Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

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Top 5 marketing waves you should ride in 2010

Monday, February 8th, 2010 by Jeremy Smith

If you’re a marketer in any capacity and you’re reading this post then I’m 99.9% sure you’ve also read about, or thought about, or discussed some sort of Top 10 list – goals, trends, etc. – for marketing in 2010.  Around the New Year this topic is often fodder for bloggers, trade publications, and the like.  Now that the dust is beginning to settle, and we’re approaching mid February, I’d like to throw my weight around regarding this matter. 

So, in the spirit of Force 5, (which we all know – as indicated by the Beaufort Wind Force Scale – is also a wind speed of 17 to 21 knots and considered most favorable by avid sailors) I’d like to talk about the Top 5 marketing waves you should ride in 2010. 

  1. Social Media:  Don’t ignore it – embrace it – because it’s here to stay.  Consider last nights’ Super Bowl as evidence.  The game is no longer just a three hour advertising window.  Jon Swallen of TNS Media Intelligence states, “It’s now a 3 to 5 week advertising event, with brands focusing on the period leading up to the game, and the period after to do social media marketing.”  Even if you’re not a fan of Denny’s screaming chickens, consider this – in a poll conducted online this month by Harris Interactive “nearly half (48%) of online US adults who watch Super Bowl ads say they will somewhat likely discuss the ads on a social networking site.”  Regardless of scale, and if you haven’t already, you must figure out how to incorporate social media into your marketing mix.   
  2. Mobile:  We talk about it often in our shop – the idea that mobile marketing is about to blow up (in a very good way).  I completely agree with Joe Marchese, President of SocialVibe, when he says, “Mobile will be huge, especially if marketers can build digital campaigns with mobile extensions.  Phones are smarter, networks are faster, and open development is leading to faster innovation.”  Together, these inconceivable truths will prove blissful to direct marketers who have been optimistically yearning for this day to come.  Imagine what lies ahead with geo-targeted marketing now upon us.  Read what else Joe had to say.
  3. Customized/Exclusive Content:  See Mobile (above).  Exclusive offers and customized content, all at your finger tips!  But remember, customization and exclusivity can also be delivered via other channels.  It’s all about using everything in your marketing tool box to make your customers feel special.     
  4. Integration:  Denny’s Super Bowl ads aimed to drive people online to their website, then Facebook.  This is one example of how traditional, outbound marketing tactics can be integrated with inbound tactics (web/SEO, social media) for a greater ROI.  The down economy has forced marketers to be more creative with budgets, but in hindsight it’s also made us better marketers.  So, integrate your campaigns – if you’re not sure how, ask.  Check out Denny’s efforts.
  5. Measurement/Analytics:  See Integration (above).  If you’re executing integrated campaigns – and you should – then you’ll need to be able to measure them as well.  The catch phrase more and more marketers are becoming familiar with is cross-channel analytics.  Those who can navigate this analytical approach will come out on top – big time.   

Over the next several months, I will report back with updates, findings, and such about the 5 waves we should all be riding.  So if you’re interested, stay tuned and happy sailing.  `J

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Finding Augmented Reality

Thursday, December 10th, 2009 by Nevin McElwrath

Augmented reality. It’s a term that has been popping up in the multimedia field a lot lately. Call it the latest internet meme, call it the next generation of marketing, call it a fad. Whatever you call it, you can’t ignore it’s possibilities.

Simply put, Augmented Reality is technology that merges elements with a view of the physical environment, in this case through a webcam or mobile phone. In relation to interactive media, Augmented Reality is a newborn. It was born with the sudden increase in webcam usage and mobile video cameras over the past several years. With the development of FLARtoolkit, a Flash class library that helps your webcam see and recognize visual markers, developers have been using this technology more than ever. How we use this technology is the make or break point.

It has been noted that AR could be so overused and abused to the point where usability has been sacrificed. This initial “Wow” can only go so far.  Marketers need to look further down the road with new utility to keep the users from forgetting about you. Some great utility examples are below.

AR on iPhone exampleWhat is in the future for Augmented Reality? I believe it’s future is bright. Given the adoption of a standardized geographical mapping data, mobile phones will be the tool of choice instead of webcams.

Imagine this scenario: You are traveling abroad and would like to know what restaurants are in the area. You take out your mobile phone, type in “Restaurants”, you are presented with a list of nearby restaurants, make your selection, you look through the camera and an arrow appears on the road with directions to the nearest restaurant.

Gartner has an interesting hype timeline for Augmented Reality adoption.

Look for Augmented Reality to take off with mobile adoption. There seems to be more room for utility and innovation in that (so far) untapped realm. As usual, Force 5 will keep all eyes open to make sure we don’t miss a thing.

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Tutorial: How to add specific page keywords & descriptions while using ASP.NET Master Pages

Friday, October 23rd, 2009 by Brent

One of the most common questions that gets asked when starting out with ASP.NET Master Pages is how to add page specific keywords & descriptions.

For those not familiar with ASP.NET and/or Master Pages is that while using Master Pages the normal HTML tags including META tags are not part of individual pages. The individual ASP.NET pages only refer to content areas called, content place holders. The advantage of using Master Pages is that your site HTML template gets referenced in one area so you are able to make site wide changes to the Master Page instead of making the same changes to every individual web page within the site.

So to add either keywords or a description to your individual page you will need to create an HtmlMeta object as show below.

/* how to code */
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // variables
    String sKeywords = String.Empty;
    String sDescription = String.Empty;
 
    // page keywords
    sKeywords = “Place your page keywords and phrases here.”;
 
    // page description
    sDescription = “Place your page description here.”;
 
    // meta tag keywords
    HtmlMeta mKeywords = new HtmlMeta();
    mKeywords.Name = “keywords”;
    mKeywords.Content = sKeywords;
    Header.Controls.Add(mKeywords);
 
    // meta tag description
    HtmlMeta mDescription = new HtmlMeta();
    mDescription.Name = “description”;
    mDescription.Content = sDescription;
    Header.Controls.Add(mDescription);
}

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Tips for Creating your Company’s Facebook Presence

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 by John Jambor

Facebook isn’t just for keeping up with old friends and family, sharing photos, and finding lost classmates. With over 125 million users worldwide your business can benefit greatly from this social networking giant.

Mari Smith, Facebook for business guru, and author of 10 Reasons to Use Facebook for Business, has stated that millions more will join Facebook in the coming months and years, and the vast majority will use Facebook primarily for business purposes.

So you agree that your company needs a Facebook presence, but you have no idea how to get started. Setting up a business page on Facebook can be a little confusing. So I’ve created the following list of tasks to walk you through the process.

1. Create a personal Facebook account. Business pages are created, accessed and managed from within your personal account.

2. Create your business page. This is actually a very easy. The registration process gathers all the necessary information to get started i.e. business name, description, mission, products etc.

3. Become a fan of your business page. You need to be your business first fan. Without a fan your page will not be seen when a search is performed.

4. Now get social!

a. Link your Facebook page to your website.
b. Link your blog to your Facebook page.
c. Invite people to become a fan of your page.
d. Search out related businesses and become a fan of their pages.
e. Finally, communicate.

i. The more valuable information you post on your business page the more likely you are to be found.

Creating your business page is only the first step. Now you have to make sure your page is accessible and populated with relative content. Following the items in step four above is a great place to start. With access to millions of users daily Facebook could become an invaluable marketing tool for your business.

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Ride The Google Wave

Thursday, October 1st, 2009 by Nevin McElwrath
Google Wave Screenshot

Working in a team environment can be an inspiring experience. However, an efficient team workflow doesn’t just form itself. An organized system and rich toolset are often a few ingredients in a well-oiled team workflow machine. One of those ingredients may be named Google Wave.

Google this week is rolling out a developer preview of it’s new product called Google Wave. Google’s Wave is touted as “an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration”.

We are used to using the traditional email method; a one way, non real time, “send and wait” approach to sending electronic messages. This method has been left relatively unchanged for 40 years since its invention. What does this mean for you? Google says it depends on how you use it. Google Wave shines in communication and collaboration – in real time with an audience of your choosing. For instance, say your team needs to come up with a script for a new 30 second spot for a client. One person initiates the document creation and invites team members to add their feedback or changes. The document can be edited by multiple people at the same time and you can watch the changes in real time. You even have the option to see the changes chronologically and play them back in the order they were created.

Another feature worth pointing out is the realtime language translation that is possible in Google Wave. For example, this enables real time communication with a French customer who does not speak English through a chat-like interface.

The extensibility of Google Wave was clearly a priority from the beginning. What this means is developers can write extensions for Google Wave to take advantage of the Wave technology, and use it with your team workflow.

What has me excited about this new technology is the possibilities that are presented for a team to streamline its workflow. With new Wave extensions, open usage for businesses to use in their unique workflow, integration with other technologies, I am very excited for the very near future and can’t wait to find our own usage for Google Wave, right here at Force 5.

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Understanding Website Traffic

Monday, April 20th, 2009 by John Jambor

As a website owner it’s important to understand website analytics. How many people are going to your website? Are they reading what you have to say? Are they buying your products? There is only one way to know. Good site analytics. The problem is there are so many statistics available sorting through these numbers can be a daunting task. Below, I’ve provided some basic analytic information to help you decipher this numerical nightmare.

Unique Visitor:
A unique visitor is a visitor coming from a single IP address. Basically, if I visit your site today I’m counted as 1 unique visitor. If I return to your site 10 more times from the same IP address I’m still counted as 1 unique visitor.

Visitor:
A visitor is the total number of people who visit your website. If I visit your website 10 times today I’m counted as 10 visitors. Remember, if I make those 10 visits from the same IP address I’m only counted as 1 unique visitor.

Bounce Rate:
Bounce Rate is the percentage of visits where the user enters and exits at the same page of your site without visiting any other pages. So, if I were to visit your home page, look around for a minute, then leave without going to any other pages my visit would be counted as a bounce.

Time on Site:
Time on site is the average amount of time a visitor spends on each page of your website. If your average time on site is 3:11 this means that your site visitors spend an average of three minutes and eleven seconds viewing each page of your site.

Page Views:
Page views are the number of times a particular page is requested from the website server and displayed in the end users browser. If you have a high number of visitors, and a low page view count this means you have a lot of people going to your site but they are not finding it useful. A low page view count usually goes hand in hand with a high bounce rate.

 Hits:
For a long time everyone talked about website hits. Basically, this is a meaningless statistic. Hits count every single item on your webpage that loads; HTML pages, images, links, headers etc. Hits might be important to your site developer to assist with reducing page load times but it means nothing to you as far as site traffic.

Traffic Sources:
Another important stat to keep track of is your traffic sources. This tells you where your visitors are coming from.

The three main traffic sources are:

  1. Search Engines
    This represents the percentage of overall visitors that reached your site via a search engine such as Google or Yahoo.
  2. Referring Sites
    This represents the percentage of overall visitors that reached your site from a direct link on another website.
  3. Direct Traffic
    This represents the percentage of overall visitors that reached your site by typing your unique URL (domain name) into their web browser.

It’s important to know your traffic sources.  This is where your site visitors are coming from. If your Search Engine percentage is high then visitors are finding your site on the first page of Google or Yahoo results. If your referring sites percentage is high then you have a good number of external links to relative websites. Finally, if your direct traffic percentages are high then you have a memorable domain name. Visitors know who you are and how to find your webpage without searching for it.

Improving your website traffic takes a solid understanding of your visitors. Using analytics is your first step in gaining that understanding. If you want to keep the traffic coming, monitor your site statistics on a regular basis, and learn what those numbers are trying to you.

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From Idea to (re)Invention

Friday, April 10th, 2009 by Nevin McElwrath

There are some exciting things happening here at Force 5 Media. One of which, is exciting for me, since it involves self-discovery and insight for the purpose of solely helping our clients realize their goals. There is an old saying, “In order to see where you are going, you must know where you’ve been.” This goes for not only our clients, but ourselves. We have something in common with our clients; our need and want for success. We are on a journey; the more we realize where we have been, the more focused we can become in realizing our goals.

There’s been some reinventing going on at Force 5 Media. This journey is represented in a new page inviting clients to join us on this new journey we are embarking on. Join us on our journey. This was a fun project to work on due to the wide variety of mediums involved as well as the awesome ideas that were generated by the Force 5 team. Sure, there’s been a fair share of Willie Nelson (On the Road Again), Rascal Flatts (Life is a Highway), and B.B. King (Key to the Highway) parodies. Some humorous, some unfortunate. Over all of the tears, we enjoyed the creative brainstorming and coming up with some amazing ideas. On the “tech/creative” side of this project, we played with Flash, 3D, Photoshop, PHP, and Javascript. What’s even more exciting is the direction this project is headed. Over the next few weeks, our journey page will evolve with different messages, animations and hidden treasures – eventually revealing our new destination.

Stay tuned – it’s a wide open road ahead.

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Go Green!

Friday, April 10th, 2009 by John Jambor

From Dell committing itself to carbon neutrality to IBM’s new eco-consulting service major business has made the move to go green. This shift is not only for the big boys. Green IT solutions can also bring cost savings to small business while reducing their environmental impact.

The No. 1 green IT practice is the paperless office. A paperless office is also the easiest Green IT solution to implement, and offers the greatest cost savings. The two best examples of a paperless office in action are electronic correspondence and online marketing. Both can be accomplished with your existing email client and Internet browser.

The use of email to handle both in-house and client correspondence is the least expensive and easiest form of paperless communication to implement. Not only is email the fastest way to deliver written communication it also the most customizable supporting full color, images and formatting for specific forms such as proposals and invoices.

The use of online email marketing campaigns is another excellent form of paperless communication. Most small businesses rely on bulk mail for advertising. With bulk mail there is significant expense in design, printing and postage with low success rates. Most online marketing campaigns require a minimal monthly fee. They offer free templates designed to generate a high response rate, no postage and no printing.

These are just two of the many ways your small business can go green reducing both your bottom line and your environmental footprint.

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