Frank Patrick

NFC in 2011: What's NFC, and Why Do I Care?

And I’m not talking about the National Football Conference, National Fire Code, or Nietzsche Family Circus.

When the iPhone 5 is introduced later this year, you’ll care.

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Interesting Facebook Campaigns: Old Navy, Carrabba’s

I particularly like the engagement involved in the “progressive” email-based Carrabba’s coupon program (Facebook link).

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What Consumers Want Online - "Show me the offer!"

The article has interesting things to say about location-based services and Facebook.

…Even so, these [Location-based] services have a long way to go before they hit the mainstream. In total, 30% of those who don’t use them said it was because none of their friends do. Nearly 20% responded to the question with answers like “Don’t know what it is” and “Never heard of them.”

Not so with Facebook. There are 241 million residents aged 10 and older in the U.S. and 149 million Facebook accounts, which are only open to those 13 and older. When you consider that the latest Pew data shows 79% of adults have internet access, you start getting to a point where saying “Everyone who is online is on Facebook” isn’t that far off.

I wish the survey laid out details for SMS Text along with the other platforms, or if it’s some small part of the 13% “Other”.

Ben Kunz makes some good points about this survey as well.

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Twitter Crushes Facebook For Marketing

From the article…

Facebook makes up 78 percent of traffic among all social network sites and micro-blogging site Twitter accounts for 5 percent, but on average “tweets” with embedded links get 19 clicks while Facebook’s shared links only get three clicks, according to a study by SocialTwist.

This makes sense.

Checking with my usual sample of one, I go to Facebook to keep up with the lives of friends and associates, and to Twitter to keep up with information on various topics. I also retweet a lot more than “re-share” in Facebook.

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Study: SMS Still Way More Popular Than Social Networking For Mobile Users

Periodically, Mobile Marketing Watch comes out with stories like this one continuing to talk up the volumes of sms texting going on, especially among “the youth”. The implications are that there are huge marketing opportunities. I don’t buy it.

Sure there’s a lot of texting going on, but it’s all about one-to-one communication. Yeah, there’s the occasional fan-oriented text programs like American Idol or the show polls on Bravo. And yes, there’s opt-in tools providing functionality like stock price alerts. And yes, I think there’s a real use for maintaining engagement with existing customers, if it’s done so with value or functionality that’s meaningful.

But most people still get annoyed with tele-marketers, and I believe they think of their texting the same…the first bit of something that even smells like spam, and they’ll be opting out.

Add to that the onerous limitations and expensive processes involved in setting up SMS programs, and I’m not seeing it taking off as a major mobile marketing channel any time soon, other than as a conduit for information from social tools like Twitter and Facebook and from location services like Foursquare and Gowalla.

How to boost search rankings via social media

Is it advertising or social media or advertising and social media?

Facebook Launches Pages Redesign

5 agency blogs you should be reading

Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising

kabookaboo Marketing - 2011 Calendar of the Unusual

The Jazz of Social Media

From the piece…

You see, Marketing 1.0 had charts.

Social Media is improvisational.

It really comes down to that.

It’s a struggle for classical marketers to feel comfortable playing social media jazz, because engaging with your market can feel REALLY uncomfortable. You can get dirty. It doesn’t always sound right. You have to Let Go. You can be misinterpreted. You don’t always look good. You can’t control the flow.