On Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 there will be a social media conference with some of the biggest and brightest presenting. In true social media fashion, this conference will not require you to travel to some big city convention center…you can enjoy it in the comfort of your home or office.
If you’re hesitant about participating, don’t be! This Social Media Summit will benefit small business owners, corporate marketer to the experienced social media evangelist. There will be 20 instructors (including my good buddy, Jason Baer of Convince and Convert) presenting nearly every social media topic under the sun, . If you book early, there is a 50% discount, which brings the cost down to$297.
Collective buying is a new behavior that is being pushed by Internet users, and more specifically, by multiple “collective buying” website companies, e.g. Groupon, LivingSocial and many others.
People are starting businesses everyday based on this collective buying market niche that Groupon carved out a couple years ago. Even with all the new competitors entering the market, there is still a lot of opportunity. Look at it this way…Startbucks did not put independent coffee shops out of business, they helped them increase their business. If you can put a twist on what Starbucks does to make your community coffee shop stand out, you can easily compete with them. Just like with Groupon…if you can get creative in your approach, there is a way to carve out a niche, within a niche.
I get a ton of Daily Deal and Collective Buying website-related traffic due to a blog post I wrote over a year ago on the “Collective Buying” website concept that Groupon created. Groupon has spawned many knock-off websites and the industry as a whole is exploding. Are you interested in building a “Collective Buying Website?” If so, my team and I can help you. We built a Daily Deal website in Europe called, “UbuyWithMe.com.” We’ve also worked on site architecture for another collective buying site, so we have the framework in place to build a daily deal type site affordably and quickly. Each client’s needs are different, but just to give you ballpark numbers, it will run between $15-$18k to build a site and 3 months to complete.
If you have any questions, or would like more information on building a collective buying or daily deal type website, drop us a line.
If you have a business today, you have to be aware of how important social media is becoming as a part of your overall marketing strategy. The current king of social media is without question, Facebook. How do you leverage Facebook? That’s a post in of-itself. The first thing you need however, is a Facebook Fan Page. There is a new service called, “PageModo” that will help you create your own custom Facebook Fan Page design. Best part, it’s free to start. If you desire more functionality, they have several paid premium options.
Check out the video below for more information on PageModo.
Shubic Web Design recently landed a new client from Ottawa, Canada. Recognia, Inc, a Canadian financial company has retained Shubic Web Design to conduct a website audit report for a comprehensive SEO/SEM campaign to focus on the U.S. and Indian markets.
“We are extremely excited about working with Recognia, Inc. in helping them achieve their online marketing goals,” said Mike Shubic – Principal of Shubic Web Design.
About Recognia: Recognia is the industry leader in providing actionable investment research products for both institutional traders and online brokers. Founded in 2000 in Canada’s National Capital region of Ottawa, Recognia has more than 20 million provisioned accounts worldwide, with products servicing the largest and most successful institutions, stock exchanges and online brokerage firms, including Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, NYSE Euronext, Fidelity, Saxobank, HSBC, ICICI Direct, Kotak Securities, and many more.
Restaurant owners are typically not great marketers, many rely upon their physical location to drive most of their traffic. I’m continually surprised when I go to the web and search for a restaurant and cannot find them, either because they don’t have a website, or because they’ve put no resources toward search engine optimization.
The mobile web market is on the verge of exploding and web marketing will be crucial to the success of any restaurateur. As a restaurant owner, you need to make sure you’re on all the local directories, i.e. Google Maps/Places, Yelp, Yahoo local, AOL Local,SuperPages, Citysearch, Local.com, etc. Best part is…getting your listing on all of these local directories is free!
From a users perspective, here are some of my favorite “local” mobile apps. Yelp.com, Google Maps and Where.
I have talked to businesses over the years until I’m blue in the face with regards to the importance of good web presence. I’ve always said that in order to stay effective online that you need to change with the times. The challenge with the web as a medium is that it’s a technology, so it’s ever-evolving. Soon, using the latest web standards and a solo website will no longer be enough with respect to your online marketing tactics.
Consumers are adopting web-enabled mobile devices at a very rapid rate—as a business owner or marketer, this needs to be on your radar if it isn’t already. Here is some food-for-thought:
There are 223m mobile phone users in the US 18% are Smartphones
26% have the web/data package, up 33% since 2008
Currently only 7% of mobile device owners viewed video on their phones
In Q-3 of ‘09 over 25% of all mobile devices sold were Smartphones, 2010 it is predicted to be 40-50%.
Looking ahead to mid-2011 it is estimated there will be 150m Smartphones in use in the US. 120m will be web-enabled.
Video viewership will surge from 5m now, to 120m
Texting has gone from 75b in 2008 to 1 trillion in 2009.
There is no question that mobile connectivity is big and is going to continue to grow at a rapid rate. If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, it’s vital that you consider mobile-web development tactics.
If you have questions or need help developing a web-enabled mobile app, please contact Shubic Web Design.
Keywords are a pervasive part of marketing today. From a marketing perspective, everything we do today has got to take keywords into account. When I say, “everything,” I mean everything. I am however not suggesting that you write with keywords as your primary focus (the content still needs to be relevant and engaging to the reader). I am saying that you should be aware when writing such things as website/blog copy, press releases, PDF content, videos, even employment resumes. Anything that is, or can be turned digital, should take keywords into consideration.
Here are a few tips to consider:
Create a target list of keywords that are relevant for your company or business so that all involved are aware of the focus.
Put yourself in the searchers shoes…if you were searching a product or service you offer, what keyword(s) would you use?
Once you have a list of keywords generated, narrow it down by doing some research to find out what keywords are most popular, least competitive, etc.
Relevancy is key – the more relevant the content is around the keywords you’re focusing on, the more likely it will be that someone will find your information vs. your competitor.
If you’re using images, be sure to use alt tags and/or captions to identify the image.
Formatting Matters – Text attributes like bold and hyperlinks emphasize info in your document for spiders bots/web crawlers.
Website urls - create descriptive urls links with a keyword…for example, rather than xyz.com/12lkkfdhadf_dfdfk.html, you could create one like: xyz.com/this-is-a-keyword.html
Direct Marketing News had a great article on optimizing your PDFs that is worth a read. If you need further assistance or have questions, please feel free to contact me.
For those of you running the Google Android OS on your smart phone, I’ve come up with my current top-10 FREE Android app list. Some you’re probably familiar with, hopefully some are new to you. In no particular order…
Google Sky – If you’ve ever wanted to know what star or planet you’re looking at, this is a killer app and one of the best I’ve seen in the category. Point your phone anywhere in the sky and with your present GPS coordinates, it will show you exactly what you’re looking at.
KeyRing - Tired of carrying a bunch of loyalty cards around? Well, no more, with KeyRing you can accept as many as you like. Just scan the bar code and it’s in your phone. When you go to a particular store, all you have to do is bring up the app and they can scan your bar code from your phone.
ShopSavvy – If you’re in a store and just about to buy something, but not sure if it’s a good price…just scan the UPC code and ShopSavvy will search area stores and online sites to let ya know.
Shazam – How many times are you listening to the radio and you wonder who the heck is singing that tune? Just turn on the Shazam app and let it listen to the song for a few seconds and it will tell you. Shazam will even find the song online for you to purchase if you like.
Movies – If you like movies as much as I do, this is a pretty cool app. Again, with the GPS cordinates you just select a movie you’re interested in seeing and it will pull up theaters near you and give you current play times.
Talk To Me – If you travel to foreign countries and don’t speak the language…not to worry. All you have to do is launch TalkToMe and speak in English what you need to say, then it translates it into German, Spanish, French, Italian, etc. Pretty cool stuff.
Goggles – This is such a killer app, it is however in its infancy, but the future is bright for this technology. Basically, you can surf the web/get info by taking a picture of something, i.e. a storefront, landmark, book, artwork, etc. Check out this video for more info, it’s really worth it!
Loopt - Discover the world around you is their tag-line. Find out what friends are near you, get coupons for places nearby, check-in service and much more. It’s a social compass.
Evernote - Lets you capture your ideas, experiences, and inspirations as they happen, wherever you find yourself.
TaskKiller – The downside to Android’s multi-tasking is that sometimes apps can become bandwidth hogs, or bring your phone down with them when they crash. Few apps provide a direct, easy “Quit” option and sometimes you can’t get to the app to close it. TaskKiller is a free app-killing utility that works from its standard icon.
I personally don’t have an iPhone…yet. I’ve been waiting for Verizon to carry the phone, however I may be swayed to get the new Nexus One by Google if it’s offered first. I do however have the iPod Touch, which is basically the same thing as the iPhone, but without the phone feature. For all of you who do have the iPhone and would like to reduce your “minute” usage or need better call quality while indoors, there might be a nice solution for you…as they say “there’s and app for that.”
Line2 is a VOIP app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that enables you to use your phone via wi-fi verses your cell service provider. The best part…it’s absolutely free for unlimited use (provided that you have a solid wi-fi connection). I should note, the app itself is not free, it costs $14.95 per month. Not cheap, but depending on your usage, it’s possible to use a less expensive plan with your wireless provider. You can also use Line2 with a 3G network if you don’t have wi-fi access, but the provider says that wi-fi works best—I would predict that once 4G is rolled out, this will not be the case.
Learn more about this new app by watching the video below. Or, by reading this article published by the NY Times yesterday. (Interestingly, the Line2 website was down most of the day yesterday, I assume it was from the resent surge in interest for their product due to the article)
David Merrill is a grad student at MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Media Lab. David and some of his fellow students are working on new technologies that could one day give us better opportunities to do the things we enjoy most. The video below shows a group of cracker-sized computers that you can stack, shuffle and interact with like nothing else…they’re called, “Siftables.” I could see some interesting marketing and learning opportunities with a technology like this.
