Image via CrunchBase

According to the Chinese calendar, we’re in the year of the rabbit.  I guess that makes sense, because things sure are hopping right along in the mobile world.

A Nielsen Company report from October 2010 shows that 29.7 percent of mobile subscribers in the United States have a Smartphone.  The two most popular at the time of the report were the iPhone and the Blackberry.  Twenty-two percent of users were running the Android Operating System.  What does this mean?  Not much unless you’re looking into the joining the wave of marketers using Smartphones to sell their wares!

How are people using their Smartphones and what difference does it make in marketing?

Take a look at this poll posted in The New York Times back in September:

A survey of 4000 people determined that most people wouldn’t even THINK about leaving home without their mobile phone.  And what are they doing with their phones?  The majority of them are playing games, checking the weather, and surfing the internet.  More and more are performing daily work tasks, but the majority is still using it socially.  How are they doing this?  They are using applications (or “apps”).  An application downloaded by the user is where your marketing strategy comes in to play.  Sixty-one percent of Smartphone users buy and play games regularly.  People load the game, they see an advertisement, and they are likely to click on it.  Sometimes users click on an advertisement accidentally.  That’s ok. It still puts your business in front of them and that is the ultimate goal.

Think about it using your own usage as an example.  As time passes web surfers (a.k.a. potential consumers), have learned to tune out the advertisements they see on webpages, as they have the commercials on TV.  We’re too used to seeing them.  Insert a new method of advertising here … via games and other apps that are being downloading and used daily on Smartphones.  This method of advertising is still fresh and new!  People are seeing it.

With Smartphones, a whole new set of opportunities has opened up for the marketer.  User location data is more readily available, which means more targetability.  All advertising is “opt-in” because the user has made the first point of contact by downloading the app.  And most users are on their phones every day so it’s more in their face and personal.  It’s a great opportunity!

So get out there!  Get to work on that marketing plan, updating it to include mobile phone application advertising!

Interesting fact:  In a poll taken by the Nielsen Company in September 2010, it was determined that when thinking of getting a new phone, women will likely choose the iPhone, which uses the iOS, whereas men will prefer the Android system.

I happened across an excellent solution tonight for a problem that takes up a lot of time, but tiny bits at a time.

The Problem
I meet with clients and take copious meeting notes. Since we use Basecamp for everything in our agency, we archive all meeting notes into Basecamp so that they are backed up and can be referenced by all teams.  The issue is that I take my meeting notes in Word, since it’s easiest for me to quickly and easily produce an outline.  Getting that data turned into the same info for Basecamp was always a pain because it required a lot of manual reformatting, which equals an enormous waste of time.

The Solution
I figured that there had to be an easy way to convert Word formatting into Textile formatting. Instead of using bullet points in Word, you use asterisks (*) to create bullet points with Textile.  Easy enough, but when I get on a roll and really need to quickly get thoughts down- I find that I’m much better at hitting the Tab key to create sub-points and quickly get down an outline.

After a little poking around, I found exactly what I needed to convert a Word document with standard bullet point formatting into a Textile formatted doc that I can just copy/paste into Basecamp. And Poof! It was just this simple: you install a Visual Basic macro into Word that does it all for you with a few clicks.

Update 6/10/11:  After playing using this a few times, I realized that I need to hack this file so that it is more geared for Textile, and less for WikiMedia.  I’ve updated the link below so that the download is of my file, which will work much better for Basecamp users.

Installation

1. Download Valeo’s Word2Textile macro (<-right-click and Save As)
2. Start Word
3. Bring up the Visual Basic Editor (Tools->Macro->Visual Basic Editor or Alt+F11).
4. From the VBE, import the macro library (File->Import File…) and select the file you downloaded.

Usage

1. Open a word document to convert
2. Run the Word2MediaWiki macro by bringing up the Macros dialog (Tools->Macro->Macros… or Alt+F8), selecting Word2MediaWiki and clicking Run.
3. The macro converts the document to MediaWiki markup and places a copy of the content on the system clipboard.
4. Switch to a MediaWiki editor and paste the result.

That just saved me about 2.37 minutes of reformatting my meeting notes.  I project that will save me… (computer beepy noises) …  more time than that down the road.  Yeah – you’re welcome.

A big thanks to http://www.infpro.com for providing the great VB script and instructions for it’s use!

During a recent presentation at Emerge Memphis on 3/10/11, Managing Project Director James Hutto covered some fantastic tips and tricks to help business users become more proficient and secure when using Facebook for professional purposes.

One of the questions we are most often asked has to do with the best way to use the same Facebook profile for both business and personal.  Since Facebook’s terms and conditions stipulate that you are not supposed to create 2 profiles, this is often confusing for a great many people.

James covered the power of Friend Lists and how they can be used to really fine-tune the security settings in Facebook and only show specific pieces of your profile to certain groups.  At the most basic level, James urged all attendees to create a list for Personal and a list for Professional, and to set what those 2 different groups can see through security settings.

There was also an overview of Facebook’s security settings, and some instruction on the best ways to optimize for privacy and professional networking.

This seminar had some great Q&A and a great deal of ground was covered with specific answers to attendee questions. Some participants even decided to test out what they learned by leaving some comments on our Fan Page!

Here is a copy of the presentation:

B.L. Ochman has kept me entertained with his various articles poking fun at the proliferation of people claiming to be social media gurus. His most recent article about how the number of self-proclaimed “social media guru” titles has gone down but other, but new titles are emerging got me thinking:

Hiring a [social media] strategist, guru, consultant, or any other title is a bad idea for 99% of the companies I come in contact with.

Now, before someone with that title gets all upset and leaves me a heated comment, let me explain why I feel this way.

Social media is a very small piece of what it takes for the majority of businesses to succeed online, pure and simple. Hiring someone who is a recently name social media _________ is a bad idea, because it’s very likely that person knows little about many of the other tools in the online marketing arsenal.  It takes years of study, trial and error, discipline, and a little luck; to become an effective online marketer.  Do you really want to hire someone who has mastered Twitter and Facebook to manage your online strategy?

If you think you need a social media strategist, then I’m going to make a very educated guess and say that is probably only a part (maybe a small part) of what you need.  Most businesses I start working with are not doing many of the other fundamental things right – so why would you jump into social media?!

If you’re not effectively marketing to search engines and generating qualified traffic that converts, then you have work to do before diving into social media.

If you are not segmenting your customers with email lists, cross-promoting to them and building loyalty and referrals, then you have work to do before diving into social media.

These are some sweeping generalizations, but it boils down to this: you need an online strategist, not a social media __________. You need someone who can look at your business and craft a solution from all the many tools in the online marketing toolbox, not just push you into social media because it’s what everyone wants to talk about right now.

Related articles:

• Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Your Social Media Marketing (verticalmeasures.com)
• 3 Social Media Myths You Should Be Careful Of (onesocialmedia.com)
• The Big Myth – Anyone Can Do Social Media (charlesheflin.com)