Monthly Archives: April 2011

Digital Marketing, Social Media

Focus on the Locus

Locus Curve
Locus Curve

Location services, good or bad? Well that depends on how it is used. If you you it to stalk other people, then it could be bad. It could also be a better way to stay engaged. Locus, defined as:
1. a place; locality.
2. a center or source, as of activities or power: locus of control.
3. Mathematics. the set of all points, lines, or surfaces that satisfy a given requirement.

In each of those definitions, it can apply to how individuals and companies react in the social sphere. Even extending the Math definition could help. Starting on the first definition, a place or locality, we can look at recent events to see how this plays out. Protests in the Middle East have been widely reported. Some countries shut down Facebook and Twitter and other sites because they do not want information getting out. By Tweeting or posting an update on Facebook, the people add locations and the world is able to see the events. The storms that swept the south of the United States and wiped out community after community. And location services played a role in re-uniting people, and being able to let others know outside of that area status updates. In the aftermath of the Japan quake, Google provided location services so people could be found and updated. Information flowing, connecting people is just one part of location services.

But it is not just about extreme conditions, or emergency services, it can be used for businesses. We can examine the hotel chains as a prime example. Their business model is to allow people to stay in a place away from home, and be comfortable (hopefully). Hotels needs to have rooms filled in order to make money. If rooms go empty, then it is hard for a hotel to make money. Hotels in larger cities are plentiful and more competition exists to fill those rooms. A new app available on the Apple line of mobile products, HotelsTonight provides a great service that some hotels have taken great advantage. This provides a way for people to get last minute deals on hotels in the city they are currently in. Imagine being in a city and having to stay over night because of a meeting that ran long, flight canceled, out for a night on the town, etc, and you need a place to stay. By using this app, it will provide different hotels with deals on empty rooms. If you ran a hotel in one of these cities, why not use this type of service?

And it extends more. At first, Twitter and Foursquare seemed like the perfect apps for college age friends to meet up, find out what is going on. I have friends in different cities across the United States, and it is funny to see them check in to different places and become “mayor”s of certain places. It is almost like a game of “King of the mountain” that we can play being in different cities, to see who can become mayor of most places. Foursquare provides more information as well. While traveling, we stopped in a restaurant. I checked in to to restaurant and found special deals for this place, and suggestions made by others who had been there before. Some places even offer discounts on the food when you check in at their location. We got a free appetizer for checking in at a local Greek restaurant. All we had to do was show them our iPhone with the check in.

lighthouse
Lighthouse

So why should this matter to anyone? It will not if you do not care about technology. Like it or not, we are becoming an increasingly connected global society. Location services, whether by a mobile application, or by web app, can help. It can help in times of needs, in times of trouble, in times for fun, in times for business. it your place, your locality. Use it for a center or source of activities, provide knowledge of your product. It can be used to help promote your product/service as the solution for the potential customers’ set of requirements at that location. When we start to look at the location services as more than a mere annoyance, and another method to engage and build customer relationships, it can become a powerful tool.

Applications, Ideas and Sorts, Social Media

Ideas for the Social Leper

What
image courtesy of Ducklips Photo

Social networking, check-ins, friending, linking-in, and other items have made for an interesting world. Some people may see this as a purely consumer/individual niche, with only the younger crowd getting into this new fangled technology. The internet has been around for a while and people sometimes have a hard time seeing how these new social areas can have any meaning to the world. Good or Bad, these items are here to stay, and eventually evolve. Today we know of things like Foursquare, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and others to help us keep in touch with everyone, even people who are not really our friends.

But how can businesses take advantage of this? Some have tried, some have succeeded, some have failed. And still some, are reluctant to try this. One of the cases I saw with this I could not believe they were using social media this way to do a marketing campaign. As I always say, I am no marketing genius, but I do feel I know technology. This company had a product that they would market. They had a specific site set up for this product, and would try to highlight the different parts of this product. When it came to social media, the message was always the same. No matter which portion of this product was being showcased, the same message was being done on the social media outlets. And I am not talking about the same idea being conveyed, or the same thought. I am saying the exact same verbiage, for each time it hit the social sphere would be the same. I equated that to social spamming.

All Alone
image courtesy of Ducklips Photo

Imagine being around a person who said the same thing every time you saw this person. No matter what the conversation was, no matter what events were happening, this person would say the exact same thing every time you were around this person. Would you be excited to see this person? Would you start to ignore this person? And that is what one really needs to ask in these situations. I am sure we all have our “friends” (using Facebook) that we read their posts and just think, “I should hide their posts because they are annoying”. Or they just get thrown into the friend dumpster.

But this group looked at social media as another billboard, another TV spot, another magazine ad. And is that what social media is really is? Of course not. It is a chance that businesses can actually interact with their consumers. Years ago, the big push was to create sort of a “symbiotic” relationship with the supply chain, including distributors, suppliers, retailers, etc. This even extended to a certain extent for competition. Now businesses have a way to create that same relationship with the people who actually pay for the goods and services. And some companies would prefer to just treat this avenue as another billboard. Why would they think that would engage the targeted audience? Does anyone, besides children, get excited to see tons of pretty colors and the same message constantly? It is time to start interacting with the consumers to build those relationships. It is possible, and no matter what the product is, it can be done.

The Pet Rock
(image from wikipedia)

Anyone remember the pet rock? It was a freakin rock! Something you can pick up in the backyard. Yet people would buy these things. It was the way it was marketed. I am sure they did not just market it by promoting a purchase of an ordinary rock from the ground. It was marketed as a real pet, filled with funny play on words and relating it to a real pet. It came with a full instruction manual, and a box that looked like a pet carrier. But at the heart of the product, it was a rock. Most products have a lot more functionality than a rock, and fail. It is the message. Using social media should be the same. Interact with the consumers, build that relationship, and have them interact with the company. Sure, some people will be rude, and even try to degrade the company. Build the positive voice, and keep the engagement alive!

Applications, PHP

Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

1 Comment

CakePHP is one of those frameworks where it is easy to set up and get an application running in a minimal amount of time. It provides different securities, helps, and functions in the framework so that your application can run smoothly and be safe. As with all applications, the level of security and functionality depends on the developer, not the code, not the language, not the database. An application is only as secure, functional and reliable as the person/team who is coding it. One of the reasons I do like Cake is that the built in security and helpers offer a developer a great way to secure data, validate it, and display it. And that can also be one of the more trickier parts of getting the application to work correctly, finding the data to do something with it.

CakePHP
CakePHP

CakePHP provides some functionality for finding the data, this is done using the “find” method. You can read more about this at the Cookbook. Using this, one can grab data from many different tables if needed, or just one table. For this exercise, I am going to use dummy data to show how to find data, using simplistic finds, and using joins, and sub-queries. So first lets examine the data tables. Not all of these are going to be connected. This is a very simplistic, quickly drawn up solution to a lending library

Sample Tables
Sample Tables

Continue reading Have Your Cake and Eat It Too →

Ideas and Sorts, Planning, Social Media

Whats the plan, Stan

After nearly a month off, I believe it is time for me to institute a new way I am going to blog. Topics range from a ton of different items, and I think we should have a specific way of what I am doing. So, starting today, and hopefully I will have enough time with this, I will be doing a post every day of the week. Some will be longer than others, and some with be short. But every day, there is a theme that will be followed. The format will be as follows:

Monday – Whats the plan, Stan; Planning ideas and thoughts
Tuesday – Have your Cake and eat it too; focusing on coding
Wednesday – Coding for the Social Leper, ideas and code segments for people like me, social lepers
Thursday – Focus on the Locus; examinations on location services, social integration and strategy
Friday – Fun Stuff to Knock Your Socks Off; fun stuff to finish up the week

Now, the next question ought to be, what makes me such an expert on any of these topics? Well, here is the answer, nothing, I am not an expert. These are my musing and experiences in these areas. I may be right on some of my endeavors, and I may bomb. I will share both with you. I figure one of the best ways to learn and grow is to share experiences with each other. And this is what I am intending to do, share my experiences with anyone who cares to read.

So lets get on with the post for today – Planning. This goes with any thing you want to do. Whether that is code, a social media strategy, or marketing campaign, heck, even mowing the lawn. I will share with you some of the things I do before writing any code for an application. There must always be a start to everything, so lets start with the basics. This will be a very high level overview into some of these items, and will get more detailed as the weeks go on.

What is really needed for the project at hand? Do we know what the goal is, how it should act, behave, grow? Has any research been done. In code, one of the things I like doing is understanding how an end user is wanting to use an application, what they expect. I go through interviews, process flows, and even user stories. This can be applied to almost everything else. We need to understand what it is that needs to be accomplished, and why it needs to be accomplished.

Next is to understand what success and failure metrics for this project. What needs to be tracked, and why. What is important to business groups and why would it be important. What is the success boundaries, and what consists a failure? I like to understand each of these items so I know what to plan for in the code, in the campaign, in the project. Statistics can be a real bugger if it is done at the very end. And it may affect how an application is coded, a project assigned out, or a campaign run.

Once we have these ideas in place, we can start with the next phase of planning, and that involves the documentation, the project write up, and the use cases, mock ups, design sketches, etc. Which can be very time consuming. This is what makes it hard to go this route for many companies. Time means money on a lot of ventures. Not just the money of paying people to do this, but the residuals that involve this as well, electricity to power laptops, internet connections, travel, focus groups, phone charges, etc. This phase can have a lot of monetary impact while yielding very little ROI. So it is finding the right combination of events to maximize those events, and get into the actual work quickly.

Planning is essential though. And it should not be passed over or taken lightly. Think of some of the major applications, or ads, or products out there. Each one of them required a ton of planning, and it paid off. The Old Spice commercials are amazing, and that could not have been slopped together quickly. Most online applications are ones that are well planned, and you can really tell the difference between the ones that are and are not. Companies that are successful plan. But a final word of caution on planning: Do not let it consume you to the point of where you lose focus on the final product. You can plan things to death. Find that perfect balance that works for you, and run with it.