30 posts categorized "Tech"

When you're marketing for a startup -- or just starting some marketing -- don't try to reinvent the wheel. Stand on the shoulders of giants, as they say, by using these essential resources to support, guide and jump-start your efforts.

1. The 5-Minute Guide to Cheap Startup Advertising A guest post by Rob Wailing for OnStartups.com. If you're as new as your company when it comes to startup marketing, here's the best rundown of what you absolutely need to know.
2. The Quick-and-Dirty Tips Network Nobody in a startup has just one job. QDT has short podcasts with tips on everything from marketing, to money management, to public speaking. Each is just 5 to 10 minutes long, and supported by extensive blog content.
3. 10 Marketing Tips for Every Startup The web is full of "X Tips" articles. You're reading one now. But classics are classics for a reason, and this post over at TheNextWeb.com is the best of its genre for this purpose. Read it before your strategy sessions for ideas.
4. The Four-Hour Workweek You've heard of the book and seen the TED talk. Ferriss's ideas won't always cut your work week to 1/10th or smaller what it is right now, but they're always applicable. They'll help you prioritize your time, identify your most important goals point your company in the direction that's best for you.
5. The Blog Tyrant If you think commercial bloggers aren't startup entrepreneurs, you haven't been paying attention. Ramsay Taplin's advice about blogging will help you build a base for your company's web traffic, but it goes beyond the blog into the realm of startup strategy.
6. What the Founders Wish They Knew The only thing better than learning from your mistakes is learning from other peoples' mistakes without making them yourself. This article asks 10 recent startup successes what they wish they'd known before opening their own companies.
7. Startup Success A podcast, now in the 150+ episode stage, where Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley cover startup strategies, tips for marketing and interviews with thought leaders and influential up-and-comers.

The trouble with lists is they're never complete. Readers, what other resources had the skinny you wish you'd known before getting started? Better yet, what advice and experience can you offer yourself? Join the conversation in the comments below.

Our 2011 Mobile Review was one of the most popular features we've ever published, so we knew we had to follow up with something even better this year. We think you'll enjoy our recap for this year: 18 Mobile Stories That Mattered In 2012.

We break down the 18 most important stories that shaped the mobile world in 2012, from the Apple Maps fiasco to the explosion of mobile ad revenue (even at now-public Facebook!). Check out the 18 Mobile Stories That Mattered In 2012 now.

Entry By Simit Patel

One of the ways marketers can stay ahead of the competition in a cost-effective way is by carefully monitoring new consumer technologies. Doing so is generally a way to find the next big marketing channel before everyone else comes in and drives the price up. And over the next few years, one of the hottest technologies to watch will be that of near-field communication (NFC).

Wikipedia provides us with a good definition of NFC:

Near field communication, or NFC, allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in close proximity to each other, usually by no more than a few centimeters.

Marketers should keep their eyes open to see what type of applications this technology ends up facilitating, though the earliest approaches thus far seem to be focused on using NFC as a payment mechanism.

Google Wallet is the most publicized offering that illustrates this capability; it will allow users with NFC-enabled Google phones to simply swipe their phones to make payments and redeem loyalty coupons at merchants with NFC-compliant terminals.

A study by mobile research group Amadeus estimates that 247 million NFC-enabled smartphones will be in use by 2015. Add that Google is seeking to bring this technology to merchants and can do so via its global ad network, and the likelihood of NFC becoming a key technology and a paradigm changer grows considerably.

For businesses, this introduces a few key considerations:

1. Accepting NFC Payments. If you're in a business that thrives on offering convenience and speed of checkout, or if you are a business prone to overload and so need to focus on getting customers through the checkout lines as fast as possible, planning to accept NFC payments should be a key priority. NFC certainly enables greater speed.
2. Integrating NFC Payments With Your Marketing Campaigns. Google is planning to enable marketers to build applications that access NFC payment information via an API. In other words, NFC payments will enable marketers to better track and identify customers who give permission to do so; this in turn enables marketers to better identify who their best customers are and how to reach them.

The implications of this are profound, especially for businesses that are already enjoying success with coupon marketing; NFC payments can help you identify which customers are most responsive to coupons, what else they buy, and many possibilities yet to be conceived.

The world of NFC is just getting started. Hopping on the trend early enables marketers to best position themselves ahead of their competitors in this field.

6 Unexpected Ways Businesses are Using iPhones and iPads in the Workplace is the seventh in a series of articles that we'll be posting this fall. Small Business Marketing Tips To Build Sales In A Down Economy will teach you how to use do-it-yourself tools like SMS, email and social media to effectively market your business.

Entry By Jason Brick

For decades, Apple courted the consumer market so exclusively that business clients often considered the company actively hostile. Since the iPhone/iPad revolution, though, Apple products have appeared more and more in employee hands at businesses both large and small. In some cases they work as the newest productivity tool, a next-generation upgrade from the standard laptop. Other businesses, have taken the implementation to an entirely new level.

1. Meet the New Cash Register
Internet-based credit card processing is beginning to nudge traditional point of sale machines out of the market. Combined with apps like Square for order tracking and accounting, this turns your iPhone/iPad into a portable cash register. Salespeople can ring up orders on the floor, or take them into the field for house calls. 

2. Upgrade Presentations
Old-school sales presentations means carrying printed materials; they're bulky and can quickly become outdated. The iPad/iPhone way of presenting is light, portable, and easy to update. Apps like Keynote allow you to add colorful graphics, animation and videos, makes this new presentation approach still more powerful. 

3. The Truly Paperless Office
Large companies and small businesses have a common problem -- too much paper. Putting the same information on a dedicated iPad though -- or a server the device can log in to -- eliminates paper and saves trees. It also creates a document that's easy to update, and one that everyone can access at the same time.

4. Integrated Customer Tracking
A business without an electronic customer database is far behind the times. But some savvy business owners are going further by integrating that customer database with apps for their iPhone/iPad. This benefits them in three ways: It lets them choose the best candidates for marketing broadcasts; it gives them the ability to update information in real time while talking to customers; and it makes inputting a new customer's information a more pleasant experience by moving it away from a formal desk and a bulky computer. 

5. The Robot Waiter
An iPad integrated with another in a restaurant kitchen means a comfortably seated diner can order a meal at the pace that best suits him. Instantaneous, electron ic delivery, helps out as well by eliminating wait staff errors, and lost or confused tickets. No luck yet, though, on an iPad that actually carries your food to the table!

6. Flexible Workstations
Everyone's interacted with the conceptual ancestor of the iPad for years by signing the UPS worker's electronic order tracking pad. Apps for the iPad now provide this kind of workstation for every imaginable task, and let one employee use the same device for different tasks throughout the day. A network of iPad workstations also gives management real-time tracking of progress

Chantel Tode at Mobile Marketer looks at the question - Will Google, Motorola deal disrupt the OEM landscape? 

While Google executives said this week that Android handset manufacturers will be treated equally even though the company is acquiring Motorola, the possibility remains that OEMs will take a closer look at other operating systems.

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While offering Android as an open system at little or no cost to license has been an important factor in its growth, the deal withMotorola points to the success of the Apple formula of owning the entire mobile experience.

“The most successful players in the smartphone market have been those who control the entire experience – from platform, to hardware to services,” said Kevin Burden, vice president and practice director for mobile devices at ABI Research, New York.

“Only Microsoft remains as the only mobile platform provider without direct ownership of a hardware arm that designs and produces mobile phones,” he said.

Buying a handset manufacturer gives Google a similar degree of control over Android that Apple has with iOS.

Conceivably, the deal with Motorola means that Android will now go into smartphones that bear Google’s own seal of approval and can be marketed as the gold standard for Android, per Mr. Burden.

While Google says it will continue to treat other handset manufacturers equally despite having acquired Motorola, there are advantages to be gained from Google and Motorola working together in some areas.

Head over to Mobile Marketer for the full analysis.

 

Public Knowledge is one of our favorite public advocacy groups at Ez Texting. Their self-described mission:

Public Knowledge is a Washington DC based public interest group working to defend your rights in the emerging digital culture.

We want to share an email we received from them this morning. Please consider:

Two weeks from now, Congress will hold a hearing on Net Neutrality where Members will make known their intentions to repeal the FCC's recently introduced Net Neutrality rules. If passed, this repeal wouldn't just scrap the rules--it would also prevent the agency from taking action on this important issue in the future. While the FCC's rules are far from perfect, they do provide a framework under which the agency can protect consumers and punish bad actors. Without this framework, internet service providers will be free to discriminate against users, services and types of traffic at will.

Make no mistake: this will be a decisive vote. This is the only time that Congress will vote "yes or no" on Net Neutrality, so it's crucial that they vote the right way. Help us send a clear message to Congress: a vote for the repeal act is a vote against Internet users.

So what can you do to help? First, head over to Public Knowledge's website and read up on their efforts. If you want to stay up to date, you can sign up for their text-message Mobile Action Alerts. We also encourage you to take a look at their petitions to the FCC.

If you're thinking about buying an iPad for the holidays you just might want to consider the following rumor - but remember it is a rumor:

The next version of Apple's groundbreaking iPad tablet PC will include a forward-facing camera, FaceTime support, a USB port and be available to consumers and enterprises perhaps as soon as the first quarter of next year, according to a report by the Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes.

The speculation comes just over a week after Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) unveiled iOS 4.2, an update to its mobile operating system that included a number of key features and improvements for the iPad.

Not surprisingly, the DigiTimes report sent Apple Nation into a frenzy, with rumors and additional speculation spreading like wildfire across numerous Mac-centric blogs, forums and websites.

Head over to EnterpriseMobileToday for more details.

Hundreds of developers have added text messaging to their Ruby applications using our dead simple text messaging gem. Check it out at our Developer Center.

Android is officially the most popular mobile operating system...for new purchases:

Nielsen is adding its voice to the chorus  of research firms confirming the ascension of Android. Nielsen said among recent acquirers of smartphones in the last six months through August, Android was the top platform in the U.S. with 32 percent of new purchases, followed by the iPhone and Research In Motion’s Blackberry platform, tied at about 25 percent.
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The recent purchase numbers from August put Android’s momentum into better context. We can see that even with the boost from the iPhone 4, Apple smartphones are still getting outsold by a flock of Android devices. RIM’s slide is even more pronounced in these numbers as well, plummeting from 35 percent to 25 percent from June to August.

Read more at GigaOM.

Interesting quesiton posed over at Small Business Computing: What is Mobile Commerce, and Why Should You Care?

Mobile commerce (also known as mobile ecommerce, m-commerce and other variations) consists of two primary components. The first is the ability to use a wireless phone or other mobile device to conduct financial transactions and exchange payments over the Internet. The second is the ability to deliver information that can facilitate a transaction -- from making it easy for your business to be "found" via a mobile Web browser to creating mobile marketing campaigns such as text promotions and loyalty programs. 

Head over to Small Business Computing to find out why you should care (you should)!