posted by Robin Tooms @ 3:56 PM
With all of the news this week about the iPad and the State of the Union address on Wednesday, you may have missed this little piece of news – the White House has an iPhone app.
Yep, on January 20, 2010, exactly one year after inauguration day, the app launched on the App Store to connect visitors to news, photos, videos etc. released by the White House. The State of the Union video was available through the app as well, so the timing of the release was meant to capitalize on that interest.
While the White House hasn’t figured out exactly how many viewers watched on the app yet, it did announce that more than a terabyte of data was streamed.
The article goes on to mention that this app is part of a larger mobile strategy. Very cool. How many businesses can say that they’ve tackled their mobile strategy yet? The fact that a government site – an honest to goodness bureaucracy – is doing this speaks volumes.
Back in November, with over 100,000 apps available in the Apple App Store, 2009 was announces as the “year of the app.” I actually think that 2010 might deserve that title instead. The iPad will support apps, along with the iPhone. We also now have Android and Palm Pre gaining traction along with Blackberry. Mobile apps (including iPhone apps) are really going to be huge this year.
This weekend is the iPhoneDevCamp in Houston. It’s great to see that Houston has the breadth of talent needed to be a part of the smart phone “tech wave.” I think some people might not see how much tech there is in Houston, but we’ll start hearing a lot more about it.
1.28.2010
posted by Paige Hebert @ 3:56 PM
The island country of Haiti was forever changed earlier this month when a 7.0 earthquake destroyed the capitol city of Port-au-Prince, leaving catastrophic devastation and tragedy in its wake. The global call for help is being answered by organizations such as the American Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF. Also responding to the call for aid is the design community.
Many impassioned and empathetic designers are driven by the contribution their craft can make to improve the human condition. From the 2004 tsunami off the coast of Asia to the relief efforts of Hurricane Katrina in 2006, designers have historically applied their skills and resources to inspire hope and make a difference in a time of global need. And now, as Haiti struggles, designers are there to create compelling work to capture a world audience and motivate a call to action by those wanting to help raise funds for continued relief efforts.
Help for a non-profit organization doesn’t just come in the form of monetary donations. In a time of need, no matter the scale, design has its place. The billboard reaching the commuter stuck on the interstate, the website forwarded from a friend, the print ad in your Newsweek magazine – a designer with the will to make a contribution to a cause is behind them all.
1.27.2010
posted by Nicolette Beard @ 4:14 PM
As one blogger put it: “Who cares where they rank (sic), if the #1 rank is below the fold?”
With the advent of Universal Search and now Real-Time Search, we can look fondly back to the time when competing for a page one ranking seemed comparatively easy.
Every business is now competing with
- Paid listings
- New product listing ads
- News
- Organic results (1-4)
- Shopping sites via Google Merchant
- Video via YouTube
- Organic results (5-10)
The above list reinforces why it’s so important to know how to promote your site, products and services in all the areas included on a page one result. Traditional search engine optimization (SEO) has morphed into “search optimization.”
Although on-page optimization is still important for effective crawling and indexing of your most important Web pages, it’s no longer enough if you want to be competitive in today’s market.
As Google continues to acquire even more data from mining Social Data Sources, they will be increasing their knowledge about a business ten-fold over the next few years.
This data will eventually be significant in how they rank Web pages not only in Local Search but in Organic Search as well. And we haven’t even factored in Mobile Search.
As detailed in a recent Webinar, the time to develop an holistic engagement strategy is now. Reputation management will be critical to the ongoing survival for any business.
What are the positive online signals your company is sending?
1.25.2010
posted by Nicolette Beard @ 2:34 PM
Digital media has turned traditional news sourcing on its head. Journalists now set up news alerts and RSS feeds to track industry news, companies and subject matter experts.
So when a journalist visits your online press room and discovers a plethora of PDF-downloads, what do you think his/her reaction might be?
1) Exit stage left. One extra click is not worth my time.
2) I’ll download the document and may write about you, but I’ll make my displeasure known. (“Hey, I’m only human.”)
3) This is so 90s. Is there a more cutting-edge company worth investigating?
The above imagined scenarios can be measured in higher bounce rates, fewer downloads and infrequent news stories and/or interviews in major news outlets.
When you make your content less accessible, you want to factor in “lost opportunity” costs.
From a technology viewpoint, while it’s true that search engines can now “read” news releases, presenting your news only in PDFs is making a search engine work too hard. If you must post PDFs, be certain you have an HTML version, an RSS feed and submit to newswire services.
If you assume that your audience is accessing your site on a computer or Smartphone equipped with the necessary software to decode the document, you could be right. You also could be wrong.
Key influencers and early adopters are increasingly using mobile applications. You don’t want anything to impede deadline-driven news or to dissuade a potential investor.
If you make your content hard to find, you may find yourself victim of The Law of Unintended Consequences. In other words, you don’t want to overly frustrate your key constituents, whether they are journalists or investors, by making them work, search, click, download and read, over and over again.
Good user experience isn’t a concept limited to ecommerce sites.
Resources: 5 Reasons Why Your Press Page Should Lose the PDFs
1.01.2010
posted by Robin Tooms @ 6:05 PM
We spoke about Domino’s Pizza a few months ago. Domino’s was under crisis – two employees had released some videos on YouTube that became viral. That time, it was a lesson on how a company should use social media as a PR tactic to help spread goodwill for the company and change public sentiment (and spread it fast – negative news travels like wildfire).
This time, Domino’s is addressing a crisis of a different kind. This crisis – one of their overall brand image – has been long in the making. As Domino’s discovered, many people didn’t like the taste of their pizza and had been quite vocal about it. In this era of social media, gauging customer feedback is easier, although it looks like Domino’s has done some market research of their own as well.
What’s different is how Domino’s has chosen to deal with it. Domino’s has chosen to face criticism very publicly and use that as part of a brand turnaround. Look at this site: http://www.pizzaturnaround.com/
It does take some “corporate bravery” to create a site like this. Not everything is scripted. The live Twitter feed they have on the page is not always positive. They are laying the results out there for the world to see. In a way, they are encouraging us to see for ourselves – to not only try the new pizza but to see what our peers think. This is a company that believes in openness, and I hope they are rewarded for it.
I haven’t tried the new Domino’s pizza yet (if you’re listening Domino’s, I would like a real iPhone app), but it has me interested enough to try it.
