The 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing Blog

Foursquare Grows to 10,000,000 Members June 29, 2011 – 11:30 am				Abdul Fattah Ismail

This event happened last week, but the infographic struck my eye for its animation flash.  To see the action, click through the image.

It’s actually astonishing that geolocal social media marketing has taken off in terms of individual engagement.  I found the concept awkward, as many probably did at first glance. Why would someone publicly alert the world of your location? Well, it’s just fun and games. It also promotes more intrigue, not to mention intensify the voyeurism of our digital livelihood.  Since we constantly engage with applications on our phone, it is also a marketing stream.

Local businesses are slowly starting to leverage the participatory nature of geolocal tagging. The Foursquare application developed a new feature to list up to 25 specials in your latest checked point. As a result, scale is becoming closer to a reality for businesses who engage with repeat customers.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Small Business, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency nyc, foursquare news, geolocation, Social Media Marketing

Patti Smith On Advertising June 28, 2011 – 3:08 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Rocker Patti Smith of ‘Horses’ fame amongst other vast areas of influence, had a rather common but pointed take on advertising. According to Clickz, this clip took place at the end of a seminar in the Cannes Lion ad festival of last week. Sometimes, less can be more. Even in the hyperactive digital age.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Content Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: advertising proverbs, Blueliner Marketing, Content Marketing, digital marketing agency, patti smith horses

GET IT Mobile Shares And Spreads Content June 28, 2011 – 2:18 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Mobile marketing has been conducted in a haphazard fashion through digital connectors. I have spoken several times about the slow pace of platform scale development. This has annoyed content executives who want to diversify their ad packages for consumers.

Quite possibly, this San Jose tech firm will put them at ease.  GET IT Mobile offers a mobile marketing platform for leading brands to connect with their audiences who are deluged with content from all angles.  How will they do it? These are some features of product differentiation:

• Web analytics – A partner site with measurement tools on par with other leading dashboards, customizable for your small business. Campaigns can be set up  at your discretion
• Landing Page Flexibility – Brands can customize their pages according to hardware platform due to the inclusion of product landing pages.
• Brand Experience – I like the shortened GET.IT URL. Links are becoming another domain where companies can stretch position and generate visibility.

The press release from EON offers more tidbits on the value of this new platform for businesses. After you review those, then GET IT over here.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Content Marketing, Mobile Applications, Mobile Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency, get it mobile, mobile marketing company, mobile marketing news

Ad Click Of The Day: Walker’s Crisps June 27, 2011 – 4:21 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

The small town of Sandwich, England is described by their citizens as ‘lovely, but boring’. Nestled in the Port of Kent, the town has architecture dating nearly a thousand years in age. The marketers at Walkers, the English snack company under Pepsico, engaged the citizens with a witty cross-promotion of celebrities like Pamela Anderson, an English boy band called JLS, and Formula 1 driver Jenson Button. You can learn more about the vision right here from the marketing director. Creativity Online writes a critique about the Grand Prix Jury ruling this one a winner.

Video content was distributed throughout the cyberspace on social media channels. Traditional ad spots also ran on the radio and television. The brand positioning is rather obvious but still clever. This particular campaign won accolades at the Cannes Grand Prix for its creative effectiveness. I couldn’t have said it better.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Content Marketing, Digital Media, Interactive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing | No Comments »
Tags: ad clicks, Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency, digital media, new york interactive marketing agency, online advertising agency

What Software Buyers Want, by Lauren Carlson June 27, 2011 – 3:03 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

It is important for web developers to understand the buyer.  Words cannot begin to substantiate this fact.  The power of our digital era has eliminated the need for immediate engagement with a sales representative.  The buyer will go online, researching through their personal channels. After this is complete, they will contact a representative to set up a conversion (sale). In this sense, the content must be a premiere centerpiece that showcases your product.

This content must also be easily transferable, crossing mobile channels and time zones.  Buyers tend to err on gaining specific details from the outset, while inquiring on a personal level when a service piques their interest.  They would like to know the price points first so that they do not spend a lot of time with a vendor that does not seamlessly fit their needs. Since they have the ability to survey from several websites, a video demonstration can be a powerful form of online advertising.

My industry colleague, Lauren Carlson, does a brilliant job of explaining the demands of a software buyer. She posted a mix of illustrative data charts and actual quotes. She also has offered some links from vendors with toolkits to get you started. Read more here.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Small Business, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency, lauren carlson, marketing automation software guide

Stretch Out The Meaning of SEO June 24, 2011 – 3:35 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

We here at Blueliner Marketing believe in the growth of digital media.  Our ability to communicate on all platforms offer a flexibility in business production which has never been realized in any other era.  Corporations are learning slowly about terms like metadata, page views, and conversion rates. But some executives still aren’t convinced that search engine optimization is a worthy investment, even if consumer traffic begins with a website for everyone. Outspoken Media had some opinions for marketing managers to crack the digital ceiling.

1.  Turn Your Data Into a Story

You relentlessly comb over the site map looking for mistakes in the metadata. The keyword list rankings have shifted a little bit over the quarter, but not too much.  The metrics paint a vivid for you to implement strategy, but what about your supervisors? Use a television show or allegorical reference to spread your data evangelism.

2.  Your Boss Isn’t Educated On the Seemingly Ancillary Benefits

In fact, I have conversations with co-workers all the time about clients who expect a complete brand transfusion in their conversion metrics when starting an SEO campaign. Unfortunately, in this world of button gratification, no mas. It takes a lot of protocol and slow roasting to see the results.  Outspoken brings out several points of value.  You gain increased web, image, and video search.  Your brand authority improves while customer acquisition costs decline.  Over time, you engage more with the customer base, and then the sales flow in.

3.  Rankings Are Up, But Traffic is Down

Again, this harkens to the last paragraph where investors could freak out in the early stages.  After a thorough metadata review and keyword implementation, you are separating the wheat from the chaff.  When this infiltrates a strong website with simple navigation paths, you will attract customers rather than surveyors.

4.  A Relationship of Obscurity

A last point they bring up is that it could be a plain old gap. Whether it be an age or personality gap  is irrelevant.  The forces of nature are not permitting management not understanding the basic value of your daily responsibility.  I bring this into the fray as a conclusion point for one simple reason. It is an indicator of a macroeconomic problem within your firm structure which is a coin flip at best.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Content Marketing, Interactive Marketing, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency nyc, new york interactive marketing, outspoken media, seo news

Ad Click Of The Day: Samsonite’s Heaven and Hell June 23, 2011 – 5:42 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Creative folks may have seen it already, but this is for the general public. JWT Shanghai designed this visceral but accurate illustration of the travel experience for many customers today.  As The Inspiration Room mentions, durability is a hallmark of Samsonite products. The ability of the bag to survive those binary elements is the selling point. This campaign piece won accolades at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, including the Grand Prix award.  Ad Age hails the recognition as a watershed for a nation who has yet to merge their digital acumen in terms of hard and software development with the advertising sector’s creative demands.  Click on the image to get a panoramic shot.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, creative campaigns, digital media, product development agency, samsonite

Blueliner Signs With Visual Lease For The Web June 23, 2011 – 3:08 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Visual Lease is a cutting-edge, easy to use web based system that automates the management of real estate leases system. Tenants and Landlords have a dashboard overview of their leases, receive critical date notification and can build an unlimited number of reports to evaluate all aspects of a real estate portfolio. Accounting has tools at their disposal to track rents, including escalations. For retailers, Visual Lease can manage complex percent rent obligations.

Despite their extensive portfolio of clients, Visual Lease needed to increase their brand visibility in cyberspace. A couple of years back, they enlisted the marketers here at Blueliner to rise on the search index. Our development team started from scratch with a comprehensive SEO initiative. They first built site architecture with relevant keywords in order to generate a spike in conversion rates. Along with strengthening the keyword segment, they built a link campaign to improve brand development inside the real estate community. Sales improved by approximately 60%.
Visual Lease’s future development initiatives involve more mobile, open source applications. Real estate is a nimble industry where data accessibility needs to be shared instantaneously across platforms, including CRM, project management and accounting.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Content Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Small Business, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

Blueliner Manages COSSERP Website Design June 22, 2011 – 3:28 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Coss Systems has led the optimization of manufacturing since 1992.  Their software enterprise system, COSSERP, takes inventory of your production chain and offers a wealth of tools for product planning, work orders, scheduling, along with data collection.  COSSERP’s ability to integrate software across platforms is the key to paying dividends in streamlining production across industries.  Despite the rapport that COSSERP built with small and mid-size manufacturers, management wanted a new website design to reach a higher customer base.

Blueliner helped COSSERP design a site with a crisp interface and drop-down navigation panels to hold content for the rich array of services.  The solutions section offers an Adobe brochure for instant download to be shared at team meetings for brainstorms.  COSSERP’s ability to mine data has allowed it to stand out.  The website also has sharper photography to further illustrate their range and depth of services for manufacturers.

A client whose balance sheet felt the positive return with COSSERP talks here:

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, CRM, Small Business | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, coss systems, digital marketing agency nyc, management software, new york interactive marketing agency

A UI Freestyle From RockMelt June 21, 2011 – 5:33 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

I noticed the article in my headlines from Netted, a digital media treasure chest of content which I discovered during Internet Week. Intrigued, I took the browser for a spin.  I am liking the drive thus far. I’m talking about the browser coming from the developers of RockMelt.  RockMelt is a browser that smoothly integrates the UI experience on many levels. The interface can be navigated with simple drags across to your Application Feed, where you can upload your social media accounts. This panel, known as the Feed Edge, updates your content stream similar to an RSS aggregator. One swipe and click leads you into a new tab for page views. The browser application is available for PC or Mac, completing a Beta 3 relaunch today. Users may be reminded of Google Chrome and Firefox in their navigation, but this one is much more streamlined.  

It’s link shortener is better than Bre.ad as well, who now has my scorn for poor account integration.  I’ve had trouble loggin in using a Facebook account and using my email account. Their smart brand strategy is being wasted right now. Hopefully they can make adjustments.

My one caveat with RockMelt is the close integration with Facebook could annoy users who use other content distributors.  The Developers vouch for Facebook because of its endless personal data reservoir. Fair enough.  I also thought the search query box was a little cumbersome as you have to open a new tab to enter Google and see content clearly.

Those quibbles aside, RockMelt is a social media browser perfect for those who push endless content around the web.  Click on the image for a download and test drive. Over here, CEO Eric Vishria talks with Bloomberg Radio about the experience.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Content Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing nyc, ui experience, web development