In the March issue of Harvard Business Review, Sunil Gupta writes about the impact smartphones and mobile devices are having on advertising.  In short, screen size minimizes the users experience related to ads with text and icons to small to be functional.  “Instead of buying tiny banner advertisements, markets should create apps that add value to consumers’ lives and enhance long-term engagement with their brands”, says Gupta.  Here are five strategies to help marketers succeed in helping people understand how and why users choose apps.

1.  Add convenience.  Apps work well to strengthen relationships.  Gupta states that apps aren’t very effective for acquiring new customers.  I disagree.  The “share” feature on most apps that allows users to refer an app to friends and associates across channels is one way to expand exposure of a brand, product, service or company.  Apps are also another digital footprint that helps promote a brand to consumers, search engines and other online communities.

2.  Offer unique value.  Here’s where apps separate themselves from other forms of communication, namely ads and email.  The user rich environment that can be created gives a unique customer experience to the user.  When designed correctly to super serve your customer base, a custom app stands out and is preferred over browsers or email.  What unique benefits does your company provide for your existing and potential new customers?  Create a value proposition for people to download your app and they’ll opt in and pull down your content because it makes their life better.

3.  Social value.  The world is hyper-connected in small and large online communities.   Facebook, LinkIn, Pinterest, Yelp, and hundreds of other social media channels are now hosting smartphone and mobile device traffic that contains information about your company.  Get connected and make it easy for your custom smartphone app users to connect with others.

4.  Offer incentives.  While not every business will want or need a customer loyalty and incentive program, the opportunity to reward your customers for patronizing your business or for opting in to download your valuable content is becoming more apparent.  It’s easy and encourages sharing and referrals.

5.  Entertain.  Today most smartphone users are using social media apps like facebook, google and dozens of tools that help people connect and gather information quickly.  More than 40% of people’s time with apps is spent playing games.

Sunil Gupta closes this article with the most powerful statement.  “So apps are not only the most effective way to reach mobile consumers; they are also more cost-efficient than many traditional ad campaigns.  When we started mobizmedia, LLC, we knew that the ability for a company to connect with their customers in a customized, branded and user friendly environment will surpass the ability of any other traditional media.  Now is the time to start building your custom mobile app audience of repeat customers.  Read more about this subject here.  Harvard Business Review – For Mobile Devices, Think Apps, Not Ads.

Tim Miles is very astute at explaining things related to how to increase sales in simple ways.
When people are skeptical about social media, they think and analyze the entire social media process like it’s underpinnings are like advertising.  Strategize, budget and execute.

People often ask me, “how do I set up my social media?”.  The answer is simple.  Get a facebook or linked in or Google Places page and start spending some time on the site to learn about it’s features and how they work.

Social media is not a pulpit from which you broadcast.  Social media is your outward showing personality.  It’s who you are as a person.  Do you care?  Do you play games?  What do you care about?  Why is that important?  Are you only interested in birthdays?  Or do you post about social causes?

Have you invited your customers to become “friends”?  Or have you invited your customers to Link In?  Or become part of you “circle”?

What competitive advantages do you bring to the table professionally?  Are you able to put those thoughts into writing to demonstrate your strengths and points of differentiation?

These steps to communicate online take courage, because you are exposing your core and you’re vulnerable.  Now anyone who’s part of your network can see what you believe.

Are you comfortable enough to put your best foot forward?

Mikal highlights the important of demonstrating your knowledge by publishing quality content using new media.  Enjoy the article.

When it comes to marketing strategies, content marketing has just been crowned king, far surpassing search engine marketing, public relations and even print, television and radio advertising as the preferred marketing tool for today’s business-to-business entrepreneur.

Late this summer, HiveFire, a Cambridge, Mass.-based internet marketing software solutions company, surveyed nearly 400 marketing professionals about the state of the business-to-business, or B2B, market, and discovered that marketers are retreating from traditional marketing tactics such as search marketing and have made content marketing the most-used tactic in their brand-enhancing tool box. Fact is, according to HiveFire’s B2B Marketing Trends Survey Report, twice as many B2B marketers now employ content marketing as they do print, TV and radio advertising, according to the survey.

So what exactly is content marketing? It’s the creation and publication of original content — including blog posts, case studies, white papers, videos and photos — for the purpose of generating leads, enhancing a brand’s visibility, and putting the company’s subject matter expertise on display. HiveFire’s researchers found that an impressive 82 percent of B2B marketers now employ content marketing as a strategy in their marketing programs. Coming in at a distant second place is search engine marketing at 70 percent, followed by events at 68 percent, public relations at 64 percent and print/TV/radio advertising at 32 percent.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents said driving sales and leads was the top marketing goal of their organization, followed by boosting brand awareness and establishing or maintaining thought leadership (both at 35 percent). Another 28 percent said their primary goal was to increase web traffic and 24 percent said it was to improve search results.

Part of the popularity of content marketing is its ability to generate qualified leads while engaging prospects in a branded environment without busting the budget. Nearly half of the content marketers interviewed said they dedicate less than a third of their budgets to such marketing expenditures. In addition to frugality, B2B marketers also believe most of their customers and prospects are online, which is why they’re focusing their marketing efforts on the Internet.

Finally, the survey shows that “content curation” — which is defined as the process of finding, organizing and sharing content — continues to gain strength as a top marketing strategy, up 17 percent from six months ago. Seen as a way for marketers to fuel their marketing programs, content curation does have its problems. Nearly 70 percent of content curators say lack of time hinders their efforts, with 66 percent saying a lack of original and quality content is a major drawback. Another 38 percent say difficulty in measuring results is the stumbling block and 37 percent say lack of staff to do the work is the hindrance.

Despite these issues, the survey makes clear that content marketing is only going to become more important going forward, whether you market to other businesses or to the public at large.

How have you used content marketing to enhance your brand? Leave a comment and let us know.

Today I attended the Grow Your Business social media program at Madison College. Steve Noll facilitated a fun conversation on the impact of social media. He touched on the subject of Geotagging. According to Wikipedia, Geotagging (also written as GeoTagging) is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites, SMS messages, or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. These data usually consist of latitude and longitude coordinates, though they can also include altitude, bearing, distance, accuracy data, and place names. It is commonly used for photographs, giving geotagged photographs.

Geotagging can help users find a wide variety of location-specific information. For instance, one can find images taken near a given location by entering latitude and longitude coordinates into a suitable image search engine. Geotagging-enabled information services can also potentially be used to find location-based news, websites, or other resources. Geotagging can tell users the location of the content of a given picture or other media or the point of view, and conversely on some media platforms show media relevant to a given location.

The related term geocoding refers to the process of taking non-coordinate based geographical identifiers, such as a street address, and finding associated geographic coordinates (or vice versa for reverse geocoding). Such techniques can be used together with geotagging to provide alternative search techniques.

Steve also touched on the importance of security and the risk of posting your location for “your friends” to see. According to Steve, Foursquare has about 10 million users and has created a great social media interface for retailers interested in rewarding people who “check in” frequently.

I attended this session for several reasons. I hadn’t seen the new Madison College West Campus yet, I wanted to get some fresh ideas on Social Media and it included free lunch. What a deal. A perfect networking event.

Watch for more great programs and innovative learning programs from Madison College. If we continue to promote continuing education and innovative learning with real business applications, our economy in Dane County will stay strong into the future.

Thanks to everyone at Madison College who put today’s program on, including the Fitchburg, Verona and Middleton Chamber’s of Commerce. If you want more information on Madison College click http://matcmadison.edu/CCL.

By Mark Lenz

I had a great conversation today about social media that inspired me to share my thoughts on social media and its future, an open and distributed network that reflects the intent of the Internet. Everyone on The Business Source team met for an extended lunch to discuss our goals for the next few months. One of the major focuses in our discussion was helping businesses get the full potential from their social media efforts. Social media can be a valuable marketing tool, but many businesses run into issues utilizing the tool and integrating it into their overall marketing strategy. Laurel Cavalluzzo, owner of Madison Marketing Communications, has joined our team to use her knowledge and experience to provide sound, valuable advice on doing just that.

If you know me you know I have a few qualms with social networking sites. If you don’t know me, it may be because I’m not on Facebook. Maybe it’s the engineer in me since 85% of engineers don’t like Twitter. I admit I just started using LinkedIn and social networking sites can be useful, but they also have their disadvantages. One recent example is the latest attack on Twitter by an Australian high school student which wasn’t malicious but could easily have been. The main issues I have with the current state of social networking and media is security, ownership, privacy, redundancy and censorship. In fact, even though site membership has increased, users are hardly satisfied with current social media sites according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. So given my feelings you can begin to imagine where our social media conversation went.

Laurel responded to each of my inquiries with precision, but with so many other interesting and important topics to discuss there was little time to share my complete vision, nor I’m sure Laurel’s. I believe that social media is a very important new communication and archival vehicle, and we’ve only seen the very tiny tip of a very large iceberg. Not to sound prophetic, but I think “Web 3.0″ is nearly upon us and it includes full integration of social media and traditional websites through an open social media network. We can solve many of the issues with social media by developing and harnessing an open network, and there are many additional benefits to an open network.

Security

The most critical concern of any business should be protecting its assets. Social networking sites are famous for their lack of security. From attacks similar to the Twitter attack that take control of users’ accounts to users themselves leaking sensitive information with and without intention. A recent article describes many of these problems faced by small and medium businesses, costing many businesses upwards of $5,000 in the first half of the year. That’s just another unpredictable cost of using social media sites, and with everyone’s accounts in one place it makes for an easy decision when choosing targets to attack.

As an example of the fragility, a few days ago Facebook was mysteriously offline twice in 24 hours, and the lack of security with regard to the U.S.’s networks is one of the NSA’s top concerns. The NSA chief and head of the U.S. Cyber Command recently told reporters he wants to create a secure partition of the Internet to protect our most vital infrastructure. One attacker could get millions of users’ private information with one attack. Issues with security will probably never be completely solved, but we can continue to improve.

Ownership

The ownership of intellectual property, the text, images, video and music you post, is another major issue with current social networking sites. Currently, sites such as Facebook will continue to publish your content long after you’ve removed it. When you post content on these sites you agree to allow them to use the content in nearly any way they wish. I am not familiar with the terms of use for corporate accounts on social networking sites, but clearly there are implications for personal use and there’s no reason to expect them to be any different for businesses. Facebook has had many issues in the past, and even though they may not keep all of your data for whatever purpose forever, they can change the rules at any time.

The ways in which you can use your content on a social networking site are governed by the how each site is designed. None of the social networking sites make it easy to swap content between sites or export it to other media. When a social networking site becomes obsolete, as MySpace has, all of your content, friends and likes are stuck on that site and you have to rebuild your profile and connections on another site. If I were a betting man I would wager that Facebook won’t be the social networking site du jour forever, and the new Google Me or Apple Ping could be the replacement. Businesses haven’t been the first-movers in this space. So businesses will eventually be forced into paying to rebuild their status on a new site once a critical mass has migrated. If we could retain control of our content by hosting it ourselves, or through web hosting providers, issues over ownership and portability would not exist.

Privacy

Privacy issues arise in part because of a lack of security but also for various other reasons. Facebook has dealt with many privacy issues in the past. Many of the issues were due to features created by Facebook to increase the sharing of user content and from changes in privacy settings. Google Buzz launched to loud criticism because of the amount of private information that it automatically shared. Since you have little control over how your content is shared and displayed on social media sites, and many settings can be buried under layers of obscure menus, you may not know exactly who can view which elements of your profile or how to change those settings. I don’t think these issues will be solved by incremental changes to the current social media sites.

Though social media sites have made progress to protect private data there continue to be privacy concerns. Software techniques called machine learning can be used to infer many surprising and private things using the data collected from you and your friends’ public content. Not only is your public data and behavior being tracked, but the sites and applications you use also track your private data. The same machine learning techniques used with your private data can infer even more things about you with an even higher degree of accuracy. Since your content is hosted and controlled by a third party it is difficult to control and know exactly how your content is used. Clearly retaining control of your own content would streamline social media.

Redundancy

Current social media sites are horribly redundant. Not only do you have to waste time sifting through the abundant noise on social media sites, but you also have to waste time replicating the same content across your website and potentially several social media sites. To make matters worse, replication is manual since none of the sites provide a feature for exporting your profile and content. Third party tools can be used to alleviate some of the pain, but they add another layer of complexity and potential for more security and privacy issues. Also, there is no simple or standard way to integrate social media from each site into your traditional website. Integration generally consists of links between social media sites and a business’s website, and though this is useful, tighter integration has the potential to increase the quality and timeliness of communication. By removing the redundancy you have more time to focus on your message and effectively communicating it.

Censorship

Nearly every social media site has censored user content at one time or another for one reason or another. This can be a touchy subject, but I feel that the community should decide what is appropriate instead of just a few people. One way to reduce freedom of speech violations is to make this decision open and transparent to the extent it is for hosted websites, which in the U.S. websites aren’t taken down without a court order or DMCA notice. An open and distributed social media network would be systematically identical to the traditional website network, providing the means to a more open decision-making process.

Open Social Networking

So it’s clear there are some significant issues with the current state of social media. Will the current social media sites fix these issues? They will probably fix many over time, but the reason these issues exist now is the reason they will persist in the future. Their profit comes from displaying our content, not protecting it. So they need to exert some control. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way it is.

However, as a society I think we can and we want to do better, and we can do it by developing and harnessing an open and distributed social media network. Such a social media network would consist of an open source software platform that is installed and run in the same way as a webserver. In fact, you would replace your webserver with it. Instead of everyone communicating on sites such as Facebook, you’ll communicate on your website, and you’ll be able to search your entire social network from your website. You’ll be able to easily integrate photos and videos from your friends’ websites into your website and vice versa. You’ll control who sees what content and how. You will have nearly complete control over your virtual presence. Sounds awesome, right?

Security risks would be significantly reduced due to the sheer number of people that are self-motivated to improve the security of the platform who would be looking for issues in the relatively simple code. This has been shown to be true in many large open source projects, which I assume such a platform would become. Also, since the network would span the Internet, there would no longer be one point of failure. You wouldn’t have to worry about the security of a third party social media site, freeing you to add more focus to your efforts securing your own website. Security issues will still exist, but an open social media platform would allow you to more effectively protect your online and Internet-connected assets.

Ownership of content and privacy are basically non-issues with an open social media network. Everyone with a computer and an Internet connection could easily host their own social media site linked to the entire social media network, allowing you to retain complete control of your content. The software would still need to be developed with enough granular control, but given that it would be open source that’s practically inevitable. So if you want what happens in Vegas to stay in Vegas, or at least away from Grandma, you have that control with an open social media network.

Social media would no longer need to be redundant with an open network. An open social media network and platorm would let business and personal websites merge with social media. Gone would be the days of checking and updating your website, blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages. Instead they can be rolled into one social media website linked to the global social media network. Think of the amount of friends and followers you can accumulate from that pool!

Realization

So if this open social media platform blathering really makes sense why aren’t we doing it? Well, some people actually are. Four students from the New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Dan Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, found funding through Kickstarter and developed the platform they call Diaspora. If I were to bet again I would say that they and many others have had similar thoughts as myself. I applaud them for taking the initiative and turning ideas into reality. The Diaspora project will definitely kickstart the creation of an open social media network, and it’s already doing so. I’m seriously considering becoming actively involved in the Diaspora project, if at the very least by creating a presence on the network, but I say that only to try to express my confidence in the project’s direction. Regardless of any involvement from me, Diaspora will become the realization of an open social media network.

Neither Diaspora nor the idea of an open social media platform is perfect, and they are bound to create other issues, but it’s progress, open and transparent. Since the software behind Diaspora is open source, development happens transparently and critical security issues can be quickly discovered and resolved. Within two days of releasing the source code for Diaspora many critical bugs were discovered by outside developers. Diaspora isn’t the last such open platform to be created either. In fact, it will probably spawn many other platforms that will link to the same network. You won’t have to use each platform but instead pick one platform to create your social media site that will link to the global social media network. This should also increase competition and innovation as different platforms create distinguishing features to compete for your use.

It will take some time for the world to migrate to an open social media network. Migrating to a new social network requires a significant amount of effort and motivation. There must be enough compelling reasons for enough people to switch to reach a critical mass. It’s happened at least once before. I outlined a few compelling reasons for an open social media network, and there’s bound to be more. Yet there is one more roadblock, Internet bandwidth, not so much for businesses who already have websites but for individual users who currently rely on the social media sites for hosting. The bandwidth required to host a site increases with increased traffic. That means if you want a lot of friends with a lot of conversation you may need more bandwidth than most households can access. However, web hosting is a low-cost solution to the lack of bandwidth that individuals can take advantage of, and none of these issues are show-stoppers.

Don’t start closing your Facebook and Twitter accounts yet. Diaspora isn’t quite ready for primetime, but it won’t be long and more like it will follow. So dust off your social media strategy because social media is about to become an integral part of every business’s marketing toolkit.

Originally posted on the Code of Intelligence blog.

I’ve been fascinated by all the buzz and hype surrounding the topic of social media.  When I decided I wanted a blog to go along with my website, I didn’t realize that I was ahead of the curve.   I wanted a blog to share ideas and educate.

Over the past year or two companies and consultants have popped up that specialize in helping others develop social media programs.  Helping companies learn what social media is, where it is, how it works and how to engage in social media is very similar to helping companies learn about and understand advertising, marketing or any number of related business disciplines.

What’s all the hype?  Let’s look at the facts from my point of view.  Social media is not for every company or every professional.  The four main social media sites are Face Book, Twitter, Linked In and blogs.  Face Book has some value and I believe there are strategies for companies to promote themselves and get involved in various conversations on Face Book.  But seriously, Face Book is for family and friends.  People that I observe who are fans of Face Book are rarely using it for business.  There are more potential threats with Face Book than value for business in my opinion.

Twitter is just that.  I’m embarrassed for some that use this format of communications to share personal things and professional acts that have no value to the readers.  I wouldn’t say it’s a total waste of time, but close.  Save the tweet, no one cares.

Linked In however, is a powerful business information engine and resource.  There’s many ways to use Linked In and it adds value to my work, my time and my ability to help others every day.  Linked In is easy to use and can be a powerful Social Media tool.

Blogs are web logs.  A place for people to comment, share events, experiences and education.  Video plays well in Blogs and You Tube has captured the essence of using video to entertain, communicate and educate.  Personally I think having a strategy for using video is a better investment in time and money than social media and they are connected.  Video is a stronger driver of Search Engine Optimization than Social Media.

Over the past year, I’ve asked several Social Media experts to demonstrate for me and show me what value they’ve created for their clients.  So far no one has been able to show me the value.  I’m still waiting and will probably be waiting, perhaps because my expectations equal the hype.  If it’s all that, show me where it’s at.  Having a profile and listing in one of the various social media databases (that’s really what they are), is easy and no big deal.

I do appreciate the exponential level of information and knowledge power I’ve seen at www.Mashable.com. This is the premiere website for social media information.

Technology is moving so quickly it is impossible to keep up.  What you heard, see and read is only a small percentage of what’s happening behind the scenes related to information technology.

Social Media needs to be recognized.  In the Friday May 14^th edition of the Wall Street Journal, there is a story on Procter and Gamble highlighting allegations that its’ new Pampers product creates rashes and leaks.  The sub-headline says, “Company Staunchly Defends New Pampers as Allegations of Rashes, Leaks Find Traction on the Web.”   That’s some serious stuff for P & G.  Pampers makes up $8.5 billion dollars of P & G’s total $79 billion in revenue.  P & G changed the formula and application for absorption and pissed off thousands of moms.  One mom started a Face Book page titled, “Pampers Bring Back the Old Cruisers/Swaddlers and in one week it went from 3,500 fans to 7,000 fans.  That’s what I call going “viral”.  It’s also social.  And it’s now the new media.

People across the world are now connected.  The World Wide Web is definitely gaining momentum and more and more people are getting into the conversation via whatever social media outlet suits their needs.  For me it’s Linked In and Blogs.  For others it’s Twitter and Face Book, plus another two dozen specific applications known as social media.

From my perspective, my job is to educate my clients on Social Media so they can make good choices and if they so choose, develop a communications strategy to monitor the various Social Media sites and participate in the conversation.   Today and in the past advertising was a paid form of Social Media.  Public Relations is a paid form of Social Media also.  Creating a website is a paid form of Social Media.  Taking time to visit, read, monitor and write for Face Book, Twitter or Linked In is a paid form.  Time is money.  Where do you want to spend your time?