We all understand that social media is a key part of any mobile operator marketing strategy. But besides its enormous popularity, do we know why or how to use it in marketing campaigns? Neuralitic’s most recent data, using its SevenFlow Mobile Data Intelligence (MDI) solution, can help position the right offer in front of the right customer.

Not surprisingly, Facebook reigned supreme in a study of mobile subscribers in mature markets, with 75% of users regularly accessing the social networking site through their device. Twitter was second at 32%.

Facebook and Twitter were the clear winners, and then a logjam ensued for slots three through eight between WordPress, Blogger, Blogspot, Flickr, LinkedIn, and Zynga.

That analysis alone is not groundbreaking. But what follows can greatly shape a winning marketing push.

More than half of these mobile subscribers (53%) access more than 1 social media site, and 22% use 3 or more social media sites on their device. Of the subscribers using just 1 social media site, 97% of the time, that single site is Facebook.

Next, Neuralitic analyzed the combinations of users who access two social media services, with the distribution for the top 5 combos as follows:

  • Facebook/Twitter: 71%
  • Facebook/Zynga: 11%
  • Facebook/LinkedIn: 4%
  • Facebook/Flickr: 4%
  • Facebook/WordPress: 3%

Mobile operators would be wise to include social media combo packages in their offering, ensuring Facebook is front and center.

This brings us to our next data nugget: high Facebook users – defined as accessing Facebook at least 10 out of 15days – also access the most peer-to-peer content, including downloading/uploading content from/onto Bit Torrent and YouTube (95% and 83% of high Facebook users, respectively), using Skype (60%), downloading videos (56%), downloading music (44%), and accessing Apple services (40%).

And here’s the most vital part of the study from a mobile marketing perspective: high Facebook users routinely visit Amazon, PayPal, Shopping.com, and eBay more frequently than low Facebook users, often more than 20 times more often. This is valuable insight for mobile marketing teams: high Facebook users are much more likely to buy online using their mobile device.

We want your opinion: do you see any other social media sites challenging Facebook in terms of global mobile usage? Have you tried packaging social media sties in combo offerings? Is it working? Add your comments below.