Posts Tagged ‘apps’

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The Guardian has reported that mobile spending in the UK tripled between 2011 and 2012, going from £203m to £526m. This is an incredible increase of 148 percent in just one year. Marketers are recognizing the opportunity mobile devices bring and have found that mobile advertising is an effective way to reach a large portion of the population.

Interestingly, in 2009 only 1 percent of the total amount spent on advertising in the UK was spent on mobile ads. That number went up to 10 percent in 2012. Social media advertising has increased by 24 percent in the past three years, and In general, Internet advertising is also steadily increasing.

What’s all the Fuss About?

So why are marketers increasing their mobile advertising budgets so quickly and by so much? Because a growing portion of the population is spending more time on mobile devices. According to the Westminster eForum in 2012, there are now more mobile phones in the UK than there are people.

Since Internet-ready mobile gadgets are more affordable and common than ever before, people are spending more time browsing the Internet, using apps, reading blogs and connecting through social media while on the go.

A few statistics, all from the Westminster eForum, illustrate the growing trend of mobile Internet use:

• 28 percent of UK citizens have bought something with their smartphone.
• 12 percent of the population has a tablet, and tablet sales are growing by about 378 percent each year.
• 38 percent of people who have tablets spend more time using it than watching television.
• 53 percent of people in the UK use two screens at once (both a smartphone and the television, for example).

There is no doubt that mobile Internet use is on the rise, and advertisers are wise to begin using this channel to reach their markets.

How Your Business Can Use Mobile Advertising

If you’re interested in taking your advertising to the next level by implementing mobile advertising, there are several ways you can do it. First, making your website mobile friendly and using mobile ads on your site is an excellent way to reach your smartphone-using market. You can also use advertising on apps or even release your own company app.

Social media advertising is extremely popular and can be very effective. Social media users are turning to mobile devices more and more as they connect with their friends and follow brands. You can leverage your current social media campaign so it will target mobile users.

As markets become more reliant on mobile Internet use, brands need to follow with mobile advertising campaigns. If you analyze your market and find that it is likely to consist of smartphone users, your brand would be wise to begin advertising through mobile websites, apps and social media.

Flipboard has undergone some major changes, making it a more social oriented app with much more marketing potential for businesses. These changes take Flipboard from a simple news service to a community-oriented tool that lets users add more content and communicate with others.

User-Created Magazines

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One of the biggest changes is the addition of user-created magazines. Before the update, users could flip through magazines that were made up of content about several different pre-set categories. Now, users can pull articles from anywhere on Flipboard or the Internet and create their own magazines to reference later or to share with friends. Flipboard has explained that user-created magazines can be private or shared with other Flipboard users.

The Marketing Opportunity

The new capability to curate and share content with other users is a huge opportunity for businesses. Flipboard has become a much more viable content marketing channel that your business can use to share your own, and related industry content, with your target market.

You could proactively make user-created magazines a part of your strategy by creating your own brand or industry magazines and sharing them with your publics, or passively by encouraging your audience to add your content to their own magazines.

Flip It Bookmarklet

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Flipboard has also created a new Flip It bookmarklet that users can add to their browser’s bookmark bar, enabling them to add content to their Flipboard account from anywhere on the Internet. The bookmarklet can also be added to browsers on the iPad and iPhone. This added feature will enhance the magazine creating experience.

The Marketing Opportunity

The Flip It bookmarklet gives your readers one more option for sharing your content. Just like you encourage your audience to share your blog posts and other content through Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, Tumblr, StumbleUpon or any other social media site, your brand will want to add Flip It to its list of places your content can be spread. Keep in mind that when users use the bookmarklet in conjunction with your content, they may be adding it to a private magazine or they may be sharing it with other Flipboard users.

Social media and content-sharing sites are important parts of any content marketing campaign. These sites make it possible for your content to spread across the Internet, possibly bringing more traffic to your site and raising brand awareness. But, there’s another reason these sites are so important. It’s a known fact that people trust their friends and family members, often times more than businesses. If your target market is exposed to your brand’s content through their friends’ social media accounts they may be more likely to become customers.

The recent updates to Flipboard make it a much better marketing tool, as users will be able to create personalized lists of content, collect content from across the Internet and share their findings with friends.

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According to Business Insider, more than half of the time a person spends on his or her cell phone is spent using mobile apps. This statistic is just one reason mobile marketing is so successful. Many businesses are finding their target markets are spending more and more time on their cell phones, making mobile advertising and marketing more important than ever before.

If your market is one that spends a lot of time using their phone to use apps or browse the Internet, you’ll want to consider adding a mobile marketing element to your strategy.

Define Your Market

Before you start coming up with creative ways to use mobile channels, decide which of your markets you plan to target with your tactics. Keep in mind that the market you target through mobile strategies could be a portion of one of your regular markets.

Don’t Overwhelm Your Audience

Adding ads to a user’s experience isn’t always the best way to market yourself. Before you plaster ads on your mobile site or your company’s app, think about what kind of effect it will have on your user base. Will it cause people to uninstall your app or stop visiting your site?

Fill a Need and Have Purpose

To stay relevant in mobile marketing, you need to give your users a reason to connect with you on their phone. Create an app that offers some value, or make an outstanding mobile version of your site. Then, creatively send your message by combining your mobile tactics with your other marketing tactics.

Diesel, the popular clothing brand, excelled at this strategy when it added QR code signs to product shelves in its store. If customers scanned the code, which allowed them to “like” the product on Facebook, they were given a discount.

Diesel’s QR code strategy. Image source

Take Advantage of the Medium

Remember that smartphone features can add a lot to your marketing efforts. Think creatively and find ways to use location-based services, cell phone cameras, social media and other on-the-go features. These aspects can make your tactics more interactive, which can have a big impact on your brand.

Mobile marketing is here to stay, and the way it can be used to advertise brands and services is always changing. As smartphones and apps become capable of doing so much more, your strategy can grow and become more interactive over time.

One way to keep up with social media posting is to use auto-scheduling software. There are many kinds of web-based programs, some free and some that charge a subscription fee, that allow businesses to write posts and attach images or links to be shared on social media sites at a later date.

The Pros of Auto Scheduling

Save Time

Scheduling your posts allows you to save time. Instead of logging in to your accounts every day, doing some research and then posting, you can do this all at once. With a social media scheduling platform, you can set aside a certain amount of time each week to plan, write and schedule your posts for the rest of the week.

Stay on Message

When you sit down and plan an entire week’s worth of social media posts, it can be much easier to stay on message. You can objectively look at each post to make sure you are fulfilling your campaign goals. Sometimes, when you post to social media sites on the fly, you lose site of what you want to be telling your audience.

Cross Time Zones

If your brand has markets that are in different time zones, auto scheduling can be a great solution. If you post to Facebook in the afternoon at your office, but a large portion of your market has gone to sleep for the night, you aren’t posting at the optimal time. Auto scheduling platforms let you choose the day and time for your post to go live, so you can target any market at any time.

Stay Involved

Scheduling your posts means that your accounts will stay active, and won’t fall into that stage of inactivity where they lose momentum. On days when you can’t get to social media or if you are traveling without an Internet connection, your accounts will be alive and active.

Hootsuite is a popular social media management and scheduling platform.

The Cons of Auto Scheduling

Miss Windows of Opportunity

Many social media conversations are real time. Facebook, and especially Twitter, sometimes thrive off of real-time posts, comments and opinions. If you only schedule your posts at the beginning of the week and never log in for the rest of the week, you run the risk of missing out on live action. You can remedy this by logging in once a day to check up on a few things and interact with users. Save time by limiting yourself to half an hour of logged-in time each day.

Labeled As Spam

Even if your followers don’t actually report your account as spam, they may feel like they are being spammed with robotic content and decide to stop following you. Scheduled posts can sound spammy, so try to write natural posts even if they are being scheduled for later.

Lose Touch

If you schedule your social media posts too far in advance, you could lose touch with what is happening on your account pages. You may not be aware of follower feedback and you may even forget what exactly you are posting to your accounts. You can prevent this by only scheduling a few days, or a week in advance. You could also decide that you’ll only use scheduling platforms for times when you know you won’t be able to post to your accounts, like during holidays or while you will be out of the office on business.

Overwhelm Your Followers

When scheduling your social media posts, it can be tempting and easy to schedule way too many posts. Remember to still post in moderation, but to post often enough to grab your audience’s attention and to stay relevant online. The last thing you want to do is overwhelm your followers with constant, low-quality or non-relevant posts.

In the end, a combination of both real-time and scheduled social media posts may be the ideal solution for managing your social media campaigns. With auto-scheduling, you can save time, reach your audience at an optimal time and plan for your busy schedule. You can also remedy some of the cons of using a scheduling platform my mixing in some live interaction and only using scheduled posts sparingly.

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The United Kingdom has hit an amazing benchmark: it has become the most mobile country in the world. Surpassing Japan, which used to hold the number one spot, the U.K. uses 424 megabytes of data each month, which is an astounding 60 percent increase from last year. Japan uses 392 megabytes per month.

More people in the U.K. use the Internet from a phone or other mobile device than any other country. Only a few years ago the vast majority of Internet usage came from desktops and laptops, but the gap has slowly been closing as mobile technology becomes more common and more affordable.

Not only are more and more people getting online from their cell phones, tablets and other mobile gadgets, but people are also spending a considerable amount of time online. According to Ofcom, people in the U.K. spend an average of just over 12 hours online each week. This may be due to the fact that 58 percent of the country’s citizens own a smartphone.

We’ve written before about how the world is going mobile, and how it’s absolutely vital that companies follow this trend. With the introduction of high Internet speeds and mobile apps that can connect people to social media, news, shopping and almost any other type of website, combined with affordable and popular technology, it’s no wonder the U.K. has reached this milestone.

Making Your Business More Mobile

Taking your business to the mobile market takes some thought and creativity. Knowing that a huge portion of the population is using the Internet on their mobile devices, you may find this is one of the best ways you can reach your target market. There are literally dozens of mobile digital marketing tactics you can use, but here are a few ideas to consider.

Your Own Mobile App

Depending on what kind of business you have, creating your own mobile app may be one of the best ways to reach your mobile market. Retail, travel and technology businesses are just a few of the types of organizations that boast their own app.

Make Your Site Mobile Friendly

Making sure your site is easy to navigate and view for your target market from a mobile device will most likely decrease your mobile bounce rate, so your traffic will stay on your site longer and respond to your call to action.

Use Social Media 

If you already use social media, your audience is probably already connecting with you from their smartphones and tablets. Keep your social presence strong and consider using it to host a mobile-centered contest or event (think a scavenger hunt, live tweets from an event or a photo contest). Social media ads and sponsored posts are also effective tactics.

Bringing your business’ digital marketing strategy to the mobile world is a smart way to target your audience. When it comes to mobile digital marketing, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Assess your business’ goals, publics and needs before you implement any mobile marketing strategy.

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As technology makes it possible for us to bring the Internet with us wherever we go, the world, including digital marketing, is going mobile. Nearly everyone has a smartphone that allows them to browse the Internet and use social media, news, shopping and any number of apps. Tablets are also becoming more popular, adding to the list of ways people are taking technology with them wherever they go.

In 2011, the number of smartphones sold in the UK surpassed the number of computers sold, and 28 percent of Internet use is mobile, according to Westminster eForum. This trend may mean that as more and more people purchase mobile gadgets, more people will use them to connect to the Internet, and potentially interact with your brand.

Why People are Taking the Internet With Them

With new, and more affordable, gadgets being rolled out every few months, more people are able to get online from a mobile device. Gone are the days when you needed a desktop computer with a dial-up connection to get online. Now, getting online is easy. So easy, that it can be done from almost anywhere.

In fact, research done by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers tells us that in 2011, 33 percent of Facebook’s traffic came from mobile devices, a huge increase from the 1 percent of mobile traffic it attracted in 2008. Needless to say, mobile Internet use is growing incredibly fast.

Our culture is saturated with social media. We are always scrolling through Facbeook, posting pictures to Instagram and checking in on Foursquare. Some of the most common ways we interact with social media are through mobile means. We post pictures on social networks as we take them and we use restaurant guide apps to find the closest and best restaurants while we are traveling.

In short, people are using mobile Internet because it’s easier now than it has ever been before and because so many Internet experiences are enhanced when we do them on the go.

Why Your Brand Needs to Go Mobile

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Mobile ads already exist and they are only going to become more targeted and more effective. Many apps include ads in their free versions, and many mobile sites have ads that are targeted for a mobile market. Depending on who your customers and potential customers are, the best place to reach them may be through their mobile devices.

However, it’s not all about ads. Worldwide mobile traffic accounts for about 13 percent of all Internet traffic (according to StatCounter Global stats), meaning your audience may be accessing your company’s website from a smartphone or tablet. Making sure your site is mobile friendly will enhance the experience readers have, making them more likely to become customers or advocates of your brand.

Many big brand names are carving out their own mobile space by creating their own apps. Stores, travel agencies, game companies, software producers and entertainment companies are just a few of the types of organizations reaching their customers through mobile apps. Specialized apps can help raise awareness of your brand and get your services directly into the hands of potential customers.

As with any other new piece of technology or industry development, it is vital that your company’s digital marketing plan includes a mobile strategy. Whether that is through social media, a mobile site, more targeted ads or your own apps, the objective remains the same. Your company needs to follow its target market wherever it goes, and if that means going mobile, your strategy should reflect that.

After their first year on Facebook, Yoplait yogurt had amassed over 200,000 ‘Likes’, not satisfied with this colossal amount of admirers, they went on to grow this following by over 800,000 fans – putting them securely in the Facebook millions club. What’s interesting about this growth is that they weren’t hit by ‘Operation Unlike’, meaning their following is mostly genuine. To get to this size and not be hit by spam Likes is truly an impressive feat.

So how did they get this far? And what can you learn from their success?

Key Stats

Likes: 1,034,059

Talking about this now: 5823

Most Popular Age Group: 18-24

Most Popular City: Chicago, IL

Post Frequency: Daily

Post Type: Image, with accompanying text

Interaction

The primary improvement they made to their community was hiring a full-time community manager to lend her face and voice to the project. Nicknamed “Yoplait Sara”, Sara Fryar brings an element of genuine human interaction to the marketing mix. She shares recipes, and snippets of her life that make it clear users are interacting with a person.

To do this with your own social media marketing, consider hiring a community manager to take the role of SMM one step further. Community managers play less of a role in the strategy and analytics, and focus more on fostering great ties with your fans. If hiring another person isn’t on the cards, share the responsibility out with your team, and create a “meet the team” tab on your Facebook page to break down digital barriers.

Apps

Since Yoplait is a healthy food item, recipes and healthy living tips make a frequent appearance on the Facebook page. To give these items a place to live, Yoplait makes use of apps to compile and collect all of the useful information they share. They also use apps to make attractive landing pages, to share money off coupons, and for mom-spiration tips. The only problem with their apps don’t support secure browsing, which is a problem for some users.

Posts

After a quick look at their last 2 weeks of posts, I would guess that each post receives anywhere between 20 and 200 shares, 50 to 5000 likes, and 10 to 100 comments. How does that compare to your posts?

The trick to their success, and the easiest way to gain similar results, is to build up expectations in your audience. Make sure they know what’s coming every day. Yoplait post a single post every day, and it’s always an image, with a few short lines of text. Sometimes they link to recipes or tips. Their posts are linked to popular culture events that their audience will also be interested in.

Their posts are also cross-platform, and will mention their other social media profiles. This post was particularly successful, and called for audience interaction.

We’re forever warned about the dangers of posting too much information online; from the horror stories we hear about houses getting robbed after the owners share too much about their location and weekend plans, to terrible tales of prospective employers asking interviewees about the photos they posted from the weekend.

Even though the privacy settings have been simplified, and we’ve all been warned, many are still oblivious to the potential pitfalls of leaking too much personal information online. So maybe the launch of this new app will convince people to think twice about what they release into the social-media-sphere.

Lookup is a social media profile search app that is currently available for free in the Apple app store  It’s essentially a people search engine, with social media profiles in the cross hairs. It was developed by the talent search engine TalentBin, which aims to find candidates for jobs by searching social media profiles. The premise is that it’s better to catch people  doing what they do best in a candid setting, rather than on recruitment sites where everyone is one the best and most uniform behaviour.

In a press release, Pete Kazanjy, co-founder of TalentBin said the app aims to show you a persons personality, by piecing together their social media profiles and presenting a whole picture.

“Lookup brings all the layers together, providing a more genuine and comprehensive profile – spanning both business and personal interests.”

He cites uses such as: finding out more about the personalities of your co-workers; using it to find talking points before a business meeting; or to screen candidates before or after interviews.

How can you use this?

It’s a great way to keep an eye on your personal online reputation. Obviously, the first thing anyone will do when they download an app like this is search for their own name. I was pleased to see my profile at the top of my name search, but the information collected about me was woefully inaccurate and out of date. In terms of functionality, the app is great, but I have my doubts about its ability to present an accurate profile.

This may lead you to think further afield about your personal online reputation; and whether you want to boost or conceal it. There are so many great things you can do to keep an eye on your online presence, and if you’re regularly publishing content, you might want to check it’s being correctly attributed to you.

There are 2 steps you should take to monitor you online reputation:

Set up Google alerts for your name, your company, and any other uniquely identifying information. This will push notifications to you when your key word shows up on the search engines’s radar.

Use a reputation management service like Brand Yourself to keep track of what does and doesn’t show up. This site helps by making links between your online profiles, and by helping you to boost your personal keywords.

The Olympics is coming to a close, and it’s been a magnificent run for Team GB. Pegged as the World’s first ‘social’ Olympics, it certainly didn’t disappoint, as fans and athletes were brought closer than ever before. It was also a interesting time for marketers, as they had a captive Worldwide audience. Check out this great infographic about the evolution of Olympic coverage.

The End of the ‘Fan’

In social media news this week, CEO of Wildfire has hailed the end of the Facebook ‘Fan’. She argues that marketers lack the information required to really understand their fans through social media, so we’re no better off than we were two years ago before the dawn of the social media ‘fan’.

While I agree with her to an extent, her argument lies on the basis that marketers have to adapt to their fans every whim. Some companies are able to ‘come into their own’ on social media and develop a brand and voice that attracts fans, who may not have been fans before. Marketers cannot speak to every single fan on a one-on-one basis using social media, so the best thing to do is to develop a brand and promote a lifestyle that attracts the right people. Check out her article here and let us know what you think below.

Commitment & Social Media

Wild Frog Studio have tackled a difficult subject in their blog; how does a company stay committed to their social media? They discuss ways you can stay on track with your social media strategy, and how to take advantage of the power of social search as more and more users are turning to social media to find information. This means businesses now have to come up with the goods and provide great content if they want to stay relevant.

Facebook Optimisation

Track social look at ways you can optimise your content for the best possible level of engagement. The key take away points? Keep it short, and use images where you can. Companies should also look to posting when their audience is listening, and not restrict their interaction to office hours. This doesn’t mean you have to stay up late posting pictures of cats, there are great scheduling services available to help.

Facebook 80% Bots Claim

Remember the start-up that claimed 80% of their advertising clicks on Facebook were coming from a bot? Well, Search Engine Watch has done the legwork and examined their claims in more detail. They assure us that we shouldn’t panic just yet, and attempt to clear up some of the claims made by Limited Run.

Mobile App Engagement

If you’re currently dabbling in mobile apps, which is fast become a huge market, then you might be wondering how best to engage your target audience. Search Engine Watch once again clears up the confusion with these top tips. As always, keeping things social is vital to success.

Testing Linkbuilding

And finally, SEOMoz shares these great tips for testing if your link building strategy is working. All you need is Google Analytics, pivot tables, and a spare 20 minutes. The result will be an awesome table, like this:

If you aren’t already using it, you should really download the Chrome web browser by Google – it works faster than you can think, seriously. One of the best features of the browser is the huge amount of additional apps available to make your Internet experience more enjoyable, stream-lined, or efficient. SEO is one area which benefits immensely from the vast array of apps. Finding the right app for you might take some time; so just try out a few and see which one offers the right level of functionality in a style that works for you.

I’ve been road testing a few of these in the past week, here are three of the best with the most varied features – you should really check them out!

SEO Quake

One of the most powerful apps; this may just get you so wrapped up in the SEO stats that you stop seeing the   anymore. This handy little desktop SEO guru will dish out information about any website, such as Page Rank, Alexa Rank, KeyWord Density, Delicious Index and Social Media Sharing Stats.

My favourite feature was the way it transforms your regular Google searches into an SEO goldmine. Get ready to dance around like a happy prospector.

iSEO

Apparently, the i stands for intelligent, and I believe them! This handy little gadget will sit quietly in your add-on bar until the time comes to unleash its power. It has fewer features than SEO Quake, but don’t let that fool you, it’s still perfect for Keyword competition analysis and checking up on your (and your competitors’) rank.

It also shows you the usual vital information such as page rank, and offers a chart of web traffic for pages ranked under 100,000 on Alexa.

I did find it a little buggy, but I’m sure I could squeeze more productivity out of it if I spent some more time using it.

SEO for Chrome

This one is from SEOMoz, and is compatible with Chrome and Firefox. It allows you to create custom searches based on search engines and regions, which is particularly useful when thinking about local search and personalised search. Some aspects of the app never managed to load for me, but that could be more to do with my Internet speed and lack of patience.

What’s great about this app is the keyword analysis beta test, although you can’t expect immense results (its still testing, after all) the keyword analysis tools are immensely valuable to website owners, so it’s worth checking in every now and then to see how much it has improved.

So there you have it, just a sample of the SEO Chrome apps available.

Do you use Chrome apps for SEO purposes? What’s the most important feature for you?