Today, I did a MOTODEV podcast with Randy Ksar of Motorola: “Social Media Marketing for Mobile Developers Part II”. The podcast addressed mobile developers and focused on the benefits of incorporating social media into mobile applications.

You can see the social dialogue surrounding the podcast on gsnap and listen to the podcast below:

Here’s the corresponding powerpoint:

In it, you’ll learn how to:

• Measure mobile app success
• Create a viral loop and engage social media within your mobile application
• Advertise your mobile apps for free on social networks
• Leverage Facebook Connect
• Add social value

The presentation also includes some useful examples of how leading mobile developers use social media in their apps. You’ll also see helpful stats on viral tuning and increasing conversions and revenue with social media techniques from Flirtomatic. Of particular interest to me were the conversions Flirtomatic saw with their latest, pre-halloween virtual gifts campaign (started November 19th), where users can send each other “Vampire bites”.  Here’s how it works – User A pays to send a virtual vampire bite to User B.  Flirtomatic tags User B’s profile with a special badge in the shape of a bat.  The bat badge quickly became something that users wanted on their profiles, and this desire spread virally. Here are some of the highlights from the first two days of the vampire bite campaign:

• 4,213 Vampire bites sold in less than 24 hours
• 100% increase in Flirtpoint transactions for gifts
• 170% increase in gifts sent from previous day
• 567% increase in accessories purchased from the previous day
• 3,400 unique users were turned into VAMPIRES in first 12 hours

It seems that few developers are willing to share stats with others. So, I’d like to send a special thanks to Mark, Gary, and Matt at Flirtomatic for sharing this great info. Not only does it show the power of a viral loop, but it validates the value of incorporating social media techniques (including virtual gifts) into your mobile app.

A couple of things I didn’t mention in the slides, but which I referenced in the podcast include:

• It is important to test your assumptions.  I mentioned two mobile analytics companies that can help with this: Motally and Flurry.  Motally does mobile apps and WAP analytics. Flurry is focused on in-app testing.
• I also pointed to a demo of Flirtomatic’s mobile app, which I’ve embedded below:

If you’d like to talk more about how to leverage social media in your mobile application(s), I can help (ping me).