Billed as “the little keyboard for big fingers,” Minuum offers a unique alternative to the traditional keyboard for mobile devices. More than 8000 crowd-fund backers pledged in excess of $85,000 to support  this project, which has been in development for more than two years and is slated to be released in beta for Android devices in June 2013.

As you already know, the keyboard on many mobile devices isn’t perfect, taking up a disproportionate amount of the screen and not well designed for typing accuracy. Will Walmsley, Minuum’s hand-gesturing CEO and lead designer, has addressed both of these issues in creating an alternative keyboard that takes up much less space and uses predictive technology to increase accuracy. It’s still based on the QWERTY keyboard, so typing with it should be intuitive for most users. Other benefits include scalability to the user’s preference and magnification to access punctuation and special characters.

But wait, there’s more. Minuum’s streamlined, one-line design allows for uses in many ways that a traditional keyboard can’t match. For example, wearable technology such as watches, rings and glasses could easily employ this type of technology for data input.

Early user reviews indicate that this type keyboard may prove to be a viable alternative to the traditional keyboard, opening doors to uses for many new technology devices we seeing with more frequency in the press.

The post The Minuum Project appeared first on Parthenon Publishing.

Like politicians, the “campaign” has been the gold standard for marketers since the beginning of time, and rightly so. As a marketer you have priorities, and the campaign is the perfect vehicle to make consumers aware of those priorities. Pick a month, pick a product, develop a strategy, and voila – you have a campaign.

There is just one problem: Campaigns operate on a company-based timeline, which inherently ignores the timeline of the consumer you are trying to reach. In the world we live in now, the consumer’s timeline is right here and right now. It is real time, and as marketers this means meeting our audience in the moment, rather than during a scheduled campaign out there on the horizon.

Luckily, there are plenty of tactics available to marketers to accomplish this. While many companies have used social media and real time engagement to supplement campaign-specific marketing, these tools are powerful enough to stand on their own. The following tactics can help any company meet their audience where they are at any given moment.

Social Media is a Headliner. OK, OK, this one is obvious, but are you using social media to its fullest potential? Are you posting on Facebook every day? Are you posting on Twitter several times a day? Even on social media, our tendency is to create posts when we have something to say. But what we need to be doing is creating posts when our consumers want to listen. Create a content calendar at the beginning of each month that charts daily posts or topics. Consider writing and scheduling posts in advance to ensure a busy day doesn’t turn into a day with no social engagement. Lastly, it’s not called marketing media. Be social on these platforms; Engage, comment, follow and be present when your consumers are looking for you.

Websites Aren’t Static. Design website, check. Write content for website, check. Launch website, check. Now what? If you’re wondering why your customers aren’t coming back to your website every month, it’s likely because you’re not providing new information to engage them. A news feed or blog is a great method for bringing your audience to your website more often, while improving your odds for website conversions. If you pursue one of these tactics, consider what information a consumer would want. Hint: a mention in the news or press release won’t cut it. For example, for one of our hospital clients, we developed a special feed on their site and we write several stories a week related to wellness, general health, and interesting facts. When the ghost in Field of Dreams told Kevin Costner, “If you build it, they will come,” he might have also mentioned that regular stadium maintenance would be necessary to keep them coming back for more.

People Are Talking About You. Talk Back. In the age of real time marketing, managing your reputation is more important than ever. As a marketer, this allows you to participate in the conversation that is being held about your brand. Immediate tactics include claiming your business pages on popular review sites, setting up a monitoring tool to keep track of what’s being said on blogs and social media, and developing and executing a consistent plan to monitor and respond. Remember, the theme for this blog [and for better or worse, this world] is real time – monitor constantly, and respond as quickly as possible. Always be intelligent, thoughtful and respectful in your responses.

Campaigns aren’t dead. They are still incredibly useful marketing tools. But in acknowledging that, we also need to remember that the way our audience wants to receive information is changing. If you’ve already used these real time tactics in the past, you’re ahead of the curve. If you don’t employ these tactics in 2013, you’ll be left behind.

The post Is Your Brand Living In Real Time? appeared first on Parthenon Publishing.

One of the most important aspects of generating interaction is optimizing your feeds to hit your audience when they’re most likely to engage. Because it’s not worth sharing content if nobody is going to see it.

When I first started working on the business side of social in 2008, the art of timing my posts was highly unscientific. I’d watch the number of Facebook friends who were signed in to chat throughout the day, and when I felt there were enough, I’d post. Luckily, my method was fairly successful; even after I tested various times, I found that my friend gauge had given me a pretty good reading. For my audience, the best times to post turned out to be late morning or mid-afternoon. My guess was people were bored and catching up on Facebook at work.

Thankfully, community managers today don’t have to rely on such arcane methods to test the best times to post for their audience. There has been a fair amount of research over the last couple years into the best times to post to Facebook and Twitter. Bitly launched a study last year that actually had findings similar to my own – early afternoons during the week were good times on both networks. Media Bistro released a similar report in the winter. Both were large-scale studies that tested a very broad audience.

But as you know, every audience is unique. It’s not always wise to rely on broad studies to decide your marketing strategies. So I thought I’d share some of the tools available to help businesses (and individuals, if you’re so inclined) learn what times are best to post for their audiences. Here are some of my favorites.

Tweriod

This tool analyzes your followers’ Twitter patterns to determine what times of the day they’re most likely to be reading their feeds and posting. Armed with this knowledge, you can time your tweets to post when they’re most likely to be read and retweeted. A sample graph from my Twitter account is below. As you can see, my followers are most active between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. during the week. It wouldn’t do me a whole lot of good to tweet something in the wee hours of the morning if I’m hoping to for interaction.

PageLever Now

PageLever has been hailed as a savior for marketers looking for robust Facebook analytics. Their focus is specifically on the News Feed, and PageLever Now provides real-time analytics for your page. It allows you to track, within minutes, which posts are most active, how long they are generating engagement and when they fall off users’ feeds. Using this data, it will assist you in choosing the best time to schedule your posts.

Timing+

This is the best tool I’ve found for optimizing Google+ page sharing. It will look at past data to help you decide the best time to write a post on your page. Your posts are given ranks based on +1s, comments and shares, and then broken down both by day of the week and time of day. The tool will also show your most popular posts as part of its report, which can help you tailor post topics to what gets the most interaction.

Once you know what time your followers are most likely to interact with your business, you can begin writing in advance to share at an optimal time. But how do you make sure your posts go out at the times you’ve planned? Certainly you don’t have the free time to log in everyday at the perfect hour to craft a genius post. Good news, there are a ton of tools that will help you schedule Facebook, Google+ and Twitter posts in advance so that you can set things up days out and rest assured your audience will see your content when they’re online.

Next time I’ll share some of my favorite tools for doing just that.

The post Timing Your Social Posts: Make Sure You’re Heard appeared first on Parthenon Publishing.

It’s absolutely true that we measure our Facebook success by the number of “likes” we rack up. Watching that tally rise day by day is a form of instant gratification, and will always be important. But not as important as “shares.” 

Think of it as the difference between an introductory meeting with a potential customer and a recommendation from a happy client. The “like” may reflect nothing more than a passing interest. Shares are a measurable version of  “word-of-mouth,” which has always been the ultimate form of promotion for any brand or company. The “share” will help you build your Facebook community, and requires a thoughtful approach.

First, build your likes organically. Even though it’s an outright “ask,” the singer’s plea is aimed directly at a group of people who are likely to be interested in what’s happening at the club. There are plenty of tricks out there to bump up your numbers, but you want genuine “likes.”  Those are the people you need to build a community. Those are the people who will share your posts — as long as they have interesting information.

Use your easily available content. White papers and blog posts on your company’s website are there for the linking. Summarize the important points in a post and then guide visitors to the full article. Be sure the page has a “share on Facebook” button. If you send out an eNewsletter, do the same. Make any content that you think is shareable easy for a reader to share.

Don’t be afraid that readers won’t scroll. Conventional wisdom says short and pithy is the path to attracting web readers. That is true for straight information delivery, but sparking comments, discussion and connections requires more. Research shows that people value longer content because it has some thought behind it. Time is valuable, and we’ve all started to realize that reading a slew of empty listicles may be fun, but it’s often just  a time-waster. Longer content  gets more shares, too.

Establish yourself as part of the conversation, not a salesman or lecturer. When an interesting article related to your business appears, post a link to it along with your own comment. Found a cartoon or video that hits home in your business? Go ahead and post that. Proud of a new ad campaign? Share it and ask others to pass it along. Even straightforward news about your company should be posted, but be smart about it.

Keep track of what kinds of posts get shared. Those are the ones that are resonating, so continue along those lines with future posts.

The post Share and Share A Like appeared first on Parthenon Publishing.

Their current marketing strategy marries the online and in-store experiences and promotes brand engagement via social, mobile and web. Digital technology in their brick-and-mortar outposts takes things one-step further, solidifying the consumer experience.

Here are some of the digital strategies Sephora is using.

• Beauty Insider – Sephora’s customer loyalty program
  • Engages Insiders with email marketing, SMS and old-fashioned direct mail.
  • Provides rewards and personalized product recommendations via website and applications.
  • Allows people to use the program between channels – links to in-store purchases, emails and apps.

• Sephora iPad application
  • Geared to at-home education.
  • Includes a multimedia digital catalog virtual mirror, video tutorials and articles on the latest trends (with links to purchase “trending” products).

• Mobile application
  • Designed for in-store or on the go.
  • In the store, users can scan barcodes to pull up ratings and reviews on product.
  • On the go, you can experience “inspired shopping” with product finders and advanced search tools.

• Social media
  • Engage consumers via a presence on Pinterest (and all products on their website have “pin-it” buttons), Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

• In-Store Checkouts
  • Quick and digital.
  • They have begun launching program where sales associate can check out customers on a mobile device, which means no lines and you only have to engage with a single associate.

• Color IQ
  • New in-store technology launched in some stores.
  • The salespeople can scan a customer’s face and Pantone technology helps them find their perfect shades.

Sephora is a player in the expected channels – email, social media, apps – but they have also found ways to take the applications, posts and technology to new level, revolutionizing the way we shop and the way they engage their customers.

The post Sephora Digital Marketing: Taking Your Retail Digital appeared first on Parthenon Publishing.

Facebook is a great place for your brand to communicate with fans. Not only is it a free communication tool, but Facebook also serves as a database of consumers who are interested — or already brand loyal — and want to hear what you has to say. In addition, Facebook also provides free demographic information, allowing you to better understand who that audience is.

So, how best to capitalize on that information? A Facebook contest is a great way to boost the number of fans your brand has. You get a captivated audience that has opted in to receive the brand’s messaging, and at the same time will be providing a reason for fans to interact with your brand rather than just listen.

Tips for a Successful Facebook Contest

A Facebook contest must follow some simple, yet very important, rules in order to be successful. Keep these ideas in mind when developing yours:

• Determine the type of contest that will help reach your objectives
• Keep the contest simple
• Pick an appropriate prize for your audience and your brand
• Promote the contest appropriately to your audience
• Follow local/state/federal or international laws and clearly state the rules and regulations
• Distribute the prize quickly (do what you promise)
• Continue to engage your audience after the contest ends

Creative Examples of Facebook Contests

The “Whopper Sacrifice”

In 2009 Burger King created a Facebook app called the “Whopper Sacrifice.” If a participant deleted 10 friends via the app, they earned a coupon for a free Whopper. Typically when you delete a friend they are not notified, but the “Whopper Sacrifice” app sent them a message in their news feed letting them know “Jacky sacrificed John Smith for a free Whopper!” You can imagine how quickly this went viral, showing in 10 people’s news feeds each time a coupon was awarded. However, due to privacy rights being violated, it was taken down just as quickly.

Canlis Menu Hunt

Canlis, a fine dining restaurant in the Seattle area, celebrated its 60^th anniversary in 2010. They created a “menu hunt,” where a menu from 1950 was signed by one of the owners and hidden in the Seattle area every day for more than two months. A photo clue was posted to Facebook each day as a hint to the menu’s whereabouts. Hunters who found the menu first each day were awarded dinner for two at 1950’s prices (think a filet for less than $4 vs. today’s $48). This was such a unique contest, kept tying back in to the 60^th anniversary to promote the brand and kept Facebook fans engaged for more than two months!

The post Is a Facebook Contest Right for My Business? appeared first on Parthenon Publishing.

Meeting in person gives you a chance to listen to your client instead of bombarding them with statistics or pitches.  Obtaining a thorough understanding of their motivations, goals, and direction is what will lay the foundation for future proposals that address client needs and give you the best chance to increase your business with them.

I spent most of last week at the Mid-America Truck Show (MATS) in Louisville, Ky.   Attending this event is a must for anyone in the trucking industry, and it gives me perhaps my best face time of the year with existing and potential clients.  I attend the show on behalf of Road King, a magazine for professional drivers that we publish for Travel Centers of America.  Virtually every advertising customer I work with is in attendance.  Like almost everyone there, I spend the entire show on my feet, saying hello to current clients and introducing myself to potential new business contacts.  MATS gives me a great sense of the general direction of the industry as a whole, and each conversation I have is vital to understanding what I need to be focused on.

I know in the past at MATS I’ve made the mistake of spending too much time refining a pitch that I would launch into the minute I shook someone’s hand, only to finish and have them explain they were shifting their focus to a different target audience.  Or maybe they were mainly interested in exploring digital options and the print media I just finished discussing didn’t fit their current needs.

I’ve learned it doesn’t hurt to ask a few questions, then sit back and listen.  Clients like to discuss their goals.  They like to give you details on a new product launch coming up.  They get excited about working together to increase sales through the proper media.  If the campaign I had in mind for them prior to our face-to-face discussion ends up not being the best fit, I have a chance to adjust & propose something that better helps them achieve their business objectives. And, that is the essential ingredient for long term client relationships.

The post MATS Blog—Listen Up! appeared first on Parthenon Publishing.

All that aside, I found this nifty infographic done by Deadspin. More than one million US Facebook users have liked a page for a team attending the conference. Facebook took this data along with user location info and plotted out a county-by-county map. This map demonstrates which teams are most loved in certain areas.

Michael Bailey, an economist on the Data Science team, broke it down even further. He drilled down into the data to extrapolate conference, tournament region, and seed favorites. He even created maps that represent some of the hottest rivalries; like Duke and North Carolina, Michigan and Michigan State, and Kansas and Kansas State. You can read more about his analysis here.

Although I’m not too into basketball, I love some infographics. I just wish I had this prior to filling out my brackets.

Facebook’s March Madness Fandom Map

The post Facebook Data Plots March Madness Fandom appeared first on Parthenon Publishing.

From the time of the caveman, the need to leave a personal mark existed. Early man had nothing but some crude tools and cave walls, but used them to create pictures that said: “This is me. This is my story.”

Fonts for everyone

We’ve got a lot more to work with now — just pull down the font menu in Word or Pages and you have tons of choices. Less than 20 years ago the only people who ever talked about fonts were graphic artists types — now everyone not only knows about fonts, they have favorites and least favorites. There are even font jokes and movies.

iPad Type foundry

Still, most people could only choose from the fonts that others spent enormous time and effort designing. Your personal mark was really a matter of selection rather than creation. Which is why  iFontMaker is so amazing. In just a few minutes you can create your own hand font on an iPad. Ideal for your own handwriting font, it can also be used by the more artistic or experimental among us to create something wacky, cute or sophisticated.

Fast and cheap is usually not the way to go with design, but iFontMaker may be the exception that proves the rule.

Handwritten fonts for free!

But if your handwriting is not so readable or pretty, and you still want to put a distinctive stamp on your invitation, newsletter or other work, you can download a number of free handwritten fonts at dafont.com

The post Your Personal Font Creator appeared first on Parthenon Publishing.

Originally launched in 2006, the News Feed provides Facebook users with real-time updates of their friends’ activity across the network. While minor adjustments have been made – the addition of brand pages to the feed in 2009 and the ticker in 2011 – the News Feed has been relatively untouched compared to other pages on the site.

Mark Zuckerberg and his team, armed with the massive amounts of user data at their disposal, developed the new design with the aim of making the entire feed cleaner and better organized. As Zuckerberg explained, their goal is to make the News Feed “your own personal newspaper.” The Facebook homepage will now be even more tailored to each user’s preferences and the new look may have profound effects on both individuals and brands.

Choose Your Feed

Facebook is touting the new design as a less cluttered version of the old, with increased control of feed content given to users. There are now a handful of feeds users can choose from, each with unique types of content. From photos to music, games to groups, users can now view only what they choose. And of course, they can still decide to view all of the most recent posts (my personal favorite.)

For brand pages, there is a ‘Following’ feed that displays updates from brand Pages and people users choose to follow. The option exists in the current layout, but is buried beneath groups and very likely not used by most people. For businesses there is now even greater incentive to create engaging content on their pages, as they have an opportunity to reach their fans through a dedicated feed. The brands that are most successful at breaking through the noise will likely find user engagement increased thanks to the new feed.

Emphasis on Visual

According to data from Facebook, about 50% of posts on the News Feed contain a photo or video, up from 25% at the end of 2011. The Facebook design team took that to heart and created a look that showcases rich media like never before. Each story has been made larger and posts with photos, videos or links are now more visually striking.

For brands, this means coming up with new ways to share your content in visually compelling ways. Imagine how you can incorporate text into images to share a message while taking advantage of this increased footprint for media.

The richer, expanded content also reaches into ads. Ads will take up much more space and be more integrated into the standard News Feed going forward. Striking images will be important going forward.

Inspired by Mobile

Facebook now promises users a seamless experience whether they’re on their computer, tablet or mobile device. And the design itself was highly influenced by their recent mobile designs – larger images and ads, sidebar navigation, etc.

The entire feed has been designed to feel cleaner and more organized, making it much more suitable for a smaller screen. One wonders how much Facebook’s acquisition of the mobile app (now also a desktop site) Instagram helped them reimagine their own site.

If you had any lingering doubts about the influence of mobile users on the web, they should be put to rest. Going forward, don’t be surprised if user experience is designed with mobile in mind first, everything else following. The days of cramming a desktop site onto a smartphone screen are near over.

This doesn’t just apply to heavyweights like Facebook. Customers are learning to expect a seamless experience whether they view your site on their home computer or their phone. You may have noticed the newly redesigned Parthenon site (which we’re extremely proud of.) If you haven’t yet, check it out on your mobile phone. Let us know what you think.

And please let us know your thoughts about the redesigned News Feed. We’ll be thinking hard about how to best take advantage of its new features for our clients. We’d love to hear what you have to say.

If you want to sign up for the waiting list, or if you’d like to hear more straight from the source, head to the Facebook News Feed page.

The post Facebook Reveals Redesigned News Feed appeared first on Parthenon Publishing.