Online Marketing And Seo Tips: Mobile Marketing – Is This The Year?

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Online Marketing And Seo Tips: Mobile Marketing – Is This The Year?

2010 is the year of mobile marketing. Indeed so was 2009, 2008 and 2007. It is the long-standing joke in the advertising  and marketing world that we are forever on the cusp of a mobile breakthrough. Recently, however, Apple entered the debate with the announcement that their newest Iphone OS 4.0, due to be released toward the end of the year, will be running iAds in some of their apps. Given that nearly anything Steve Jobs and Co. touch turns to digital gold, this news may finally usher in a wave of advertisers on to the cellular airwaves. Before analyzing the potential of iAds, it is worthwhile to chart the progress of mobile advertising, and understand what has gone wrong thus far.

In the early days of mobile phones, SMS marketing was utilized, and users were text-messaged company information and promotional deals. This format was not well received by consumers, and was initially considered as spamming. MMS advertising followed and was more popular than SMS because the use of multimedia was something everyone could partake in. Campaigns were run by companies that encouraged consumers to send their photos or videos to interactive media boards for public display. This type of marketing was much more engaging than cold, unwanted text messages, but the interaction was mostly a one-way street dictated by consumers. Mobile users were comfortable sending the advertisers material via their phones, but not the other way around. Although any form of interaction with the consumer is positive, advertisers ultimately sought a means where they could display or send content to the consumer.

This need was somewhat satisfied by mobile web marketing, where advertisers bought space on the web; but given the nature of the web space this format was not altogether successful. The size of mobile phones at the start of the 2000s did not lend themselves well to advertisements. Traditional brand logos were awkwardly placed on miniscule mobile screens, which added to the cumbersome nature of scrolling down the page to view all content. Further attempts have been made through mobile gaming, with companies sponsoring games or placing advertisements within the games themselves, but this method still does not allow the advertiser the full freedom to communicate its message to the user.

Such freedom, it would seem, will be enabled by Apple’s iAd concept. The idea allows the advertiser to create their message the way they want and post it in an app, which if clicked on will interact with the user without leaving the app. This point is crucial, as users can carry on what they were doing with the app while maintaining an interest in the advertisement’s message. The technology is also set to facilitate rich-experience media, so the quality of the ads will far exceed a consumer’s expectation for any mobile content. The key element for this medium will be managing the intrusion factor, and making sure that the material thrust upon mobile consumers is in no way overbearing or detrimental to their experience – in short, creating a message that appears natural. If this can be achieved, the year 2010 may just signal the end of a long running joke and the start of something special for marketers.

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Mobile Search Market

admin    SEO Marketing     Market, Mobile, Search

Mobile Search Market

Mobile internet and mobile search is gaining ground. While surfing is inconvenient, many people are accessing their emails from their mobile phones. Google has just announced it had released a special java gmail client for mobiles, following Yahoo!, which already has been offering service for some time.

All major search engines offer a version customized for mobile devices, and are quite active in expanding market reach within mobile networks and device manufacturers. At the beginning of 2006, Yahoo! signed a distribution deal with several key manufacturers for a suite of Yahoo! services that includes email, search and photos. Google signed a deal with Motorola to ship a pre-installed Google icon on some of its devices, allowing instant access to the Google search page.

In the meantime, mobile search startups are actively striving to create an effective network of advertisers while developing mobile search tools and indices for integration into cellular devices and networks.

The mobile search experience

Search through mobiles fosters dilemmas:

1. What types of results will be returned for a given user query? Should it be wml websites, html websites that are more relevant but not fully compatible, or should it be some sort of “answer” that the search engine has compiled for the query rather than a list of links?

2. How should the user location be taken into account? Should the search engine assume mobile search is local by essence and serve local data?

3. How can search engines capitalize on the search results? Even displaying more than three results requires scrolling and frequently another access iteration, so how could the severely limited screen space be conducive for advertising?

The answers to these questions are not clear, and currently there are more experiments and trials than facts and conclusions. Some analysts have argued that search results should be answers rather than a set of links. This might be true in some cases, not appropriate in others and not feasible for many queries. Searching the normal google.com or yahoo.com through wireless devices returns the same set of results as a desktop search with the snippet modified and number of results shown ranging from 1 to 4 depending on device screen size, listing length and other factors.

This means that the websites found have been designed for desktop and will not be suitable for wireless application (WAP) browsers. Searching through Google or Yahoo mobile search engines, for example google.com/wml, will allow selection between internet results and mobile network results. Selecting the mobile network results will only return listings of wml documents. However, since the selection of content written in wml is drastically inferior compared to the wealth of options on the html web, result relevancy is generally low.

How is presence to be gained within mobile search results?

SEOing for mobile

Very scarce research and knowledge exists in the SEO community regarding mobile search algorithms. There is reason to believe that the basic algorithms, still in the making, resemble those for web search. However, all the basic elements that exist in html and matter for search engines, such as relevant inbound links and formatted content, also exist in wml and the logic behind the way robots analyze link popularity and texts prevails here as well. Nonetheless, designing your website in a W3C-compatible manner as far as xhtml and css coding, will increase visibility of websites within mobile search results along with desktop search.

Website mobile version

In the future, most website publishers will likely produce mobile versions of their websites for WAP mobile browsers. An abundance of html to wml converter tools exist on the market, but as long as standard xhtml coding was not applied initially, it is unlikely those tools could work in the general case. The operative recommendation for website owners and marketers planning a new website or redesigning the information architecture of an existing website is to comply with xhtml, or better yet, have all the content stored in xml and the display adjusted with xslt. This way a website can easily be created and maintained in an updated, valuable wml version.

Mobile search advertising

Google, Yahoo! and MSN are experimenting with mobile search advertising and the major problems inherent with highly limited screen space. MSN currently offers a pay-per-call advertising model, which seems only natural for mobiles. No integration is offered yet with any of the respective paid search advertising programs. Some startups are offering mobile advertising platforms on their proprietary search engines to be distributed on partnering devices and networks. While many potential interactive online advertisements are natural and useful for cellulars and may result in action such as ordering flowers and parking payments, the market is generally not yet mature enough to call mobile search a real venue for internet marketers.

However, search engine engineers and designers are now hard at work tackling the issues at hand to create useful concepts, models and methodologies for serving relevant mobile search results while marketers are working out feasible mobile search advertising models. It is unlikely to happen immediately, but within a few years it will be a dynamic market in its own right. So internet marketer, get prepared.

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Financial Forex Trading – Mobile Forex Trading Platform Gives Access to Financial Markets and Tools Anywhere

admin    Website Marketing     Access, Anywhere, Financial, Forex, Gives, Markets, Mobile, Platform, Tools, Trading

Financial Forex Trading – Mobile Forex Trading Platform Gives Access to Financial Markets and Tools Anywhere

Financial Forex Trading

With foreign exchange being the most fluid market in the world, mobile Forex trading is nothing less than a necessity. Currency trading is part of a 24-hour marketplace where opportunities for earning may arise any time of day. Thanks to the cutting-edge technologies offered by some Forex trading firms, it has now become possible to trade and perform other operations through a Web-enabled mobile device such as a PDA.

Access to the Internet is practically ubiquitous in the modern world; when coupled with mobile trading software, the Web becomes a powerful tool that gives traders round-the-clock access to foreign exchange and other financial markets. Apart from viewing current market prices, the software also enables traders to conduct a technical analysis through advanced trading tools. Various technical indicators may be available, such as moving averages and Bollinger Bands. Financial Forex Trading

Functioning like its desktop-based counterpart, the platform for mobile Forex trading also allows traders to view their real-time account summary as well as their account history. In addition, traders are also given access to financial market news, allowing them to anticipate currency pricing fluctuations and take the necessary steps to earn from such changes.

A robust mobile trading program also comes complete with features that enhance user experience. It is equipped with sound alerts, notifying traders about changes in the market and eliminating the need to constantly keep an eye out for currency movements. Users may also change the language of the software interface as needed, and replace other features available from their default settings as well for a much more personalized experience. Financial Forex Trading

Forex Currency Trading Tools – Mobile Forex Trading Platform Gives Access to Financial Markets and Tools Anywhere

admin    Website Marketing     Access, Anywhere, Currency, Financial, Forex, Gives, Markets, Mobile, Platform, Tools, Trading

Forex Currency Trading Tools – Mobile Forex Trading Platform Gives Access to Financial Markets and Tools Anywhere

Forex Currency Trading Tools

With foreign exchange being the most fluid market in the world, mobile Forex trading is nothing less than a necessity. Currency trading is part of a 24-hour marketplace where opportunities for earning may arise any time of day. Thanks to the cutting-edge technologies offered by some Forex trading firms, it has now become possible to trade and perform other operations through a Web-enabled mobile device such as a PDA.

Access to the Internet is practically ubiquitous in the modern world; when coupled with mobile trading software, the Web becomes a powerful tool that gives traders round-the-clock access to foreign exchange and other financial markets. Apart from viewing current market prices, the software also enables traders to conduct a technical analysis through advanced trading tools. Various technical indicators may be available, such as moving averages and Bollinger Bands. Forex Currency Trading Tools

Functioning like its desktop-based counterpart, the platform for mobile Forex trading also allows traders to view their real-time account summary as well as their account history. In addition, traders are also given access to financial market news, allowing them to anticipate currency pricing fluctuations and take the necessary steps to earn from such changes.

A robust mobile trading program also comes complete with features that enhance user experience. It is equipped with sound alerts, notifying traders about changes in the market and eliminating the need to constantly keep an eye out for currency movements. Users may also change the language of the software interface as needed, and replace other features available from their default settings as well for a much more personalized experience. Forex Currency Trading Tools

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Mobile Media Metrics Data Could Change The Face Of Website Marketing

admin    Website Marketing     Change, Could, Data, Face, Marketing, Media, Metrics, Mobile, Website

Mobile Media Metrics Data Could Change The Face Of Website Marketing

A new data source which provides information on consumer use of mobile internet if set to change the face of website marketing.

The long-awaited Mobile Media Metrics (MMM) data was finally unveiled today (February 4th) by the London-based operator trade body GSMA, offering advertisers a precise insight into the browsing habits of every UK mobile subscriber.

Data is drawn directly from the five UK operators by measurement firm ComScore and independently verified by ABCE.

It is the first comprehensive data to be collated about mobile internet traffic directly from operator logs.

Speaking at the launch of the MMM at GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Paul Palmieri, president of Baltimore mobile ad network Millennial Media, said the service would help power the growth of the mobile advertising industry.

“This major mobile advertising initiative is a large validation that the mobile advertising industry is a key global growth area,” he added.

The GSMA’s Mobile Media Metrics Study ranks popular mobile websites by number of visitors, page impressions, time and duration of visits, with the aim of enabling people involved in website promotion to improve the planning of their marketing campaigns.

More than 160,000 mobile internet sites were measured for the study, which gathers anonymous data.

In Britain, the study showed that carrier sites had the lion’s share of mobile audiences, with 68 per cent of visits to mobile sites in December 2009.

Google came in at second place, followed by Facebook, which was the top mobile site by time spent browsing.

The next most popular sites, in descending order, were webpages belonging to Yahoo!, the BBC, Apple, Microsoft, Sony Online and Sony Ericsson, Nokia and AOL and its Bebo social network.

Alost half of mobile internet users were in the 18-34 age group, while men were more likely to use hand-held browser than women, accounting for 63 percent of total users.

Recent research by Nielsen revealed that over ten million Brits now use their mobile phone to access the internet.

Further, according to the comparison service Broadband Genie, the burgeoning popularity of mobile internet means it could overtake fixed-line connections by 2011.

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Bob Allard: President of Extension Engine an Offshore Web & Mobile Software Development Firm

admin    Website Marketing     Allard, Development, Engine, Extension, Firm, Mobile, offshore, President, Software.

Bob Allard: President of Extension Engine an Offshore Web & Mobile Software Development Firm

Bob Allard is the Co-Founder and President of Extension Engine, a company that provides technology and business solutions within the mobile and web offshore software development arena.  Extension Engine is made up of a group of experienced software developers and engineers; in the last ten years, Bob Allard has grown the company from a small consultancy firm into what is now a full-service product development and operational sales force.  

This offshore software development company has a development center in Split, Croatia, with sales and operations locations in Boston and Philadelphia.  Bob Allard’s inspiration in establishing Extension Engine grew from his extensive experience in technology as well as business.  With his knowledge of these subjects, Bob Allard grasped how much technological solutions could help improve business productivity and profit when web based technology was still a niche field.  For this reason, Extension Engine has mastered the execution and development of both their products and services rendered to clients; it remains ahead of the technological curve since its inception in 1997.

Specifically, Bob Allard has more than fifteen years experience in fields such as software development, product marketing and strategic business development, sales, and technology; in his product marketing and business development projects he has worked in high performance computing, database development, wide-area networking, and mobile applications.  Perhaps his inclination towards using his own knowledge to help problem-solve and assist others is derived from his first job when he worked as an outreach caseworker in Baltimore, mentoring teenagers and helping families.

Clearly, this Co-Founder and President has a talent that is often rare but extremely valuable in the field of business and technology; he has great communication skills and works well with others to create innovative solutions through offshore software development methods.  Bob Allard is an entrepreneur, and through Extension Engine has wed effective technology with successful business practices.  

Extension Engine specializes in the type of web and mobile application development that are requisites of every well-run corporation today, including project management, platform and application development, and desktop, database, and internet-based software.  Bob Allard is a graduate of Holy Cross and Harvard’s Program on Negotiation.  He now lives in North Andover, MA with his two sons and wife, Dee.

Combining Mobile And Website Marketing Is Best For Boosting Brand Awareness

admin    Website Marketing     Awareness, Best, Boosting, Brand, Combining, Marketing, Mobile, Website

Combining Mobile And Website Marketing Is Best For Boosting Brand Awareness

Organisations which combine mobile and website marketing can radically increase brand awareness and purchase consideration, according to industry experts.

New research published by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) reveals that the click-through rate online was 150 per cent higher among people that been exposed to – and recalled – a given mobile advertisement.

The study, based on a sample of 875 mobile internet users and qualitative focus groups, also found that when people were exposed to ads across online and mobile, recognition was 43 per cent greater than when they were exposed to website promotion alone.

In addition, spontaneous brand awareness was 50 per cent higher among those who had seen mobile ads than those who had seen no advertising, and increased to 114 per cent when the sample were exposed to both mobile and website marketing.

Matt McNeil, founder of email and mobile marketing specialist Sign-Up.to, explained that this was one of the reasons mobile marketing had become increasingly popular over the last 12 months.

According to Mr McNeil, mobile and website marketing are becoming an inseparable combination for many brands as more people tend to access the internet away from their desktop.

Mobile internet usage is accelerating, driven largely by the rise of smartphone devices which now comprise one-fifth of the total UK mobile subscriber base.
The firsts ever GSMA mobile media metrics data, published earlier this month, showed that 16 million people in the UK accessed the internet from their mobile phones in December 2009.

Further, the top ten sites accounted for 70 per cent of both total pages viewed and time spent online.

The top two sites were Facebook, with 4,986,000 unique visitors, and Google Sites, with unique visitors of 4,567,000.

The popularity of such sites among mobile web users is, according to Mr McNeil , the reason that lines between mobile and website marketing are becoming increasingly blurred.

“There is a very strong synergy between the two,” he explains.

“You can make ads much more interesting if you can base them on what as well as where and when someone is doing something as that can increase engagement.”

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Web Design Articles – Mobile Web Designing

admin    Website Tips     Articles, Design, Designing, Mobile

Web Design Articles – Mobile Web Designing

The thing is, creating a great web experience for users of mobile devices is much easier than you might think. We present here the seven steps for you which will help you avoid the pitfalls that have caused many other mobile sites to fail. By the end of this article you’ll know exactly where to focus your efforts in order to build a successful mobile site.

1. Don’t Mix Up Your Markup

A few different types of markup are available for building a mobile web site. You’ll need to choose one that suits the needs of your customers and stick with it.

WML

In the early days of mobile web devices, the only way to surf the mobile web was to browse WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) sites. A WAP site uses WML (Wireless Markup Language) as its primary markup language. WML is an XML markup language based on the card-and-deck metaphor.

Luckily for us, WML has since been superseded by several other technologies — in fact, if you’re just getting into the mobile web game, you can probably ignore WML entirely. WML is mostly used by legacy systems or by sites that explicitly target customers with low-end phones that are obsolete.

One potential group of customers still using WML browsers, however, is those in developing nations. The Nokia 1100 and 1101, for example, are extremely basic, extremely cheap phones, of which an estimated 200 million units have been solid worldwide, making this phone the best-selling model to date, worldwide. If your site is targeted to this market segment, WML might be the best solution for you.

XHTML

For most sites, we can ignore WML and make use of a markup language with which you’re probably much more familiar — XHTML.

Most built-in phone browsers these days can handle XHTML just fine. A mobile phone recognizes two flavors of HTML:

XHTML — the same, basic XHTML rendered by desktop web browsers
XHTML-MP — the MP here stands for Mobile Profile

The difference between these two languages is that XHTML-MP consists of slightly fewer elements and tighter restrictions. These differences exist to make it easier for the mobile device to parse and render a web document, but writing XHTML-MP markup shouldn’t introduce any significant changes to your process for writing regular XHTML.

2. Know Your Phones

As plasma and HD TVs slowly hit the market, broadcasters have run into the problem of where to place their logo and news tickers. Previously, they knew that all TVs were the same 3×2 dimensions, so they knew the relative width of the screen. Now, they’re beginning to feel the pain of dealing with a wide assortment of TV resolutions and dimensions — an issue that web developers deal with on a daily basis.

Of course, the mobile world is even worse! Not only must we cater for different screen sizes and resolutions, but also different shapes. From rectangles that are short and long, to those that are tall and skinny, to perfect squares, the mobile world contains a variety of handsets that almost puzzle you!

If you consider the most common phones available, they can be categorized on the basis of screen size — give or take a few pixels:

128 x 160 pixels
176 x 220 pixels
240 x 320 pixels
320 x 480 pixels

Knowing these screen dimensions helps you optimize some of your content, however it’s best to keep the shape and style of your site as minimal and linear as possible. There is no mouse on a mobile phone — only an up-down feature — so you can’t demand that users jump around the page.

iPhone/Internet-tablet versus old green-screen phones

There are a couple of exceptions to the norm in the mobile phone market. They are the really high-end devices like the iPhone or the Nokia Internet Tablet, and the very basic, old “green-screen” monochrome dot matrix devices such as the Nokia 3310.

Low-end mobile phones have several limitations, including screen resolution and a severely limited ability to render XHTML documents. At the other end of the spectrum, high-end devices often have the ability to run a web browser that’s comparable to one you might use on a desktop machine. Delivering a quality user experience to these devices can be tricky — while the device may be perfectly capable of rendering a full, traditional web page design, it’s probably transmitting data over a cellular network, which is much slower than standard broadband Internet speeds. So even though the device can handle a normal web site, the customer’s situation and the reason why they’re requesting your services may mean that sending them the normal version of your web site isn’t the best solution.

3. Target the Right Customers

The goal for any web site should be to know your customers in order to deliver to them the most appropriate content.

This goal is even more important with mobile sites — not only do you need to know your customers, but you need to know what they are likely to be doing on your mobile site, as well as where they’ll be when they’re doing it. Traditional web site customers are most likely sitting at a desk facing a large monitor that has a decent resolution. Visitors who are browsing your mobile site are unlikely to be in the same circumstances — they might be waiting in line, riding on the train or the bus, driving a car or in a shopping mall. Google is one company that has invested considerable effort into streamlining its web applications to suit mobile users. The web developers at Google have identified and focused on three main groups, and they attempt to target their applications to those customers’ needs. These are three solid categories, and are worth examining for your own mobile site. Let’s look at them now.

a) The Casual Surfer

These customers act in a similar way to customers of traditional web sites. Casual surfers are not really interested in any one thing, but have a few spare minutes between tasks to take a look around. In the world of desktop PCs, those few minutes might occur between meetings, or while the user’s on a short break. For a mobile customer, those few minutes might occur when the user’s sitting outside waiting to meet friends, in a car or taxi traveling somewhere, or even during the morning commute. If your site is focused on the sort of content that would appeal to casual surfers, then be aware of the limitations on the time and screen-size of your mobile customer.

The goal should be to make your content more “sticky”, so that casual surfers come back for more. For example, you shouldn’t serve up long pieces of content. Instead, aim for small, bite-sized chunks that are just enough to keep customers interested, but not so long that users can’t browse your site in the time they have available.

b) The Repeat Visitor

Repeat customers are those that are constantly returning for some sort of specific news or data. If your site is the kind of site that offers information about stocks, gold & silver prices, weather or sports scores, you probably have plenty of repeat visitors. The interface of a mobile device is very limited, so if you know what your repeat visitors are coming back for, time and time again, let that naturally bubble up to the top of the site. Avoid burying the content your customers want behind 3 or 4 clicks.

Mobile web site customization can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. A traditional site might ask you to log in, but on a mobile device, data entry is not as easy to perform, so it’s best avoided.

One option is to allow visitors to use their desktop machines to streamline their mobile experience. Take a page from Apple’s iTunes Music Store as an example. A repeat customer might customize his or her version of the mobile site while at a desktop machine; this could generate a special URL in which all of that user’s preferences are encoded. The next time the user visits your site from a mobile device, he or she can take advantage of this special URL, enjoying an experience that’s completely customized to his or her preferences.

c) The “Urgent, Now!” Visitor

Depending on your business, your definition of “Urgent, Now!” will vary. For an online store, a customer might consider the following message urgent:

“My books were supposed to arrive yesterday. They’re late. Where are they?”

A more seriously urgent scenario might be:

“I’m running 10 minutes late. Will I be able to catch my fast train or a fight?”

For some customers, everything is urgent! But by identifying the most important needs of your customers and making the relevant information accessible within one click or less, you’ll increase the usefulness of your mobile site enormously.

4. Publish the Bare Minimum

One of the common misconceptions about mobile web development is the misguided notion that content from your traditional web site can be easily re-purposed into smaller bit-sized chunks for the mobile version. A simple change of style from media=”screen” to media=”handheld” is all you need to do to magically mobilize your site, right?

You are mistaken here.

While it’s indeed possible to filter content with the liberal use of display: none in your mobile style sheet, in reality, this isn’t a good idea. In fact, many CMS systems can output a mobile, streamlined version of your web site, but even this is not always what your customers will want.

The W3C defines the concept of One Web as follows:

One Web means making, as far as is reasonable, the same information and services available to users irrespective of the device they are using. However, it does not mean that exactly the same information is available in exactly the same representation across all devices. The context of mobile use, device capability variations, bandwidth issues and mobile network capabilities all affect the representation. Furthermore, some services and information are more suitable for and targeted at particular user contexts.

As this definition suggests, some things are simply not available (or even usable) on some devices. Additionally, some devices (such as a mobile phone) are much better at certain activities (like making phone calls) than other devices. Therefore, a device designed for a specific activity should utilize its unique features on the Web.

While the concept of having only one site, and to simply style it differently depending on the medium the visitor is using, is popular with many standardistas, a separate mobile site is required in order to deliver an optimized experience for mobile users. Customers who are surfing on a mobile device have different needs and requirements, so to force-feed them the same content as that displayed on the traditional site is a recipe for disaster. The following images show a good example of this principle. The Best Buy mobile site displays only two functions (Product Search and Find A Store) — a far cry from the traditional site.

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Go Mobile! Take Your Social Media Marketing Efforts to a Higher Level

admin    Social Media     Efforts, higher, Level, Marketing, Media, Mobile, Social, Take

Go Mobile! Take Your Social Media Marketing Efforts to a Higher Level

By now, most businesses know how vital social media marketing is for their bottom line. From keeping a pulse on your customers’ experience to branding your company to promoting your products and services, social media marketing allows you to do so much for so little.

Yet, one of the main complaints businesses cite about staying on top of their social media marketing efforts is the time involved to do so. They feel that someone has to be tied to the computer 24/7 to make the effort effective. Fortunately, with today’s mobile applications and technology, social media marketing is being reborn as a mobile experience – a mobile social media marketing initiative, so to speak.

As more people realize and embrace the fact that social media marketing is a real time experience rather than a “wait till I get to my computer” experience, they’re taking advantage of the processing power today’s mobile phones have to offer. So while real time does mean you have to have your computer with you at all times, that computer is now your cell phone, not your laptop or desktop.

Why should businesses focus on mobile social media marketing? Consider this: Right now around the world, 1.1 billion people use the internet, 1.4 billion people watch television, and 2.2 billion people use mobile phones. So if we look at the power of social media going mobile, we quickly see that it has the potential to be more powerful than television watching, simply because it’s interactive and with you at all times.

The Driving Forces

Both technology and people are driving the prevalence of mobile social media. One of the basic human needs since the dawn of time is to connect with others. Additionally, today’s increased processing power, bandwidth, and storage available on mobile devices enables people to have better audio and video capability on their phones. This means people can communicate with their phone more effectively, in a way that goes beyond your basic phone call. And any time technology allows you to communicate and connect better, you have a revolution. From smoke signals to telegraphs to telephones to cell phones to the mobile social media, all are evolutions that cause revolutions.

Other driving factors include globalization and localization. Globalization means you can now connect to the world with your phone. You don’t need a laptop or a television to see news feeds from around the world. At the same time, it’s local. You have access to local events and happenings. With permission, you can see where your friends or employees are at any given time. So your phone can deliver much more than just weather forecasts; you can also know what’s going on around you at all times.

The Case for Mobile Social Media

Because the phone was designed for two-way communication and social media marketing is a two-way dialogue, it’s a natural extension to have cell phone applications for mobile social media – programs for your cell phone that allow you to view and post to various social media sites.

With mobile social media, we’re no longer just sharing information; we’re disseminating knowledge in an organized way, getting feedback, and gaining additional knowledge to help us grow. Between text messages, tweets, blogs, and other social media posts, we’re seeing a shift in how people discover, read, and share news, information, and content. We’re learning information in real time before the evening news or morning paper reports it.

If your company is using social media marketing but has not yet gone mobile with it, you must do so right away. Here’s why:

It expands your internet footprint. You can only monitor and respond to so many Facebook, Twitter, and other social media posts from your desk. However, when you can post from your phone, you can say what’s on your mind whenever you want. As such, you expand your internet footprint and make it easier for prospects to find you. It improves your search engine rankings. Each post you put out on the social media networks points back to you or your company. That increases your listings on search engine results. So where you might have been listed 1,000 times, you’re now listed 3,000 times. It establishes you as the expert. When you can post your information and ideas at any time, it will happen more often, which builds your reputation and credibility. It improves communication and feedback. Many companies are monitoring people’s tweets on Twitter and posts on Facebook. If they notice people who have problems with their company, products, or services, they find out about it right away and make changes in real time. This, in turn, builds positive relationships with customers. It drives a steady stream of prospects to your business. All of the social media sites are becoming business friendly, enabling you to create a business-oriented presence. As they’re becoming more business friendly, they’re going to be very mobile friendly. It’s the next iteration. It fuels content generation. Because you’re micro-blogging and doing Facebook entries, you’re creating content and getting it out there. And since content is king these days, you definitely need a way to keep your information flowing into your prospects’ and customers’ hands. It supports decision-making. You can make better decisions if you’re monitoring what’s going on in social media about your industry, marketplace, etc. And when you get these updates directly to your phone, you don’t have to wait until Monday morning when you get to your office to make a big decision. You can make it and implement it in real time.

Go Mobile Today

In short, the mobile era takes all the benefits of social media marketing and puts them in your hands at all times. It also frees you from your computer so you have more time for other activities.

As the business world evolves, our ways of communicating with prospects and customers must evolve too. Remember, it used to be about distributing content; now it’s about getting people’s attention and engaging with them. It used to be about gaining shelf space; now it’s about gaining mind share. It used to be about mass marketing; now it’s about niche marketing. It used to be about trying to control your customers; now it’s about using influence and reputation to generate desired results. When you incorporate your mobile device as a key way to achieve your business objectives and attain these benefits, you open your company up to a whole new world of sales and profits.

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Pump Up Your Sales With Mobile and Social Media Marketing

admin    Social Media     Marketing, Media, Mobile, Pump, Sales, Social

Pump Up Your Sales With Mobile and Social Media Marketing

Consumers no longer sit still and absorb your marketing. They are on the move and they are connected. They want direct access and interaction with your business. They are mobile and social. Leverage that combination in your marketing strategy.

Creating a mobile or social media marketing strategy can be exactly the tipping point your business needs in 2009. Consumers are increasingly mobile and socially connected. Consumers are constantly connected with friends, family, and community–make sure that is how you connect too.

Mobile Marketing

The cell phone is the average American’s constant companion. So much so it seems more likely to walk out of the house without your pants than your mobile phone.

In fact a growing number of consumers are abandoning their home and office phone for a mobile only lifestyle. This is a great opportunity for creative mobile marketing strategies.

John Edwards used mobile marketing at political rallies you capture opt-in text messaging numbers. He would hold up his mobile phone and ask everyone to text a specific number to sign-up for campaign updates. That is just one of many emerging mobile marketing concepts engaging consumers:

* Sports networks are using it to update you on your favorite team
* T-shirt and bumper stickers are displaying text codes for promos
* Realtors are using it on For Sale Signs
* Cable news networks are using it to take real-time surveys and polls

Getting in the mobile marketing game is critical to your business, regardless of the size.

Social Media

Like mobile marketing, social media is becoming a required tool in your marketing kit. The Internet is becoming a seamless part of not only our workflow, but also our lifestream. Every moment of many of the most attractive consumer segments are spent connected. Connect not only to the Internet, but also to their social networks.

Like the Clue Train Manifesto, a prophetic book about the coming of Web 2.0, predicted markets are becoming conversations. If you are not in these conversations you are losing opportunities.

Your marketing plan need to include social networking and social media. Building an audience is important. You need to meet and activate your community where they are–Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Putting it Together for PR & Branding

Of course mobile marketing and social media are unlikely to give you results without a plan–objectives that build your PR and branding. Start by planning your core messages and perceptions you want to build in the market. Which lets you fully leverage these emerging marketing opportunities.

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