Archive for June, 2011
The 25 Wackiest Mobile Apps Ever
Jun 24th
It seems the world has gone app crazy. Afraid of being left behind, companies are creating apps for everything … even when maybe they shouldn’t. Let’s have some fun with it. I present to you the wackiest mobile applications that I could find:
Sin City – Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been 300 tweets since my last confession. Whether you’ve been “borrowing” free Wi-Fi or coveting your neighbor’s Android, a new mobile app is designed to help you atone for it. “Confession: A Roman Catholic App” say their software is seriously designed to help believers confess their sins. I’ll take two please. Might need a back-up.
Love to love you Baby! With Smartphone apps, romance is never far away! Valentine Radio compiles soulful grooves to set the mood; Shakespeare in Bits brings you the legendary love lines of Romeo and Juliet. A Blackberry Love Calculator, an iPhone iRelate chart or a honky-tonk Cupid love tester can clarify whether your date is Mr. or Ms Right. The “Pick-Up Lines” app gives you nine categories to choose from, including cheesy, sweet, and plain lame. Hey, is that a smartphone in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
$&(*)#*$@*#% – Of course nobody should be without an app that teaches you to swear in many languages. “Profanity” for the iPhone looks like one of the most useful apps I have ever seen : ) A must for the seasoned traveler.
While my iPhone Gently Weeps — Several apps for the iPhone and iPad give guitarists the ability to add effects and record. The most popular seems to be AmpKit which offers a wide range of sound effects, including standards like distortion, wah and delay. The free version includes two effects pedals, one amp, two speaker cabinets and two microphones. Pretty amazing stuff!
A different kind of Internet Cookie – Craving some Samoas or Tag-a-longs? Help is in your hand with the Find a Cookie app that helps you find the closest Girl Scout Cookie Stand. I’m a Thin Mint kind of guy.
Doggone entertaining — It seems that cats and the Internet go together like ice cream and olives. Game for Cats encourages cats to chase a dot. Hours of delight! Cat Toy offers four objects to chase: a spider, a butterfly, a red dot and a tiny mouse that squeaks when tapped. The Cat Compatibility Test will make sure your cat can make friends with other felines. And don’t forget to download the Cat Age Calculator! Translator for Cats gives pet owners an idea of what their furry friends are saying — although we’re not sure why you’d want to know. P.S. I’m obssessed with Keyboard Cat. Don’t judge me.
Say you, say me — Don’t know what to say in awkward social situations? No problem. Let an app pave the way to smooth conversation. On “iPology” (“The sorriest app on the web!”), when you answer the questions “What did you do?” “Who did you do it to?” and “Are you being sincere or sarcastic?” the app delivers automated responses guaranteed to get you out of the doghouse. Send the message via spoken word (you know, like in person), email or text. Along the same lines, “Excuse List” is available on both the iPhone and Android phones. Pick the activity you wish to avoid — work, church, sports, school — and scroll through a list of excuses.
The Hangover - Have you ever woken up and your first thought is, “How did this chicken get here?” If this describes you, check out “Last Night Never Happened”
When alcohol makes your fingers itch to record every embarrassing thought that passed through your inebriated mind, this app prevents those humiliating moments from haunting you forever. For a mere two dollars, the app erases all Tweets and Facebook posts for a selected span of time. Now that’s a sober investment.
Bribe-o-matic — Bribespot helps you record and report bribes you are forced to pay. Seriously. Talk about a niche market. It’s like a Foursquare for corruption. The app features mobile “check in” technology but instead of letting everyone know that you’re enjoying a fabulous latte at Javerde Coffee, you let them know that you just were forced to pay a bribe to the subway inspector because you were caught riding (in Hungary) without a ticket.
Nature calls– I’ve read about apps that will help you find a parking space in San Francisco and I saw Kimmo Linkama pay for a parking space using a smart phone in Estonia, but this next one is pretty cool — helping you find an available camping space. If you’ve been in the car for five hours with two tired kids you know how frustrating it can be driving around to find the right camping space. Apps like Oh, Ranger! ParkFinder (free on Apple) and Camp Finder ($2) are great for finding your next destination while you’re in transit or on the trail.
Are you ready for the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? Here they come. Grab some canned food, fresh water, your torch, and be sure you’re packing the Zombie Detector with you! No family should be without this must-have utility. Because it’s either you, or them!
BONUS!! Just because you made it this far, you have earned bonus content. Hurray for you! I hope you’re feeling validated and lemon fresh. This is not really an app but I thought it was clever. A company is trying to combat distracted driving with a low-tech solution: The Phone Condom, a plastic bag that is supposed to keep smartphones away from text-happy fingers while in a car.
So there you have it! Have an Appy Day!
The Seven Elements of Smart Content
Jun 22nd
By Robert Dempsey, Contributing {grow} Columnist
Despite the huge growth of eCommerce, most business is done by people, with people and for people … and is therefore built on relationships. You have relatively few options when it comes to building a relationship with new customers:
- Meet them in person
- Meet them over the phone
- Meet them online using proactive contact on social media
- Provide helpful, informative and entertaining content that will bring them to YOU
The first 3 out of 4 items on that list are scalable only by adding people to your team, requires constant personal attention, and are time-intensive.
Now here’s a question for you: how many people can you talk with on the phone in a given day? If a phone call with a potential customer takes one hour, at most you could do perhaps 8 calls a day if you break for lunch and do nothing else. So you can start to form relationships with 8 people a day.
Option four seems like a really good idea, doesn’t it? That’s called inbound marketing. A single blog post, for example, has the potential to reach hundreds, thousands and beyond. And what’s even better, you don’t have to be the one doing all of that sharing.
The bottom line is that inbound marketing through smart content allows you to build relationships with more people than ever before possible. It allows you to possibly connect with people around the world that were unavailable by any other means. And it works to build those relationships for you 24×7 – without adding people. That my friend is awesome.
So what is this “smart content?” A blog post is just a blog post, but smart content can take many forms as long it is a targeted, mindful attempt to connect with the needs and wants of high potential customers.
I think smart content must cover seven different bases to be effective. Let’s see if you agree …
- It must be created for your ideal customer and use their language
- It should be helpful, informative, entertaining, or some combination
- It must be created on a consistent basis
- It should be able to be spread quickly and easily via sharing and syndication
- Every piece of content should be linked to at least one of your products and services
- Direct marketing 101 - always include a call to action
- It must be measurable and produce a return on investment
Well, that’s a lot isn’t it? But it takes a lot to cut through the clutter these days and it’s probably going to be worth it for your sales effort. Do you agree?
Robert Dempsey is the Itinerant Entrepreneur. He combines technology, psychology, and marketing to help his clients build their empires using strategic marketing. You can find him at http://BuildMeAnEmpire.com
Keep your hands off my Klout
Jun 21st
The whole idea of assessing social influence is fascinating to me. Klout and other companies are popping up to reduce people to a single number … which evokes delight in marketers and loathing in those being rated! An evil genius could have a lot of fun with that scenario : )
This trend also taps into people’s sense of competition and it’s easy to be knocked off center when a cat or an inanimate object has a higher Klout score than you. Hey, I admit it – when Klout first came out, yes … I compared my score to other bloggers to see where I stood. I’m competitive, too! I think you have to enjoy competition to be good at business. We just have to keep it in perspective. Today, my score kind of stays the same under most circumstances so it’s not at the top of my hit parade!
But when people start getting obsessed with personal scores and measuring against “the competition,” it may drive the wrong behaviors. In the past month I’ve seen no fewer than six posts with Klout-enhancing strategies to game the system. I could really care less about how other people spend their time, except when it starts to affect me. You see, all these posts include something along the lines of finding ways to troll for people with high Klout scores and trick them into engaging with you. They suggest something like this:
- Research and follow people with high Klout scores.
- Retweet and reply to Tweets from these “influencers,” in an attempt to elicit a response.
- Find ways to support and promote influencers, hoping they will support and promote you.
So I am the perfect target. I have a relatively high Klout score and I engage a lot. But this seems a little creepy to me. Plotting artificial engagement to hike an artificial score? It just seems well, artificial!
I sense that there are people enacting this strategy on me now. I just had somebody follow me called @kloutbait. Hmm … subtle! Of course I can never really know a person’s intent, but I also don’t want to spend my time being part of a plot to game the system.
I believe that increasing your influence in any social environment — offline or online — can be supported in the long-term by following the simple formula that is also at the heart of my book, The Tao of Twitter:
- Surround yourself with meaningful people who have a probability of caring about you and what you do (regardless of their Klout score)
- Provide meaningful content that will naturally create value and act as a catalyst for connection
- Nurture and sustain relationships by being sincerely, authentically helpful to people.
These online scoring systems will come and go. Their algorithms will change constantly. Instead of trying to figure out the system, I think that by consistently following this path, your social score will take care of itself. And more important, personal and business benefits will accrue no matter what your score may be.
Does this make sense? What does this trend toward measuring social influence mean to you?
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Why SEO disgusts me
Jun 23rd
195 comments
Before my SEO friends get their panties in a wad over today’s headline, let me emphasize that I understand the practical value and wisdom of basic Search Engine Optimization practices. There are many prinicipled people in the field doing good and useful work.
But the competition to out-fox the search engines is getting ugly. Beyond ugly.
I recently had a discussion with the CEO of a leading Midwest search firm who described their common practice of creating fake accounts to pump client links into the comment section of blog posts and forums.
The process goes something like this:
Reality check. Isn’t this fraud?
I really don’t pay attention to the SEO shenanigans like this on a day to day basis but now these practices are starting to impact me and my precious time. Here is an example of this practice in a comment that was salted into the {grow} comment section by “John” –
This is good post. This is some good important facts about the corporate blogs. Do you have any information on how to manage comments on the blog. I think http://www. (web link to consumer electronics retail outlet) might have an idea. Chech it out.
And of course this linked website did not even have a blog. So now I am spending my time weeding out fake comments that elude the spam filter … and it happens every day.
I spoke to one of the freelancers hired by this SEO company to provide this faux commenting service. He’s otherwise unemployed and is doing it because he’s desperate for money. He’s good at what he does and rarely gets “outed.”
However as he described his work, he told me he feels guilty when people on the blogs actually want to engage with his fake persona. “I feel terrible about this,” he said. “I have to find some other work. I’m deceiving people as part of my job. I’m not in a position to engage with them because I’m a fake, which seems wrong.”
While Google fights against this kind of practice, it is very difficult to detect, and the “penalties” are so minor the risk is ignored by the SEO’s. And the volume of fake comments is likely to get worse. This firm alone has hired 300 fake commenters in the past 12 months and sees rapid expansion as a key competitive advantage.
The CEO of this SEO company does not consider this a “black hat” SEO practice — “it’s gray,” he said, “and we have many companies willing to pay us a lot of money to do it.” He bragged that one client has a monthly SEO bill of $200,000.
I recognize that there are many important business insights and strategies that can come from legitimate SEO professionals like:
… and more. But I’m concerned when it gets difficult to compete in the SEO industry without engaging in fraudulent behavior. This is a slippery slope that will lead to regulation. All it will take is one high-profile case that blows the lid off these practices. And we will all lose if we have to endure new rules and the cost of compliance.
I want to do business with people who view ethics as black and white, not gray. I want to work in an industry where we can compete fairly without resorting to SEO fraud to cover up ineffective products, services and marketing plans. How about you?