5 Ways to Market Your Business with a Smartphone

Featured

With a projected 50 percent of Americans expected to be using smartphones by the end of the year, it’s time to look at possible ways to use this technology to market your business. Here are five ways to market with a smartphone that almost anyone can use.

1. Use a Smartphone with a Great Camera

Smartphone with great cameras, like one of the HTC Android camera phones with Instant On and other special features, that let you not only snap up to five photos with one click, but that let you edit them and compile them into another photo right on the phone. You can photograph company events, clients and customers, sales activities and more then post to Facebook or Twitter to create buzz.

2. Create Your Own Smartphone App

Look for a way to tie in your business niche to a helpful, fun or simply unusual application then hire someone to create it if you don’t have the skills. You can distribute it freely from your own site, your Facebook page, other social networking sites, and application download directories.

3. Advertise on Someone Else’s App

Many smartphone app designers sell advertising spots to business owners. Find one, or more, who target the same customers you’re trying to reach and place an ad on a popular app. Be sure it’s one that your prospects will be interested in, though. Otherwise, it could be a waste of time like any other non-targeted marketing.

4. Joint Venture with Other Businesses to Create a Community App

With crowdsourcing becoming the next big thing, working with other businesses to create a crowdsource app can be a coup for your company—and you’ll be doing some good in the process. This could be an app designed to help folks become more eco-conscious, increase volunteerism, give back to the community or pay-it-forward in some way.

5. Don’t Neglect Text Messaging

While some folks prefer other forms of advertising to receiving a text message, others find it an ideal way to discover new products, access coupon codes and discounts, and keep up with company news. You’ll want to be sure to provide a way to opt out, but this could be an excellent marketing method for your business if used well.

These are only a few ways on how to use your smartphone to market your business. Do you have other ideas?

 

Better Burgers, Better Websites

Featured

There is a trend sweeping across the country that should excite anyone who enjoys ground beef, cheese, veggies, and toppings placed in between two buns. Specialty burger joints that shed the low quality ingredients and offer high portion servings are popping up everywhere you turn. With these new restaurants comes a slew of fresh new websites with a side of social media optimization. Which of these popular franchises has the best web design to go along with their physical locations?

Dave and Tony’s

It’s simple and it works. There is a black background and three panes that include a navigation bar on the left, a picture of the food in the middle, and a Twitter feed to the right. The logo dons the top of the website while social media info and contact numbers are nestled safely on the bottom. The only thing wrong with this site is that it leaves you craving more.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries

The design for this website follows the red and white checkerboard motif found in the actual restaurants. There is an excellent use of white space and the minimalist feel makes the photo slide show, media praise, and online ordering button hard to miss. The navigation is very clean. When you scroll over a word, a drop down menu gives you options on where to go. There is a lack of social media buttons on the main page which detracts their loyal following from continuing the conversation further.

Christy’s Hamburgers

This website looks like someone threw together a graphic in Microsoft Publisher, stuck an image map on it, and published it to the domain name. It is a decent site that allows users to access the important information like menu items, locations, and history. For a small company with little tech support it is a good website.

SmashBurger

The SmashBurger marketing team must have paid an advertising agency a lot of money to design this site. The Colorado based chain uses dull colors to highlight a portrait of a burger and their logo. The navigation is beautifully designed and features drop down menus. A gray silhouette of Chicago promotes a contest they are having, with more information in a red strip running down the right side of the page.

Cheeburger Cheeburger

This website uses the Gaussian blur effect in order to make their typography look like neon lights. It really stands out against the black background and gives the page a “retro diner of the future” feel. The major aspect of the website that is lacking is a clear navigation bar at the top of the page. All of the links look like they are jumbled together.

In this author’s humble opinion, the winner of the battle of the online burger wars is Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Like their restaurants, they want the food to do most of the talking while avoiding frills and whistles. The amount of extra content available makes coming to this website a fact finding operation. If you eat while at your computer, you can order Five Guys for delivery and then eat it with their website open. It’s just like going to the restaurant.

 

Website Design for the Low-Tech Business

Featured

There’s lots of advice and chatter geared towards the business-savvy web developer out there. You can find ideas for the best design programs to use, the best ways to improve site speed or SEO, and the surest ways to create a layout that most closely appeals to the interest of your target audience. Ultimately, if your business has a strong online presence that you seek to further optimize, there are countless resources to help you make that happen.

But what about our average low-tech business owner? This man certainly sees the benefits for getting his business advertised online, but he’s far from a tech geek. He doesn’t own a smartphone, the computer plays a minimal role in the operation of his business, and his most tech-savvy skills are finding traffic reports on the radio and doing a reverse phone lookup to track an unknown call. What should he do? For that matter, what steps should anyone take who wants a basic yet effective website for their business?

If you’re looking for an answer to any of the above questions, here are some suggestions:

Be Informative

If your site is only a side component of your business, there’s a good chance that the average visitor will arrive there seeking out basic information. This includes such information as hours of operation, contact details, services provided, featured employees, and driving directions. Since most of these visitors are probably current or future customers of your business, it’s best to primarily design your site with them in mind. You can do this, simply, by providing all the basic information and doing so in a clear and forward manner.

Keep It Clean and Professional

Business owners who make their own sites often delve too far in their web design to one of two extremes: they either try too hard, and make a sophisticated-looking site filled with obvious problems and glitches, or they make it too simplistic and basic, thereby losing credibility with a layout more reminiscent of 1995 than 2011. The goal is to find a medium between these two extremes while keeping your ultimate objective in mind – a site that legitimizes your business in the virtual world, and does so clearly, without causing you any potential headaches as a result. With this in mind, go for a design that is both basic and modern. You don’t need imbedded videos or stylish drop-down menus, but you’re probably going to need a strong color scheme, a clear presentation, and some easily navigate-able panels. There are many online resources to help you find the right scheme for your business.

Think Local

If you’re a small business owner, your clients probably live within a limited geographic area. This means that your potential clients probably also do, as well. So instead of using fancy SEO services to boost your online visibility, stick with those programs that can promote you on a local level. The easiest way to do this is by posting your website on Google Places, which can then link your business to many mapping queries.

With these tips in mind, you can hopefully now begin to envision the low-frills yet professional website that can best serve your business needs. You don’t need to be a tech guru to do it. Rather, you should simply have your core business objectives in mind.

 

Best Free Sonic Games for You

There only is one best to play all kinds of the best Sonic games online. This sonicgames365.com does provide Sonic games’ collections that are simply beyond matched. At anytime that you mention about anything Sonic and you want to play any one of them, this site could always give you the best gaming experience you could ever hope for. You can still add your best funs with this site as it also gives you more options to play your games online. There are three different categories of this game and all of those categories, including each and every game included in those respective categories, are all free to play.

If you want to have more funs than any other reasons, you can choose all games placed within this action category. Here you can try having as much fun as possible by collecting coins, killing some zombies, having the wildest adventures, or even dueling with other characters. Indeed, it is just unquestionable that you cannot get that much fun when playing all those arcade games in this site. However, should you like to have some real challenges then you can opt for any of these puzzle or creative games using Sonic as your main character. Here you can try to defeat those games by answering quizzes, moving boxes, creating scenes and many more.

Of course, for all of you who do fall into the adventurous type, Sega also gives you many of these RPG games available to choose. You can complete more quests, do more battles, find more objects and take down more enemies. In short, you can have all sorts of funs here playing any, or many, of your favorite Sonic games. And remember the best fun of all: for all these funs you get from this site, you never have to pay for anything!

Low Power PCs

Personal Computer have changed the people life. And every person have a PC in their home in a normal family. And my opinion every one need a PC. But due the the huge amount of use of the energy due to the Computer in huge sector, the energy consumed is growing day by day. And there must be some solution to this problem. If the huge computer can be made to work in low power available then we can managed the energy saving and bring a revolution in the world.

After some research we found that green pc has been introduced by some people around the world and has been a great success. It has a saying that its energy costs reduced 60% of the current energy consumption. So a Low Power PC can be a great revolution for the people and countries.

Its not just about the power consumption, but they are also the cheapest found on market. If people are really concious about the energy and the money then, I suggest people surely should get a one. I have order a piece for myself, as every good things should be started from ownself.

Save energy, Save world – Go green.

Twtter new revolution

Twtter is the biggest all in one Twitter application directory. People here can subscribe to whole lots of apps and get benefits- of all the applications free of cost. Twitter is not just a place where you Tweet, it is more than that where people can share and help each other out. So, twtter has been making application that makes user ease their twitter.

Well for a marketer, a twitter multi account manager is a great application indeed. You can access to multiple accounts once you approve for a particular twitter account. You just need one time login and one time approval for an account. You can have lots of benefits such as Easy tweet, multi RSS subscription, mass following and more.