what you need to know about mobile commerce

Zaarly chief marketing officer Eric Koester had a very informative guest post on Forbes last week that was very timely. Mobile is hot right now. Very hot. Hence, mobile commerce is on the rise. According to Gartner, 19% of all phones sold now are smartphones and according to Morgan Stanley, in the next five years more people will connect to the internet via a mobile phone versus a PC. All of this means that more people are going to be spending money via their phones as opposed to their PCs. The catch is that mobile commerce is a different animal. It is not the same as traditional e-commerce. Eric has smartly outlined seven tips for anyone with a stake in mobile commerce. Here they are (along with my two cents):

• Mobile commerce is here! - Agreed. No doubt about it. But we are still learning how when and how best to use it. Often times I do research on my mobile and then transition over to my laptop to make the purchase if it is a big ticket item. I believe there might be still be a price ceiling regarding people's comfort level in making a purchase on their mobile device.
• "Normal" people start buying from their phones - Yes, Starbucks is out in front in mobile commerce. I see it every week at the shop just up the street. The concept is easy for people to understand as Seattle's mass transit system and new toll bridge use the same idea. Link the app to your bank account and load it when necessary. You can even have it auto-load. Boom!
• Pay attention to privacy - Although I agree privacy is important, it does seem to be going out the window. Younger folks don't care as much about privacy as the older folks. And when the younger folks have kids, they probably will care less. We now live our lives (at lease partially) online and have gotten used to the fact that what we once considered private (like what we paid for our house) now lives in the public realm.
• Mobile advertising is as clear as mud - Bingo. With apps, the mobile web and the traditional web, it is difficult to figure out where to concentrate your mobile ad spend since people access all three on their devices. But with so many folks head's down, scrolling, tapping and swiping, starting out somewhere will be better than staying on the sidelines. Besides, you will still be ahead of the curve and you'll be collecting valuable data.
• Mobile is not just an extension of the web - Agreed. Sort of. It was born from the web, but now it is all grown up and clearly a different animal. People interact differently with it because of it's very nature. They are walking down the street, on the bus, at dinner. The attention span is different. The experience is different.
• Apps aren't dead yet - I don't think they ever will be. Mobile developers are indeed making the mobile web more app-like but until they are able to replicate app behavior 100%, there will always be a place for apps. Besides, can you imagine a time when there won't be an app for that? I can't.

I will leave you with this...we know our phones can do so much more now. They take pictures, pay for coffee, find restaurants, broadcast our location, play games, and on and on and on and on. And what all of these things have in common is that they have our attention, and that's where the potential is.

the four "f"s of content marketing.

What are your goals regarding your content marketing? Are you looking to be found? Are you looking for fame? Are you looking for fans? Or are you looking for feedback? As the authors at the Wikibrands blog point out, depending on your goal, your approach will be different for each of the steps. By no means is this an easy task. It requires unique skill sets, persistence and most likely, a group of people.

At the bottom of the pyramid is the basic "getting found". This means folks are locating your brand, product, service or cause on the web. This is about page views plain and simple.

The next step up is a little trickier, fame. This is where the holy grail of the internet lives. What all marketers want there video to be. But you can't make it that way, it can only become...viral.

Up next are fans. We all want more fans. In business meetings we call them brand champions. Ambassadors. Those sound more official. These are the folks that will enable us to grow our audience. They will share, rate and review. They will tell their neighbor, co-worker, the gal sitting next to them on the bus, the taxi driver on the way to the airport, the barista who makes their coffee...you get it.

Lastly, there is feedback. This is when you have established fans who engage you in a dialogue. You collaborate. You create lifetime users. Loyalists who want to help you and collaborate and give you ideas. In other words, influencers.

Check out the Wikibrands article for some tactics and tools to help you achieve each step and become an internet rock star.

infographic: the process of inbound marketing

#linsanity

This guy is for real. No joke. And the legend is growing. This game-winner against Toronto is amazing. The confidence with which he directs the offense in the final seconds is unbelievable. Hollywood couldn't have scripted it better.

Here's to Jeremy Lin, may he be an inspiration to everyone sitting on the end of the bench.

multichannel approach for the multitaskers.

Some things are just make sense, regardless of research. The thought that by targeting your audience with a multichannel approach would increase your reach makes sense, and now there is some evidence in the form or research to back that up (Source: eMarketer).

July 2011 data from Yahoo! and advertising agency Razorfish revealed that while watching TV, 66% of US mobile device owners multitasked on their laptop or desktop PC on a daily basis. In addition, 49% used their web-enabled mobile phone daily when watching TV.

highest resolution image of earth ever.

Via The Smithsonian, and courtesy of NASA, comes the highest resolution image of earth ever. Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space.

cliff mass, seattle weather celeb.

Cliff Mass has built quite the following here in Seattle with his Cliff Mass Weather Blog. The University of Washington professor has a unique style that appeals to a lot of the folks here in the PNW. He gets fairly technical but what you end up with is a better understanding of how weather systems work and why it can be so hard to predict. I particularly love the way he geeks out over fancy radar images and rare weather occurrences. If you are at all interested in the weather, I highly recommend checking out his blog.