marketing – Page 2 – Maroon Interactive

January 5, 2011

Do you need a mobile phone for facebook?

2011 is a big year for mobile marketing and facebook is gearing up to take advantage of this trend by forcing users to add mobile phone numbers to their profiles.

facebook users are now being asked to enter their mobile phone numbers and enable SMS texting from the social network in order to verify their identities for simple tasks such as logging in or setting up a vanity URL. If you’d rather not enter your mobile phone number in the network’s database, you are simply told to try again “at a later time”.

There is no word from facebook to clarify what “a later time” might mean, but this is proving an inconvenience for businesses that don’t use mobile phones or people would rather not add their mobile phone number to the network.

facebook requests mobile phone number for vanity url — facebook: no mobile phone number? try again at a later time

But let’s be clear, a mobile phone is not a requirement for being on facebook and doing business in the world’s #1 social network – but it’s fast becoming a necessity.

January 2, 2011

New Year’s Resolutions For Small Businesses

1. Get a smart phone. This great tip appeared on the New York Times‘ list of “10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Technology“. Your clients are no longer using phones for conversation only, they are using them to find products and services, get directions, keep track of appointments and goals. Mobile marketing is the next frontier for engaging your clients. In order to understand how your customers are using mobile phones, you need to become a user.

2. Socialize your Website. If referrals are important to your business, you’ll need to make it easy for your current clients to tell their friends about your great products and services. Subscribe to services (such as ‘Add This‘ and ‘Share This’) that allow visitors and clients to share your content with friends in their social networks. After all, your clients (and potential clients) are visiting your Website, but they are spending most of their time in social networks.

3. Form partnerships to promote your business. Although new media marketing delivers clear, track-able results, it can be costly and time consuming for small businesses. Partnering with a business that is not a competitor is one way to over come the cost and time. For example, if you are running a bakery, partner with the shop next door to retweet messages, Facebook statuses and share a marketing budget. Soon you’ll find that you are building and sharing a community of supporters for half the effort.

December 28, 2010

Google – Teaching Parents Tech (for Product Awareness)

Google has joined Yahoo! in converting its email login page into a billboard – but what Yahoo! is using as premium ad space, Google is using to promote its products through a new project called “Teach Parents Tech”. The project is a Web-based video resource that allows users to select any number of simple “how to” tech support videos and send the videos to mom, dad or just about anyone. It takes about a minute to watch any of the videos and they cover a range of topics including, how to find information, upgrade your browser or manage electronic media files.

So, how can businesses and nonprofits benefit from this great idea? Continue reading “Google – Teaching Parents Tech (for Product Awareness)”

December 10, 2010

The Truth about Twitter, Trending Topics and Your Business

Are Twitter trends fixed? — Twitter Trends - fixed?

The wikileaks fiasco has revealed an ugly truth about social media marketing via Twitter – their top trends may not be ‘the top trends‘ after all. Marketers assumed that top tweets and trending topics were based on actual Twitter user activity, but according to Twitter – this is not true. When users raised questions about the omission of tweets about wikileaks in Twitter’s list of trending topics and top tweets, the company was forced to admit that “Twitter favors novelty over popularity…” and that the company is in full control of what topics make their lists. Continue reading “The Truth about Twitter, Trending Topics and Your Business”

October 21, 2010

What’s Next for Facebook? Games!

How do Facebook’s 500 million users spend over 700 billion minutes each month in that social network? The typical drill is that they log in, skim the ‘latest updates’, browse their friends’ profiles, read emails and follow up on a few leads from people and businesses they ‘like’, then interact with one or more of over 550,000 active applications currently on the platform – i.e. mostly to play games. Continue reading “What’s Next for Facebook? Games!”

July 27, 2010

Is mobile phone jailbreaking good for business?

Big news in the mobile phone industry this week! According to the latest findings of the U.S. Library of Congress, if you’ve bought a mobile phone it’s yours to do with as you please – and that includes jailbreaking and adding applications to your phone not approved by the phone’s maker.

So what is jailbreaking? It’s simply the altering or unlocking of your cell phone’s code so that you can use it with any carrier Continue reading “Is mobile phone jailbreaking good for business?”

July 17, 2010

Email vs. Social Media – Should you follow Ben and Jerry’s?

Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream recently notified their UK subscribers that they are dropping e-mail marketing and focusing on their social networks instead. US subscribers will still get the monthly edition of ChunkMail, Ben & Jerry’s e-newsletter. With over a million Facebook followers and a growing Twitter following, the company appears confident that social media can fill all of their relationship management needs – at least in the UK. Continue reading “Email vs. Social Media – Should you follow Ben and Jerry’s?”

June 30, 2010

Google Targets Late Adopters in the E-Book Market

Google’s next move won’t help sour sales for Kindle, but it will make e-books more readily available to any customer with Web access. This summer the company plans to launch Google Editions, a platform for selling digital books that will also be available in a Web browser friendly format.

According to a New York Times report, the move will rescue independent bookstores that are being squelched out of the market by giants such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Google went directly to the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to hammer out the partnership which should also drive the adoption rate of its Google Checkout online payment system. Continue reading “Google Targets Late Adopters in the E-Book Market”

February 15, 2010

Social Networks: Free R&D for Small Business

How do you keep your products and services fresh? Three words – “Research and Development”. True, R&D can be expensive and time consuming, but without it you could be wasting money trying to convince your target market to buy your products when you should be providing the products and services that they actually want.

Most small businesses think that they have to get to ‘big’ before they can afford R&D – not true. Here’s our quick guide to using social networks for research and development (R&D) on a shoe string budget: Continue reading “Social Networks: Free R&D for Small Business”