mobile

6 Mistakes You Could Be Making In Mobile Marketing

by Paul Joseph May 24, 2013 Featured

Mobile Marketing in the next big thing. Mobile has changed the landscape of consumerism in a few short years by becoming our favorite tool for reading the news, watching television, communicating, socializing, shopping, navigating…for just about everything! As a marketer, mobile is a very powerful place for you to connect with your audience. However, with great power comes great responsibility. Since mobile is such a personal medium, it is the easiest place for marketers to make massive mistakes that will turn off a customer forever. This articles serves the purpose to help you avoid making those mistakes. • Not engaging with your customers and not making your campaign local, social and mobile Mobile marketing is a way to build a relationship with your customer, the same way you do with social media marketing. Just pushing your product without building a relationship will annoy your customer and cause them to opt out. You should market to as much media as possible to reach as many people as possible. Concentrating on mobile marketing only excluding the other media will narrow the results you can expect. Concentrate on engaging with your customer through as many media as possible. Including other media can enhance your mobile marketing campaign. For example, when you use QR codes in your marketing, that can be scanned by customers with mobile phones. • Not respecting the privacy of your customer If you continually bombard your customer with push messages, and do so more than once a week without engaging them, you are going to lose them. Texting a mobile offer once a week is more than enough. When your customer subscribes he or she is literally giving you access to them 24/7. Don’t abuse it. • Not proofreading or testing your message Everyone makes mistakes. If you want your marketing to deliver results, make sure you know exactly how it looks. Do all the links work? Is there a phone number so they can call you back? Do the graphics show? Are the words a jumble? Not testing can be fatal for your campaign. • Mismatching content with mobile messaging Make sure your links to all content work on every mobile device available so everyone with a mobile phone can interact with your campaign. Don’t send someone with a normal mobile phone a link to an iPhone app. Make sure there are different versions corresponding to each mobile device. • Building an app without a plan for promoting it If you build an app and just wait for people to find it, you will be disappointed. When developing the app, make sure you plan how to promote it. You can use text messaging, e-mail, traditional ads and mobile advertising. You should continue to promote the app with regular updates, advertising any new features you release. It’s Mobile, Not Desktop Too many mobile experiences are just smaller versions of the brand’s desktop, enabling the exact same functionality, and trying to shrink it down to the small screen. Yet, a mobile app is an entirely different vehicle for experiences, and it should be treated differently for the new opportunities it provides. A mobile customer will quickly discard overwhelming designs that mimic desktop content page-for-page. It’s fairly common to assume that a customer will input as much information on the mobile device as they do on the desktop. But input is much more time consuming on mobile devices, and it’s important to design with that in mind. The reality is that the small screen can be a blessing , as it enables you to focus on what is truly important. Following the path of online advertising Mobile seems to be following the well-traveled path of online advertising with the same old strategy of placing ads around the experience taking up valuable real estate with irrelevant, interruptive and ignored advertising, rather within it.It is important that marketers understand what their target consumers are doing. Not Actively Promoting Your Mobile Web Site This one may sound like a no-brainer but it’s surprising how many great mobile sites are woefully under-promoted. If you advertise in print, on TV or in outdoor media, it’s far more likely that your audience members are closer to their mobile device than to a PC that’s on. The point is, there are some things your customers will only be able to do on your .com site and others they can only do on your .mobi. The more you promote the mobile experience, the more people will turn to it. Top brands that promote their .mobi sites are finding their traffic starting to rival their .com websites. But people can only spend time on your .mobi if they know it exists! So these were some of the most common mistakes marketers make when they jump on to the mobile advertising bandwagon. Let’s hope the article made you aware of these and will aid you in avoiding such mistakes in your mobile marketing campaign. Image Courtesy |  shuttershock Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

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Google Looking To Buy Waze For $1 Billion, Sparks Bidding War With Facebook

by Paul Joseph May 24, 2013 Featured

Google Inc is considering buying Israeli mobile satellite navigation start-up Waze Inc , which may lead to a bidding war with Facebook Inc, who has also earlier expressed interest to buy up the maps company. Waze has already been receiving expressions of interest from various Silicon Valley giants like Facebook. Reports had surfaced some time back that Facebook wanted to buy Waze for more than $1 billion, but the deal hasn’t taken ground as of now. The possible reason we can speculate is that Facebook will want the Waze team to move to California after the buy, something which the founders of Waze are against. Google and other parties approached Waze after the Facebook talks became public but none of the bidders are close to clinching a deal, though the start-up might decide to remain independent. Industry analysts have already started reasoning as to why Facebook would want to buy Waze. Waze is a mapping app for smartphones that’s infused with some cool social features. The deal will improve Facebook’s chances of  their mobile conquest and also create a mobile application platform that can be effectively monetized. Maps and geo-location apps are the way for location-based industries in the future, and this fact seems to be driving Facebook’s acquisition of Waze. Another reason could be that integration of Waze could provide a richer experience to mobile Facebook users. I believe Google too has plenty of reasons to gobble up Waze. Google Maps could become a stronger product after the incorporation of Waze. And it would also secure Waze from it’s competitor Facebook’s hands. Waze has not communicated regarding this development, and nor have Facebook and Google. Waze uses satellite signals from members’ smartphones to generate maps and traffic data, which it then shares with other users, offering real-time traffic information. The four-year-old company has 47 million users. It has raised $67 million in funding from firms including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Blue Run Ventures and semiconductor company Qualcomm Inc Facebook has been making powerful in-roads into the mobile space lately, time after its founder announced Facebook will start focusing on the mobile platform. It announced Facebook Home for Android, which even hit 1 million downloads. On the mobile front, Google recently announced the Google Play Music All Access App at the Google I/O 2013 . Today it overhauled its Google Drive App for Android devices as well. Let’s see how all three companies, especially Waze, react to this development. Image Courtesy |  forbes Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

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Chrome Beta Gets New Features On Android And The Web

by Paul Joseph May 24, 2013 Featured

Ever since Google I/O , the company has been releasing boatloads of new features across most of its products. Today, they have announced two new features for Chrome Beta. One for Chrome for Android Beta  and the other for the Chrome Web Browser beta. Chrome Beta  for Android: With today’s update to Chrome for Android, the app can now translate foreign languages on the websites. Whenever the browser identifies a web page written in a foreign language, it shows the translate button which upon being pressed gives the translation of the page to your default language. Chrome now sports a + button at the address bar so that new tabs can be added easily. They have also added a fullscreen feature for immersive consumption.  Chrome for Android also has an experimental data compression feature. You can now check out a graph of this compression data by going to Settings > Bandwidth Management in the browser app. Chrome Web Browser Beta: The Chrome Web browser beta on Windows is now getting a new notification system which is very similar to the one they have in ChromeOS. This notification system can be accessed by Chrome apps and extensions to deliver updates to users on the web. In the image above you will notice the Google Now design metaphor on all these notifications. Google’s design philosophy is now converging across all its services as it readies itself for a more consistent ecosystem this year. These notifications are not just announcements and updates but also offer some richer features depending on the app involved. These images below will give you an idea of the context specific implementation of the notification system. It will allow you to reply to mails, call, see image previews etc. right from the notification bar, thus saving your lots of time in your overall workflow and helping you not get distracted completely from the task at hand. If you want to check out these new features, download the latest Chrome beta on Android and your desktop OS (Windows). Download Link | Chrome Beta For Android | Chrome Beta For Windows Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

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Viacom 18 Forays Into App Ecosystem With Three Mobile Products

by Paul Joseph May 24, 2013 Featured

Viamcom 18 has  launched  three new products under three of its most popular brands –  MTV, VH1 and Nick. They are MTV Gupshup – a  VAS chat service, Vh1 Hub- mobile content shop and mobile game Stardom Saga. Rajneel Kumar, Viacom18’s VP and Business Head, Digital Media said “ The initiative is in tune with the fact that youth is spending more time on phones than TV. We want to capture this growing number of audience. Our first product MTV GupShup targets youth while Vh1 Hub is a platform which is best for international music discovery. They do not have to depend on operator anymore to download their favourite tracks. Stardom Saga is aimed at attracting young girls to live a fantasy life of a star via the game. ” MTV Gupshup: The company has partnered with chat service platform Altruist to which allows to make friends in India. Available in 13 different languages MTV Gupshup enable searches through various options like friendship, flirting and serious relationship. Viacom 18 is targeting the expanding VAS ecosystem of the country with this IVR based chat service. Vh1 Hub: A mobile content shop powered by Techzone, VH1 Hub boasts of international music. It enables users to download mobile content like songs, ringtones, caller back tunes, videos and wallpapers by logging on to the Vh1 Hub WAP/mobile site or website. The Vh1 Hub is available on Android, Blackberry and Symbian. Customers will be charged by the operators for using MTV GupShup and VH1 hub service. I checked out the website which has a good collection of old and latest international music. Users can check out a sample track and buy them but not listen to the whole song. No information about the pricing is given on the website. Vh1 recently collaborated with Hungama to launch music streaming app Vh1 Pulse on Facebook. Stardom Saga: Aimed at teenage girls and Available on iOS and Android, the the objective of the game is to become a celebrity star and the girls will be given virtual currency to manage. They can dress up their avatars at the salon and boutique, hire an agent to represent them, audition for movie roles and earn some quick coins from commercials. The content for the game has been created based on the understanding of the consumer behavior. For now Viacom is promoting all these products through TVCs on its network channels, and advertisements on social networks and its existing mobile network.   Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

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Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD Tablets To Be Available In India Soon

by Paul Joseph May 24, 2013 Featured

Amazon’s popular Kindle Fire tablets are going to be launched in India in the next three weeks i.e June 13, according to sources. These tablets run a customized version of the Android stack. Amazon launched the Fire HD series last year and till now these devices were officially available only in the US, UK, Canada etc. Now the company is going to start shipping these devices to as many as 170 countries, India being one of them. The tablets that will be shipped include the 7” Kindle Fire HD and the 8.9” Kindle Fire HD. These are currently priced in the US at $199 and $269 for the 16 GB versions. These kindles reportedly deliver a good experience with multimedia and books. Amazon has upwards of 300,000 kindle books in addition to other things like games, audio books and other content. The Amazon App Store on these tablets is the place where users can access, discover and shop for this content. We wrote yesterday about the Amazon App store now being live in India. This is an indicator that the Kindle Fire tablet line will begin shipping in the country soon. Kindle Fire Specs: Sourced from Amazon Developer page. The Amazon ecosystem once live in the country will be a good alternative ecosystem to get into as it offer some good content choices at some really good rates. I believe that their cutthroat pricing of the original Kindle Fire forced Google to price its Nexus 7 in a affordable way. Amazon has managed to make these computing devices really affordable for everyone by pricing their products in a reasonable way. The Kindle HD series is very tempting and I believe a lot of people will see value in these devices. What are your thoughts? Will you go for it? Source | The Mobile Indian Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

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Reliance Games Introduces iOS Game ‘Dancing With The Stars’

by Paul Joseph May 23, 2013 Featured

Reliance Games, an international developer and publisher of mobile games, has launched a game based on the dance-based hit reality show, Dancing with the Stars . The game is based on rhythmic movements and is available on all of Apple’s iOS devices- the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad. The game allows users to enjoy the dancing experience and includes the characters from the show-including Derek Hough, Mark Ballas, and Cheryl Burke-and develop their own revolutionary dance style in a performance. Players can also customize their dancing outfits with the game offering over a hundred variants. The game doesn’t lack in depth in terms of other content too. More than thirty songs are available to suit the skills of different players across the globe, which include Fallin, Toxic and Respect. The original TV reality show Dancing with the Stars showcases paired celebrities and professional dancers that compete for the famed mirror ball trophy season after season. The mobile game by Reliance Games aims to provide and let users re-live just that very dance action on the move while keeping the game to the original sense and competitive spirit. Manish Agarwal, chief executive officer of Reliance Entertainment Digital, said, “Dancing with the Stars: On the Move mixes the glamour and high-stakes drama of the competitive show with the rhythm-based gameplay. Both new and seasoned casual gamers can play this game.” This is good as I’m sure not many first-timers would be skilled at dance moves, and the game will also offer them indirectly with a chance to learn some cool dance as well. “ It’s an amazing, immersive experience ,” said Paul Joffe, VP BBC Worldwide Digital Entertainment and Games. “ It puts the excitement and energy of Dancing with the Stars in your hands. Fans get the chance to enjoy firsthand the journey to becoming a champion. They can even team up with their favorite dancers from the show .” Reliance Games, a leading publisher and developer of mass-market mobile games, is the international gaming division of Reliance Entertainment, which also comprises entities like DreamWorks, SKG, IM Global and Codemasters. The game portfolio includes more than 600 games for over 2,000 devices across various operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows, Java and Symbian. Its current roster of hit games includes Real Steel, Total Recall, and F1 2011, among others. The company’s content can be accessed worldwide through 80 networks across 40 countries as well as through global app stores. Reliance Games went on an acquisition spree lately and acquired game development studios in Japan and Korea in order to broaden its portfolio. Late last year, it rebranded gaming under Zapak. I think this development signals towards the maturing gaming environment in India as well as the world, and points towards the spike in smartphone usage and rise in mobile internet usage. Do give this game a spin and share your experience with us. The game can be downloaded from iTunes. Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

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Vodafone Plans Nationwide 3G Services

by Paul Joseph May 22, 2013 Featured

Vodafone India seems to be gearing up to offer a nationwide coverage of 3G internet services. Having earned well from its subscribers who use Data services, the company is contemplating collaborative techniques to offer seamless connectivity via much faster standards than prevalent EDGE & patchy 3G services. Vodafone’s Operating Profit (adjusted) rose to Rs. 1,854 Crores (US$ 335 Million) in FY13, much higher than Rs. 503 Crores (US$ 91 Million) in the previous financial year. For the 1 st Quarter of 2013 which just ended on March 31 st , Vodafone earned Rs. 9,276 Crores (US$ 1675 Million) as revenue, which is 7.2% higher than the same quarter the previous fiscal. In all, Vodafone India’s Net Profit for the year ended March 2013 rose substantially by almost 40% to Rs. 1,010.93 Crores (US$ 182.6 Million) from Rs. 723 Crores (US$ 130.6 Million) last fiscal. Vodafone’s India arm seems to be doing well for itself. In fact, by recent figures it has now taken the lead away from Bharti Airtel. Though the Mittal Company still holds the pole position for the highest revenue, Vodafone, along with other players like Idea have been climbing steadily. Interestingly, majority of its upswing can now be attributed to the rising usage of Mobile Internet. Hence the company is now looking seriously at exploring multiple options to ensure a pan-India 3G experience for its subscribers. Vodafone has confirmed 3G airwaves in 11 circles and was offering nationwide high-end data services through roaming pacts with Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular. But on numerous occasions, these companies have come under the legal scanner for offering higher speed services, where it had not won spectrum through auction. Hence it has now been restrained from adding new data customers in circles where it does not own 3G bandwidth. Vodafone may now be contemplating buying airwaves on this platform, from other mobile phone companies like Airtel & Tata, who seem to be struggling. While other companies are finding it difficult to sustain operations under the burden of Auctions & poor revenue, companies like Vodafone have clearly illuminated the path to Telecom’s progress. Will other Telecom Players now follow suit & offer better internet connectivity? Image Courtesy |  fonearena Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

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Opera For Android Comes Out Of Beta

by Paul Joseph May 21, 2013 Featured

The new version of the Opera Mobile browser for Android has shed its beta tag and is now available for free download on Google Play. This version of the browser marks an important development. Opera has now switched its rendering engine from its proprietary Presto to the open source Webkit , which also powers Chrome and Safari.   The new browser has a lot of improvements. The entire user interface has been streamlined to display more web content. The various functions of the browser can be accessed from a single button on the right hand top corner. Also the new off-road mode lets you have Opera Mini like compression technology at your service. It also shows you the amount of data that it compresses so you can instantly gauge whether the browsing is affecting your data charges. Besides that the browser implements a slick tab selection page if you are viewing multiple tabs. You can also get a quick look at news and other content which is personalized to your browsing habits by swiping right to the Discover section of the browser. The switch from Presto to Webkit seems to have given the Opera browser more speed in terms of page load. I am basing this on the comparative way in which Opera functions on my Android phone compared to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Both Chrome and Firefox on the mobile seem to be incomplete products because there is a significant lag in scrolling (in chrome) and page blur on scrolling ( in Firefox). By comparison, Opera works much better in this case. Opera seems much more stable and I am going to test it as my default mobile browser for a week and see how it turns out. If you have been facing similar issues with Chrome and Firefox on Android, you should check the latest Opera out. Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

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A Smart Brew: Blackberry Is Marketing Z10 At Cafes Across India

by Paul Joseph May 21, 2013 Featured

A lot can happen over a coffee. And if the new age marketing trends from the smartphone industry are any indicators, a lot is already brewing. In a world clogged with the dominance of Google’s Android mobile and massive eminence of Apple, Blackberry has put its invasion mode in the top gear by deciding to demonstrate its latest handset, Blackberry Z10, at hundreds of cafes across India. According to the company sources, the move has paid off as 70% of the cafegoers consented to demonstration and one in ten asked Blackberry to contact them about the purchasing. Out of this group, 82% proceeded to buy a Z10. A pretty impressive feat considering company’s projection rate of 50% conversion. Although Company’s Marketing Director, Anish Gupta, did not unveil the final number from overall generated sales, he confessed that the campaign has managed to facilitate 22,000 demonstrations successfully with many consumers even inviting the blackberry staff for a cup of coffee. The present eagerness of Blackberry to cover the lost ground after being elbowed from the third spot by Windows recently at Global scale is understandable. * But, whether the shaky smartphone giant would be able to transform the generated goodwill to any real number remains to be seen…. * The IDC Survey Story Source: ZDNet Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

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Jolla Debuts Sailfish OS Powered Smartphone

by Paul Joseph May 21, 2013 Featured

We  had covered Sailfish, the mobile OS that Finnish startup Jolla was developing, a few months back. The OS is based on MeeGo , the OS that Nokia abandoned in favor of Windows Phone OS. A lot of developers had dedicated a fair bit of time to Nokia’s linux based platform to see it get axed this way. The most passionate among them forked the MeeGo codebase and over time created the new gesture based OS called Sailfish. The OS seemed promising in aesthetics and well as features. Yesterday, Jolla announced its first smartphone which features the Sailfish OS. The company has priced the phone at Rs.28,000 (399 Euros) and is planning to ship it by the end of this year. The phone looks aesthetically pleasing and has a unique concept of splitting the phone into half. The phone has two parts, the front containing the actual phone and the other half which is a back-casing. The phone’s display adapts to the color of the casing that you attach, thus giving off a personalized ambience. The phone sports a 4.5 inch Estrade display, a dual core processor (brand not specified), a 8 MP camera, microSD slot, removable battery and 4G capability. The company claims that the phone will be compliant with Android apps. Since, Sailfish is based on Linux, the same kernel that powers Android, it may be easier to port Android apps to it. Even Blackberry 10 (built on QNX, a Unix-like variant) has a similar feature. This is marvellous for the startup as it can already leverage the millions of apps written for the Android platform and get developers to port their apps over to Sailfish easily. We are not sure about which countries this phone will ship to as the company has yet to provide that information and it remains to see if India will be in the shipping list. Jolla’s new phone is very promising but so is every other new platform popping up nowadays. Within a few months, we have seen the rise of new mobile phone platforms which are aiming to break the duopoly of Apple and Google and give everyone some much needed variety.  We have Blackberry 10, Ubuntu Touch , Tizen , Firefox OS and now Jolla. All of these platforms are based on Linux or Unix-like kernels. Even if industry watchers say that the mobile platform market is fragmenting, I would like to point out the the possibility of all these new players coming together and establishing a standard of app development where one app could be ported across others. This would make a lot of sense for most developers as it would bring down the time required to develop apps to all the platforms. Technically, this seems possible as Jolla and Blackberry have shown us. The question is whether this association will materialize or not. Android is marvellous but we need more open platforms as options. Developers and users should not invest only on one platform controlled by one player. What are your thoughts on this aspect of mobile platforms? Share your thoughts with us. Website |  Jolla Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

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