5 Marketing Technology stories you might have missed 10-6-12

Marketing Technology Stories you might have missed

Back in the saddle after an enjoyable week vacationing in our nations capital. it was my kind of vacation, lots to do with a little bit of downtime. Relaxing is okay, but I get more satisfaction from getting stuff done.

Not a lot of big stories this week, but a LOT of stories you might have missed. I struggled to whittle it down to 5 and Lynette DeWitt told me I had to give you 6. So 6 you shall get.

MT5 Edition: #56

Stories This Week: SoMe doesn’t drive sales?, Facebook users can promote posts, Facebook sells more of you, LinkedIn endorsements, showrooming data and a bonus track

1.Social media doesn’t drive sales? A response

[LiesDamnedLies&Statistics] In an Op Ed piece Dirk Singer reacts to a Forrester report that says less than 1% of online transactions can be traced to a social media post.

My Take:  Less than 1% of online purchased are influenced by social media? That doesn’t sound right to me. Although I’m a Forrester customer, I’m pulling for the little guy in this one.  

2. Facebook lets Americans try promoting their posts

[engadget] Facebook is running a trial that let’s individuals promote posts. It feels very Reddit-like. Letting users “thumbs-up” builds more data and creates a new way of creating engagement among people you don’t know.

My Take: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, YOU are the product on Facebook. Need anymore evidence?

facebook promoted posts

facebook promoted posts

3. Facebook Sells More Access to Members

[WSJ] Facebook is experimenting with new ways to leverage its greatest asset—personal data on about 900 million people—reigniting concerns about privacy. The strategy: selling access to its users.

My Take: Wait. I already did the thing about “you being the product” right? As long as Facebook doesn’t sell personal information and as long as Facebook provides relative Ads and doesn’t spam users (any more than they are spammed today).  Users won’t bat an eye.  People talk about leaving Facebook, but it never happens.

Facebook is selling access to you

Facebook is selling access to you

4. Introducing Endorsements: Give Kudos with Just One Click

[LinkedInBlog] LinkedIn is starting to add new features and providing updated designs.  In the past week LinkedIn rolled out the ability to endorse the skills of members in your network.  They also rolled out a new design for Company Pages that looks remarkably like Facebook’s cover profile feature.

My Take: Regarding endorsements, it feels very “Klouty” to me.  Actually it’s better than klout because you can easily tie their skills to their work experience. 

5. Showrooming Is a Mixed Bag for Stores

[eMarketer] Is all the hand-wringing by retailers over the perceived threat of showrooming warranted? The answer, according to an August 2012 survey of adult mobile phone users in the US commissioned by mobile marketing company Vibes and conducted by research company Research Now, is yes and no.

My Take: Because I’m a mobile shopper the “show rooming” story continues to fascinate me.  What we can learn from this story is that different customers will use mobile connectivity differently. Personally, I’ve noticed that I don’t get reception once I step into Target.  My conspiracy-theorist self is convinced Target is ensuring 3G signals can’t get in their stores.

BONUS TRACK: Twitter ‘Surveys’ Announced Alongside New Nielsen Partnership

[Hubspot] Twitter is partnering with Neilsen to add surveys to twitter.

My Take: I like it.  So many features added to social networks are copy cats from other social networks. And while polls and surveys aren’t new, it’s never been integrated into social marketing like this before.  Twitter Marketers now have an option other than a promoted tweet or hashtag – and this has engagement.  It’s simple, easy and effective.

twitter survey

twitter survey

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5 Marketing Technology stories you might have missed 9-29-12

Marketing Technology Stories you might have missed

MT5 Edition: #55 We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our family trip to DC. A nice side benefit to home-schooling is you can plan vacations for when everyone else is in school. We enjoyed visiting all the sites without having to stand in any lines.  But, I still had time to curate my top 5 stories for the week…

Stories This Week: Ideation vs. Execution, Marketing needs a new metric, Facebook teams up with Dropbox, email marketing strategies and ePublishing.

1. The Truth About Being “Done” Versus Being “Perfect”

[FastCompany] “Done is better than perfect” is not about coming up with ideas; it’s about believing in them. And having an attitude that compels you to run with the idea before it’s too late.

My Take: This article uses examples like Instagram to express the notion that execution is as important, if not more important, than ideation.  Anyone can have an idea, but having the courage to fully commit to bringing the idea to life is the hard part.

2. Twitter mulls a replacement for follower counts

[VentureBeat] “The dream metric is how many people saw your tweet.”

My Take: Twitter is not alone in trying to develop a better metric for measuring eyeballs.  Marketers are interested in developing “Viewable Impressions.”

3. Dropbox teams up with Facebook to let folks share stuff within Groups

[Engadget]

Dropbox and Facebook integration

Dropbox and Facebook integration

My Take: If you managed a Facebook group undoubtably you’ve wished you could share a document with no  easy way to do so. Kudos for Facebook for partnering with an existing solution rather than trying to develop yet another file sharing solution.

4. Email Marketing: 6 tactics on combining content and email strategies

[MarketingSherpa] This article offers six tactics from Chris Baggott, Chairman, Compendium, and co-founder, ExactTarget. Read on for tips on content marketing and how it intersects with email, including mining customers for content, why the blog should be the content “hub,” repurposing content, and even how to mine outgoing email from Sales and customer service reps for effective, and reusable, content.

My Take: I love the idea of mining outgoing email for customer tips and curating those into blog posts.

5. Epublishing Offers Brighter Future for Magazines and Newspapers

[eMarketer] Rising adoption of tablets, smartphones and ereaders point to a favorable business climate for publishers of digital newspapers and magazines, as well as for other stakeholders in the publishing industry.

My Take: I find the digital magazine experience lacking as compared to the analog print version.  Sure there are nice digital features like: video, updated information, communities, etc., but none of the promises deliver enough value to best the readability of a paper magazine.  Still there’s plenty of room for innovation in this market and much of that will be driven by the rise of tablet devices.

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5 Marketing Technology stories you might have missed 9-22-12

Marketing Technology Stories you might have missed

MT5 Edition: #54

Stories This Week: Social Media proves its value, LTE coverage, Facebook makes free cost $5, Marketing Technology supergraphic, “the next big thing”

1. Social Media Proves Value, Gets Budgets

[eMarketer] Despite difficulty in proving ROI, 52% of US B2C marketers and 41% of US B2B marketers planned to increase their social marketing budgets in 2013

My Take: Depending on your company, social media may be easy/hard to quantify.  However, I haven’t met anyone who qualitatively isn’t finding value in social marketing.

Also, I’m starting to separate social a bit:

  1. Social Media – including branding, outreach, listening & engaging with influencers, PR
  2. Social Networking – empowering employees and sales, events, etc.
They have different success measures don’t they.

2. Where You Can Actually Get 4G LTE With the iPhone 5

[Gizmodo] LTE speeds are awesome, unless you can’t use them.  Click through to find AT&T, Verizon and Sprint LTE coverage maps.

LTE Verizon Coverage

LTE Verizon Coverage

3. Facebook to charge for promotional offers

[ABC-CBN News] Facebook Inc said it will start charging businesses to run promotional offers on its social network, turning a free service into a potential revenue generator as investors and analysts demand new sources of growth from the recently listed company.

My Take: Oh this is good.  FB revenue and stock prices are lagging and Facebook is going to charge for previously free services?!? Marketing executives, already not happy with their return on facebook marketing dollars are not happy with this decision.

4. Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2012)

[ChiefMarTec] Scott Brinker updated his Marketing Technology Landscape graph. I’m amazed by how much effort must have gone into researching and classifying these companies/products.

Marketing Technology Landscape 2012

Marketing Technology Landscape 2012

5.Don Dodge: Why Indoor Location Is The Next Big

[TechCrunch] The video in this article starts with some interesting comparisons between Google and Microsoft and then moves to “the next big thing.”

My Take: I agree. If you’ve ever shopped a big box store (Target, Home Depot, Ikea) you realize how much the customer experience could be improved by connecting people with the stuff they want to buy.

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5 Marketing Technology stories you might have missed 9-15-12

Marketing Technology Stories you might have missed

Hey everybody.  My side project site lives(!) (kidtun.es), but it doesn’t do much yet.  Hoping to model  the iTunes interaction over the next few weeks and code that out.  You can create an account, but there’s not much else to do after that – for now. Once I get it to Alpha I’ll put a new skin on it.

MT5 Edition: #53

Stories This Week: Feedburner is dying, go to school with Google, create your own whiteboard animations, iPhone 5 review, K.I.S.S

1. Feedburner is dying. Here are your alternatives…

[knolzone] The Feedburner forum is dead. The Feedburner Twitter account is dead. The Feedburner blog is dead. What little support documentation Feedburner had isn’t being updated. Some bloggers claim that their RSS feeds are not updating at all anymore.

My Take: If you’re using Feedburner for RSS and/or email feeds – WAKE UP! Consider your alternatives and decide if you want to jump to another platform or wait it out.

2. Google Launches Free Tool To Let You Run Your Own Online Courses

[edudemic] Google’s new Course Builder software comes on the heels of a massively popular online Google class ‘Power Searching With Google‘.

My Take: This seems like a unique content generating tool for Marketers. What do you think?

3. Whiteboard Animation Sales Videos That Grab Attention

[FillTheFunnel] Sales videos that grab the attention of the recipient are valued treasures when you come across one. Creating one of these masterpieces is always a challenge and innovation and experimentation is going on all the time to find the next big thing.

My Take: Another unique content creation utility!

4. iPhone5: How Does It Stack Up?

[FastCompany] FC breaks down the screen, camera, WiFi-4G and chassis.

My Take: Is the iPhone5 revolutionary or evolutionary? Okay, it’s evolutionary.  But if it seems like it’s the best at doing everything, except maybe Maps which Android still has a lead on.

5. The Rise of Simplicity

If you’ve missed the trend, many apps and web services are focusing on doing one thing well.

Here are some examples:

  • Lift – Track your goals against reading more, drinking water, taking vitamins, or many other items
  • Timehop – sends you an email telling you what you did one year ago
  • Sunrise – sends you an email each day reminding what you have going on for that day
My Take: I’m fascinated by the focus on simplicity. One one hand, who wants a million apps that do a million different things? On the other, the more integrated apps become the more niche they are.  It seems developers are finding greater success (market, funding, adoption) in focusing on simplicity.  
Start small. Do one thing exceptionally well and build/learn from those successes.

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5 Marketing Technology stories you might have missed 9-8-12

Marketing Technology Stories you might have missed

I spent the week holed up at home this week honing my programming skills.  Some ups: getting a working user model, a functioning log in, and some downs: controller issues, db corruption and javascript errors. Nonetheless, I enjoyed focusing on building this website all week.  Now, on with the show.

MT5 Edition: #52

Stories This Week: Smartphone wallets, new gadgets on the way, top email list building tactics, Twitter sets date for lock down, 5 new marketing trends.

1. When Will Your Smartphone Really Replace Your Wallet?

[Wired] Near Field Communications. The iPhone 5 and Passbook. Google Wallet. Square. PayPal. Every day brings news of new developments in mobile payments and mobile-pass technology. So when can we finally get rid of our wallets?

My Take: Hope you’re not in a rush – 10 years until the systems are integrated and reliable.  And it will take some people longer to trust this new technology. Hang on to your credit cards a bit longer.

2. September Will Bring a Full Roster of New Gadgets

[Bloomberg] It’s the most wonderful time of the year, at least for gadget hounds. September is packed with events where consumer-electronics giants plan to unveil new, widely anticipated products.

My Take: Amazon is shipping new Kindles. Along with new phones from HTC, Motorola and of course – Apple. Great new mobile devices on the way!

Capture subscribers with top list building tactics

Capture subscribers with top list building tactics

3. Capture email subscribers with top list building tactics

[MarketingSherpa] B2B Marketers rely on email marketing as a critical lead generation tool.  This survey lists the most effective ways to gather email addresses.

My Take: Bottom line – here are the top five email gathering tactics: 

  1. Registration during purchase
  2. Online events
  3. Website registration
  4. Paid search
  5. Offline events

4. Twitter’s more restrictive API has arrived

[VentureBeat] Twitter just announced anticipated changes to its API, intended to “deliver a consistent Twitter experience.” Or to tighten Twitter’s grip even more on how Twitter users’ tweets are used off the social networking site … and prep for the continued growth of Twitter monetization.

My Take: I’ve covered this topic before so I’ll just mention the changes take effect in 6 months.

5. Meet the Five Big Tech Trends Changing Marketing

[AdAge] Media Kitchen put together 5 Marketing Tech Trends click here to see the presentation on Slideshare.

 

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