Monday's Links- This Week, On Wednesday!

I tend to think that the social media tool ecosystem is pretty much set. You know, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever. There may be a Google +, or Quora, or Pinterest bouncing around, but to me, they have to prove themselves worthy before I can really devote any of my limited (although large) amount of social media time.

That having been said, one must always keep an eye on what tools or apps are bubbling up from the thousands of Mark Zuckerberg wannabees toiling away endlessly. Which is why I found this article on Entrepreneur.com so valuable...


10 Little Known Social Media Tools You Should Be Using -- Now by Neil Patel
You should read the whole thing but here is the abbreviated list

1. EditFlow
2. TweetReach
3. ArgyleSocial
4. Hootsuite for IPad
5. TweetLevel
6. ReFollow
7. TwitterSearch
8. Traackr
9. SocMetrics
10. Social Scope

Why Videos Go Viral- CBS News
Apparently, YouTube's Kevin Allocca knows how to make videos go viral. He should know, as his TED talk on the subject is getting picked up everywhere, including on this hunble blog. Good job, Kevin!

The secret sauce? Taste Makers, Communities and Participation, and Unexpectedness.


Content Marketing Delivers Traditional PR Value Too - Chris Parente
I'll just go ahead and quote my good friend Chris-

All that said, a well crafted and executed content marketing program can also deliver more traditional PR benefits like awareness and earned media placements. This was clearly illustrated recently for one of my B2G clients. The company sells commercial satellite communications to the government, a market that is going through significant changes due to the federal budget climate and corresponding cuts in Pentagon spending.
My client’s senior management are focusing on this market evolution with thought leadership content that is both candid and creative. In the past two weeks, this content has resulted in tangible market benefits such as:

• A blog post being mentioned verbatim in a government agency presentation on the state of the market; 

• An offer to repurpose a blog post as a a full page byline, again verbatim, in a leading industry trade magazine; 

• An offer to expand a blog post into a 2,000 word article from a leading academic journal. 

All these benefits from a program designed to directly support revenue growth. The choice isn’t always black and white. A well executed content marketing program can deliver many traditional PR benefits along the way to measurable ROI.

Congrats to Tandberg on Social Media Award

I spent a fun evening at the K Street Lounge last night. No, I wasn't there to see and be seen with the cool people here in DC. One of our clients, TANDBERG, now part of Cisco, was there to receive an award from the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC)- "Best Use of a Corporate Blog."

The blog, "Break Down the Walls," has evolved greatly from an experimental pilot project to see if a blog could help support its public sector telepresence business to a successful social media portal integrated into the overall sales and marketing infrastructure. The Strategic team member who leads the account for Strategic wrote a post about working with TANDBERG back in March- read it here: http://cparente.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/breaking-down-walls-with-tandberg/. Here is a quick but illuminating quote:

Social media initiatives must demonstrate measurable value to earn their place in marketing budgets during tough economic times. Grounded in strategy and executed properly, social media can build audiences that directly support the bottom line of an organization.

Hear, hear. And I'm happy to see that strategic approach validated and recognized by local tech community...but its really a great pat on the back for the TANDBERG marketing team for taking a "risk" on social media and seeing it through to success.

Follow them on Twitter- @TANDBERG_FED

Where are the Cool Mobile Apps?

A lot of action in the mobility space this week, most likely prompted by the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. I've written before about mobile phones, pda's and applications on this blog before, mostly from the perspective of a enthusiastic consumer of mobile technology. However, a couple of data points today make me but on my business thinking cap.

1. This blog post by Tom Yager at InfoWorld ("The mobile app god rush"). Tom writes about the opportunities and roadblocks to developing mobile applications with slick GUI's, super fast response times and integration with the mainstream developer community. I love my PocketPC, but I have to put up with a fairly serious step down in prettiness when I view a web site, play a game, or view a spreadsheet. I can voice activate my phone using Microsoft Voice, but the feature isn't integrated into each and every application.

2. My colleague, Chris Parente, posted today about a new report on trends in mobile TV users. He says,

Here’s that survey I hinted at in the post last week and released today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. M:Metrics and Tellabs surveyed 34,000 mobile TV users in Europe and the U.S. last year. Here’s the verdict:

The Good: The market grew 36%, and is estimated to be a $270M opportunity

The Bad: Former users grew 68%, faster than the market growth. Too many people don’t like the experience and are dropping.

I think this backs up Tom's point that the user experience on broadband mobile devices isn't quite good enough and needs improvement. The question, as always, is when are the carriers going to open up their platforms to small, innovative application developers. As Tom mentions, Adobe Flash is ubiquitous on PC's but is tied down in agreements with carriers. He writes (my emphasis added),

Adobe had a shot at defining an even more appealing common ground with Flash, but it made a strategic decision that brings up the second roadblock to rich mobile apps. Adobe could have made a business of making sure that either the full Flash Player, or the embeddable content player called Flash Lite, runs on everything that moves, just as the desktop Flash Player does now. Flash Player drives sales of Adobe dev tools and back-end servers. Imagine extending that model to millions of devices, and allowing every Flash developer -- and there are so many -- to target phones. Instead of taking Flash to mobile developers and users, Adobe brought the best of Flash to wireless operators who will keep it under lock and key. Must-have features such as widgets and customizable home screens done up in Flash will exist on phones but only as created by wireless operators, who are likely to bill you for your maps and weather just as they charge for ring tones now. Even Apple saw the folly of putting developers at the bottom of the mobile food chain.

I see a slow process as the carriers slowly evolve and respond to the changing market. It's going to be frustrating for me and other consumers, however. You would think that they would make mobile apps not only easy to use but make them cool to look at too.