootsuite. Neither Twitter APP makes it easy to shrink a link once it is loaded. Huffington Post's links do not get shortened in either APP. This deters me from sharing on Twitter. The real irony is they get ZERO revenue from me using their APP. Even the APP was free! So now they block potential revenue from their content they are giving me for free? Which basically says they developed the APPs but did not then follow the path to what happens after the link moves elsewhere.

Next on Friday I started my morning at the Social Media Club Tech Valley Breakfast, and I knew my guest post on Shonali Burke's Waxing Unlyrical was coming out. I was quite excited. I am ok with the blog not being formatted for Mobile. Shonali is not some big company oozing money. And her web page has buttons at the bottom of each post to share.

So I loaded the webpage. Sized it with zoom. I clicked on the Twitter button and instead of loading into the Hootsuite or Twitter APP which were both running, it asked me to log into Twitter's Web Homepage. Which I did. Several times to no effect. Then finally it worked! I jumped out of my seat in the Auditorium and screamed Touchdown Giants! Clicked send and was stoked I just shared my guest post........until

I got home clicked the link and it went to an empty webpage. This is technically a Skyfire Browser issue. In fact none of the browsers seem simple to share links on Twitter. Talk about a big fail. Maybe it is different on the IPhone or Windows 7 or Blackberry Phones.

So I just explained much good intentions. A lot of fumbling around with a small screen. Lot's of opportunity for sharing content socially, but because Android, the Content APP/Web, and the Social Communication APP's are not seamlessly integrated it winds up a big Social-Mobile Fail.

Granted if you are a Content provider you are challenged with Mobile Technology Platforms, APPs of all sorts, possibly even your own. But it would be wise to pick the most popular platforms and ensure at least most of your readers can share the content with their networks should your content be worthy. Trust me, they aren't going to remember when they get home and you then lose a grand opportunity.