Monday, May 16, 2016

How to put SMS marketing to work for your busines


[Free Guide]

Free Guide and Case Studies

Guide to Smart SMS Marketing: Driving Sales With Mobile

Get SMS Guide
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If you want to know what kind of marketing delivers sales, ask a
retailer.

And retailers are using SMS marketing - because it drives sales.

Get this free guide, and find out how to put SMS marketing to work for
your business - with proven, cost-effective tactics like these:

* Enticing customers with offers whenever they're near your location
* Drawing customers in with product information and public service alerts
* Motivating purchases with timely announcements of specials and sales

Plus, get practical tips on creating successful SMS and short codes campaigns.

Get Guide to Smart SMS Marketing: Driving Sales With Mobile now.
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But, Social Is Gaining


Study Shows Email Still Bigger Than Social

But, Social Is Gaining

30 Proven Internet Marketing Strategies


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Social Media Marketing in Five Steps


Establishing a good social media marketing campaign for your business could make a difference for your sales. Keep reading to learn more about social networking.
Start by creating profiles on sites your audience is likely to use. You should create profiles on Facebook and Twitter and any other site your target audience is using. Take the time to create original designs for your profiles, but make sure you create profiles that can easily be recognized as being affiliated with your brand. Use the name of your brand when registering for a profile and place a logo on your page. You also need to place links to your homepage and product pages in visible locations as well as your contact information. If you join more than one site, add a link to your other profiles on each site.
Post updates on a regular basis. You need to write quality content that your audience will want to read and share with their friends. Posting links to your blog updates or new products is a good idea, but do not hesitate to share news stories and articles from external sites related to your industry. Keep track of the comments you get and of how many people share your updates to find out what your target audience is really interested in. You might find that certain formats such as top 10 lists are more shared than others.
Establish a real connection with your audience through social networks. On your site, add links to your social network profiles as an option to contact you with questions, requests or suggestions. You should be very polite and professional in your interactions with people on social networks. If necessary, create a personal profile so you can talk to your friends and family privately. Remember that the social network profile associated with your brand is basically a storefront for your business; it is necessary that you make a good impression. Use your real name to encourage people to trust you but treat them as customers, not as friends.
Make a few changes to your website or blog so that sharing your content becomes easier. You should add social network buttons to your blog posts; most blogging platforms automatically add Facebook, Twitter, Google + or Pinterest buttons to your posts. You can easily get the code for these buttons on social networks if you wish to add them to your site. You also need to place links to your different profiles and invite people to connect with you on these sites by mentioning the kind of content you share, including discounts and other exclusive offers. You could create contests or advertise some discounts on social networks only to create an interest around your updates. Your audience will connect with you on these sites if this is perceived as valuable.
Use these tips to reach out to millions of potential customers in a low-cost marketing campaign. Take the time to develop a good campaign and to adapt it to your audience.
By Greg Holloway
http://bnetworking.info/?p=460

Sunday, April 24, 2016

The power of empathy in Immersive Media

 on FEBRUARY 7, 2016

Immersive Media is about building story experiences that shift your point of view.  There is a beautiful quote from Lucy Christopher from Stolen, A letter to my Captor.

“It’s hard to hate someone once you understand them”

When media immerses its audience it has the opportunity to shape belief, and therefore how we act in the world.  While there is no question this can be used to incite the worst of our instincts, there is powerful evidence that positive collaboration, co-operation and profound meaning and purpose can arise from this kind of immersion.  (We are seeing it in the genre of Alternative Reality Gaming, the online phenomenon of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, in crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding start-ups globally).  Jane McGonigal’s beautiful treaty called “Reality is Broken”, is really a call to see how we can use immersive games to fix our real world problems.
Traditional computer games & ARG’s often put you inside the action against your standard “villainous” evil-doers.  They might be Russian, or South African, Muslim extremists or whichever subset of enemies of the West are currently making headlines (although even here games don’t always stereotype, but on the whole the trends are set by the larger gaming businesses.)  Now imagine if you, instead of simply killing all and sundry, had to hide in the guise of your enemy?  You had to learn to speak their language, learn their customs, and meet their families – play with their children.  Could you still pull the trigger so easily?  That’s the premise we’re developing in “Amnesia”.  Without giving some of the twists and turns away, the idea is to turn the popular genre of first-person shooters into an entirely different kind of immersive experience.   The concept is simple.  You wake up, have no idea who you are and find that a lot of people are trying to kill you.  But what if all is not what it seems?  What if, as you progress, you are not even sure just who the enemy is?  How do you get to see your own actions in an entirely new light?
There is a fundamental question, how can you even begin to communicate on a level playing field with your enemy, until you learn to see their intrinsic humanity?  One of the most important lessons that emerged from our documentary Nelson, Mandela Redrawn for History, was Mandela’s understanding that in teaching himself the Afrikaans language he didn’t just engage his guards, he learnt to understand their poetry, their history and their passions.  He not only forged genuine friendships that survived the most indescribably harsh conditions.  He knew this captors as people.  And that, in turn, meant they were forced to do the same.  Years later, when he donned that Springbok jersey on the field of the Rugby World Cup in 1995, he understood so completely the power of symbol to cross a racial and cultural divide.  In one instant he could bridge the chasm of “us” and “them”.  Tactically it remains one of the greatest moments in our planet’s political history, and without doubt because it was so human. Clint Eastwood’s film “Invictus” dramatises this historic tipping point, but today we are emerging into an era of media that doesn’t just “show”, it in fact invites us to experience the shift from “us” to “them” first-hand.
There are a host of beautiful examples of using media to bridge divides, making experience from far-off places visible, authentic and real to audiences who would not ordinarily even have the opportunity to engage with them.  Film maker’s Chris Milk and Nonny de la Pena have both been involved in amazing VR experiences – check out the video here for Project Syria or here for Chris Milk’s TED talk.
If you want to walk in someone else’s shoes and experience empathy there must be, to some degree, a loss of a sense of self.  When you are fully immersed, that experience can literally be life changing (I wrote about it and my experience with the documentary “Amy” on the blog Immersive Media junkie).   Nothing is more exciting to me than the implications that this shifting of understanding, education and ultimately beliefs provides.  One of our smaller projects, but one the proudest moments in my life, was when we developed a game for Jessica Yellin at SAB Miller to reduce drinking in young kids in KZN.  Called You Decide, I have to this day never been part of something that had the feedback and response that the game elicited in the children who played.   You can check out the promo video below.
With only ten students at each of the 50 schools starting off as full-time players, we still managed to record over 60 thousand hits within a matter of weeks.  Those numbers are staggering.
The success of the You Decide project was driven around the premise of how do you shift the narrative so that the audience is the lead character?  I believe that Immersive Media has us poised on a very powerful brink – we can start to play games, watch films and go inside the experiences of our most feared enemies and misunderstood foes – whether that is people or ideas.  We as content creators can embrace a media world that by its nature, will leave us all fundamentally changed.
Brett Lotriet Best is the Creative Director for EdenRage Media, check out their Immersive Media work at www.edenrage.tv.  Go on, take a bite!
 https://themaddwarf.com/2016/02/07/the-power-of-empathy-in-immersive-media/