Studies have shown that webinars are an effective and cost efficient tool in reaching out to people. Small business owners and companies have recognized its importance and are now utilizing it for marketing and list building purposes.
Image: techwench
While it’s true that the most popular social media platforms are doing a great job in helping businesses market their products and services, the webinar system has its own advantage over them. For one, it generates a low cost for every lead and a high level of engagement with target audience. Secondly, it is considered the second most effective method in terms of content marketing and thirdly, it promotes greater satisfaction among students thereby contributing to a higher study success rate.
Webinar vs Podcast
Compared to the podcast, the webinar has an edge in that it allows real time interaction with the attendees. This is efficient in clarifying certain issues clients and potential clients have about a particular product or service. Engagement is also assured in this method of communication. More →
Amazon is the oldest and largest online retailer in the US. It initially started life in the mid 90′s selling books but now sells a variety of products from DVD’s to toys and even furniture. Below is a graphical representation of their growth and success over the last 15 years.
Enjoy this great Infographic from our friends at Infographiclabs
AT&T has launched its newest interactive product called Buzz.com. Interestingly, aside from the similarity with Google Buzz, it seems that both service might tend to overlap in terms of function and purpose. AT&T’s Buzz is a social recommendation site with a dash of local search function. It’s a new service for sharing local tips or “buzz” with your friends.
Similar to most social media sites, Buzz.com also taps into the growing social networks. Hence you can register using your Facebook credentials. So, once you register to Buzz.com using your Facebook profile, you don’t really need to build a new community of friends or sift through rants and raves from strangers.
Buzz.com also provides personalized local search based on the recommendations of people you know and trust. Again, another vital ingredient of a successful social recommendation site.
David Krantz, AT&T President and CEO Interactive said that Buzz.com was built on the strong foundation influnced by AT&T Interactive’s leadership and success in local search.
“By offering buzz.com alongside our other local search properties like YP.COM, we create opportunity to reach a broader – and growing user segment that relies on their community to make decisions. For favorited businesses, it means immediate recognition of a loyal customer and positive exposure among a network of friends,” said Mr. Krantz.
Google has just rolled out a new online service, making it officially known that the company is serious about cloud computing and business applications. The new service – Google Apps Marketplace provides products and services including installable apps that integrate with Google Apps. These installable apps features single sign-on capability and Google’s universal navigation. Â Some of these apps even integrate with domain data.
If you an enterprise network administrator utilizing Google’s many cloud server application or Google apps, the marketplace is a useful destination for finding new apps from both Google and third-party application developers. The marketplace shall serve as a one-stop-shop for all your enterprise apps need.
Currently, Google is in a deal with around 50 companies offering online business apps. And right after Google announced the Google Apps Marketplace, those companies started announcing their own applications which debut at the marketplace.
Of course, the number of companies joining this avenue is bound to grow leaps and bound. Give it a couple of days and I’m pretty sure third-party online apps developers will start jumping into the deep pit of Google’s marketing strategy.
In case you’re interested to know, some of the great apps which debut at the Google Marketplace include the following:
BatchBook Social CRM- BatchBook is a lightweight but powerful CRM that allows you to easily organize contacts, monitor social networks and track leads and deals.
Aviary Design Suite – Design tools and templates to create, modify and share images, logos, presentations, audio tracks, podcasts & more. Teams can collaborate on multimedia projects. Works directly in Google Docs!
EchoSign Electronic Signature for Google Apps – EchoSign.com, the web’s leading eSignature service, natively integrates with your Google Apps account, including Google docs, spreadsheets, etc. for instant on-line review, approval, and eSignatures.
Google Apps Marketplace seems to be a solid applications shop. Nothing fancy on the UI aspect. Just your usual plain Google theme.
If you’ve watched the video attached to this post from start to finish, you’ve probably noticed the advertisement that flashed  out  starting from the 15 seconds time mark. Did you scan the barcode? If you did not ,well you just missed the chance of taking a crack on possibly one of the coolest way of downloading an app to your phone. To be specific about it – the Weather Channel app for your Android device.
Believe it or not, it actually works. After scanning the barcode using the Bar Code Scanner Android app, Â your phone will be triggered to connect to the Android market to download the Weather Channel app.
And that’s for the Weather Channel app only. Can you imagine how effectively the Android can reach out to its targeted users if more Android apps will adopt the same advertising strategy? Â You don’t have to do the numbers because we all know that perhaps majority of consumers still watch the weather segment of their favorite news programs on TV.
Soon enough, there might be a big chance that corporations will adopt this same method to reach out to their consumers directly as well. But in the meantime, let’s be contented with the fact that this might give the Android platform a boost in terms of popularity. This has to be done especially since the IDC predicted that the Android platform will the number two mobile OS by 2013.
Both the Bar Code Scanner app and the Weather Channel are free apps. Just visit the Android market from your phone’s apps screen.
I’ve hearing about Kevin Rose’s latest project called Square for quite some time now but only got the chance to really find out what’s it all about just now. Square is a small gadget/tool that works with iPhone and a corresponding app which will in turn allow you to accept credit card payments. Very much the same way that establishments used those credit card transaction machines.
It’s a pretty clever idea actually. Who would have thought that you can use your iPhone to accept credit card payments. You can just imagine how useful this would be if you’re in remote places where credit card machines don’t exist. With an iPhone running on 3G or Wi-Fi perhaps, small businesses can elect to use the iPhone instead of the usual credit card machine.
So, how does the Square gadget really works? It’s quite simple actually. You just plug in the device onto your iPhone using the headphone port. Then you need to launch the Square app on your iPhone, swipe your credit card on the Square device, wait for the app to process and then you can start entering the necessary transaction details.
What’s cool about this device is that you can actually sign the transaction by writing your signature on the iPhone screen and voila! Your credit card transaction will be proccessed.
Cool right? But wait, there’s more.  You can also email transaction receipts to your clients after processing the credit card payment. The Square tool will be coming out in a few months.
Business strategist Dion Hinchcliffe presents an interesting (if rather buzzword-heavy) rundown of how the shift to the Web is changing IT and business. In particular, he cites five trends in that direction for 2009: More →
I’m one of those irritating Mac users that has barely any Microsoft software installed. When I want to read a Word document to get the gist (rather than the formatting) I’ll use TextEdit or Pages. Spreadsheets? Boring anyway. PowerPoint goes to Keynote.
So I’m not particularly excited to hear that Microsoft will be shipping Outlook instead of Entourage in its next business version of Office for Mac.
Microsoft has promised that Office will be better integrated with the OS because it’ll be built on Cocoa, with a new database and information rights management system.
True to Microsoft form, Office 2008 for Mac Business Edition will launch on September 15 2009, but do I care? More →
In a press conference earlier today, Microsoft and Nokia announced a partnership which would see them design, develop and market mobile productivity solutions.
Side-stepping the corporate jargon as best we can, it means that Microsoft’s Office Mobile plus a range of its business comms, collaboration and device management software will be available on Nokia devices running the Symbian operating system.
Obviously, it’s been possible to work with Office documents and to interface with other Microsoft products on Nokia devices for years, but this is an official alliance that, in rhetoric at least, will offer a “seamless and integrated productivity experience”.
A recent study of 140 leading UK and global organizations with profiles on Twitter found that the majority are simply using it to broadcast their corporate messages rather than engaging with their followers and the wider community.
Just over a quarter of those surveyed adopt a very formal tone, while just a few are interacting well with fans and critics alike.
The amount of tweeting also varied hugely, from one extreme (BMW tweeted once a month when it started) to the other (Innocent Drinks tweeted up to 900 times in a week). More →
