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Mobile Marketing at the Mall: An Interview with Sam Feuer of FastMall

Written on August 26, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, marketing

The Mall of America has 4.2 million square feet of gross building space, 4.3 miles of storefront footage, 520 stores and 40 million visitors annually. Now try to remember where you parked, let alone find a bathroom when you need one. Sam Feuer, CEO of Mindsmack has the solution. It’s a smartphone app called FastMall which is as helpful to advertisers as it is to consumers.

I spent some time with Sam this week talking about FastMall and the rise in mobile marketing.
Let’s begin with a short description of your product and how it came about.

Sam Feuer: FastMall is the world’s only true turn by turn navigation for shopping malls and areas around the globe. Our navigation works without the need for GPS, instead it uses a system called MapOS or Map Operating System which we have developed from scratch. Once the user downloads the map to their device, no Internet signal is needed for any route desired including multi-level, elevator only routes. It began as my wife’s idea when we could not find a restroom at our local mall and has spawned into truly useful technology that can be used anywhere in the world for any structure or venue indoors or outdoors.

FastMall is a true advertising platform that can be utilized in many ways for the retailer, mall owner, sponsor, user and of course, venues outside the shopping area including hospitals, museums, universities, airports, conferences and anywhere else around the globe.

Local is the big buzz word in marketing these days. First the internet was about reaching the global market place now we’re using geo-targeting to go local. Your thoughts?

S Feuer: Lets go with globally local, in our case, if that makes sense. We are currently in 21 countries and reach the local shopping malls that the public attends. The idea in our case is to make a significant impact to ensure users can navigate the indoors or areas where a GPS/Internet signal may not be prevalent. Also, in an emergency if there is no Internet, our maps will still work and we are able to even black out the map and find emergency exits in an upcoming release. Our application will also come in multiple languages starting with Spanish and we have just finalized the ability to let those who are visually impaired on any level including completely blind utilize our navigation to feel confident in their ability of navigating a structure or area.

Mobile is the next big thing in marketing. Would you talk about how you see this trend progressing in the future.

S Feuer: Mobile marketing is pretty awesome if we can all harness it effectively. Obviously the idea long term for retailers and tourist areas is to give users of applications an incentive for being there and even doing something. I know 1000′s of times I would have bought something if I was offered something a bit more significant at the point of sale. Even if it was a ploy by the store and sounded good, for the way I shop, I feel a deal will push me over the top. Exclusive deals to make the user feel like a VIP is integral for success as we progress with mobile marketing.

Most mobile marketing requires a smartphone but not everyone has one. Is that a concern?

S Feuer: Not really because on the whole all of this is still in its infancy. As we progress just about everyone will have a mobile device capable of handling technology like our FastMall application. We will all continue to work at enhancing our technology, applications and ability to hit as many people as we can to enhance their lives for the better by saving them time and money through technology.

What would you say is the most important thing a business needs to think about when building a marketing campaign.

S Feuer: Distinguishing the difference between you and the competition through some type of fun/exciting/powerful/memorable visual experience. At the core level though, I am a firm believer that if you build something truly special that solves important problems in our societies and also helps people save money and time, the people will take note and discover you through word of mouth. While running MindSmack.com over the last 12 years, I have paid for advertising 2 times, the rest has been word of mouth.

To download the application or to get information about advertising your business with FastMall, visit the website at www.FastMall.com.

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Mobile Marketing at the Mall: An Interview with Sam Feuer of FastMall

A Sneak Preview of the London Pro SEO Seminar 2010

Written on August 22, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

Posted by willcritchlow

I’d like to invite you to the London Pro SEO seminar we are running on the 25th and 26th October.

With a 98% satisfaction rating and 95% of attendees recommending it to others, we were blown away by the positive feedback we received last year. Seasoned pros like Rob from Easynet Connect called it the “highlight of the year” and we have plenty more where that came from (see for example:

Facebook Places Are Here (And There and Everywhere!)

Written on August 18, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

Facebook’s location service called Places (couldn’t they have worked a little harder on naming it something a little more pithy?) is here. All of the guessing, wondering and speculating can end. Now, after all is said and done guess who has the last word on Facebook’s move to tell everyone where everyone else is at every moment of everyone’s existence? Why the ACLU of course!

From the website of the Northern California ACLU

Following Facebook’s announcement today about its new location-based product, Places, here’s what the ACLU of Northern California has to say on the privacy front:

Facebook made some changes to its regular privacy practices to protect sensitive location-based information, such as limiting the default visibility of check-ins on your feed to “Friends Only.” But it has failed to build in some other important privacy safeguards.

In the world of Facebook Places, “no” is unfortunately not an option.
Places allows your friends to tag you when they check in somewhere, and Facebook makes it very easy to say “yes” to allowing your friends to check in for you. But when it comes to opting out of that feature, you are only given a “not now” option (aka ask me again later). “No” isn’t one of the easy options.

And if you use Places yourself, you aren’t even given a “not now;” you’re just told that friends are able to check-in for you and left to discover for yourself that you can change this setting by digging into your privacy controls. (Visit our Facebook Places resource page for instructions about how to manage your privacy settings)

Well, now that we’ve got the inevitable ‘Facebook tramples our privacy’ stuff out of the way, what about this new service? In summary

You gotta have an iPhone to use it.

Whoa! Wait a minute! Who put this service together, AT&T? Maybe this is the real evidence that Verizon is getting the iPhone in January since only the cool kids can play along until then. Well there are a few others according to the Facebook blog

You also can access Places from touch.facebook.com if your mobile browser supports HTML 5 and geolocation.

In short, this is not the complete death knell for the likes of foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah’s MyTown since they are partnered with Facebook in one way or another. It is, however, the notice that they may all need to kneel at the Facebook altar in order to survive moving forward.

Now, rather than have me tell you exactly how this new service works I thought it would be best to get it straight from the geolocation horse’s mouth

With Places, you are in control of what you share and the people you share with. You choose whether or not to share your location when you check in at a place. When you check in, you can tag friends who are with you but only if their settings allow it. When you are tagged, you are always notified.

Only your friends can see when you visit or are tagged at a place, unless you have specifically set your master privacy control to “Everyone.” You also have the choice to set more restrictive customized settings.

When a friend tags you through Places, you will receive a notification on Facebook and on your mobile device. The first time this happens, you’ll be given the choice to allow your friends to check you in to places.

When your friends check you in, it is as if you have checked in at that place yourself. You also will appear checked-in to your friends. If you do not allow friends to check you in, then when they tag you at a place, your name will appear in the same way it appears in a tagged status update. You will not appear checked-in at that place.

You can always remove any Places check-in or tag using your mobile device or on the web. It’s like removing yourself from a photo tag. You also have the choice to turn off the ability for friends to check you in at Places. Go to your Privacy Settings and turn off the setting to “Let Friends Check Me In.”

Ahem. Did you get that? It’s like the social media version of “You know, that I know, that you know what I know” as far as I can tell.

So I think it will be a while before the dust settles on this one. Facebook says it is not monetizing the service out of the gate but may do something in the future. May do something? That’s like saying that the sun may come up tomorrow. Sure there is a chance of it not happening but it is real slim.

So are you excited about the Facebook Places offering? What are your thoughts?

Here is the original:
Facebook Places Are Here (And There and Everywhere!)

The Blogosphere is Alive with the Sound of Marketers

Written on August 17, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

While Twitter and Facebook are all the rage with your average internet user, blogs are still going strong in the corporate world.

According to a study by eMarketer, 34% of all US companies have a public blog and they project 45% by 2012. That’s up tremendously from 2007 which lands at only 16%.

“Studies have shown that marketers perceive blogs to have the highest value of any social media in driving site traffic, brand awareness, lead generation and sales—as well as improving customer service.”

The study suggests that there is a larger number of blogs devoted to smaller companies, where larger companies may be lagging due to legal and logistical issues. It’s a lot easier for George to upload an off-the-cuff blog post when he’s the CEO of a two man company than it is for a VP at Procter and Gamble to make his thoughts known.

One of the biggest benefits of blogging over micro-blogging is the evergreen nature. A blog post is searchable and indexable as long as blog site shall live. That means consumers can easily revisit the information a month from now or a year from now. Try doing that with a Facebook post or a Twitter message that’s more than a month old.

Ideally, a combination of social media messaging is the way to go. A Twitter tweet leads readers to the blog post which leads them on to the Facebook via a “like” button at the top of the post. Of course, for all of this to work as it should, you have to have something interesting to say and that’s the hardest part of blogging.

See original here:
The Blogosphere is Alive with the Sound of Marketers

Facebook’s Success Drives Social Ad Spend Forecast Up

Written on August 16, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing

Facebook is the market maker for social media ad spend. Maybe that’s why there is so much rumbling from Google about getting into the social media game for real because, after all, online advertising is Google’s game, right?

eMarketer reports that they have increased their projections for social media ad spend for 2010 an it is mainly Facebook’s success that is causing this reassessment.

eMarketer estimates US advertisers will spend $1.68 billion on social networking sites this year, a more than 20% increase over 2009. Spending will rise even further by 2011 to more than $2 billion.

In December 2009, eMarketer forecast $1.3 billion in social network ad spending for 2010. Strong performance from online ad spending in general, and Facebook in particular, has resulted in the increased forecast.

Funny how ‘real’ numbers can impact forecasts, huh? At this rate cracking the $2 billion level in 2011 should need to be updated as well but for now it looks like eMarketer is playing it safe.

This growth is something that is occurring worldwide as well which makes it all the more interesting for advertisers. The US should account for just over half of that spend in 2010 but in 2011 it will slip below the 50% of spend mark due to increased popularity of the advertising opportunities around the globe.

With the market shaping up the way it appears for now it will be very interesting to keep an eye on Google’s plans for the social space. Many have speculated that because of their recent abandoning of Google Wave and the non-impact of Google Buzz that the Goog won’t be able to pull this off.

Personally, I think that their two relative ‘failures’ have moved them closer to figuring out just what might give Facebook a run for its money. Of course, if Google lays a social media egg with anything in the future they are going to start to look a lot like a corporate ‘dinosaur’ in the land of the young, quick and nimble. It has happened to the best in the past (remember the invincible Big Blue of IBM?) so Google better pay heed to history.

Your thoughts?

Originally posted here:
Facebook’s Success Drives Social Ad Spend Forecast Up

Vote & Decide What’s Next for the SEOmoz Web App?

Written on August 16, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: seo

Posted by randfish

The team at SEOmoz has been hard at work this week, smoothing out a lot of the initial bumps we’ve seen with our beta launch of the new web app. We anticipated the app would be popular, but I don’t think any of us were prepared for just how many keywords needed rank checking/grading and pages needed crawling/error-checking. Our queue to fetch rankings/crawl URLs had a backup of multiple tens of thousands of requests all week, and the dev team’s been slogging away on parallelization, separation of queing stages and other fixes.

Our next big release is scheduled for August 25 (possibly the 26th depending on how repairs go) and we’re all crazy excited (and more than a little nervous, sleep deprived and caffeinated). Feel free to start marking your calendars; I

Google Place Page Owners Can Now Respond to Reviews

Written on August 5, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Google’s Place Pages are becoming increasingly critical to the ability for local businesses to capitalize on their online presence. With mobile increasing in popularity (is it the year of mobile this year or is that next?) and more people who actually do searches understanding maps (meaning that while we, the industry, prattle on about these options they are only as good as the searchers’ understanding of them) this element of local search will only increase in importance.

Google knows this and has finally responded to one sore spot in the whole place page experience for business owners: being able to respond to reviews. The Google LatLong blog tells us

Starting today, if you’re a verified Google Places business owner, you can publicly respond to reviews written by Google Maps users on the Place Page for your business. Engaging with the people who have shared their thoughts about your business is a great way to get to know your customers and find out more. Both positive and negative feedback can be good for your business and help it grow (even though it’s sometimes hard to hear). By responding, you can build stronger relationships with existing and prospective customers. For example, a thoughtful response acknowledging a problem and offering a solution can often turn a customer who had an initially negative experience into a raving supporter. A simple thank you or a personal message can further reinforce a positive experience. Ultimately, business owner responses give you the opportunity to learn what you do well, what you can do better, and show your customers that you’re listening.

Here’s a look-see as well.

Now some of the caveats are that you have to be logged into the account that verified that listing in order to respond (makes sense). One that is not clear , however, is whether these responses to reviews can be made to reviews that are imported to the Place Page from third party sites like CitySearch.

From what I can gather this response mechanism is for reviews that are done in Google Maps only (I am willing to be wrong here if someone from Google would like to let me know). This would limit the ability for the business owner to truly manage his / her online reputation completely but it is a very good step in the right direction to make the Google Place Page an even more important part of every local business’s online presence.

Read more here:
Google Place Page Owners Can Now Respond to Reviews

Google Opens Places API to Developers of Check-In Services

Written on July 29, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

If Google were to put itself in to the geo-location game right now there may be some real howling about Google and world domination. Well, leave it to Google not to be completely out of any game. In the case of the check-in craze that is being pioneered by foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt and others, Google has found a way in without having their own ‘product’. How you ask? Google tells us at the Geo Developers blog

We have been delighted with the enthusiasm we have seen for the Places API, and the innovative ways in which developers would like to use it. We have seen applications that offer check-in to places and need to identify an individual place at which a user is currently located, applications looking to show a user Places around them, and applications looking to offer a search and browse experience for Places similar to that offered on Google Maps.

We are going to focus initially on check-in applications. These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience.

When we previewed the Places API back in May we indicated that we planned to begin processing applications in July. I’m happy to say that we have now begun reaching out to developers who have expressed an interest in building check-in applications using the API, including those working on client applications for the Buzz API.

So Google is in the game without being in the game, so to speak. Let’s face it, there is nowhere online where Google will not be in some way manner shape or form. Maybe Google is going to let the developer community work out the kinks and make the mistakes while Google gets to sit right next to them as they do it. Who knows?

With all the talk of Google looking to get into the social networking game it only makes sense that geo-location functionality wouldn’t be far behind. What do you think this might all look like one day? Will Google be a real player in more than just search when it comes to the social check-in world?

It’s Friday Pilgrims. Check-in with your thoughts before you check out for the weekend.

The rest is here:
Google Opens Places API to Developers of Check-In Services

What the Heck is Google Punch?

Written on July 27, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

No, really! Does anyone actually know what the unveiled Google Punch does?

Apparently Google Operating System spotted Google Punch listed in a Google Documents drop-down–within the video below.

Speculation has already started as to what Google Punch could be, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Continued here:
What the Heck is Google Punch?

6 Tools For Better Blogging With An iPad

Written on July 13, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

Like many others, I recently purchased an iPad out of curiosity. While my intentions were of discovery, I quickly found some productivity gains with blogging.

The upside to blogging with an iPad is that it’s portable and you can easily log your thoughts on a screen that is a lot more convenient than typing into an iPhone or other smartphone. Also, there are a number of apps to make it fairly easy.

The downside is that even though typing is easier on a much larger screen, typing on a screen vs. a tactile keyboard still takes some getting used to, even if you’re an iPhone owner. I also found some issues with copy/paste and for web based tools, anything that uses Flash is a no-go.

Here are several tips and tools that you can use to become productive more quickly when blogging using an iPad. Each icon links to the app store and this post was written entirely on an iPad.

WordPress App – The free app for WordPress is handy and is of course a very limited version of the web based version. The advantage of using the app is a simplified view and larger editing area. Basic functions like create, edit and delete of pages, comments and posts is available. If the limited nature of the app doesn’t work for you, the web based version works well too, albeit with smaller text and work area.

Bonus tip: Another handy blogging tool for iPad is BlogPress, which now supports updating Twitter & Facebook as well as upload & embedding of YouTube videos.

Dragon Dictation – One very handy workaround awkward typing on the iPad is to use speech to text. I had pretty low expectations of Dragon speech to text software but it’s pretty easy to use. You just speak into the microphone on the iPad and then copy the text from Dragon software over into WordPress or wherever it is that you’re blogging with. There might be a few small edits to make, but I found it to be pretty efficient and pretty accurate. Speech to text saves a lot of time and it’s something you can do when typing isn’t convenient. In fact, most of this post was done with Dragon.

PhotoPad & Built-In Screen Capture – With many blog posts, I capture images as screen grabs and then do some editing to customize for a particular blog post. iPhones and iPads can easily take a picture of whatever is displayed on your screen by holding down the top and bottom buttons at the same time. The image is automatically stored to your images folder.

Then I use the free PhotoPad app to open the image and do basic editing. Upload the image using WordPress and you’re all set. Editing options are very limited and I would love to get other recommendations.

Disqus Pro App – We use Disqus to manage comments on Online Marketing Blog, so moderation duties can be handled in part with this app that is made for iPhone, but usable on the iPad.

Echofon Pro – What good is writing a great blog post (or dictating one as in our case here) if no one knows you’ve published it? That’s where tools for Twitter and/or Facebook come in. I use Echofon for my Tweeting activities on my iPhone 4 and the iPad. In regards to blog promotion, it’s a quick way to share links to your best posts. There is a Tweetdeck app for iPad too, but I’ve had little luck getting it to work.

Analytics App – If you need a quick fix for top level web stats for your blog and you use Google Analytics, then this app comes in handy. Like the other apps on this list, it’s limited, but can offer you info on the go.

Will the iPad server as a replacement device for blogging over the laptop?  For now I would say no. The limited features of the iPad apps over their web counterparts means too much switching back and forth between app and browser. However, I do see the iPad providing more convenient access to blogging than a cell phone. If you’re like me and manage a large number of draft posts at any given time, being able to finish off a post in between watching streaming movies on Netflix or HuluPro can add a slice of productivity to an otherwise all-entertainment device.

There are many other apps for iPad and if you have found some that are particularly useful for blogging, please share in the comments.

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