Mobile Movement

Whew! I’m back! It has been a crazy week of moving and getting things straightened out, but anyways I’m back and ready to put my brain out there and let you know what’s going on in the realm of Social Media, Generation Y, and Horticulture in general.

Last week I touched on the topic of music and how the youth have always been “in tune” with music and how we need to find a way to tap into that. A day after I wrote that piece Nielsen released a study stating that YouTube is the number one way in which the youth listen to music. YouTube has surpassed internet radio and I-tunes. This got me thinking about a few things.

My first thought was that the horticulture industry needs to tap into this. We need to find a way to get our products connected with the music scene on YouTube. How do we do it? I guess an easy answer would be to start advertising on YouTube before music videos, etc. However, I think one of the overall goals should be to somehow get musicians to promote gardening in general on YouTube. If we can get Blake Shelton or Adam Levine to do a one minute piece on their YouTube channel about how they love to relax in their garden, I think we could see them have some influence over the youth. I don’t know how the industry could do this but there has to be a way we can come together and send out the message that gardening is “cool”.

Generation Y wasn’t raised in the garden. They feel out of place there. We have to show them why they should be gardening.

The other thing this YouTube trend got me thinking about was how it could be possible that a website was the most popular place to listen to music. It wasn’t that hard actually. On my morning walk today I saw five people listening to music – all of them on their cell phones. Cell phones have revolutionized the music industry and made new music available to anyone at any time. I’m guilty of it I’ll admit! If I want to know what a song is called or just hear a song I haven’t heard in a while, I’ll just look it up on YouTube on my phone.

But how does this apply to our industry you ask? Well clearly YouTube has catered to this mobile revolution of having a “computer” in your pocket wherever you go. Have you? Does your company’s website have a mobile version that is easy to use on an Android or I-Phone? If not you might want to consider making one or hiring a company to make one for you. Take a look at your Google Analytics page (If you aren’t using this already you need to start), and see how many of your visitors are coming from mobile operating systems. My bet is that number is higher than you think it would be.

Think about it: if you are getting a significant amount of traffic from mobile devices, and your website is not easy to navigate on a small screen scale, isn’t it worth the change. It even makes it easier on yourself if you are out and about and want to show a client something online. You don’t have to fumble through a clumsy webpage if you have a clear cut and easy to use mobile page.

In this instance it’s not about creating new content, it’s about making the content that you have easier to find in the palm of your hand.

Again I apologize for my absence this last week. I’ll try to get back to posting in a more regular fashion. I would love to hear your thoughts on these subjects or any other related topics. Leave a comment!

You can email me at mday55@gmail.com , find me on Twitter @mday55, find me on Klout here: http://klout.com/#/mday55 , or find me on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mason-day/20/9aa/233