Archive for the ‘Mobile’ Category
On April 18th, interlinkONE and Grow Socially will deliver an information-packed webinar to help you succeed with QR Codes and mobile websites. Register today to reserve your seat!
While the usage of QR Codes and other mobile tags has increased greatly over the past year, customers and businesses have often been disappointed by the results.
However, our main presenters — Katie Saldlier and David Platz — will provide a number of best practices to increase the success of your next mobile marketing effort.
Attendees will receive actionable information on a variety of topics, including:
- Best Practices for Implementing QR Codes
- Building an Engaging Mobile Website
- Educating Your Target Audience
- Strategies for Selling Mobile Solutions
- And more!
Don’t miss out on this timely and relevant information!
Register Today >>
It is safe to say that here at the Grow Socially office, we have some big fans of Instagram.
If you’ve ever wondered how we might spend our free time, chances are that you can learn that through our Instagram photos.
Of course, Instagram does more than simply allow you to share and browse photos — it has some great effects that can easily be applied to help make a photo look better than it’s original file.
And once we’ve made our photos look good with Instagram, we tweet them, we post them, we send them, and we print them.
Up until this week, the Instagram app was only available for iPhone owners. However, that has changed! Android users can now become as addicted to Instagram as many Apple fans already are. And it looks like they are already on their way. We read one statistic that said: “Instagram for Android logs 1 million downloads in 24 hours”!
Ready to get started on your Android device? Click here now >>
We are very excited in the Grow Socially offices! We’ve successfully launched a new service called Mobile Résumé.
Mobile Résumé is a unique service offered by Grow Socially that will transform your traditional résumé into a slick mobile interface, making your name rise to the top of the pile!
You supply us with your existing résumé and we will get you started. We will generate a custom QR code that, when scanned on a smart phone, points directly to your mobile résumé. We will also create your Mobile Résumé. Info, links, pictures, videos, you name it and we can do it. When your QR code is scanned, your potential employer will now have all of your information in the palm of their hand.
More and more, employers are turning to mobile to find their next employees. In this highly competitive job market, it is essential for you to set yourself apart from the applicant pool.
Interested in learning more? Check out this landing page to see how you can get started.
Don’t look now, but your smartphone may be offering you more than just Angry Birds. Businesses are asking their HR departments to explore mobile apps and websites to track down the best and brightest potential employees.
And according to Mashable, who reported on studies from Potentialpark, “in a separate Potentialpark survey of 150 employers, 75% of respondents stated they were planning to have either a job app or mobile career website by September 2012.”
That is three-quarters of business, albeit only a sample, that will be utilizing mobile recruitment. Keep an eye out for a flood of job application mobile websites.
Has your company thought of foraying into this arena? A post on MoRecNews.com, a site devoted to global mobile recruitment trends, outlined four main criteria your mobile job application site should contain.
Make sure your site is simplified for the viewer. According to the blog, “78% of mobile users are willing to retry a website twice or less and 80% are willing to retry an app twice or less before moving on to a competitor service.” Don’t risk losing your employees by having a lackluster mobile presence.
Also, your mobile site should be aesthetically appealing. It should contain the branding of your normal website. Remember, prospective employees are looking at this and deciding if they want to work at your business. If you want the elite to apply, make sure you sell your brand.
Keep your site simple and make it clear for the user what they can expect. And finally, market your site. Devise a plan for gaining exposure, just like you would for any other new product. If you can’t drive traffic, your great new site will gather cobwebs.
For more mobile news, follow @GrowSocially and @MyMobileMadeEZ on Twitter!
Or you can follow my Tweets @LouCimaglia!
Taking the leap towards a mobile website is a big step. Maximize your investment by including these three essentials in your new mobile site.
1. Keep Your Branding Consistent
Your mobile site is another medium that your company can use to engage with potential customers. Keep the same branding and color scheme that your existing website has. This helps with recall and recognition, two critical components of any advertising or marketing strategy.
ESPN does a good job of consistency, as evidenced below.
Desktop Site
Mobile Site
2. Calls To Action
Much like your desktop website, you want your mobile site to inspire some action from viewers. A mobile site offers the opportunity for commerce and immediate data collection. Give viewers the ability to sign up for newsletters or other initiatives. One great feature is “click to call”. This blog from iFlyMobi speaks more in depth on the subject. Display your phone number on your site, and one click dials the number. Now that is instant gratification.
3. Navigation Ease
A smartphone screen isn’t excessively large, and a lot of us need glasses to read their phones (ahem). So don’t defeat the purpose of a mobile-optimized website by squeezing tiny text onto a page and adding small buttons and links. Eliminate the need for scrolling and zooming.
For some more information on mobile marketing, check out the Mobile category on the Grow Socially blog.
There is no doubt that marketers everywhere right now are working hard to ensure that their strategies and plans for 2012 are firmed up and ready to rock.
If you are one of those folks, I feel what you’re going through! Most likely you are devouring articles about trends, tactics, tips, and more. You’re looking for ideas and inspiration to help ensure that your plans will be successful.
Well, sometimes inspiration for our marketing efforts comes from places we don’t expect. It might be from an industry that we do not typically associate as being similar to ours.
To help support you in that regard, I wanted to share a presentation that was designed specifically for a group of baseball teams. The content throughout the slides was all presented under the theme of how their teams could use social media, mobile, and print + QR Codes to better reach their prospects and customers.
Here are the slides that were presented. No matter what product or service you may be marketing and selling in 2012, I hope that you find the content helpful!
So it’s that time of year where everyone’s bank accounts fill up and then empty quicker than you can say Merry Christmas. As the “big deal” shopping days approach and savings is the first thing on consumers minds its important for companies to have unique campaigns that help their company build on that relationship with their consumers. With today’s quickly changing technology and the growth of the mobile consumers I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the major companies taking advantage of this trend and developing some really awesome Mobile Coupons or Mobile Oriented campaigns.
When you think about it the concept of mobile coupons is genius! Producing a QR code that leads to your stores savings while reaching to a new and developing crowd of consumers can do nothing but help your company compete. You will also be saving money with this type of advertising by posting your QR code to your social media sites, or all over your store where consumers will be searching. Develop a successful mobile marketing approach to this holiday shopping season and you’ll find some really interesting feedback from those bargain holiday shoppers.
Mother Nature has struck the northeast again with the unseasonably “Snowtober” storm. This storm has caused the 3rd largest recorded power outage in New Hampshire, leaving more than a quarter-million New Hampshire homes and businesses and more than 3 million across the northeast without power (PSNH). In situations like this one, the need for news coverage and updates always becomes needed yet limited.
Fortunately, in this digital age, social media apps have become fantastic tools for people who have lost power but still have a powered-up smartphone. In New Hampshire, WMUR News and PSNH, the state’s largest electricity provider, are aware of this outlet and have been utilizing their Facebook and Twitter pages to deliver news coverage and updates to its audience throughout the historic storm and post-storm recovery efforts.
WMUR has been sharing critical information like school closings, available public shelters, updated lists of towns without power and other related news that residents must know about. People who are following WMUR have also helped with sharing information by posting updates of what is happening in their town. This serves as a great resource for people who have no access to their computer, television or any radios.
PSNH has been seeing a tremendous amount of activity on their Facebook page. Despite a vast amount of customer complaints, PSNH representatives have consistently informed their audience of the progress they have made, what their expectations are for future repairs, and the amount of workers who are tirelessly working to repair as much as they can and as fast as they can. Customers have also been using it as a tool to tell PSNH where there are broken power lines, outages and other damages throughout their towns.
With apps, like Facebook, on a smartphone, people are able to get fast information, communicate directly with the news sources and even share information with everyone else. So the next time there is a storm approaching and there is a threat of any power outages, be sure to power up your smartphone. It has the capability of keeping you updated, allowing you to communicate with the right people, and yes, it even allows you to vent and share your frustrations with others.
As the number of smartphone owners continues to rise, so does the number of people that think that true calling was one of a professional photographer 
A major reason for this is because there are some tremendous apps available that can help people to take and then dramatically improve the quality of their pictures.
For brands that want to improve their online marketing efforts, this is an important development. By sharing pictures on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc., companies can absolutely engage with their friends and followers with compelling content.
Here are a few of my favorite photography-related iPhone apps:
Adobe Photoshop Express By Adobe Systems Incorporated
This is basically a very, very, stripped-down version of Adobe Photoshop. It does help for when you need to make minor changes to your photos before sharing them. This may include rotating, cropping, tinting, and adding in other artistic filters and effects.
Tiny Planet Photos by infoding.com
Now this is a pretty nifty app. Tiny Planet has some great effects for transforming your images. For example, it can rotate your photo around a cylinder shape to give it a “planet” effect. Though this app will certainly work best for landscapes, it is fun to test out the effects on all sorts of photos.
Instagram By Burbn, Inc.
Oh, the infamous Instagram. My fellow employee Jason Pinto is obsessed with it. As are nearly 10 million other users.
Instagram allows you to take any photo and make it a little more retro, grungy, distressed, or (can I say this?) old-school. They’ve continued to deliver some excellent improvements to their app over the past year. But not only does it allow you to give new life to your pictures, but it really does also act as a social network. You can follow other users and Like & comment on their photos too.
Wan’t to know more about Instagram? Check out the infographic below from Lemon.ly.
As some of my Twitter friends (and others!) know, I am a major fan of Instagram.
Not only does Instagram provide some great filters that enable you to greatly improve the pictures that you take with your smartphone, but to me, it’s also a social network. I turn to Instagram primarily to see what my colleagues, friends, family, and other acquaintances are up to. Of course, their story is being primarily told through pictures.
Over the past 9 months, Instagram has done a nice job of rolling out some small, but useful enhancements to their application.
But they really delivered one heck of a present to all of their fans (and soon-to-be fans!) this week. (Click here to read the official details from the Instagram website.)
Here are a few of my favorite features thanks to the latest App upgrade:
Live Filter Previews
Thanks to their filters, Instagram has the ability to make any user feel like their true-calling was that of a professional photographer.
However, it used to take a decent amount of time to actually figure out what your picture would like in Instagram’s various filters.
In the latest version of the App, there is a Live Filter Preview. Simply scroll through the available options to see how your picture will look in each option.
Optional Borders
Some of Instagram’s filters seem like they absolutely must come with a border!
However, to provide more flexibility to users, Instagram now allows you to turn a border on or off for their various filters.
More Filters!
I will continue to spend most of time using Instagram to see what my friends are up to. That will include browsing, liking, and commenting! But I also am striving to take and share more pictures on a regular basis. Instagram has provided greater incentive to do this by adding 4 more filters to their application.
Yes, users now have even more choices to show the world how great of a photographer they really are.
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