Augmented Reality

How Augmented Reality Will Save Traditional Media  - Vaughan Palelei 

Traditional Media has taken an ass-whupping of epic proportions since the emergence of the Web and online media. Even more so with the explosion of mobile and social media. And now, Augmented Reality enters the fray? 

Augmented Reality (AR)  is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.

With the emergence of AR recognition technology such as Google glasses, and smartphone apps that can read physical objects (like newspapers) and can read digital screens (like the ones you have on your TV) you can be sure that there is a mighty storm a brewing for the world of online marketing.

Location, location, location

Ask anyone dialed into the business of being in business on the internet and they will tell you. The buzz is location, location, location.

Your mobile device points the way to anything you want and anywhere you want to go – and with the advent of location based marketing from the likes of Foursquare and Yelp – you can get pinged when you come in range of a restaurant you like, or a deal that’s going on close by.

If you’re serious about online marketing – in particular mobile marketing – for your business, you will have to get up to speed quickly about the pros and cons of location based marketing.   

Facebook Follies: A Guide to Avoid Being a Narcissistic Facebook Over-Poster

Facebook is almost at the one billion user mark. That means one in six people on the planet has a Facebook account.  Poignantly, there are reportedly over 12 million (and growing) Facebook pages for business.

Obviously, having a Facebook page is essential for a business. Almost a pre-requisite if you want to have any kind of online presence. Businesses who have Facebook pages can promote their business, brands, sales, deals, and services on a daily, bi-daily, even hourly basis if they want to.

However – there’s a big down-side to getting to carried away with plugging your business on Facebook. You can very quickly be viewed as  an “overposter.”  The resulting fallout from being an overposter is substantial, both in collateral damage to your brand’s image and to a big drop in followers and fans.

Get your Website Configured for Mobile Phones. Seriously. Do it now.

How many times have you gone to a website on your smartphone and discover that its really difficult to navigate the site? The  text is too small, images don’t load and you have to zoom in-zoom out to browse.

That happens because the website is configured for computers screens not smartphone screens. In today’s increasingly mobile world, smartphones are the first means of browsing for goods and services for millions of consumers. In fact a recent 2011 Garnter survey said that nearly half the population of the US is browsing the net using handheld devices. Namely Smartphones and Tablets.

The Importance of Organic

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

So you have a couple of options if you want to be found online. The first is to pay a search engine for Ad Spots. We’ve all seen those; they’re the search hits at the very top of the page that look like spam and are sometimes relevant to what your search query is, sometimes not-so-much. Either way, most of us don’t actually click on them.

The next option is the “Organic” search results, meaning those results that are the closest likely match in reference to what your directed request was. These are what most people click on when they send out a search request, and they fall directly below the paid ad spots.

Moves Like Jagger

Some things never seem to go out of style.  Same thing for your business right? You do what you do well, it’s worked in the past, so you keep doing it.

Well the same could be said for those slick dance moves that you used to slay them on the dance floor back in the day. You might have wowed them back when, but they’re a little woeful right now…if you’re trying to drive business with an ad in the local newspaper and a coupon in the mail, and that’s worked for you in the past, then fantastic. Good for you. Maybe that will continue to work for you.

Odds are your competitors aren’t just relying on snail-mail and sandwich boards.

Social Media?

Weboloy combines a canny mix of social media marketing, mobile marketing, SEO boosting techniques and consistent, engaging social content to build fans and followers.

Lest face it. Like it or not, without a Social Media presence, your relevance online drops considerably. Social Media can help generate  holistic SEO outside of standard techniques like PageRank, meta tags and link building.  This technique is called Social Media Optimization. (SMO)

SMO refers to the use of a number of different social media outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, brand or event.  Types of social media involved include RSS feeds, social news and bookmarking sites, as well as social networking sites, such as Twitter, and video and blogging sites. SMO is similar to search engine optimization in that the goal is to generate traffic and awareness for a website.

Essentially, Social Media Optimization is optimizing a website and its content in terms of sharing across social media and networking sites.

Toprankblog.com writes “Searcher expectations have changed.  – Searchers no longer have the sole expectation of searching to find information for a specific outcome. As people spend more and more time connecting, sharing and interacting with the social web, they now often expect to interact with what they find in the search results.

Searchers have always been able to save the useful things they find in search results by bookmarking or saving to the favorites in the browser. Bookmarks are now social, to be shared and leveraged via the collective wisdom of preferences from other likeminded searchers. The growth and popularity of socially enabling web applications (social bookmarks, news, networking, messaging, publishing & media sharing) drives consumer expectations for social interaction with search even more.”

Webology can create custom Social Media Optimization solutions for business that are supported by the three core components of Webology’s online solutions. Social Media, Web and Creative Copy.  Merging these three means that intelligent, engaging, relevant  content about your brand, product or service is shared across websites, listing services and social networks.

You need to make sure your business is social. If it’s not then you’re business is… well…anti-social.

Why Yelp is the Future of Your Small Business

What is Yelp? “According to their website at yelp.com “Yelp is an online urban city guide that helps people find cool places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play, based on the informed opinions of a vibrant and active community of locals in the know. Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what’s great — and not so great — in your world”

“That’s nice” you may say, “but how does that help me? How does that help my business?”

Location-targeting apps work in two ways. First, they report a specific user’s location to other users, and second, they relate real-world locations (in this case your business) to their location. Geo-location based mobile apps like foursquare, mapping services like Google maps and localized reference websites like Yelp all work together to provide the collaborative and collateral data for mobile search engines and now, voice activated search engines like Apple’s Siri and Google’s Voice Search.  Siri and Voice Search pull data from listing services. Listing services like – you guessed it – Yelp.