Lady Gaga and Charlie Sheen? Give me a minute…maybe two.

The release of Antenna’s new Volt Mobile App Publisher and its acquisition of mobile Web dynamo Volantis opens up significant new mobile app, Web app and mobile Web possibilities. In particular I’ve become intrigued by what becomes possible from a combined Web + Mobile Web + hybrid HTML5 development environment. A key question for me today is – how does all this mobility affect recognition, authority and visibility as these new mobile iniatives develop and essentially take over the marketplace?

Building an online Web site today has become all about keywords and key phrases. Especially in today’s world, the newer new thing is measuring back links – links from external sites back to your site. Armies of SEO (search engine optimization) ninjas are deployed every day to engage in link building (I know, some SEOs disparage the term ‘link building’ but let’s face it – it’s critical) and keyword/key phrase development to insure that Google (first and foremost), Bing, Yahoo and all the rest of the search engine outliers find you quickly and rank you highly relative to your competitors. You know the rest…high page ranks mean authority, high traffic and high awareness; revenue follows.

For example, CNN has a rare 10/10 and ZDNet has a 9/10 Google page rank score – how’d they do that respectively? Great content? Great SEO ninjas? Both? More likely than not their SEO ninjas just play a better overall game than CNN’s and ZDNet’s competitors do. BUT – I confess that I myself am in fact ALSO more partial to the site designs and content organization of both CNN and ZDNet than to their competitors’ sites, so perhaps the user experience plays a big part overall in their page rank scores. I know a good bit about Web site and mobile app design – I know good design when I see it (and touch it) and it matters a great deal. All of this in turn directly contributes to a site’s ‘authority,’ the ultimate holy grail to owning your online – and your mobile – market space.

Here is the first question of the day:

As the entire enterprise world – especially including publishers, marketers and ad agencies – begins to move to mobile Web delivery, HTML5, hybrid mobile HTML5/native apps, and the targeting of both smart phones and tablets (especially iPads), do those enterprises still need to bring in the SEO ninjas to deal with wireless/mobile content?

Here is the second question of the day:

Is the mobile-driven social network – where your own personal army of ‘friends’ (instead of SEO ninjas working behind the scenes) is the primary source of filtered and trusted information – going to mean an end to the SEO war games? I don’t mean here substituting a people-based Q&A site such as Quora – I mean specifically the social networks that people live and breathe.

There are other SEO ninja ‘tools’ we can toss into the SEM (search engine marketing) mix here – SMO (social media optimization), ORM (online reputation management), and reverse SEO (reverse search engine optimization). Will any of these matter in a mobile world made up of mobile-social-connected consumers and today’s mobile-social-connected Gen X and Gen Y workforce?

Will mobile social networking, the power of the social network ‘friend’ filter, and the rapidly accelerating growth of mobile publishing (and mobile advertising and mobile marketing) – especially through the Flipboard and Zite model – obviate the need for these SEO tools or will it make them more important than ever?

It isn’t a secret that both Google and Bing factor in Twitter and Facebook in their search rankings, however what is really crucial here is the level of authority and influence of who is tweeting and who is posting on Facebook that directly affects the search rankings. Charlie Sheen and Lady Gaga don’t know you, but if one of their posts or tweets (or whoever it is actually doing the posting or tweeting for them) makes note of you, well…in today’s world that is another holy grail.

Back to Me-centric and We-centric Mobility

My previous posts on this topic have focused on an emerging me-centric and we-centric mobile world and in receiving AND disseminating what the mobile user and his/her mobile social networks perceive to be HIGHLY valuable, personalized information. These posts strongly suggest that as mobility evolves – quickly – into the central means by which we both communicate generally and filter information specifically – and more importantly ‘attach our own authority’ to the value of information we both receive and disseminate, that the power of SEO wil rapidly diminish in favor of what the individual, the similarly focused group, and the larger group overall think about any particular thing. Social networks internally gather this enormous flow of raw information and it is up to the individual and his/her groups to turn that raw information into authoritative and actionable data (from an enterprise perspective I mean, of course, business intelligence).

For publishing, advertising and marketing specifically, there is the additional issue of how important the ‘learning algorithms’ of the likes of Zite and Flipboard become as they begin to play far more central roles in establishing the authority of content sources – back links become ‘forward links’ as these apps go out on the hunt for tightly targeted and valuable information and information sources, rather than relying on search engines that function outside of social networks. Twitter and Facebook already play a key role with these apps. There are powerful reasons Twitter and Facebook are of major concern to both Google and Microsoft.

So what is the bottom line here? I don’t know about you but I personally find it amazing (in the sense of I want to pull my hair out) that the likes of two essentially irrelevant people outside of the mostly tween and perhaps somewhat older male segments of the entertainment industry – Lady Gaga and Charlie Sheen – can wield so much power over YOUR enterprise business authority. Sure, celebrity and sports endorsements will always play a key role in marketing and advertising, but they have become disproportionate and out of control. It’s part of today’s overall SEO game.

SEO will of course evolve and expand to take the me-centric and we-centric aspects of mobile social/business networks into consideration. But is will also hopefully become far less black arts ninja centric.

Mobility and the power of the mobile-based social and business network can restore a balance to your enterprise’s ability to establish its authority and presence in the marketplace in which your business plays. Mobile apps that are properly built with the right mix of mobile Web, hybrid HTML5 and traditional Web access capabilities, in turn tied to mobile users through their personal networks, are the cornerstones to taking back authority. Through mobility your enterprise can grab back the holy grail of authority. I find this opportunity that now exists to do so almost intoxicating – as should you!

My fellow MMverse bloggers - Matt Torgersen, Ed Dekema, and Brian Philbin, have each been adding their own perspectives on how to get there. The bottom line is that it requires a carefully thought out mobile game plan that involves all stakeholders – with your mobile-social-business-enabled users at the core of your plan. Utilizing today’s mobile technology – Antenna’s Volt, Antenna’s AMP mobile app development platform, and its Volantis-based mobile Web capablities are great examples – is the most powerful next step to getting there. The point is the mobile technology now EXISTS.

What is still missing within most enterprises is the deep mobile game plan to establish your authority with the mobile user. Don’t leave it to Charlie Sheen and Lady Gaga. Today they are great keywords. Tomorrow they’ll be gone and you will still be in need of that mobile authority.

Make it happen!

∞

Tags: 2011 Trends, Enterprise Mobility, Mobile Apps, Mobile Devices, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Observatory, Mobile Web, Tony Rizzo