Posts Tagged ‘text messaging’

Sticking Out Like a Sore Wienie.

Nate
May 20 |15:27

I’m overwhelmed. Honestly. There is so much online content being shoved at us and somehow we’re expected to keep up with it all. Many of, if not all of us, have resorted to some sort of piecemeal approach to information upload to our tiny cerebrals. I mean, I’m subscribed to approximately 140 RSS feeds. So what do I do? I scan, looking for relevant content or something humorous. Sometimes standing out is the most important thing. If you’re more eccentric, bizarre, or important, you may get some hits: your ten seconds of fame, so to speak. But if not, you could be left to your own devices forever.

Put yourself out there.

I chose to name the title of this post “Sticking Out Like a Sore Wienie” for a couple of reasons.

  1. Shock Value.
  2. I recently read an article about marketing with a wienie (incidentally, it was Walt Disney’s idea—a brilliant one at that).
  3. You’ve got to stick yourself out there, make yourself vulnerable, risk something.

That said, there are many types of traditional approaches that may work.

Walt Disney’s Wienie

After Disney and his Engineers had created the GE “Carousel of Progress” for the 1964 World’s Fair, Walt brought in a group of GE execs to see the show firsthand before it was available to the public. The executives were thrilled. Walt, however, wanted to nail them to the wall. So, he did something a little bizarre. He piped, “It doesn’t have a wienie! Come back in a couple weeks and I’ll show you.”

If you heard Walt Disney say that, you’d probably be back too. A week later the puzzled execs returned again to see a show, almost identical to the first version – with one exception: Walt had added a comical audio-animatronic dog with a wagging tail to each scene.

Genius! They were sold.

Marketing to the Digital Gen

Digital Advertising is much the same way. You have to stick out, be memorable, do something different, interesting and exciting. Gone are the relic advertisements of the past. Going digital means using content in ways never before utilized. Using projective marketing tactics, gives consumers a reason to believe. I personally feel marketing over the next ten years will be comprised of three integrated and selective platforms.

1. Internet. Search Engine Optimizers, Affiliate Marketers, and Pay Per Click specialists all have a place in this world. All have contributed and will continue to contribute to the vast evolving world of digital advertising.

2. Digital Signage. Also known as Narrowcasting or Out-of-Home Advertising, Digital Signage is the billboard of the future. Utilizing LCDs, Projectors, Plasmas and other digital media, Digital Signage is quickly becoming a powerful medium in bringing your message to the end consumer.

3. Mobile. We have not even begun to tap this market. Not even close. Mobile marketing will become a very powerful way for individuals and audiences to engage with you. In addition, when mobile campaigns are integrated with the other forms of digital media, including digital signage and internet, powerful, targeted campaigns can easily take place.

Finding a fail-proof method of getting recognized with the barrage of information and literature flooding the channels of media is not easy. So, find your wienie. As you do, stick it out there, make it known and get noticed.

 

The Early Bird Gets the Worm.

Nate
May 19 |14:16

I recently read a post by Stan Schroeder of Mashable. His point was so good, I just had to post about it. His article entitled, “The Importance of Being an Early Adopter,” really hit home to me as I read through his article. He speaks specifically of Twitter and its now commanding influence in the WWW. At first many may have thought it a waste of time, but those who grabbed on early and “twitted” often from Twitter’s inception in 2006, have really gained traction and quite a bit of influence because of it. Robert Scoble is mentioned as one of these early adopters. Schroeder states,

Whenever Twitter is mentioned in mainstream media, Scoble gets a nod. Whenever he tweets, he gets loads and loads of replies, which turns almost every one of his tweets into an interesting conversation.

He says that although some may argue that Scoble was already influential on the web prior to Twitter, he’s convinced that Twitter has taken Scoble to where he couldn’t have gone had not he been an early adopter that Twitts regularly. Schroeder also says that if you thinking about reaching such alarming size by jumping on the bandwagon now, you may be in for a surprise. He says, according to Twitterholic, the big just get bigger quicker, while those who are less influential have a hard time catching up. He even gives a graph showing the stats of his findings.

What’s the lesson here? Next time you see a promising new network forming, don’t wait for others to start using it before you hop in. Be a pioneer, actively use the service, share it with everyone, and in time, your voice will be heard by many.

So, hopefully the lesson is clear. If you want to be influential in new technologies, you have to learn about them and become an early adopter of them. In other words, “the early bird gets the worm.”

sleep talking, recorded sleep talk, sleep talking recordings

 

SMS Text Message Increasing.

Nate
May 10 |00:54

Just some updates in the SMS industry today.

* There are now more cell phones in Australia than there are people.

* 60% of phones in China are “knock-off” brands.

* There are now more mobile phones users in Africa than North America.

Random facts of the day I know. I also read an article that said December of last year showed that more than 48 billion text messages were sent, or about 1.6 billion per day. Woah! Mucho! The info also said that the last 6 months of 2007 showed 4 billion multimedia messages sent (pictures, video, etc.) compared to 2.7 billion sent for the entire year of 2006.

So, it’s increasing. We can see that. Going forward, it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

 

SMS Short Code Keywords.

Nate
May 10 |00:40

In the world of SMS marketing there are a couple of important factors: sms short codes and keywords attached to those short codes. How hard is it to procure a short code? Well, it’s not that hard. It just takes some money and some time. Short code procurement takes about 4 to 6 weeks to procure and will cost you your first 3 months billing up front. Well, what’s the monthly cost of an SMS short code? That depends. Do you want a randomly generated code or a vanity number? If you have a randomly generated short code assigned to you, it will cost you $500/month. However, it’s $1000/month if you wish to make it a vanity number like CHURCH or PIZZA or some other crazy thing. So, the first three months up-front is going to cost between $1,500 and $3,000 clams.

Now what about the keywords associated with the short code you purchased. Oh, that easy compared to the short code itself. Or, is it? Well, it may not cost as much in the long-run to have a keyword selector tool, but initially it may be somewhat of an investment. Why? Well, because you’ve got to hire a programmer to create a keyword selector tool. Once this mechanism is in place, the keywords are easily attained.However, unless you do what Twitter does and place an @ prior to each keyword, then you’ll run out of keywords quickly if you’re distributing to a mass audience. So, one way to combat this is to do what Mobivity has done and just sell keywords for $20/month. They also charge a per message amount as well. Talk about making that $500/month back from their short code costs.

So, I was personally curious if anyone was in the industry just out there selling Keywords attached to their personal Short Code. So, I went to a domain name purchaser and did some searches to see what domains were available. I couldn’t believe what I found! ShortCodeKeywords.com as well as ShortCodeKeyword.com were both available. I snatched them up quickly. Someday, someone, perhaps a Mobivity clone, is going to take all their resources and just sell Keywords associated with their Short Code. It’s only a matter of time. We plan on doing it as well. It just remains to be seen whose gonna jump first. It will be lucrative when they do.