Category Archives: Social Media

5 Social Media Content Tips For Startups

by David Murdico In the land of social media, content is king. Respect the king and he will reward your loyalty. Creating and sharing content, along with active engagement, is the key to marketing via social media, but whether your startup is heavily funded or operating on a shoestring, your budgets are carefully scrutinized and there is a strong need for results. Therefore an emphasis must be put on creating and sharing the right content so your startup doesn’t burn through valuable resources in the process.

The biggest myth about social media is that once you create a page or account it will automatically boost your company’s visibility and popularity. This is extremely false! Social media is practically useless if you don’t regularly manage your accounts and provide content that is relevant,  engaging and sharable.

1. Post relatable content

Startups often face the question, “What should we post?” when managing their brands’ social media accounts. This is where providing relatable content comes into play. A social media page should not solely be used for spamming marketing and ad content to followers; marketers should also regularly post indirectly-related content to keep followers interested and hit a wider swath of people.

Relatable content can also include posts about events, pop culture trends or the holidays, particularly in ways that mesh with your brand, such as holiday sales. In other words, when thinking about what to post, approach it in a very personal manner so that you post content that your followers will easily relate to and be interested in. Also, don’t  forget to actively engage the people who are responding to and sharing your content!

2. Post pictures

Pictures are an easy way to draw attention to your social media posts. Let’s take Facebook for example. Posts that come up in the newsfeed with a picture are a million times more likely to draw attention than a simple text status. Try to pick an image that is related to your post and will also stand out when appearing in the newsfeed. Every post should come with a picture or should at least provide a link with a relevant thumbnail.

3. Post videos

Like pictures, video is another great tactic to draw attention and engage your followers through your social media page. Websites such as YouTube and Vimeo have developed ways for their videos to be embedded almost anywhere on the internet, including social media sites! Take advantage of this versatile feature and share your videos and/or other relatable videos across all of your social media platforms engage your fan base.

4. Do giveaways

Followers needed a reason to begin following your social media page and they also need reasons to stay engaged. Giveaways are a great strategy to keep your followers happy while at the same time promoting your products. Create social media giveaways that require followers to share your content with friends before they can enter for a chance to win one your products, services or prizes. Not only does your page gain more followers, but your products and services are also broadcasted to a widening audience.

5. Focus on Aesthetics

Once again, marketing always comes down to drawing attention through visually pleasing and eye-grabbing content. The look and feel of your social media page should be taken just as seriously as the design of your main website. An aesthetically polished social media page can go a long way in making your brand appear more professional and will separate you from your competitors. Social media sites all offer different ways of designing your page (some more than others) and putting on the finishing touches. Facebook’s “Cover Photo” is a recently developed concept that allows for companies to upload a photo banner to the top of brand page to be used creatively for marketing, branding, etc. Remember the most important part of aesthetics is being creative; do this and you will surely have success!

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INTRODUCING OUR MOST RECENT RESTAURANT WEBSITE!

Kelsey Media Productions produced custom web designs, photography, mobile sites with social networking for Boston Chowda Co. along with other restaurants from their Kitchens of
the Bay State Restaurant Group.

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More people are accessing the internet using their mobile device. Restaurants without a mobile presence are missing out on a massive opportunity to drive new customers into their stores.

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We can take your existing web design and format it for mobile – or create a new custom design.

Kelsey Media Productions specializes in Creative Marketing, Video Production, Web Animation, Digital Media, Marketing Events, Website Spokesperson, FB Apps., Photography, SEO, Social Networking, Web Design/eCommerce for Mobile and PC.

About time—Apple now experimenting with a watch-like device

Little is known, but NYT, WSJ both report using anonymous sources.

Apple is experimenting internally with the development of a watch-like device with smartphone capabilities, according to separate reports from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal today.

Screen Shot 2013-02-11 at 10.23.10 AM

Details beyond that fact remain murky. The NYT report indicates the watch may “operate on Apple’s iOS platform” and be built with a curved glass surface, leveraging “the company’s understanding of how such glass can curve around the human body.” WSJ reports Apple has already talked with manufacturing partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (aka Foxconn) about the idea, and this initiative could be the centerpiece of Apple’s next large product group beyond smartphones and tablets.

Both pieces relied entirely on anonymous sourcing from Apple—”according to people briefed on the effort” for WSJ and “according to people familiar with the company’s explorations, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not allowed to publicly discuss unreleased products” for NYT.

Screen Shot 2013-02-11 at 10.24.15 AM

If all this pans out, Apple would be primed to break into the emerging wearable computing market. It’s an area focused mostly on fitness today, but Apple has shown public interest. The company partnered with Nike on devices like the FuelBand or those iPod-connecting shoes. Apple has also previously partnered with Corning Glass, using the company’s Gorilla Glass, so it’s not a reach to say finding a use for the stretchable, new Willow Glass could be on Cupertino’s agenda.

The lack of on-the-record info didn’t stop NYT from speculated on some logical future uses for such a device—mobile payments using Passbook, GPS functionality, Dick Tracy-like communications.

Strum app turns a status update into music video

USA TODAY11:20a.m. EST December 13, 2012

Smule’s new Strum app turns status updates into music videos.

That’s what the folks at Smule, which makes popular music-oriented apps, have done this week with Strum.The free app for Apple iOS devices lets you shoot a 15-second status update and use their tools to vocalize your musings with a backing track, and add Instagram-like photo filters to pretty up the image.

The app “turns your life into a music video,” says Prerna Gupta, the general manager of Smule, which is best known for its Magic Piano app, with over 20 million installs.

“A really fun app. that friends and family can enjoy”
Stephen Cataldo

Smule has virtual instrument apps for flute, trombone and violin as well. It also used auto-tune technology on the Songify app, which was developed by Gupta’s then-Atlanta-based Khush before it was acquired by Smule in 2011.

Gupta and the Khush staff moved to California. Strum is the first collaboration between the two teams, she says.

Smule has reaped nearly 80 million downloads since first formed by Stanford University professor Ge Wang in 2007 as a side project, and now has 60 staffers.

Strum is the company’s first video app, and has 22 visual filters to enhance the image.

While the app is free, the company plans to make money by selling add-on filters.

Status updates have a limit of 15 seconds, and can be produced within the app.

A Quick and Accurate way to get you into your clients Address Books and STAY THERE!

A QUICK AND ACCURATE WAY TO GET YOU INTO YOUR

CLIENTS’ ADDRESS BOOKS AND STAY THERE!

EMAIL SIGNATURE A download link embedded in your e-mail signature which takes users’ to your branded web/mobile page, allowing them to save and receive updates of your information to any desktop, web or mobile address book (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, Outlook, SalesForce.com).


WEBSITE WIDGET A “download contact” icon applied to your existing profile web page that allows users’ to quickly and easily download the selected information to any desktop, web or mobile address book. Current “vCard” methods may only support Outlook and Mac address books, whereas we support 19 different address books!

QR CODE A Quick Response (QR) code for use on your business card (or any printed ad) which, when scanned with a mobile device, takes users to your branded mobile web page, allowing them to save your information directly to their mobile address book.

NOTIFICATIONS AND REPORTS Our service tracks how many people have viewed and downloaded your contact information, as well as notifying you by e-mail when someone has downloaded, followed or referred your contact information.

Kelsey Media Productions | Burlington, Massachusetts USA | www.kelseypro.com

 

Email Is Still Huge, And That’s Where People Want To Be Marketed To

By Chris Crum

Email is thirty years old, and it’s arguably bigger than ever, despite other technological advancements in computing and communication. The number of emails sent per day continues to increase, and there are way more accounts than even Facebook has.

What has been more successful for you in your marketing efforts? Email or social media?

This week, ReadWriteWeb interviewed “father of email,” Ray Tomlinson, who implemented an email system in 1971 on the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). The piece cites some stats from the Radicati Group, saying that 144.8 billion emails are sent per day, and the number projected to hit 192.2 billion in 2016. Another stat from the same source: there are currently 3.4 billion email accounts worldwide, and somewhere around 75% of them are actually individual people.

That works out to be over 2.5 billion accounts of individual users. Facebook recently announced that it had hit the 955 million active user milestone, with just 552 million of them accessing it daily.

In the interview, Tomlinson is quoted as saying, “Email has the time difference – that is, you send it now, you read it later – you don’t have to have someone sitting there and ready to respond like you do with instant messaging to make it work and make it effective. You can use instant messaging that way, but if they’re not there, nothing happens, and you gotta remember that there may be a message coming back to you and go back to the IM client and look for the response.”

He also said he expects email to be around for “a good long time,” adding that “We may find that these other forms of communication may be merged with email.”

We are indeed still seeing the merge of other online communication channels with email. For example, earlier this summer, Facebook started listing Facebook email addresses as the default email address for users, as even the world’s largest social network recognizes email’s importance to the communication landscape. Google+ and Twitter have both recently made moves indicating that they are relying more on email for user engagement.

Email is even making its way to Google searches. Last month, Google introduced a new way for you to search your Gmail account right from the Google search box, perhaps enabling users to access old emails when they’re at their most relevant. It’s only in limited trial mode right now, but this could become an important Google feature sometime soon.

In this article, I talked about why this could make email marketing even better for conversions. The point I was trying to make is that it can make marketing messages available perhaps when they’re more relevant to the audience, when they’re actually searching for something that you’re selling. Basically, it adds some search marketing advantage to your email marketing efforts, though perhaps not in a way that’s as visible as straight paid search. But hey, it’s free.

ExactTarget’s Jeff Rohrs said in a piece about email’s 30th anniversary, “In fact, an overwhelming 77 percent of all consumers surveyed prefer to receive promotional messages from companies via email compared to five percent who prefer text messages and four percent who prefer Facebook. Email is also one of the most utilized apps on every smartphone — right up there with the phone, text messaging and the browser itself.”

Emphasis is mine, because those numbers are quite interesting, given how much we see about Facebook marketing these days.

According to a recent study from Experian, email volume rose 10% in the second quarter, compared to the second quarter of last year. This is only a continuation in a trend the firm says it has seen each quarter for the past three years. Open rates were similar to those in Q2 2011. While click rates declined from last year, the pace of that decline slowed. Revenue per email fro multi-channel retailers increased from $0.13 to $0.14.

According to that study, the average click rate rose for business products and services in Q2.

Mobile Website vs. Mobile App (Application) – Which is Best for Your Organization?

"Kelsey Media Production mobile website services"

For Broad Marketing Outreach, A Mobile Website is the Place to Start ……

If you’re planning to establish a mobile presence for your business or organization one of the first considerations that will likely come to mind is whether you want to create a mobile application for users to download (app) or a mobile website, or perhaps both. Mobile websites and apps can look very similar at first-glance, and determining which is most suited to your needs will depend upon a number of factors, including target audiences, available budget, intended purpose and required features.

  • What’s the Difference Between a Mobile Website and an App?

    • Before you can evaluate the benefits of a mobile website vs. an app it’s important to understand the key differences between the two. Both apps and mobile websites are accessed on a handheld devices such as smartphones (e.g. iPhone, Android and Blackberry) and tablets.

    A mobile website is similar to any other website in that it consists of browser-based HTML pages that are linked together and accessed over the Internet (for mobile typically WiFi or 3G or 4G networks). The obvious characteristic that distinguishes a mobile website from a standard website is the fact that it is designed for the smaller handheld display and touch-screen interface.

    Like any website, mobile websites can display text content, data, images and video. They can also access mobile-specific features such as click-to-call (to dial a phone number) or location-based mapping.

    Apps are actual applications that are downloaded and installed on your mobile device, rather than being rendered within a browser. Users visit device-specific portals such as Apple’s App Store, Android Market, or Blackberry App World in order to find and download apps for a given operating system. The app may pull content and data from the Internet, in similar fashion to a website, or it may download the content so that it can be accessed without an Internet connection.

  • Which is Better – an App or a Mobile Website?

    • When it comes to deciding whether to build a native app or a mobile website, the most appropriate choice really depends on your end goals. If you are developing an interactive game an app is probably going to be your best option. But if your goal is to offer mobile-friendly content to the widest possible audience then a mobile website is probably the way to go. In some cases you may decide you need both a mobile website and a mobile app, but it’s pretty safe to say that it rarely makes sense to build an app without already having a mobile website in place.

    Generally speaking, a mobile website should be considered your first step in developing a mobile web presence, whereas an app is useful for developing an application for a very specific purpose that cannot be effectively accomplished via a web browser.

  • Advantages of a Mobile Website vs. Native Apps

    • If your goals are primarily related to marketing or public communications, a mobile website is almost always going to make sense as a practical first step in your mobile outreach strategy. This is because a mobile website has a number of inherent advantages over apps, including broader accessibility, compatibility and cost-effectiveness.

  • Immediacy – Mobile Websites Are Instantly Available

    • A mobile website is instantly accessible to users via a browser across a range of devices (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, etc). Apps on the other hand require the user to first download and install the app from an app marketplace before the content or application can be viewed – a significant barrier between initial engagement and action/conversion.

  • Compatibility – Mobile Websites are Compatible Across Devices

    • A single mobile website can reach users across many different types of mobile devices, whereas native apps require a separate version to be developed for each type of device. Furthermore, mobile website URLs are easily integrated within other mobile technologies such as SMS, QR Codes and near field communication (NFC).

  • Upgradability – Mobile Websites Can Be Updated Instantly

    • A mobile website is much more dynamic than an app in terms of pure flexibility to update content. If you want to change the design or content of a mobile website you simply publish the edit once and the changes are immediately visible; updating an app on the other hand requires the updates to be pushed to users, which then must be downloaded in order to update the app on each type of device.

  • Findability – Mobile Websites Can be Found Easily

    • Mobile websites are much easier for users to find because their pages can be displayed in search results and listed in industry-specific directories, making it easy for qualified visitors to find you. Most importantly, visitors to your regular website can be automatically sent to your mobile site when they are on a handheld (using device-detection). In contrast, the visibility of apps are largely restricted to manufacturer app stores.

  • Shareability – Mobile Websites Can be Shared Easily by Publishers, and Between Users

    • Mobile website URLs are easily shared between users via a simple link (e.g. within an email or text message, Facebook or Twitter post). Publishers can easily direct users to a mobile website from a blog or website, or even in print. An app simply cannot be shared in this fashion.

  • Reach – Mobile Websites Have Broader Reach

    • Because a mobile website is accessible across platforms and can be easily shared among users, as well as search engines, it has far greater reach capability than a native app.

  • LifeCycle – Mobile Websites Can’t be Deleted

    • The average shelf-life of an app is pretty short, less than 30 days according to some research, so unless your app is something truly unique and/or useful (ideally, both), it’s questionable how long it will last on a user’s device. Mobile websites on the other hand are always available for users to return to them.

  • A Mobile Website Can be an App!

    • Just like a standard website, mobile websites can be developed as database-driven web applications that act very much like native apps. A mobile web application can be a practical alternative to native app development.

  • Time and Cost – Mobile Websites are Easier and Less Expensive

    • Last but certainly not least, mobile website development is considerably more time and cost-effective than development of a native app, especially if you need to have a presence on different platforms (requiring development of multiple apps).

  • Support and Sustainability

    • The investment considerations of app vs website don’t end with the initial launch; properly supporting and developing an app (upgrades, testing, compatibility issues and ongoing development) is more much more expensive and involved than supporting a website over time.

  • When Does an App Make Sense?

    • Despite the many inherent benefits of the mobile web, apps are still very popular, and there are a number of specific use scenarios where an app will be your best choice. Generally speaking, if you need one of the following, an app makes sense:

  • Interactivity/Gaming – for interactive games (think Angry Birds) an app is almost always going to be your best choice, at least for the foreseeable future.

    • Regular Usage/Personalization – If your target users are going to be using your app in a personalized fashion on a regular basis (think EverNote) then an app provides a great way to do that.
    Complex Calculations or Reporting – If you need something that will take data and allow you to manipulate it with complex calculations, charts or reports (think banking or investment) an app will help you do that very effectively.
    Native Functionality or Processing Required – mobile web browsers are getting increasingly good at accessing certain mobile-specific functions such as click-to-call, SMS and GPS. However, if you need to access a user’s camera or processing power an app will still do that much more effectivley.
    No connection Required – If you need to provide offline access to content or perform functions without a network/wireless connection then an app makes sense.
    As with any project, when developing an app you want to ensure that your are getting an optimal return on your investment. What you want to avoid at all costs is the needless and expensive exercise of building an app to do something basic that can be achieved with a mobile website.

  • In Conclusion

    • As long as mobile remains a relatively new frontier, the “app vs web” question will remain a very real consideration for organizations seeking to establish a mobile presence. If your mobile goals are primarily marketing-driven, or if your aim is to deliver content and establish a broad mobile presence that can be easily shared between users and found on search engines, then the a mobile website is the logical choice. On the other hand, if your goal is interactive engagement with users, or to provide an application that needs to work more like a computer program than a website, then an app is probably going to be required.

    Kelsey Media Production has produced several mobile websites that are formatted to work on all the popular mobile devices. Call us now at 781.365.4800 or visit http://www.kelseypro.com

    A simple but effective tool for any website with some great new features!

    The Flash News Scroller is a multi purpose tool for events, special offers, new products or services, press releases and other content for your website.

    Kelsey Media Productions is always looking for better ways to help our clients. This vertical news ticker is very effective and offers important features that are not available on other tickers.

    features include: Smooth News Movement – A Resizable Interface – Links to Every News Heading – Custom Icons or Images can be displayed – Set scrolling speed/direction – CSS Support News text style and rollover color – Custom Background Image or Color – News Freeze on Mouse Over Event – Individual Pause for every News Item. Click on the link/image below to view.

    For special pricing contact us or give us a call.

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    Kelsey Media Productions specializes in Marketing Communications,
    Video Production, Web Animation, Digital Media, Marketing Events,
    Website Spokesperson, Desktop/Mobile/FB Apps. Shopping Carts,
    Web Design for Internet & Mobile Devices.

    Questions or to Order call 781.365.4800
    Kelsey Media Productions | Burlington, Massachusetts USA | www.kelseypro.com

    Important Online Marketing Trends….

    Keeping up with some new ways to market your products or services.

    Results from this Slide Show below will give you a good reason on why any business should market themselves on Facebook, utilize a blog site and make sure they can easily be accessible on mobile devices.

    [flashvideo file=http://www.kelseypro.com/marketingtrends.flv /]

    If you need help in marketing your business with todays new trends – give Kelsey Media Productions a call today.

     

    175 Million People Log Into Facebook Every Day……

    It’s no secret that online social networking (done well) is a great way to market yourself or business.  Social network applications can make that even easier.  Our applications are designed to enhance the experience for users on Facebook. Kelsey Media Productions most recent projects have included creating Facebook applications designed to help corporations, small businesses, schools, houses of worship and artists. Each app. we develop can be seamlessly placed into a FB page. Our FB apps. can be used to help market, promote and bring awareness to your products and services. If you have a following on FB and are looking to create a buzz, then a custom FB app. would be an effective way to showcase you or your company. Click on the link below, navigate through our website app. and then give us a call.

    < Visit Kelsey Media Productions Facebook App. >

    < you may need to [LIKE] this page to view >

    Kelsey Media Productions specializes in Marketing Communications, Video Production, Digital Media, Marketing Events, Website Spokesperson, Desktop/Mobile/FB Apps. Shopping Carts, Web Design for Internet & Mobile Devices.
    Call us now at 781.365.4800

    Kelsey Media Productions | Burlington, Massachusetts USA | www.kelseypro.com