Holistic Technology Enabled Internet Marketing Solutions

Photo credit: Terry Wha

The whole reason I started these Weekly Recaps is because I was having many conversations with people who were so overwhelmed with how fast this whole ‘social media’ thing was moving. Keeping up is hard in our busy lives.

As I collected the items I wanted to highlight this week I noticed we aren’t the only ones who are trying to keep up – the tools and businesses we feature each week are still working all of this out too. There were some bad decisions, some failed attempts and just some things that were not working and they had to be cut loose. So when you feel overwhelmed, remember we are all (including the most savvy) still trying to figure out all these tools, what they can do and how we should use them.

So here are the items I am highlighting in this week’s Weekly Recap

Mobile phones used more for internet than games – PewInternet released some facts about mobile phone usage. With more options for smartphones, use of non-voice data applications on cell phones has increased. Taking pictures tops the charts as the activity most users said they are likely to do with their phones. A third of the respondents said they use their smartphones to access the internet, that is a lot! We as businesses need to make sure when people are looking for information about us on their mobile phones that they can find us and read our content. Mobile phone internet access is only going to increase, so we make sure our websites, shopping carts and content are prepared. If you want to know more you can read 3 Quick Things to Make Sure Your Website is Ready for Mobile Browsers or watch What Your Business Needs to Know About Mobile Marketing.

How Fast Company got it wrong – This week Fast Company launched The Influence Project, an alleged method to find the most influential people on the internet and the winner would be featured in the November print issue of the magazine. Instead, it turned into a weird pyramid scheme and link bait. To participate in the project you had to create a profile and upload your picture, then Fast Company gave you a unique URL to use however you wanted. As people clicked on your unique URL you got more points and your image got larger on the collage of other internet ‘influencers’.

Users who clicked on the links felt duped and those who registered felt they were set up in some sort of weak scam from Fast Company. The backlash from the experiment definitely overshadowed any participation. Some were irate while others explained why they were irked more eloquently. The biggest argument against the project is that this link baiting was more of an ego boost to those that were fine duping their online networks versus providing any actual value. The social media landscape is a slippery one. Many businesses are trying to figure out how to make it work for their business, but it appears Fast Company got this promo wrong.

Twitter comes up with another plan to try to make some money – Twitter has recently rolled out a few ways the popular microblog, with little to no revenue stream, can make a little extra cash. This week they announced @earlybird, a Twitter handle that you can follow to get the first alerts on specials from popular brands; businesses pay to have their specials added to the @earlybird tweets.

Foursquare is adding more features and talking about hardware for brick and mortar stores – Foursquare, the popular location based app, is refining their game as they recognize what users want and need from the service. In a blog post from them this week, Foursquare mentions allowing businesses to enter employees so they can still participate in the game but won’t qualify for mayorships or loyalty rewards, rotating ‘Specials Nearby’ alerts so you don’t see the same one all the time and expanding the reach of specials. They also mentioned making it easier on merchants to redeem offers. Sounds like Foursquare is going to pay a close attention to scanning devices in the future to see how they can incorporate them with their rewards programs. If you want to know more about Foursquare, TechCrunch had a nice piece about the company including some really interesting data.

Facebook got it wrong and is pulling the plug on the online gifts – The Facebook Gift Shop is closing August 1st. Facebook opened the gift shop hoping to be a major player in the online gifts industry but the offer missed the mark. Facebook gifts were little images that you could buy (for usually $1) to virtually give to a friend and they could keep it on their profile. I don’t think many will miss this feature but I always like when a company recognizes something isn’t working and isn’t afraid to let it go. Now they can focus on other products.

Links I liked this week:

• 5 YouTube Channels for Small Biz Advice
• Is Social Media Failing to Produce Business Leads?
• 10 Easy Steps to Social Marketing – and it’s all free!
• Listen, Social Media Expert! Tweeting is Easy, Marketing is Hard
• Ten Things You Need to Know About Design

Not too much to report this week. In my world, all my Twitter streams, blog rolls and alerts were about the iPhone hoopla. Hopefully the dust will settle next week and I will have more to share with you – but for now, here you go:

iPhone mania and complaints – So not only did iPhone 4 come out this week but the previous iPhones were treated to an operating system upgrade. Unfortunately for both announcements, the public was generally unhappy with both. The new iPhone seems to have issues with the new screen, certain spots turn yellow and if you ‘hold it wrong’ the reception drops out on you. With this new iPhone, Apple made a smarty pants move and made the metal around the phone part of the antenna but when you use the phone your hand can actually block the reception.

If you want a full run through of the new iOS Mashable has a quick 16 minute video showing you the new changes.

If you want to see the iPhone 4 get blended to itty bitty pieces check out what those crazy guys at Will It Blend did with their new iPhone.

LinkedIn tries to make conversations better – LinkedIn realized that their Groups were not living up to their potential so they are trying out some new things. LinkedIn wants their group discussions to be more like the conversations we have at events and conferences, less stiff. They are revamping how you add news and discussions to groups to try to get more raw and less stiff. You also have more options in the Groups and can more easily see conversations you have participated in. For a tour of the new groups check out the video below.

Smart links I liked this week

• How to Use Social Media for Lead Generation
• 5 Steps for Selling to B2B Customer 2.0
• 11 Lessons For Social Media’s Future

As the dust settles from Internet Week last week, most of these updates are reactions and more information about all the big announcements last week. I am a visual/experience learner, like many of you; I am not going to know how new tools and updates are going to really affect my work day until I get my paws on them and see what they can do.

So here is this week’s list of what has been happening in the web world this week:

iPhone 4 is causing a stir – Everyone seems to be talking about the new iPhone and the pre-order sales are already maxed out and won’t be shipped until July! Possibly the winner of the first iPhone is this crazy guy Justin who is camping out in front of a Dallas store a week early to get his paws on the new phone.

Mark Zuckerberg might want to hand his Facebook account over to an intern – Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, switched from a Blackberry to an iPhone and quickly went to his Facebook wall to complain about his new toy. His status said “This week I got an iPhone. This weekend I got four chargers so I can keep it charged everywhere I go and a land line so I can actually make phone calls”. The post has since been removed. I bet he got a talking to about thinking before he posts things to social networking sites.

Office 2010 is ready and Google Docs improves – As we discussed last week, Microsoft Office 2010 is targeting lost opportunities that Google Docs has taken from them. The new version includes web apps allowing for online document collaboration and online storage. The price points are now official and the three versions can be purchased at $149.99, $279.99, or $499.99. Lots of improvements from 2007 but is it too late? Have people gotten used to their current online tools? As Microsoft Office joins the game of online collaboration, Google Docs launched new updated features to their product. Below is a video of the recent changes to Google Docs.

Twitter hops on the location-based train – In the location-based app world, Twitter has announced how they are joining the game with Twitter Places. With Twitter Places you can add your location to your Tweets. Twitter Places is going to integrate with Foursquare and Gowalla. I can see this being especially useful for conferences and events to get a better idea about who is in the same location as you when they send out Tweets.

Twitter still dealing with down services and bugs – Twitter had a big week of more troubles.  Aside from losing Tweets, they also tried to explain why the service has been down off and on for about a week. Pretty much Twitter’s biggest problem is that they are just too popular.

Starbucks has WiFi! – Starbucks is FINALLY offering free WiFi. That is all I have nothing else to say about it except, it is about time!

WordPress 3.0 is available – WordPress 3.0 is now available with lots of new features. I am excited to try them out and see how I can use the new tools. The new upgrade is called Theloniuos and the default theme Cubit is being retired (finally! You know the one with the blue header?).

Videos and Links I want to share – I am not sure if I will do this every week (this recap thing is a bit of a work in progress) but there were a few really useful posts I read this week that I wanted to share.

• Chris Brogan’s 50 Power Twitter Tips
• Recent B2B Marketing and Social Media Posts from socialmediab2b.com
• 5 Objectives for Social Media Measurement from Brass Tack Thinking

Lastly, I wanted to share a video full of stats about social media for B2Bs (below).

New York City celebrated “Internet Week” this week but just because people weren’t in the Big Apple didn’t mean they were not participating! As many of us internet nerds hoped, the week of tech events led to some new launches and announcements. As opposed to last week’s recap (which was more about making the most with things you have), this week was all about new, new, new. As with most new things it will take awhile to figure out the long term implications of these new advances. I for one am excited about some new opportunities coming my way, opportunities to better use that data we already have and new tools for how we interact with each other.

iPhone 4 announced – This week, as we expected, was the announcement of the next iPhone. The iPhone 4 will be available in the US on June 24th. Steve jobs announced the release at WWDC, the company’s annual conference for application developers. The new phone is a bit thinner, has more pixels, battery life is supposed to be better, better camera with zoom and flash, HD video recording and iMovie to edit video and you can move in between running applications. One of the biggest new features is a front and rear facing camera for better picture taking abilities and to utilize the new video chat functionality. It is also shinier, prettier and you probably need one. If you want to watch a video that may make some of you drool and/or cry here is the official Apple video.

Google Caffeine is brewed up and ready for the public – As Kasi told us a few months ago, Google has been working on a new platform for searches called Google Caffeine. The new indexing system is supposed to make searching faster, more relevant and be able to handle the demand for more real-time search queries. For more information about Google Caffeine you can read about it on the Official Google Blog.

Add your Flickr photos to Facebook – The photo sharing site Flickr has teamed up with the king of social networking sites, Facebook. Now you can automatically add your Flickr photos to your Facebook stream. I recently had a conversation with a client about automating your social media content. Some are violently opposed, others think it is the bee’s knees – I am in the middle. I think it can be done well and be done poorly. I understand all of us are very busy so why not focus on one or two social media sites or blogs and find relevant ways to automatically feed that content to other sites? This new feature is a good example. I know lots of businesses that use Flickr to capture events, conferences, semi-professional shots and more. Now you can have that streamline into your Facebook account. This could be beneficial to some people. A bigger undertone in this news bit is that Facebook and Yahoo (who own Flickr) are getting awfully chummy these days. Wonder what else we will see from this new couple?

Bluesky Factory stomps the yard integrating social media profiles with email marketing campaigns – I came into this career world as an email junky. My last job and starting this one, I was all about email marketing. I have added a few more things to my plate but I have always been interested in how email marketing paved the way for so much that is the norm on the social internet. The relationship between email and social media is a strong one and the guys and girls at Blue Sky Factory have always recognized that – calling email the “digital glue” of the internet. This week the email marketing company announced a new feature to its service, SocialSync, that integrates your most valued business contacts with the social networks THEY participate in. One of the most important parts of businesses participating in social media, is participating in the right networks where their customers already are. How cool is it that with your email marketing service you could instantly have that data available to you? Pretty cool if you ask me.

Google homepage designs caused quite a stir – As I told you last week, Google is now letting people customize their home search pages. The company decided to show off the new feature by adding their own custom designs by artists and photographers for a day. The change was quite unwelcomed and one of the most popular search terms was ‘how to remove Google background’. The background should be back to normal by now but the whole situation caused a bit of frustration with users who claimed to be distracted by the busy backgrounds.

Twitter had a tough week – Twitter was down for a good chunk of the week. Lots of people had no idea what to do with themselves. Twitter has become a large part of how many people go about their day and how they do business. Services like Twitter will only get better with time but this was a friendly reminder to not put all your marketing eggs in one basket. If Twitter does go down, do you have a backup plan? If you ever need information about Twitter possibly being down you can check status.twitter.com for the latest updates.

Office makes web apps – As what seems to be a direct hit at Google Docs, Microsoft Office is rolling our a series of web applications for their products. It was a move that was bound to happen. Now with the updated 2010 Office package users can create, store and share Office documents online. More and more businesses are going to not only want but need more cloud services. As a culture we are getting less and less tied to our desktops and more utilizing documents and the internet on the go.

Bing to search Facebook and Twitter – Bing announced this week that they are now searching Facebook and Twitter updates. The new search section will search only public tweets and Facebook statuses that marked as ‘Share for Everyone’. Now might be a really good time for you to review your Facebook privacy settings to see what exactly you are putting out there to not only your Facebook friends but now to general people searching for keywords and phrases.

That does it for my list this week! As always, let me know if there is anything interesting you are seeing that you want to talk more about!