A colleague and I were discussing that The Blade’s iPad app views grew after the holidays. We agreed that a fairly large number of people received iPads as gifts. That conversation morphed into an “obviously mobile is growing faster than even Gartner’s December 2009 study” revelation.
The colleague and I began discussion what The Blade can do for our advertising customers.
First. The Blade has excellent advertising opportunities in all of our mobile applications and mobile Web sites.
Second. The Blade can create mobile Web sites that can assist your customers to find useful information about your products while using their mobile devices.
Third. The Blade has the expertise to assist your use of QR Codes to provide content that would allow the convergence of your digital message to your prospects and customers with print.
Comment here or email us at paulhem@toledoblade.com for more information.
Facebook rules as the marketing tool most effective for small business.
eMarketer’s recent story regarding the use of social media marketing by small businesses reaffirms what most of us knew. And that is: Not only are small businesses aggressively adopting Facebook, they are getting results, too.
Facebook is rated as at least moderately effective as a marketing tool by 83% of U.S. small businesses who use social media, and Twitter isn’t exactly a slacker either coming in second with 46% feeling the same about it.
U.S. small businesses seem to be slow in adopting mobile sites. For example, in order to use the ubiquitous QR Codes, there must be content that works with a mobile device.
The Blade is nationally ranked in more than one area by The Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The Blade’s mobile presence is unparalleled by any other media outlet in the area. Not only is The Blade offering iPhone and iPad apps, but it’s Android applications are also very popular.
The Blade has the social media experience, mobile platforms and advertising reach to assist area small businesses who want to develop their own programs. Many agencies work with The Blade and also have social media marketing expertise. Contact me at paulhem[at]toledoblade.com for more information.
Morning and evening seem to be the time more people use mobile devices
The ComScore graph indicates that phones and tablets see their relative news consumption highest in the morning and in the evening. During the day (probably while at work) the news consumption percentage for computers is highest. Remember, these are not absolute numbers. The Y-axis is percent. However, we can derive from the graph that while individuals use a multitude of devices, they tend to use their tablet devices to consume news at the highest rate in the evening. Again, since this is a percent, we can’t see which device is used the most, just the relative news consumption percent for each device.
Retail advertisers may want to promote different products by taking into consideration of the higher percentage use of mobile devices for news consumption in the morning, during the day and evening.
Business to business advertisers may want to look at the fact that people are heavily engaged with news consumption during office hours. It is possible that even businesses that rarely advertise may want to consider advertising their engineered solutions to their target business prospects at the time most people are at work. Certainly, a SIC code study for the areas in Ohio and Michigan that The Blade covers would provide an idea what industrial and office supplies prospects would have an interest in.
The Blade offers multiple platforms for its audience. Not only does The Blade have a top-rated Web news site, toledoblade.com, but also iPhone, Android, and iPad apps that advertisers can use to engage with their target market. It is also worth noting that The Blade’s Android app works well on most of the Android tablets, as well as the smart phones.
The Blade’s newspaper is a great vehicle for engaging with mobile device users through the use of QR Codes..
What do you think? How would your company or advertising agency use this information?
I recently attended the second “Connected in NW Ohio” LinkedIn Group networking event that was held in Toledo at The Admiral’s American Grill at the scenic Docks location.
As with the last event Bob Koenigbauer, our group manager, did a great job preparing the venue and activities. As a result, another successful networking event was held.
The opportunity to interact with such an innovative and diverse group is exhilarating. Our shared interest in using social media to enhance business indicates that our group is forward looking and as individuals we are not afraid to use new tools to educate ourselves and others. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) And yes, we discuss the latest events and technologies that might interest us.
Please believe me when I tell you that I am not some crazed QR Code fanatic – honestly! I might be a little evangelical about QR Codes, but not overly so. Right?
At the event…
So, a friend from an advertising agency mentioned that a person who was not named (probably because the friend thought that I would hunt that person down… that’s a joke, folks), claims that the QR Code fad has peaked.
Here’s my response.
After I calmed my self, I was able to explain that just the other night I had seen a QR Code on Herman Cain’s campaign bus. OK. So what if Herman Cain was in the news because of less than favorable allegations? It’s still a QR Code, right?
See? If a presidential candidate’s marketing people think QR Codes are cool, then they ARE cool, right?
What do you think? Are QR Codes dead? Would you put one on the side of your building? In an ad? Why? Or why not?
“Trick or treat!” Some turn their porch lights off and don’t engage with neighbors’ children. They are usually antisocial during the rest of the year. Others go all out and use dry ice to create fog and set up mock graves with sound and light shows complete with family members and friends dressed up as ghouls. The majority turn on porch lights and enjoy the parade of cute kids while handing out goodies.
Ignore or embrace it, Halloween isn’t going away, neither is social media.
Some people go all out and purchase scary pop-up zombies.
Some firms are confused about how to approach social media. Should they go all out, hire some social media “experts” and put on a huge production like the Halloween dry ice fog people? Or should they hunker down with their lights off and hope this all passes by with the next day, and avoid their neighbors for the foreseeable future? If your success depends upon engaging with many B2B prospects or customers, then it would be advisable to use social media.
Can your business survive without social media…?
Can your business survive without social media in the B2B world? If you have a small business that caters to one large corporation, then you will probably survive, depending upon the management of the larger business and other industry participants. However, if you, like most of us, exist by selling to a number of companies, then the outcome is less certain, as time goes by.
…approach social media in exactly the same way you approach any other aspect of business.
What are you doing now to market your product? Do you attend trade shows, advertise, and engage in other brand-promoting activities? If you do, then you’ll want to integrate social media in that effort. Approach social media in exactly the same way you approach any other aspect of your business. You analyze where it fits into your organization and plan implementation using a strategy that works for your culture and business personality. Before you hire another full-time employee, assign someone on your staff to set up a executive briefing. At The Blade, we used The University of Toledo, Business College Executive Center for Global Competitiveness (ECGC).
An executive level briefing or Q&A presented by a business college is the best way to obtain information that your leadership can rely on. Or, perhaps, like the neighbor with porch lights off, you may be blocking social media at your organization’s perimeter.
Fallacy: Social media is blocked at our company.
Banning social media is not practical
There are some macro issues that flow across your entire organization. Here’s the boogeyman for many Command and Control organizations: Employees using social media on the job… – Your employees in finance, transportation, in your plant break rooms and everywhere else are using social media. How? Well, you know those smart phones that you see your employees carrying around? Among other things they are using them for is posting updates on social media. Even though your company Internet firewall blocks social media, it can’t block your employees’ cellular data connection capability in many – if not all – areas of your building(s). Of course there are some heavy-handed actions that you could take. One would be to to purchase a cellular frequency jammer. However, the jammers don’t discriminate. They will cause every phone in their reach to fail. Some governments have attempted to block social media. To date, they have had very little success. And I’m not just talking about South Asia or the Middle East.
Bloomberg interview regarding the U.K. government considering blocking social media
The best course of action is to just accept the inevitable. More and more of your employees will be posting updates on different social media.
If your employees don’t know how you would like them to use social media, then outcomes are less likely to be those that you would like. So, AFTER you have developed your social media integration strategy for marketing, sales, customer service, finance, production, logistics etc., then you can address what’s going on now in your offices, plants, warehouses, vehicles, etc. by creating policy.
And that’s the key. Social media must be integrated into your current strategy in marketing, public affairs, customer service, not a stand-alone. Try not to repeat the “Yeah, we have a Web site, too.” process that failed in the 1990s. Let’s face it, many, if not most firms did just that. They set up a Web site that had little of real value to visitors, other than the same brochure marketing images and messages that they had received in the mail, or left behind by sales professionals. Of course there were exceptions, but they were few and far between.
Let’s try to make social media a useful tool internally and externally. The best way to get that started is via your local colleges and universities. In the meantime, what are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree?
I attended a LinkedIn “Connected in NW Ohio” group meet-up recently. Bob Koenigbauer, the group’s manager did a great job organizing this very successful and well attended event. I’m looking forward to working with Bob on his next group get-together.
My conversations with many members of the group had to do with inexpensive and quick ways to promote your business. The Blade’s upcoming small business lift campaign where we offer toledoblade.com and print advertising at a more affordable rate seemed to be well received. However, besides the obvious LinkedIN social media marketing opportunities, there is one very quick and free way to get your business noticed – using QR Codes.
There are a couple of things to remember that can help make your QR Code use successful.
The QR Code MUST point to mobile-friendly content – MUST. Please don’t point to your Web page unless it fits well on the small screens of smart phones.
Use a short URL. – goo.gl is free from Google. You have to have a gmail account, though.
Of course there are other considerations, but mobile friendly is the most important, in my humble opinion.
And it’s easy to be mobile friendly. One way is to just point to your Facebook fan page for a “like.” Ask for the like on the message with the QR Code on it. Another way is to record a YouTube video and use the link to that as the QR Code. Please try the code, above to see a video that I uploaded to YouTube – of course it is a Blade pitch. And another is having the QR Code point to a coupon or “Text to 123456 for a discount.” Just put your cell number in place of “123456.” Most QR Code generators that can be downloaded for free are capable of creating a text message on a prospect’s smart phone, or address book contact information, etc.
Where to put them? Do you have a brick and mortar store front? Use your laser printer and paste it in the window. Obviously, it has to be large enough to be seen from the sidewalk and street.
More than half of all QR code scanners were between the ages of 18-34 (53.4 percent). Whether this observation holds true for the northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan area, we don’t know. However, The Blade can report that the number of people who have clicked the QR Codes in the newspaper for movie trailers surprised us. We didn’t expect the volume. This is one of the reasons we have expanded QR Code use to our sports and other content.
comScore’s research found the target demographics that most businesses intend to reach with higher incomes in the 25-44 age group was in the majority.
The Blade has the expertise that we have gained from our experience with QR Codes to assist our advertising customers to generate reliable QR Codes for newsprint and Web ads.
As The Blade’s digital products manager, one of my goals is to enhance our advertising customers’reach through developing new digital products. However, it seems that whenever I research, print comes out ahead. Thankfully, QR Codes are both digital AND print.
A good example of a QR Code in an economical ad position is this house ad on toledoblade.com for The Blade’s iPhone and iPad apps.
Care has to be taken to ensure that because of the smaller size of QR Codes on online ads, the codes can still work. This is accomplished by making sure the data that the QR Codes have to impart is lower than a company would use on the side of a building or bus.
The Blade has the tools to make your campaign successful. Call me at 419-344-0775 or email at paulhem[at]toledoblade.com to inquire how The Blade can assist your social media efforts.
