As the world continues to struggle with a social media definition, anxiety is building at an alarming rate on how your small business can leverage social media.  Almost everyone I speak with during my travels right here in Calgary but across our entire client base is challenged with these same thoughts.

How can we really use social media and how can we profit from the use of social media?

These questions are fantastic and genuine.  We can measure some marketing and some companies are spending thousands of dollars on marketing that doesn’t work with no real measurement.  I would be better off sometimes driving down Deerfoot Trail here in Calgary and throwing my business cards out the window.  Oh yeah, and then trying to follow up with every one who picked one up off the side of the freeway.

Concern and the pursuit of figuring our social media, tough economic times and constant bombardment from gurus is causing more and more social anxiety to occur.  Leaving Small Business owners to feel like their heads are going to explode.  They won’t explode and you can always call me if it feel like it will.

It is no secret that communication strategies are evolving.  Some may see this as change while others see it is a natural evolution on how people communicate.  I believe most people are resistent to change as well.  They don’t like it, maybe they don’t accept it and it could be the alarming pace of change that may also lead to anxiety throughout Canadian business.

After all, we had telephones, fax machines, cell phones, email, cell phone with email and now social media platforms.  Change is all around us.

Is the rate of change that is fueling the anxiety or even adoption of social media in the workplace?

I am shocked every time I learn about a firm who block services like Facebook, Blogs, Twitter from their employees?  Why?  Are you position them to fail in one of most critical parts of your business.  Creating rapport and communicating with clients, customers, prospects and the community?

Recently, I learned of a friend who left his Calgary car sales job because his employer wouldn’t allow him to use these new social media tools to help build his following and use social media services to increase awareness about the cars the dealership was looking to sell into the Calgary market.  He was told that he had to do this work from home and the dealership wouldn’t allow it on their business network.  I am not sure if you are aware how car sales work?  The hours are long and you are exhausted at the end of the day. Plus it is very competitive.  Any leg up may just be the advantage they were looking for.

Did this lead to social anxiety?  You bet!  Someone who wants to take it to the next level and an organization that doesn’t back it.

Here is the way I see it.  Social Media is here to stay.  Each and every day social media services are weaving their way into the fabric of our communications.  Definitely at home and now moving into the workplace.  Don’t get hung up on the tools is something I coaching our Ulistic clients on.  The tools may change but the core philosophy doesn’t.  Look at your cell phone, it doesn’t matter if it is an iPhone, HTC, Blackberry – the core principles are in place.  Do you have anxiety over your mobile phone?  For most no, why?  It is part of the way we communicate today and so will social media…it will become part of the way we communicate.

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Ulistic focuses on serving the needs of Canadian Small Business, REALTORS, and Information Technology firms across Canada and United States. Helping your business understand, deploy and leverage social media, search engine optimization and online communications to generate business opportunities and make an impact inside your community and industry.

My business partner David and I are business professionals first. We understand what it takes to run a successful small business.

I invite you to reach out to me personally at 403.775.2205 or email Stuart at scrawford@ulistic.com.

I find myself these days with three Apple products at the ready at all times and with our team at Ulistic growing, collaborating and sharing of information amongst our team members is crucial to our success.  Our MacBooks, iPhones and IPADs travel with us everywhere we go and this allows for keeping in touch with our clients when they need us.   Having instant access to our client data is crucial to our success but having this luxury within our budget is especially critical.

The Internet Cloud allows Ulistic to operate in a manner that meets all of our needs for access, security and affordability.

Enter another robust, secure and free/nearly free solution for business

I stumbled upon a great “free” application over the weekend and what is even more impressive is how seamless it works with all of our computers and mobile devices.  For me personally, one of my biggest challenges throughout my business career has been taking accurate notes of things that happen or are said in a meeting.  I just wasn’t one of those guys who took notes on everything that was said in a meeting.  But I think I just found a solution that can cure me of this challenge.  Sure I tried Microsoft OneNote but it didn’t have a solution (when I was using it) that worked when I didn’t have my laptop.  With this new application I learned about over the weekend I may have just finally found a cure for my challenges with keeping track of what happens in our meetings.

Notetaking Software that just works

Enter Evernote! Evernote is simply one fantastic service!  Evernote offers free and “nearly free” services to a busy guy like me who doesn’t have countless hours in a day to wrestle with technology.  Evernote’s simply interface and synchronization allows our team at Ulistic to have our notes with us whereever we go.  MacBook, iPhone or iPAD they all work like a charm.  Synchronization works virtually without any user interference to all of our devices without any headaches at all.  Need to start taking notes for an idea that pops into your head, no problem, just open Evernote wherever you are a make a quick note.

This includes pictures, movies, typed in notes and audio recordings.  Can you say SLICK!

The free version of Evernote allows for 40 MB of data transfer each month, not bad as a starter. Go Premium with 500 MB of synchronization traffic for only $5 per month or $45 per year – less than the cost of that memory stick you just bought.  When you combine Evernote with other great online services such as Dropbox and Google/Microsoft hosted email, why would you ever need a server or complex information technology solution for your small business?  It just makes technical and economic sense to choose robust, secure and efficient services such as Evernote and the others if are simply sharing files and sending emails.

Evernote also works on the Microsoft Windows platform and Android, Palm Pre and Blackberry mobile phone services.  I am giving Evernote two thumbs up and placement on my home screen of both my iPhone and iPAD.  Great tool for any size of business.

Something else that is cool, Evernote can also track where you were when you worked on a file and bring up that location on a Google map.

Now it is time to forget about those expense, complex and perhaps unreliable network servers for simply sharing information amongst members of your team!  Small Business now has a robust, easy to manage, pain-free solution to manage their day-to-day sharing of information across team members everyday.  During a recent trip to Tampa, my partner David stumbled upon a fantastic solution that solves most of our file sharing challenges and at a price that fits our business budget.

Have you heard of Dropbox?

Dropbox is a web-based file storage, online backup and synchronization platform for small business and also can scale to support larger teams.  Dropbox was easy to install and flexible enough to support our small business needs.  No complex setups, no super high IT costs for a simple service like sharing information and we have the peace of mind knowing our business information is safe and sound, accessable wherever our travels take us and our overall cost of ownership is next to nothing.

At Ulistic we run a number of different platforms.  David and I both run Apples Macintosh systems of some flavour, we have the odd Windows machine kicking around the office and David runs Linux when he is on the road.  For a small business we have a wide variety of business systems.  Dropbox provides us the flexibility to run our business and access our information on all of these robust platforms.  Did I mention…with no headaches and no super high IT bills each month.

In addition, with its synchronization abilities when a file stored our team Dropbox account changes we have the ability to be notified.  Great when you are working and collaborating on a project together.

Are you ready for the price?

2 GB of storage and under is FREE! That’s right, it doesn’t cost you a cent to set up your own Dropbox account and copy your critical files to your account and off of your computer system.  Dropbox once installed shows up as a resource in Finder and also in your Windows Explorer.  It was so simple, even I installed it without the help of anyone.

For those concerned about security.  Dropbox allows you to lock down who has access to what.  All access is encrypted using AES-256 encryption and they claim that Dropbox employees do not have access to your information.  That is pretty good security in my eyes and especially for the information we work with daily.

Web and Mobility is also looked after.  Dropbox has applications for the iPad, iPhone and Android operating systems plus is fully accessible via a web browser.

Give it a try.  Pricing for storage is pretty reasonable after 2 GB.  For 100 GB of storage…$20 a month.  Wow, pretty reasonable!

Apple has approved a Paypal mobile payment solution that works across different applications on iPhone. What this will mean is travelers will soon be able to pay for goods and services from within a wide variety of applications on iPhone within Paypal. Ditto for Android phones.

The next phase of development for tourism business apps will be to integrate Paypal payments; making it easy for mobile phone users to pay for tourism services from the palm of their hand.

Frankly, I’m not sure why more restaurants haven’t offered diners the option of paying their tab using the existing Paypal app. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

I have officially pulled off Foursquare this week.   I am working hard and continuing to determine what social media services work best for business and of course those business who put their trust in Ulistic for online marketing recommendations.  Foursquare on the surface appears it can attract restaurants, hotel owners and retail stores who can jump all over it and offer some great specials and draw in visitors who check-in with close proximity to their business.  However, for me and for some others the novelty and quirkiness of the check-in process, points and badges is something that quickly became boring and really pointless.

What was it that killed the novelty of Foursquare with me?

Is it a simple lack of adoption in the business community or was it just a lack of value and results.  Was Foursquare just a few months or a year ahead of its time?  I still believe location aware services are the up and coming thing when it comes to online marketing.  Just look at Google’s initiatives around “click to call” with mobile browsers.  For business to adopt leveraging these services it needs to be able to draw in prospects who are looking for what you have to offer, not just visitors who perhaps don’t have the dollars to spend on your products and services.

Where I see location aware services really working is in making recommendations based on your location.  If I go to Toronto and want to get a listing of restaurants close to where I am and meet my budget I can easily open up Yelp and it knows where I am and what is close by.  This can easily work for Realtors with open houses, restaurants with specials, hotels looking to fill up some empty rooms or any other retail shop with specials or sales going on.  There are lots of opportunity but it has to show return for business to adopt it full on.

I think at the core this would have worked well with Foursquare but its major flaw is business relying on folks checking in.  I guess we still need some kind of opt in and as long as we rely on people to opt in, this will continue to be a flaw.

Foursquare you are out…my iphone Starbucks application stays.

Foursquare rating for small business = To early and needs to attract those with real dollars to spend, not just those of us who like to play a quirky game.

My conversation with David Janes @dpjanes (Discover Anywhere Mobile) asks the question:

Are a you Destination Marketing Organization or a Destination Make-them-spend-more-money-in-your-region Organization?

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In this 40 minute conversation, David and I cover a number of interesting content ideas for destination apps including:

• underestimating the growth of mobile
• understanding the needs of digital traveler
• the importance of finding the right partners
• marketing Web apps in a destination
• the importance of GPS location relevant data for the traveler
• the irrelevance of regional boundaries
• how Discover Anywhere Mobile does the work of integrating destination content into the app including: remapping the themes of experiences, events calendar, tracking changes (adding, modifying and deleting content for the host dmo) – so there is no need to upload your content to a content management system.
• why an app living on a device is more valuable than a Web app and why hosting data on the app is vital for minimizing data pull (roaming charges) for out of country users
• augmented reality
• integration of social media with real time communication from twitter users in the destination
• direct communication with the dmo from the app
• the importance of having Web Savvy staff at your DMO and partners in your community.
• issues and opportunities with making handheld payments from within an app.

Check out apps discussed in this podcast:

• Discover St. John’s app on the iTunes store
• Near Me BC app on the iTunes store

What do you think are the obstacles and opportunities of handheld applications for regional destination marketing organizations?

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by Duncan Kinney

It’s the middle of October and 30 people have gathered on a weekend in an old classroom at the University of Calgary. They are here to discuss esoteric concepts like how to program a game in cocos2D and how to plug memory leaks. Called the yyc iPhone DevCamp, the two-day-long workshop brings together an emerging community of software developers who specialize in making games and other applications for Apple’s iPhone. The crowd ranges from experienced developers with successful apps under their belts to neophytes to representatives from WestJet Airlines and the Telus World of Science. The iPhone dev culture is putting down roots in Calgary and those roots are about to get deeper.

Jon Lam is at the camp wearing multiple hats: participant, sponsor, talent scout and pitchman. Lam is the CEO of Ph03nix New Media Inc., a small but successful casual gaming company based in Calgary that takes its name from Lam’s gaming handle. His most recent venture is more ambitious: the iPhoenix Fund, a micro-cap fund that is targeting the entertainment and casual gaming space on the iPhone, aiming to get in on an exploding niche for applications for the popular smart phone. The goal is to produce 133 apps over the next three to five years.

Since September, Lam has been pounding the pavement raising $700,000 in $5,000 units. His eventual target is $2 million. In his sales pitch, Lam has a quotation that he brings up time and again: “There are two kinds of people: people who love to gamble and people who love money.” The line is from legendary poker player and gambler Amarillo Slim. Lam loves Slim.

“The iPhone market seems like gambling to a lot of people. It’s very, very hit-driven and people can’t make sense of it. But what Amarillo’s lesson is is that if you apply the right strategy and the right math to it, you can make sense of the chaos,” says Lam.

The idea for the fund sprang from a beer meeting in late July at Earl’s Tin Palace with business partner and iPhone developer Michael Sikorsky. Both wanted an iPhone division but Sikorsky wanted one that would scale. The problem was risk. iPhone apps have a notoriously short shelf life and, like any entertainment audience, the customers can be fickle. By investing in different developers and different games, a technology development fund can spread out the uncertainty inherent in betting on just one team or one game to hit it out of the park.

The iPhone platform has created a staggeringly large, self-contained economy in just the two and a half years it has been around. According to mobile advertising company AdMob, the iPhone app economy is worth around US$2.4 billion a year. Developers have created more than 100,000 apps and users have downloaded more than two billion copies. Flight Control, one of the most successful iPhone games, has enjoyed more than 1.5 million downloads at 99 cents a pop. Not bad for a program made in an Australian developer’s spare time – on nights and weekends – over a two-month period. In that game, you juggle the flight paths of giant airliners, single-engine aircraft and helicopters and land them on a skinny airstrip. Alberta companies such as MoboVivo Inc. and Multiplied Media Corp. are likewise generating revenues off iPhone apps.

Under its licensing agreement, Apple Inc. takes 30% from every transaction, then the iPhoenix Fund will split revenues 50-50 between investors and the marketing and development teams. By Lam’s calculation, if the fund raises the full $2 million, there will be $6,917 for the development of each app with another $6,917 for marketing. Third-party developers only get to start to negotiate on 35% of the potential revenue from their games. Developers can negotiate for more payment up front and less revenue sharing or less payment up front and more of the back end.

iPhoenix plans to attract talent with help from the people behind BlueUnit Studios Inc. Acquired over the summer, the company started by Craig Rushforth and Dan Kratt developed Sally’s Spa, an iPhone hit game where the eponymous Sally performs facials, hot stone treatments and massages. Rushforth and Kratt will provide feedback and shepherd developers through the game-making process.

The idea of charging a fee for video and audio from conferences and events is old, and comes from the days of charging for tapes of presentations as a way of boosting revenue from live events.  Those days are over.

Today, sitting in little old South River, Ontario, Canada I’m watching the live streaming event LeWeb from Paris France – for free.  Not everyone can afford to travel to conferences and not everyone can attend your event each year.  By letting participants peak into your conference on their computer, you build your event reputation, entice future attendees and earn fans far beyond the walls of your event.

Events like LeWeb and Web 2.0 Conference put some of the brightest lights in the tech industry on stage for their audience and give away the content. These events gain a wide audience and inspire people to consider attending in person and make it more enticing for presenters to offer their services at little or no cost.

These events and others like Phocuswright Conference for Tourism Industry earn income by providing a stage for start-ups to showcase their businesses.  Unlike others, Phocuswright charges a fee for access to streaming and on-demand video.  This insulates conference content from those who don’t pay for access, and offers less exposure for the people and businesses that take the stage.

Growing your brand exposure by giving away the proceedings, earns free promotion for your event from people “Outside the Walls” who:

• tweet about happenings with your hash tags (even though they are not there)
• broadcast the news and info and crediting your event
• tell others about what they learn
• blog about ideas they see and hear
• link back to your event
• attend future events

In this regard your event might consider moving the cost of video production from an expense that will produce income (selling access to video from your event) to a Public Relations and Promotions expense that will grow future attendance at your events.

Ask Yourself: How can I extend my brand and involve people who can’t be here?

Why Live Streaming your Event is a no brainer:

Audience members can stream your event themselves today for FREE.  Apple yesterday approved the Ustream Live Broadcaster application for iPhone.  Now anyone with an iPhone 3G can  live stream video straight from the iPhone to the Ustream Web site.  That video can be embedded in other Web pages for free.  When audience members are holding up their phones, they are no longer just snapping photos, but sending video of your conference or event to others on the Web.

The Ustream.tv Live Broadcasting app works on both 3G cell phone connections as well as Wi-Fi.  It supports audience interaction with chatroom messaging and polling of viewers and allows uploading video to Youtube and Facebook.  Ustream Live is available in the iTunes store for FREE here

Other apps like Qik Video for iPhone (and other smartphone devices) has submitted its app for approval to the iTunes store as well.  This app permits instant updates of Video broadcasting via Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

All information is already free. The information attendees gather from your event will be publically available around the world before your speakers even step off stage.  There is virtually no information that Google can’t provide, but for the sake of a couple of keystrokes.

Information presented at your event is already old. The Web is changing so quickly that information has a “Best Before” date stamped on it that expires before the signs are taken down and the stage is packed away.

If they can get it for free, why would anyone come to your event?

The truth is, most people don’t come to your event for the conference proceedings and presentations.  They come to socialize with other attendees and presenters.  The biggest value you bring to attendees is the opportunity to build face to face relationships.  If your event doesn’t gain renown for the face to face interactions that take place in between presentations, you have a bigger problem than ubiquitous live streaming video.

photo credit: kitcowan

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