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Social Media Positives: Conversion is Achieved with a Personal Touch

04/03/2013 by

Marketing strategies are always evolving, and chances are, even the best methods today will be outdated within five years. However, that doesn’t mean that your business should ignore them. You need to be up-to-date with the best ways to reach your customer base, and right now, social media marketing is one of the methods at the top of the list. Familiarize yourself with the rules of the road when it comes to marketing on social media, both in terms of what to avoid and how to reach people and convert them into customers.

Remember you’re reaching individuals: Even if the person you’re marketing to is representing a company, you’re still interacting with an individual. Therefore, your marketing needs to have that personal appeal that will engage people. After all, your content is going to be lumped in with everything people are seeing from their friends, too. A casual voice, lighthearted tone and a little bit of personality will go a long way in connecting with your audience. Before posting anything, ask yourself whether it’s something you would be interested in looking at during your leisure time. If it’s not, rethink your content and adjust it to make it more interesting and relevant for the people you’re trying to reach.

Be trendy, but don’t break copyright: Sharing viral content on social media is all the rage, but you have to do so in a way that doesn’t infringe on the rights of others. For example, many companies ran into trouble when they tried to post Harlem Shake videos because of copyright issues with the song. The safe method is to reference trends, while still keeping all of your actual content original. That way you’ll attract the attention of your customers without running into legal issues.

Keep the conversation going: Social media marketing isn’t your traditional outbound marketing. Rather, it’s a continual conversation with the people who interact with your company or brand. People are going to be posting questions or comments directed at you, or replying to questions or comments you make. Therefore, you need to be checking these and engaging with the people who have made the effort to engage with you. This often comes easily when people have positive reactions or honest questions about your products, but it can be more difficult with customer complaints. Remain polite and address everything, even the negative items.

Consider what people are interested in: People who are connected with you on social media don’t just want to hear about your brand and products all the time. Instead, they’re interested in information, fun facts, and news related to your type of product and services. Therefore, do lots of linking to interesting blog posts, news stories, and other content that will add value to those you reach. Go light on the promotional links, and tread carefully if you’re linking to anything that could be considered misleading.

Your business marketing strategy needs to include social media involvement, but it’s not going to be effective in converting customers unless you’re using the right tactics. Take a look at how companies similar to yours run their social media accounts and the results they’re getting in terms of customer engagement. Engagement often translates into sales, so if people are interacting with them, they’re doing something right. Of course, you don’t want to just copy your competitors, but to put your company’s unique voice and style into your social media marketing messages.

 

Filed Under: Strategy & Business Tagged With: , , , , ,

Meeting Your Customers through Engagement

11/15/2012 by

There’s a common suggestion many rock climbers have for those who want to start climbing: “Three on, one off.” This means you should have three extremities—two hands and a foot, or two feet and a hand—touching the rock or wall at all times, ensuring multiple points of support. This is also a great way to think about cross-channel marketing. The more places you connect with customers, the more support you have. Even if a customer doesn’t connect with your business in one venue, they’ll hopefully connect with two or three others. This article will explain and highlight some tactics for cross-channel marketing, specifically in social media.

The pull method of marketing

Pull method marketing works when a product or service becomes so well-branded and valued that customers seek out the company’s stores and other places where their product is stocked. Rather than pushing the product at customers, marketers pull customers to the product through branding. How does a company brand their product or service? Cross-channel marketing to establish branding works like this: when customers hear about a product from a number of venues—like social media, email and television, as well as newspapers, storefronts and word of mouth—they then seek out and purchase the product or service due to the frequency and effective branding done by the company.

How should cross channel marketing work?

Pull method marketing is a simple theory, but a more complicated reality, as is cross-channel marketing. Cross-channel marketing creates a streamlined, repeated message that appears consistently in a variety of different venues, both physical and digital. But customers respond differently to emails than they would to ads on Facebook. Likewise, their presence and mentality on YouTube will be different from their mindset when sorting through the mail. Your marketing should be tailored to the particular medium—while repeating a streamlined message—so you connect with customers on a variety of levels. Cross-channeling focuses on meeting customers at each stop in a way that is applicable to the medium, re-establishing and repeating the company’s message.

What role should social media play?

Let’s look at an example when marketing on social media doesn’t work. The advertisements that appear on the sidebars of a website like Facebook or YouTube are often targeted to users based on their interests and search histories. While this is by no means a bad way to connect with new customers, it’s only doing half of the work that a streamlined, cross-channel campaign could accomplish. A more effective tactic would be to streamline communication with a customer through several venues, such as sending an email within a month of a similar-messaged ad that appears on Facebook and a video on YouTube. It’s important in a case like this to understand your customer and how they are likely to respond in a social media venue. Integrate data from multiple sources to better equip your cross-channel marketing strategy.

The fact is, customers won’t see every channel you employ for marketing. While it’s increasingly common for users to establish multiple presences online—Facebook, Twitter, blog, YouTube—they won’t be everywhere at once. What’s important is the availability and prominence of your message at each location so your message is consistent and streamlined when customers frequent a website or receive mail. This is a great way to achieve successful branding and your social media communication with customers will only grow from that point on.

Filed Under: Strategy & Business Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Three Examples of How to Succeed in Social Media Marketing

11/08/2012 by

Social media has made tremendous gains in recent years with both individuals and corporate users. While people use the popular sites as a means to stay in touch with friends and share important life events, companies have used Facebook and Twitter as a means to connect with their customers and fans.

Some companies use their social media as a way to deal with customer feedback while others use the unique channels as a way to market their products and services. Regardless of how they interface with customers online, the most successful companies have found the proper balance between the “what” (product) and the “why” (story and branding) of their marketing campaigns.

Oreo

We’re all familiar with the slogan that Oreo is “milk’s favorite cookie.” The iconic snack’s advertising has always had fun with the simplicity of the treat while incorporating an absurd sense of humor in its celebrity endorsements, such as the DoubleStuf Racing League. This sense of humor extends to their Twitter feed, which frequently retweets fans, drives discussion as to how their cookies are best eaten and shares contests and other opportunities for fans to compete for prizes. The strong unity of their central theme keeps the company’s voice from differing on its different media channels and keeps fans involved.

Try to develop a strong narrative voice for your company and incorporate it into all of your media efforts.  Keeping the tone fun and self-aware can encourage more interaction and personal relationships with fans.

BodyForm                                       

When a fan posted a mocking post on Bodyform’s Facebook page pointing out the misleading advertisements of feminine hygiene products, the company was given a golden opportunity: to better brand its company by being transparent on social media. In the popular viral video response, an actress portraying the company’s CEO breaks down the stereotypes of feminine hygiene commercials, all while breaking preconceived notions of accepted female behavior. The company has enjoyed more than 2.8 million views of its video and increased awareness and appreciation of its brand as a result.

Social media is full of jokesters and trolls. Sometimes when one serves up such a golden opportunity to better your brand, you must take it. Being honest with yourself and your public helps to drive brand transparency and build trust with consumers.

Southwest Airlines

Making travel plans in an increasingly expensive economy has become difficult as many different travels sites are available. How can you be sure you’re getting the best deal? Southwest Airlines, an affordable travel provider, has used its social media to share deals and perks for travelers, as well as direct complaints to a customer service page. While the methodology is simple, the classic approach to connecting with consumers puts the focus upon its customers and how to better serve them through special deals and offers.

Remember that your focus is on your customer. Put plain details in place to help direct them to proper channels to solve their issues and share offers to add value to their time on your site. Without the consumers that make up social media, you would have no business to run. Don’t forget that – most of the social media failures are big box companies focused more upon marketing than interfacing.

Social media represent a special opportunity for companies to interface with their consumers. Whether you tie your company’s voice, transparency or service to social media, be sure that the approach unifies your company and meets customers’ needs.

Filed Under: Contributors, Social Media, Strategy & Business Tagged With: , , , ,

Social Media Conferences: Coming Together to Enhance Communication

07/26/2012 by

Social media is all about communication across a distance. This Internet-aided communication makes it easy for individuals to reach out, keep up on current events and acquire insight into the thoughts and ideas of others. While communication—thanks at least in part to social media—no longer requires coming together physically, many real-world conferences specifically pertaining to this topic are popping up around the country.

Such conferences—many of which are located in Chicago—allow social media users to come together face to face, perhaps enhancing the connections they’ve cultivated online and offering an opportunity for those who value social media to learn more about it and provide input on how it will continue to evolve into the future.

Face-to-Face Interaction

While some contend that the point of social media is to eliminate the need for face-to-face communication, others would argue that social media is in fact only another layer in the modern, multi-faceted system of interaction of which we are all a part. These advocates of communication across multiple channels would argue that connecting via social media alone isn’t sufficient to develop complex relationships and solve problems or reach a consensus for change. By coming together at physical locations, these lovers of—or capitalizers on—social media can add complexity to their interactions, enhance their understanding of the opportunities that social media affords and have a more lasting impact on the development of these channels.

What’s There to Learn

Using social media is generally intuitive, as designers of these online communication platforms aim to make it easy for users to teach themselves to use these tools. Knowing how to take advantages of all the opportunities that social media affords isn’t as simple, however. Through conferences like the Saint Xavier University Conference in Chicago, social media users can receive training in how to effectively utilize all the tools of social media as a communication and advertisement platform.

Such information could prove particularly useful to business leaders trying to use social media as a way to promote their products or services. Any time individuals of like interests converge in one place, the opportunity for networking also presents itself. At the SXU conference, as with other social media conferences, those with social media skills can network with those looking to use social media more effectively, exchanging ideas and potentially trading services.

Location, Location, Location

The Midwest provides an ideal location for conferences on social media; the centralized location makes it convenient for the maximum number of attendees. Unlike a conference on one of the coasts, which would be difficult for those from the opposite side of the country to attend, this Midwest locale isn’t as out-of-the-way for attendees.

As an additional bonus, Chicago offers much for visitors to see, ensuring that, even if the conference doesn’t meet their expectations, they aren’t sorely disappointed by their trip. From the Navy Pierto the Chicago Cultural center, there’s som

Social Media Conference at Harvard

ething to suit anyone’s fancy in this metropolis. With numerous well-appointed Chicago hotels, visitors will spend their time in the city in comfort and relaxation.

Since its eruption on the communication scene, social media has only continued to grow as a Web presence. Because of the pervasiveness of this communication medium, individuals in business—or just those with a refined desire to use and understand this sometimes-complex communication form—are remiss not to take advantage of the learning opportunities, including social media conferences, available to them.

 

Filed Under: Social Media, Strategy & Business Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Joining the Conversation: How To Make Your Small Business Internet Famous

07/19/2012 by

Social media provides small business owners with a novel and effective way to market their business directly to a customer or client base. The advent of the Internet and widespread social media has eliminated the obstacles that once stood between a brand and the consumer. Without a middleman, brands can directly interface with their consumers through all the usual social media haunts. Social media is important enough to the business cycle that marketing companies have cropped up to aid brands in their endeavors to capture the hearts and the minds of their consumers directly. You need to learn how to take advantage of social networking to get the word out about your small business, and to interact with customers for great virtual word of mouth recommendations. However, you also need to accomplish this without coming off as being pushy, sales orientated or a complete tool.

How to Play the Social Media Field

The first thing you’ll need to do is to get a feel for the specific social network you’re targeting. Each social media site has its own focus, flavor and specific features that you need to be aware of so you come off as savvy. Look at your competitors’ profiles on the same site to see how they approach things, and how their customers respond to them.

Keep things professional, but don’t be too uptight. Most social networks provide you with an informal and personal platform to connect with your target demographic. If you approach them with the personalities behind your small business, they’re going to be able to relate to you far more than a faceless big box company. Don’t be afraid to be real and honest with them throughout the conversations. Just always be aware that you do still represent your company. Always be aware of the impression that you’re putting out.

Provide incentives to get your customers to share your profile. Maybe you can run a contest or giveaway that depends on sharing a post or picture. You can also provide discount coupons or access to exclusive sales by favoriting or friending a social media profile.

Let them look behind the curtain. People are always curious as to how the product creation process is conducted, how ideas are generated and other information about things you might consider mundane since they’re part of your day-to-day business. Show your customers what’s going on behind the scenes and let them feel like they have a better understanding of exactly how your business works.

Go beyond your own profiles. Not everyone that’s talking about you is doing it on your social media profiles. If the network provides tools to find out where you are mentioned, use them to your advantage. Try and respond outside of your own profile in order to show your customers that you’re involved and care about the impression that your company makes. Even if you find bad experiences, do what you can to help the person out. You just might end up with a great deal of word of mouth recommendations or even viral traffic for your troubles.

Everyone is playing the social media game and you can’t expect to stand out right off the bat, especially if you’re getting started now (good luck!). As long as you are honest and professional with your presence, you can always cultivate your user base and build new fans out of skeptics. Don’t give up!

 

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Success of Indie Developers

05/03/2012 by

The arcade and console gaming industry was established and spurred on by creativity and true genius in its early years. The late 70s and early 80s saw an explosion of games based on the abilities of individual developers or small talented teams skilled in graphics optimization and backed by conscientious investors. Everyone remembers and loves the likes of Brick Breaker, Pac Man and Donkey Kong. Unfortunately, the industry is in the grip of a decades-long cycle of repeats in concepts and name upgrades. Year after year the “top” gaming prospects are determined by the companies that win by having loudest voices and the brightest colors.

The beginning of the 21st century, however, has seen a rise in more of the buck-the-system styles of independent–or indie–developers. As a result variety is seeping back into the market and there seems to be more of a place for those looking to express creativity.

But why now, when everyone is being driven toward big money? A few possibilities beg for our acknowledgement. Mass platforms like Facebook have become convenient outlets for gamers. No more jostling for a quick demo in an elusive limelight. Developers can now play all the cards. This is the story of smaller squads run by guys like Jonathan Blow, creator of the Braid game. Another reason for the growth of indie game development is the influx of developers from the mainstream sector. This exodus, while not exactly pilfering the mainstream markets of its talent, gives indie game developers a tint of viability.

So, you’re an aspiring developer; and you have enough business sense to understand that skill with coding and stand-out creativity will not be enough to keep you afloat. We have a few tips that may be helpful to you.

Find a Niche

Knowing where you are and what you have offer will give you sure footing in the development game. The strength of indie game production is in niches. The best and brightest produce a game that helps them stand out. Most game devs who go indie are attracted to it because of unique concepts that aren’t available except in the developer’s chosen outlet.

Don’t Go for it Alone

Build a solid team around yourself. Although it could be rewarding to hock out an award winner all on your own, it’s not likely. The best indie games are produced by teams built of passionate experts in their field, and use already-established graphics optimization companies. You may not be the best at what you do and you may not be able to get the best sound developer or designer, but you can put together a solid and dedicated team.

Capital, Capital, and more Capital

Yes “capital” is a dirty word in the world of indie gaming, but you must come up with creative ways to fund your projects. You and your team have to eat. Keep your day job. Try and raise capital investors from interests groups that line up with your concept interests or avid gamers that you know.

Consider Seeking Out and Joining an Already Established Team or Start-Up

If you are confident in your skill level, you may be able to go the route of some of the professionals who got their start in the mainstream. Although you won’t have as much of an appeal there are probably more than a few budding teams that share you drive and determination but lack that necessary ingredient: a team member like you.

Above All, Stay Positive

As the indie industry grows so will the competition. But staying positive will allow you to continue to develop in your skill area, suffer setbacks and move forward until you see daylight. Don’t be discouraged at this, but you may have to go through a few teams and projects before anything chalks up to a worthy gaming experience on the other end. Keep the faith and go forward.

Filed Under: Blogging, Contributors Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

3 Tips for Political Campaigns on LinkedIn

04/19/2012 by

LinkedIn is a powerful social network for political campaigns. Like other social networks, candidates can get value from sharing and engaging with their network on LinkedIn, but where LinkedIn really shines is data analysis and mining.

From a bird’s eye view, there are more than 61 million users on LinkedIn in the United States all of voting age. The most popular age demographics are ages 35 to 54 (39.9%) and ages 25 to 34 (31.2%).

Candidate Fundraising

According to a Consumer Electronics Report, 49% of LinkedIn users have a household income over $100,000. That’s leaps and bounds over Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, you name it! Candidates can raise some serious campaign cash by connecting with and contacting these professionals with significant financial resources.

What’s more powerful than the average numbers, however, is your campaign’s ability to craft precise asks for each fundraising prospect using the intelligence that you can gather from a contact’s profile. Once you open an account and connect with all of the people that you already know by using your email address book and your social graph on other social networks, click on “Advanced” on the top right hand portion of the screen.

On this advanced search screen, you will be able to search through your first order connections and find other possible contributors. Some of the filters to get the best fundraising prospects on LinkedIn that you might consider are:

Location: To start, target the lowest hanging fruit. The people that live in the district that you will represent, are more likely to contribute than others in your network that live far away.

Industry: Depending upon the issues that you are talking about in the campaign, focus on educators, government employees, the financial services industry, or other verticals.

Groups: If you haven’t already joined groups on LinkedIn, be sure to join groups related to the industry in which you work, groups that would be impacted by your campaign, community or religious groups, and alumni associations. For example, connecting with old college buddies, crafting an appropriate fundraising ask based on their profile information, and asking for a contribution to the campaign is really effective if done right.

You just created a profitable and a detailed fundraising list in a few clicks of a mouse! Check out each profile, determine an ask, and if there isn’t a phone number, Google the contact’s current employer and call the general line.

Endorsements

In addition to using strategies similar to fundraising on LinkedIn, there are other tactics to get endorsements on the social network for professionals:

Companies: Click on “Companies” and follow the organizations that you are most interested in getting endorsements from. Use the information that you glean from following the company to effectively make your case to the organization that you deserve the endorsement and to better understand the resources the organization has. If, for example, you were endorsed by an organization who has a talented designer on staff, why not make the ask, albeit unorthodox, to use the designer’s talents to design an upcoming mail piece?

Keyword search: On the advanced search screen, try searching for specific keywords or keyword phrases to find individuals or organizations to reach out to. In conjunction with the keyword search, choose second order, or third if need be, to identify people other than the usual suspects for endorsements. It’s one thing to get an endorsement from your political party or known politicos, it’s quite another to get endorsements from business, civic, and religious leaders who, after connecting with you, are excited about your candidacy in its own right.

Political campaigns can use LinkedIn to get meaningful endorsements and leverage those endorsements in unique ways.

Hiring staff and interns

While there are many affluent professionals on LinkedIn, there is also a large pool of talent looking for work. In addition to going to the traditional political job boards and tapping known local talent, post your campaign job on LinkedIn too.

Don’t stop there; however, use the search functionality to proactively identify possible candidates and direct them to the position announcement on LinkedIn. More often than not, when a campaign is ready to hire someone they are ready to pull the trigger as close to now as is possible! LinkedIn is an excellent tool to help speed along the hiring process while increasing the quality of applicants.

LinkedIn is different

LinkedIn is too often overlooked because it’s so different than other social networks and requires a different approach than Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest because your campaign’s purpose and objectives for LinkedIn are so different than these other social networks. LinkedIn takes some time and effort because you will need a separate strategy to get the most out of the social network for professionals, but the reward is a steady flow of fundraising prospects, endorsements, and quality campaign staff.

This is a guest post from Ben Donahower, experienced campaign operative and LinkedIn power user, who blogs about campaign signs at Campaign Trail Yard Signs.

Filed Under: Contributors, Featured, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Relationship is Everything

04/19/2012 by

Social media did not start with the invention of Facebook and Twitter. In fact, social media was around prior to the invention of the Internet. The terms emotional connection, engagement and relationships are pillars of success, providing brand value. In order to be a major player in the world of social media, you must realize a strong social media campaign management strategy is not only smart business sense; it is a necessity to maintain your overall Internet relevance. The 5 percent growth of social media spending over the past year seems a very real endorsement.

The trick is to capitalize on your strategies and eventually create your own social media voice—something your customers will hear load and clear. Incorporating a strong social media campaign into your already successful business is not a task to be taken lightly. If you do, you are not true to your brand. So with that said, how do you accomplish an effective social media strategy?

Multiple-channel Integration

Businesses do not just use Facebook and Twitter to embrace social media and interact with your client base. In order to fully enhance a customer experience and promote your brand, companies need to utilize traditional marketing strategies such as mobile technologies and email communication. With multiple-channel integration, you have the ability to track customer trends in one easy format.

Relation-based integration

When you think of relation-based integration, thoughts of growth should cross your mind. Since businesses can’t predict the future of the customer-base, you need to incorporate a strategy that acts as a so-called “roadmap” for success. Learn and manage the communication of your customer. Listen to what they tell you. They’re the ones driving your overall profitability.

Customer-focused Marketing

How do you market your brand? If your business strategy is based upon profitability alone, you are going to undoubtedly fail. The key social media strategy needed is one that solely focuses on your customer. What are your customers likes and dislike? What is the demographic? Moreover, what is your target audience? Knowing and understanding your customer leads, not only to a happy customer, but also to a business that continues to grow.

Automated Services

Social media is a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week machine. When you leave for the day, your social media presence should not clock out. As an online brand, you must pay close attention to trends, habits and communication of your customer. Create a strategy that is not only focused on the needs of your customers, but also to the particular lifestyles they keep. An automated service, similar to cloud computing, allows you to leave the office setting and still promote the brand when you are not in the office.

Real-time Metrics

There isn’t a time throughout the day customers don’t have the ability to check on their favorite brands. If you’re the business in question, how do your check on the satisfaction level of your customer base? You have to rely on real-time metrics. This strategy allows companies to track results of customer/business communication to better serve the customer as well as increase brand value.

When the lights are turned off for the day, your business continues to run, similar to a well-oiled machine. An effective social media strategy involves Multiple-channel Integration, Relation-based Integration, Customer-focused Marketing, Automated Services and Real-time Metrics. Utilizing these pillars of success will ensure success. So at the end of the day, where does your success lie?

Filed Under: Blogging, Contributors, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Alternatives in the Cloud: Knowledge is Power

04/05/2012 by

All the cool kids at the water cooler seem to have one phrase on the tip of their tongue: the cloud. Everybody is talking about the cloud. However, thanks to various advances in cloud computing, not everyone is referring to the same thing when they reference the cloud.

Essentially, anytime someone mentions the cloud, they are referencing computing that exists as a service rather than as a product. Instead of a bulky disk that downloads a program onto their computer, cloud computing exists outside of their computer. The resources, software, or information that are provided as part of the cloud exist on a grid or network, which in most cases is the Internet. When companies use the cloud, they can expand their capacity and functions without having to add any extra infrastructure, hire any extra staff or purchase any software. For instance, if a company needs to engineer a large-scale project, they no longer have to waste weeks planning to buy new servers or other equipment. Instead, they can simply sign onto a cloud computing service that offers them this functionality without requiring them to spend piles of cash.

When many people think of cloud computing, they immediately think of the cloud services offered by Amazon or other big names in the industry; unfortunately, a relationship with any of these companies can be costly whereas a relationship with a smaller company may be just as effective or even more effective for less money.

Although most people are referencing the same set of advantages and the same general ideas when they refer to the cloud, there are several different forms of this emerging technology.

Six Types of Cloud Computing

  1. Web-based clouds. With the right web based service, business owners can avoid using expensive applications that may require a lot of space on their computers. Instead, they can perform the same functions from a web-based program. For example, they can use an API for something as ubiquitous as Google Maps, or they can use a mash-up of various programs so that they can perform routine tasks like payroll or payment processing easily and efficiently.
  2. SaaS (Software as a Service). This allows multiple users to access the same web based software from their own browsers.
  3. PaaS (Platform as a Service). This layer of cloud computing allows businesses to run a stack of tailored applications on the cloud’s infrastructure without purchasing the software or servers that would have been necessary to run these applications a few years ago.
  4. Utility cloud services. Instead of employing a host of geeks to add memory here and there, businesses can now safely and easily store heaps of data on the cloud using the cloud’s utility services.
  5. Managed services. Businesses have been using this version of cloud computing since years before the phrase was ever used commonly. In this version, the cloud provider rather than the business employees uses the application. Managed services are commonly used for things like anti-spam services that many business owners find useful to outsource.
  6. Service commerce. A combination of SaaS and Managed Services, service commerce cloud computing gives the end-user access to a number of services from a single application. These applications act like personal assistants, and they can do almost anything for a company from helping them to track their expenses to helping them to organize their payroll.

These six iterations of cloud computing are just fractions of what cloud computing is capable of. As the technology continues to emerge, new ideas will come into play, and the types of cloud services that providers can offer will continue to expand and evolve.

With so many cloud-computing options, more and more business owners are looking to the cloud for their particular needs, and they have many different providers that they can opt to work with. There are companies like Amazon that have massive, sprawling cloud servers for enterprise businesses. For companies and individuals looking for an Amazon alternative, there are many smaller cloud service providers that offer the same services for lower rates.

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Contributors, Strategy & Business, Success, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Future of Mobile Social Media

03/22/2012 by

When Apple released the iPhone and effectively changed the entire mobile communications game forever, the price of entry was so high that only super savvy tech fans and the 1 percent could really partake. Now, the landscape looks much different. Increasing numbers of viable competing devices and falling data prices have opened the market to a larger segment of society. Since the debut of the modern smartphone, they have grown into a piece of society in a real way. When a band takes the stage at a show, how many phones do you see come out? Does anyone even look at another person on the train anymore, or are they glued to their 5 inch screens? Smartphones (and tablets) have become an extension of the body, and one of that function’s most important assets is its ability to connect with social media.

Most smartphones are filled with a stable of social media applications. As the hardware that runs those applications change and evolve, so too must those applications. The release of the iPad 3 this past weekend gives a little indication of what’s next for mobile: high definition and faster speeds. Compared to other advancements, though, that’s not very exciting. What we will see in terms of information sharing, cloud storage and mobile interaction in the next few years – all with regard to social media on mobile devices – is set to blow some socks off.

The Future of Social Media

Researchers at Stanford University envision a world where users can share data between two smartphones, as well as between a smartphone and a computer, with a single action.  Still confused?  Watch this video: Inventing an open-source mobile social media future at Stanford .

From the Stanford website:

They have formed MobiSocial to ask the most fundamental questions about this rapidly burgeoning field, questions that seem obvious now that mobile and social media are firmly entrenched, but which weren’t so obvious as the technologies were entrenching themselves: Can social be done better? Can it be even more social and more fun? Can it be more open? Can it be more secure? And, if so, how?

The idea is to find a way to synthesize the best parts of mobile and social, then streamline them so that switching between apps and connecting with multifarious networks is seamless, whereas now it’s all just collected in a device.

Another example of this new technology is Sparsh, which allows social media users to transfer data from one medium, such as a smartphone, to another medium using only their touch. That means that each person effectively becomes an organic vessel for information.

These new software systems will have to be powered by robust mobile application development platforms. Mobile application development platforms, such as Brew, will also shape the future of social media. Development platforms continue to incorporate new options for creators of mobile applications, which translates into more sophisticated social media apps in the future.

The Issue of Privacy

Social media claimed its coveted position in popular culture so quickly that many social media platforms were unable to keep up. Along with the widespread use of social media platforms came a lack of privacy and increased vulnerability to identity theft and other social crimes. As mobile social media applications move into the future, it’s likely that they will address these concerns as effectively as possible. For example, since new mobile social media applications will allow users to quickly transfer data from one medium to another, the applications handling the transfer will use encryption to prevent third parties from intercepting the data.

Consolidation

One of the common aims of future applications will be consolidation. There are already apps available that consolidate social media profiles into one location, but it is likely that these apps will become more sophisticated in the future. In addition, new mobile apps will consolidate personal data into an “individual cloud” that a person can use to make purchases, share video and photos with other individuals, and swap valuable information. However, in response to privacy concerns, these new apps will protect your data using more sophisticated security measures.

 

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