The cell phone industry is one of the world's leading advertisers. As the competition among cell phone companies heats up, these businesses are looking for creative and unique ways to increase their market share and to probe the customers perceptions of their products and services. Weblogs are a recent means of finding out about customer feelings.

The Cell Phone Industry And Weblogs By Vernon Telfar, Copyright March, 2005

The cell phone industry is one of the world's leading advertisers. As the competition among cell phone companies heats up, these businesses are looking for creative and unique ways to increase their market share and to probe the customers perceptions of their products and services. Weblogs are a recent means of finding out about customer feelings. Weblogs are a brilliant source for learning about how cell phone users are using their cell phone products. Weblogging is certainly cheaper, simpler and less time-consuming than the traditional research methods. Highly rated weblogs have attracted a cadre of enthusiastic readers who actively respond and offer feedback about what they are reading in the blog and also supply feedback about the cell phone industry. Some of the popular weblogs have become so useful to the cell phone companies marketing efforts that cell phone companies began adding pop-up messages that discuss cell phones within the weblogs of individuals. Many people started a weblog for their own amusement and are now pleasantly surprised to be offered about 7 cents when one of their readers clicks on the pop-up screen of the cell phone company. This invasion of private weblog space by cell phone industry advertising has had its backlash as well as its perks for the cell phone industry. Some weblog users have called this new wave of advertising pimping. Cell phone company access of private blogs helps to boost the site's ratings and this may be considered a manipulation of the site for their own purposes. In an attempt to decouple from private weblogs, cell phone companies have started their own weblogs for testing out new marketing strategies and advertising campaigns. If the ideas are successful in the weblog arena, they can be moved to the national market. The most popular ideas on the weblog have the greatest chance of being implemented by the cell phone company. The weblogging world appeals to trendy young people in the 20 to 30-year old range. Webloggers tend to be college educated and savvy in the latest technology and avid users of it. These young people wouldn't even consider using something as outdated as a wire phone line except in case of a dire emergency. Tapping into the thoughts of this "information generation" is certainly a priority for the cell phone industry. Some more popular cell phone weblog topics that draw the most attention among this generation include unfair coverage, anytime minutes, unlimited calling plans, cell phone technology, migration of cell phone technology, ring tones, and comparison of wireless carriers especially since the recent mergers of numerous cell phone companies. From the information that cell phone companies have gathered from their customers from weblog forums, cell phone companies have changed their services and offerings. Several major marketing promotions have come from the new information, including "FamilyTalk" by Cingular, and "Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes", and "No Unfair Coverages" by Sprint. Cell phone companies are continuously developing new products and designing new service packages in order to please their marketplace. Vernon Telfar is the owner and operator of FT Phone, a major source of information on phones and related topics on the Internet. For comments or questions, make sure you visit his article archive at: http://www.ftphone.com/newsletters/ Keywords: cell phones, cell phone companies, cell phone industry, calling plans, wireless communications,weblogs Online Advertising Provided By Ads-On-Q.com