Affordable Mobile App Development Is Here!
My First PhoneGap App
If you ask most companies how much it is going to cost to develop an app for mobile devices, they usually come back with a figure of at least $20,000. That figure might just be for one platform! Getting the app launched on Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry would be tremendously expensive.
But now PhoneGap is here. Developers only need to know HTML5, Javascript, CSS, and extensions like jQuery to start building affordable cross-platform mobile apps. Continue reading
Dedicated Mobile Website vs One-Site-Fits-All
Domino's Mobile vs Desktop
As the smart phone era continues to grow, web developers are now presented with a few dilemmas and building options when it comes to building websites that work with mobile phones.
Build just a desktop website
On one hand, 80% or more of smart phones released since 2011 are perfectly capable of displaying full desktop websites.
Build a dedicated mobile website and a dedicated desktop site
In this case, two completely separate websites are built. When a mobile user attempts to visit the desktop website, they are automatically re-directed to a mobile version of the site.
Build a dedicated desktop site that scales well to mobile Continue reading
Facebook Isn’t a Sales Opportunity. Facebook Users Are Not A Captive Audience.
People that do not take the time to understand social media assume their interactions with people on platforms like Facebook and Twitter can be treated purely as sales opportunities.
That assumption is FALSE!
Conversing with people on Facebook and twitter is about creating dialogue, receiving feedback, building brand value, and managing the relationship you have with your public.
Facebook users are not watching television, they are not listening to the radio, they are not waiting for an episode to load on hulu, they are NOT a captive audience. Now let’s clear up why by looking at what exactly a “captive audience” is: Continue reading
Why you are TERRIBLE at Marketing Your Own Services (and how to get better)
It can be hard to market your own service. In your head, reasons why people should choose you are clear. Maybe you’ve got the best prices, maybe you think you have the best customer service, maybe you’ve got the best technology. You’ve been throwing these messages at people for years and your growth has remained stagnant.
It is time to crawl out of your internal thought process. The real problem is that you know TOO MUCH about what you do, and not enough about what people are looking for. What you think is important to your audience may be completely incorrect. If you are using industry jargon, people may have no idea what you are talking about.
The remedy for this is research, and its actually more simple than you think. You don’t need to be a master of statistics, you don’t even need to know how to do long division. The only requirements are that you are comfortable talking to strangers and staying open minded.
You’ll need to create a couple surveys. You can type them up in word and give them to people personally, you can ask a stranger the questions next time you are at Walmart, or you can get fancy and create a survey monkey account and email people your survey.
These are Basic questions you can start asking your current customers, encourage them to be completely honest and make it anonymous (your current customers are the easiest to access, so we can start here first): Continue reading
Engagement – The Newest 4 Letter Word
The most popular buzz word these days in social media and marketing is “Engagement,” and it has become a four letter word. It’s not that engagement is a bad thing, but the way people are using the word makes me cringe.
Let’s start out with a few examples that give me a headache and insult the Public Relations profession:
- We’re using social media to increase your brand’s engagement
- You should be using social media to engage more with your customers
- Here are some tips to increase your social media engagement Continue reading
How To Start A Twitter Chain Reaction – Get Noticed by Your Target Audience
On my last blog post, I did something on accident and soon realized its effectiveness. I started a chain reaction on twitter. I caught someone’s attention, they liked what I wrote about, so they tweeted it. Then their followers liked that tweet so they re-tweeted it as well…
An exaggerated twitter chain reaction diagram
The combined followers of all the people that re-tweeted my message is over 25,000 people! Having my article exposed to potentially 25,000 people in a matter of a few hours is pretty incredible… But before I keep yacking about these “outputs”, let’s see what I accomplished here. Continue reading
My Klout Is Bigger Than Your Klout – The truth about influence “measurement”
What is really being measured?
These social media “measurement” tools are gaining in popularity. They go by several different names including klout, twitter grader, Peer Index, Twitalyzer, and a new one called Kred. These tools claim to measure influence, or how influential a social media entity is to others. Each one has a unique ranking algorithm, but they all do one thing, they put a number on influence.
There is a fundamental flaw with these systems, they measure outputs not outcomes. These influence scores will not necessarily correlate to real world business performance, or give any indication of whether or not social media is helping a business to accomplish any of its goals. Your klout score could be absolutely terrific, but was all the time spent getting that score wasted?
Continue reading
Gravatar & Social Commenting
When you comment on a website, do you wonder why some people have personalized image thumbnails (avatars) while yours is generic? It’s probably not because they’ve registered with the site. (For me, that would be a pain because of all the places I might comment and never return again.)
Their personalized avatars show because they have a “Gravatar” or globally recognized avatar. A LOT of websites use Gravatar as a place to pull commenter thumbnail images (avatars) from, including every website built on WordPress and many other popular CMS platforms.
A Gravatar is great for personal branding and great for adding a personal touch to your comments. People are a lot more likely to care about what you have to say (and maybe even click the link through to your website) when they can see your face.
Is There A Person In There?
It’s called social media marketing. The term social implies that the communication meant to travel down a two way street, yet many small businesses which offer very personal service in real life are still struggling to grasp this concept when it comes to their advertising.
This might be because its scary, it might be because the poster is instantly opening them self up to criticism. It might be because they are afraid to say something wrong and, heaven forbid, see some negative criticism come from a post. It is easy to continue to hide behind the corporate image your company provides when attempting to communicate in order to avoid some of the anxiety and personal responsibility that comes with communicating with people…
Let’s take an example, many local businesses will show their personal side by using employees or business owners in television commercials, however on Facebook they will still appear to be one uniform post generating machine with no human face. Ask yourself this, whens the last time you knew who the person was behind a Facebook post?
