It used to be that marketing teams and technology people didn’t really interact apart from uncomfortable meetings about getting a new offer onto the latest website build. But with the rise of mobile-optimized websites, custom branded apps, locality services, and integrated messaging campaigns, the lines between marketing and technology are blurring. Marketers today must be comfortable talking about HTML5 and integrated databases. Technologists today must be comfortable talking about audience segments, targeting, and messaging strategy. But mobile technology is changing more than how we work together. It’s literally changing how we market and where we put our marketing investment. Poor Old E-mail E-mail was called the ‘killer app’ for at least a decade. Its power to connect with audiences led to an entire generation of technologies to gather addresses, segment lists, target messages, test performance, and provide service. Only, young people today don’t (or rarely) use it. They use instant message technology and social networks, with mobile (and SMS) figuring – Read the full article
It’s not uncommon for businesses today to use social networks – namely, Twitter and Facebook – as a platform for engaging with customers and managing customer relationships. This development has given rise to an increasing number of social media solutions and dashboards, each promising to streamline all tasks and bring a new level of ease in customer engagement. Let’s take a look at the best of these solutions and their features. MediaFunnel MediaFunnel is a social media suite for businesses and enterprises, with a host of features designed to make Twitter and Facebook accounts easier to manage. One of these distinguishing features is Multiple User Roles, or the ability to assign Administrator, Publisher, and Contributor roles and grant various levels of permission to review or publish tweets and Facebook posts (for greater editorial control and efficiency). Apart from monitoring Twitter and Facebook for mentions and tracking the performance of links via Bit.ly and BudURL, MediaFunnel also enables you to – Read the full article
What’s the difference between a Mobile Website and a Mobile App? A good marketing strategy ensures your business is represented on the media your customers use. Since people are increasingly interacting with mobile devices such as smartphones, you should consider if a mobile website or a mobile app would be an asset to your business. So why do mobile users need special treatment? Smaller monitors and touch screens mean that presentation and data entry for traditional computers may seem awkward and cumbersome to a mobile user. Furthermore, mobile devices have hardware such as a camera, GPS, and compass that offer more opportunities if software can effectively use them. There are two approaches for designing content for mobile devices: creating a mobile website and creating a mobile app. Mobile Website A mobile website is generally cheaper to build since you can use the content management system (CMS) of your main website. You can develop a mobile theme for your site to – Read the full article
What’s the difference between a Mobile Website and a Mobile App? A good marketing strategy ensures your business is represented on the media your customers use. Since people are increasingly interacting with mobile devices such as smartphones, you should consider if a mobile website or a mobile app would be an asset to your business. So why do mobile users need special treatment? Smaller monitors and touch screens mean that presentation and data entry for traditional computers may seem awkward and cumbersome to a mobile user. Furthermore, mobile devices have hardware such as a camera, GPS, and compass that offer more opportunities if software can effectively use them. There are two approaches for designing content for mobile devices: creating a mobile website and creating a mobile app. Mobile Website A mobile website is generally cheaper to build since you can use the content management system (CMS) of your main website. You can develop a mobile theme for your site to – Read the full article
Increasingly, people are accessing the Web from smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. It’s not just the desktop and laptop anymore. This means that, as a business owner, Internet marketer, or SEO professional, you have to come up with a search engine optimization strategy that’s specific to mobile – a strategy that will help you get found online more easily and quickly. Let smartphone users and mobile consumers find you whenever they search. Here’s a mobile SEO checklist to get you started: Plan for it. Set a strategy, identify your targets, and plan accordingly. Like any other SEO campaign, successful mobile marketing takes plenty of research and preparation. Know the various mobile search engines. There’s Google XHTML, Google Mobile, Bing Mobile, Yahoo! Mobile, AOL Mobile, and abphone – among many others. Familiarize yourself with these by using your own mobile phone or tablet device. “Mobilize” your website. There are plenty of plug-ins and tools for building a mobile version of – Read the full article
So, you’ve finally decided to join the social media stream and now you’re looking for more creative ways to market your business. So far, you’ve built your Facebook page, a LinkedIn group, and your newly launched corporate blog is receiving a lot of positive feedback from readers. There is one more thing that can boost productivity: social media applications. These apps can boost your marketing efforts and make the process even more efficient. Here is a breakdown of the five most popular social media apps that you can use to accelerate your marketing success: Networked Blogs Join an online family of over 500,000 blogs and build an active community around your own blog. With the Networked Blogs Facebook app, you can: Import the blog feed to your Facebook profile Share your posts with a huge community of bloggers Gain massive visibility Promote your blog on Facebook The first step is to add your blog to the Networked Blogs via Facebook. Once you – Read the full article
Now that the dust has settled after the farmer update, it should be time to take stock of what exactly happened to our sites and how they were affected, what happened to their traffic and their search rankings. I think it may also be time to look at a new link building strategy because it looks like article marketing – at least the kind that is applied in content farms – has been shot down, probably never to return. Has Google managed to shake up one of your most constant and reliable source of links? The first thing we learn as Internet marketers is this: you need links to your site and you can get links from the many thousands of article directories. The fact is that directories have been a staple of Internet marketing for so many years; and yet it seems now that the era of article directories has ended. But was it really such a bad thing? – Read the full article
The Internet and smart phones are two modern inventions that most people cannot now live without, especially since the increased processing power of phones is being used to browse the mobile Web. Statistics reveal that more and more people are using their mobile phones to access the Internet. According to Bango, a mobile payments and analytics specialist, the number increased from 10.8 million in January 2008 to 22.4 in January 2009. These figures are hard to ignore and there are suggestions that these growth rates are set to continue for the foreseeable future. If you’re a business owner, a blogger, marketer, or brand manager, then check out your traffic stats and see for yourself the increase in the number of your mobile searchers. Unfortunately, not a lot of webmasters have begun to recognize the importance of optimizing their sites for mobile. After all, what works well on desktops won’t necessarily work – or look good – on a smart phone. – Read the full article
