Archive for August, 2009

There’s An App For That – iPhone

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Almost everyone that I know, young and old—whether employed by a large company or running their own small business—a web designer or web developer or someone who owns an iPhone or not…we’ve all had an idea for a new iPhone app.

Easy to develop iPhone applications with the low price from Apple to become a developer and download the SDK—it is actually tougher than we think, to come up with that app that will sell one million times. But maybe just talking about the iPhone and making a video about it will result in viral numbers and can amplify your brand or online presence. That’s exactly what happened here [ title: LEAKED New iPhone commercial ]

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Making Social Media Work For Your Business

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

If you own your own business and your trying to find a perfect marketing strategy (I am not sure if one exists) — it has a lot to do with diversity and balance. Stick solely to traditional marketing strategies and you will find yourself potentially missing an enormous demographic. Try to milk the internet for all it is worth and you will find yourself completely overwhelmed by the number of tools and application available for internet marketing. Using social networking sites between traditional and internet marketing strategies… could make a huge difference in your business without overwhelming you altogether.

1. Creating a Strategy. Your competitors have already created a strategy for using social media, so chances are you are already behind. This means thinking intentionally about how to use social media instead of randomly opening an account here and joining a group there. Spend some time determining the kinds of sites available and evaluating what role they might have in your marketing strategy. Then make a plan to use them consistently and effectively. If you just go with the flow you will be wasting your time and effort.

2. Brand Building. Social media marketing is like having one enormous billboard advertising your company. Everything you post, every tweet you write, and every comment you make should be treated as a chance to show your audience what your business is all about, what you value, and what you stand for.

The first step to consider is creating a business blog. Chances are you have employees who are already involved in social media in one way or another, so ask them to post some articles to the blog. Make sure your blog entries include things that will help you promote your brand.

3. Choose Wisely. Do not feel like you need to use every single social media site available. Stick with a few and spend time using them to your advantage. Choose sites that help you connect with your target demographic, that help you show off the components of your business that interest potential customers, and that will be most helpful in connecting potential customers to your business.

4. Find the Right Balance. Social media is so popular that it might initially be difficult to find the right balance between it and traditional marketing strategies. In the end, they should all work together to serve your business effectively. Start with LinkedIn and create a business profile where you can post testimonials and make connections with your customers. Then create a Facebook group tied to your industry or product.

Finally, use Twitter to create a community of those with interest in your industry. Connect traditional strategies with online strategies by printing your Twitter ID on business card and make a place on your website that shows visitors where they can connect with you using social media.

5. Mobility. Many platforms allow you to communicate in real time by downloading applications to your phone. Imagine what you could do as a business owner attending a conference. Sharing with your readers what you are learning, as you learn it, is a great way to build rapport with and interest in your customers.

Overwhelming or not—young people are exchanging information and making decisions based on social media sites. If you are interested in connecting with them as they age, procure more discretionary income, and spend money on things that interest them, then you need to find a way to connect with them now. And you need to make sure you are defining your business online rather than waiting for others to define you in your stead. Get connected online and spread your message and reach many people online.

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An Old Way to place ads in a New World

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

There’s one area of your site that if a web designer or web developer include it, users have no choice but to engage, if they wish to continue with the task they’re trying to complete. That would be the CAPTCHA, other wise known as that annoying, (often times barely legible) word you have to recreate in a box, so that the site knows you’re human.

So if the user is already engaging with this, why not make it an ad? That appears to be Microsoft’s mentality, as it has proposed exactly that with a patent application. The concept is simple. It works just like any other CAPTCHA, but it shows you a picture of a product (the Xbox 360 in an example from Microsoft) and asks you to type the name of the product you see.

xbox-360

Todd Bishop at TechFlash points to this and actually another mention of this concept from as long as four years ago, at Ad Lab, which simply presents the concept, showing logos for Tide and UPS.

Clearly this is a concept that has been around for some time, but you don’t see it very often, and you have to wonder why that is. There’s no question that the CAPTCHA is intrusive, and perhaps brands won’t always want to be associated with that kind of advertising, but in reality, it’s not the ad itself that is intrusive. It’s the step of completing the CAPTCHA form, which is already there. If it’s already there, you might as well utilize that space for some further benefit.

What Designers and marketers would not want to do is start displaying more CAPTCHAs specifically for the purpose of advertising. That’s where things could go sour. On the other hand, a user might not know the difference, and could reach the conclusion that you’re just throwing an intrusive advertisement at them.

It is an interesting strategy—and I like it and I would take a picture rather than those hard to decipher CAPTCHAs any day. There is no click value to this from the advertising standpoint, but the brand value is definitely there.

Source: Web Design Library

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Re-Tweet and Location Aware

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Twitter just announced that it has plans to launch a feature to make it location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any specific tweet.

“Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won’t be stored for an extended period of time,” says Co-founder Biz Stone. “However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.”

“For example, with accurate, tweet-level location data you could switch from reading the tweets of accounts you follow to reading tweets from anyone in your neighborhood or city—whether you follow them or not,” he explains. “It’s easy to imagine how this might be interesting at an event like a concert or even something more dramatic like an earthquake. There will likely be many use cases we haven’t even thought of yet which is part of what makes this so exciting.”

Twitter will release geolocation to web developers and web designers first. So look for this functionality on various Twitter-apps before finding it on the site.
Twitter seems to be stepping it up in the way of usability. They also recently announced plans for retweet capabilities.

Source: webpronews.com

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