Belated Happy New Year! It’s been a while since I have posted, the bad news is shame on me for that! The good news is it’s been because we have been so busy working with YOU! As I rapidly approach the first anniversary of Small Business Affinity’s start-up, we have a lot to be thankful for. We’ve had the pleasure of working with some really great clients, and obtaining some great results for them. We’vethru campaigns for clients, done direct mail, a boatload of printing, some radio, events, and much more. built a lot of websites this year, ramped up SEO and click-
In each case, my client experience has afforded me with the opportunity to LEARN, and that’s one thing that really jazzes me in my work.
As many of you know, I’ve just returned from a busman’s holiday, of sorts, to Amsterdam. While the trip was mostly to get recharged for the New Year, I did have the pleasure of meeting and chatting to one of Europe’s leading social media experts, and learned a lot from that visit. In so many ways, Europe is leading us in this segment, and we can hurdle forward by emulating some of their social media implementations!
I was also amazed at how wired Amsterdam is, with wifi everywhere, and it being implemented for the smallest tasks – like wireless order taking and bills in restaurants, and shops. So cool!
This is going to be a great year for all of us, the recovery is in full swing, and by laying the groundwork and investing in your marketing NOW, you’ll emerge at the top of your game in the coming months.
I look forward to catching up with all of you I ‘ve worked with in the past year, and if you haven’t heard from me, give me a shout!
Here’s to 2010 being the best year ever for your business!
My husband, who spent a lot of years in the traditional news business, has shared an insight with me that I want to pass along to you.
In the “traditional” news and PR business, if you have to put out something publicly, but DON’T want it noticed, you launch the story (or press release) on a Friday afternoon. This assures that the least amount of people will notice it.
You could encounter this situation in responding to a negative story, or putting out a press release with bad news, for example.
He said he has noticed the same trend with Twitter. About noon on Fridays, people generally quit responding to Twitter links or replying to messages.
Lesson learned. If you have something important to Tweet about, generally don’t do it on Friday, unless you re-tweet yourself on Monday morning. Good advice.
Chrome OS from Google is coming next year. Among other things, it takes all those onerous, clunky processes, so vulnerable to gaffs, malware, and bugs, and runs them online, not locally, providing you with faster, more efficient, updated web access. Check out this short video.
Huh? What’s that you say? Well, it’s basically a video technology that is going to make a leap to print, at least for some. The strict definition of AR is “a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.” Augmented Reality (AR) is the technology you see on television to “paint” the yellow first down lines you see on your television screen.
But Esquire mag is taking it to the next level this month. On the cover, in stories, and ads, you will see a square sticker with a black and white abstract design. Holding these squares up to a webcam that is connected to the net triggers topical videos to play. Turn the magazine at a different bias, and the video will change or be augmented.
Expect to see a lot of this in the near term, as advertisers grow more and more frustrated with the results of “static” advertising and content. And you’ll see it used to supplement content on phones, nav systems, and other devices.
Pictured below is an example of AR used in a digital camera viewfinder..
A part of being active in the social media realm is monitoring what others are saying about your business. A new tool for this is monitter.com, which allows you to insert key words relevant to your business or business segment and track tweets that are relevant to those key words. This is an excellent way to prospect for followers, to head of bad information being disbursed about your company, to learn about what the competition is doing, or to analyze industry trends that might help you target your marketing more precisely.
You’ve committed to a social media strategy; you have a rough idea of what you want to do. You have an idea of the name you are going to use. You sign up for Linked In, no problem. You move on to Twitter, enter your name, no problem. Now it’s on to Facebook, and what the heck? Someone there is already using the name you were going to use?
It’s an increasing problem, what with over 3oo social media sites (and more daily). How can you check a name to see if its available on most of the sites you intend to use? Or to lock it in even if you don’t anticipate using all of the sites right now?
We’re glad you asked.
Check out these two sites, that do name checks, and tell you if the name you were thinking of using is already booked on one of the sites. If not, go ahead and register away! Most of these are free, you know. Better to maintain a consistent identify across the board, even if you are going to limit your use to one or two sites.
A few minutes now might save you a lot of grief later, when you find the name you were using on Twitter to promote your business is being used by some unsavory sort on Flikr!
Phone payment is readily available in many parts of the globe, but slow to catch on here.
This from the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab:
Whether scanning a cell phone to purchase a bullet train ticket in Japan or buying cattle in sub-Saharan Africa, the ubiquity of mobile phone is revolutionizing traditional banking and commerce. Gartner estimates by the end of 2009, 74.4 million people will use mobile devices to purchase goods and services worldwide, and will double by the end of 2012 . DoCoMo’s Japanese consumers have been buying mass transit tickets and vending machine goods via cell phones for ten years. Over 5 years ago, the m-Pesa project brought mobile phone micro-payments to the un-banked regions of Kenya. The proliferation of mobile phones brings new business models and opportunities to third world countries, and provides a chance to break cycles of poverty. The cell phone also creates opportunities for new business models, and new revenue streams for established players in finance and telecom.
Adoption of mobile technologies varies region to region. The race is on for who will control – and ultimately profit, from mobile banking. Banks, mobile carriers, security and technology providers have much to win, or lose, depending on technology advancements, partnerships, security and user adoption. There are nearly 4 billion mobile phone users, but only about 1.6 billion bank accounts.
If you are doing email marketing, you want to make sure your prospects receive your email, instead of it going into a junk mail folder.
Gone are the days of ISPs rejecting mail solely on keywords, now they use a sender’s “behavior” as a criteria for flagging mails as spam.
Here are some tips to prevent your emails ending up in a junk folder.
1) Maintain a clean list by handling bounces properly and scrubbing your list frequently.
2) Ensure your prospects remember giving you permission; a confirmed opt-in process is helpful.
3) Use a form of email authentication like Domain Keys or Sender ID.
4) Avoid spam complaints by using a reasonable frequency for mailings.
5) Make sure your emails look right in multiple email clients.
We can set up your email marketing program and write the newsletters if you like. Just drop us an email.
