November 13, 2011 in Blog by VisualMob

Why I think Groupon will ultimately fail

While the title is pretty inflammatory I do not personally like the Groupon business model at all. Plain and simple I think their cost vs. benefit is too high and the customer retention and customer quality is too low.

After more research and looking at some of the horror stories online I simply don’t like the idea that price rules it all when making a purchase. If anyone has ever read any blogs from Seth Godin or subscribe to the fact that successful marketing and brand building sells products, not just low prices, then you will know what I am talking about.

Groupon can fit into the marketing of some business. If you make millions of widgets at a profit of 400% you can afford to sell them cut rate on Groupon and still make a profit. If you in fact work hard making a product that includes sweat, love, and ingenuity; and a profit margin of 20-50% you cannot make it work. They simply take too much of the pie.  The lesson learned at the Posies cafe in Oregon is one that has been shared all over the interwebs. It may have, in fact, become the lesson of why not to do a Groupon. The angle as I see it is, from a marketers perspective, why should you lower your products price temporarily (read have a sale) ever?

1. It is expiring or needs to be used (supermarkets sale on eggs)

2. You want to offload items to make room for more or newer products (brands selling last years colors).

3. You want to give a special deal to loyal customers or entice new customers with lower than normal price.

If you business model necessitates having sales people will expect them over time and not pay full retail price for your products because they think they can get them cheaper if they wait. You also run the risk of devaluing your products or image. So what should you do instead of playing race to the bottom? Simple. Do what car companies have been doing forever. Market your business or product as better. Create some creative campaigns to position yourself as a good value at retail price. Because you offer an experience, or service standard that no other can match. Separate yourself. Another concept that many business forget. Find out what your customers want more of, cater to them, an build a tribe of loyal followers who want it. Everyone feels good and no one gets ripped off or feels used in the end.

July 19, 2011 in Blog by VisualMob

Tor Myhren at TEDx in Denver

This is pretty good talk by Tor about Radical collaboration. The bit about social media is funny, but in all seriousness the main thing many millennials, leaders, and even regular job applicants of all backgrounds have to differentiate themselves today is their creativity. Being a person in the creative business it is sometimes hard to just go back to the well over and over get creative solutions. But if you just daydream or take the time to relax the ideas will often just appear.

March 9, 2011 in Blog by VisualMob

QR codes are here to stay – Here’s why

You have probably been seeing the little black and white qr codes here and there while your out and about town. If you live in a large city you may have seen them way more often. Best Buy has them all over the place, Jimmy Fallon had one for one of his artists that he showed on his program and they linked to a song on iTunes. These QR codes are going to stay for a few main reasons.

1. QR codes bring your print advertising to life.

Not long ago print was kind of delegated to the backseat for many advertising options because the call to action was too far away. Some had called print officially dead though I never saw the obit. Think about it from the web age standard though. You had to look at an ad in paper or magazine and then remember the website they had so you could go back to your desktop and plunk it in four hours later. No longer. Add a small QR block to the bottom of your print ad that links to your specific product page or mobile website and you have the direct link between the curious shopper and more information on your product. The loop has been completed.

2. The price is right

QR codes are an open standard that costs essentially nothing to produce and are easily read by any free qr code readers out there for your smart phone. They can be used in print of nearly any size from billboard to business card and they are flexible in that you can use them for many types of information, not just urls. You can promote map locations, contact vcards, urls, phone numbers, sms, and calendar events.

3. They are simple.

Most things tech are admittedly kind of hard to adopt. Facebook managed to get around this by keeping their user interface simple and people responded with a “yes, thank you”. But, even Facebook has people wondering what are they going to change next? QR codes are just like the tools we already use nearly everyday, Bar codes. Except these barcodes are interactive and much cooler. Using QR codes is really very simple. Point your iPhone at it, bam!, information imported, website visited, event added etc. There isn’t any code to learn and the payoff can be instant. Which is exactly what people want. Instant gratification without all the hassle.

March 4, 2011 in Blog by VisualMob

11.6 hours scam on Twitter

If this 11.6 hours scam on twitter tells us anything it is that keeping your social apps locked up tighter than drum is good practice. For goodness sake people, make sure you trust any app that you  are giving access to. Time on tweeter, as it is also known, has already ripped through the majority of the click happy folk out there. Even a simple ploy like this one can get some legs quickly. It is a more of a smash bang thing. But, this is unfortunately, only the beginning.

If you’ve accidentally added this or any other poisonous app to facebook or twitter you should immediately revoke Twitter access to all suspicious applications.

To revoke their access, log into Twitter, click on “Settings” in the upper-right drop-down menu, choose “Connections” and click “Revoke Access” on suspicious apps — which, in this case, is the app named “Time on Tweeter.”

February 23, 2011 in Blog by VisualMob

WordPress 3.1 code name “Reinhardt” now availalble for download

WordPress has updated  to their much anticipated version 3.1. Woo Hoo! The new release was codenamed Reinhardt after legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. I use legendary loosely because I listen to some Jazz here and there and had to look him up. Which was good because I was looking for some new music to listen to today. So double good on WordPress today.

Based on the WordPress blog they have fixed and committed 828 updates to 3.1. Excellent work people! And on the blog they list all of the 180 people from all over the world who have worked to make WordPress the best CMS ever. It is truly a world class piece of software. And it is a full CMS now. The only lagging feature may be full document management, but hey, even that is better than some.

Our favorite updates

Interlinking – It seem there are some pretty great admin updates which are a welcome addition. Inter linking between posts is a major upgrade and now allows you to easily link between posts by searching via a new window. Very cool. Better than two tabs open.

Admin tool bar – Once logged in you can now see and admin tool bar with some links to helpful backend areas on the top of the page. This is another area of importance as bloggers and content managers are always going back and forth between live pages and backend screens to make updates. This really streamlines the process and helps us all makes changes quicker.

Streamlined writing interface – Perfect, we can hide some of the lesser used tools and keep the main focus on the tools you use the most. Not that the wordpress interface was bad before but heck, your in there making things awesome, why not. Since you can bring them all back by using hte screen option menu it is really just a matter of taste. Everyone loves to tell people “how they use it”. So customize away. WordPress will keep making more.

These changes along with the custom post formats, importer/exporter upgrades, and custom content types make Worpdress 3.1 a very good buy. Wait, it is still free? Go for it. This is a no brainer upgrade.

Below are the main highlights of this release.

Highlights

• Internal Linking – click a button for an internal link and it allows you to search for a post or browse a list of existing content and select it for inclusion.
• Admin Bar – contains various links to useful admin screens. By default, the admin bar is displayed when a user is logged in and visiting the site and is not displayed in admin screens for single blog installs. For multisite installs, the admin bar is displayed both when visiting the site and in the admin screens.
• Streamlined Writing Interface – new users of WordPress will find the write screen much less cluttered than before, as more of the options are hidden by default. You can click on Screen Options in the top right to bring them back.
• Post Formats – meta information that can be used by themes to customize presentation of a post. Read more in the article Post Formats.
• Network Admin – move Super Admin menus and related pages out of the regular admin and into a new Network Admin screen.
• List-type Admin Screens – sortable columns for list-type screens and better pagination.
• Exporter/Importer Overhaul – many under the hood changes including adding author information, better handling for taxonomies and terms, and proper support for navigation menus.
• Custom Content Type Improvements – allows developers to generate archive pages, and have better menu and capability controls. Read more in the article Post Types.
• Advanced Queries – allows developers to query multiple taxonomies and custom fields.
• Refreshed Blue Admin Color Scheme – puts the focus more squarely on your content.

Check the WordPress blog for more info.

Download it manually here. Or, just update from within your dashboard.

February 16, 2011 in Blog by VisualMob

I didn’t get my facebook apps text confirmation

If you are like me you may have used your google voice number for your phone number to get a text message confirmation from facebook for your apps verification.

This probably didn’t work for you since it didn’t work for me. This is where facebook kinda blew it because you hit a wall. You can’t really choose a new number.

The trick is to go to your account drop down. Then go to Account Settings.

After that go to your mobile tab.

You will now see a page where you can remove your phone number from the account!  Once you do that you can logout and then log back in and you will be able to send a new text conformation from the developer apps page to that phone number.