Latest Updates: Mobile RSS

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  Nic 2:41 pm on February 11, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Mobile, mobile SEO, search engine optimization, SEO (3)

  Mobile SEO is coming. Are you prepared?

  I don’t think that you are, I’m not. No one is.

  What I should be doing if I was a smart little blogger is move this blog to a mobile domain and spend some acquisition budget on getting readers to visit, follow me on twitter (via mobile) and click on my adverts.

  But I’m not doing that. In fact before you can just launch in to mobile you need to understand it, entirely and I don’t think that there are many people who have a very high-level holistic understanding that is worth while and valuable.

  You want some free advise? Learn about mobile SEO and sell your skills. Soon.

   

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  Nic 12:03 pm on November 4, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Marketing (18), Mobile, New Media (6), Online (25), Sales (5), social networking (5)

  Jobs of the future are hard to predict.

  What will we all be doing in 5 years? Who can tell.

  I studied to be a journalist. No, I studied to be a print journalist. And now I work in and around mobile social networking strategy and development.

  Let’s just quickly repeat that: Mobile social networking strategy and development. I am almost 100% certain that when I started studying at Rhodes University in 2003 that my current job didn’t even exist.

  There is one job in particular that is going to need a lot more focus in the coming years:

  New media sales and advertising.

  The reason that I think this job is becoming increasingly important and increasingly neglected is because there is a marked lack of skilled and experienced people to fill this position.

  What does this position entail?

  Sales and advertising has traditionally (back in the old days) been about selling and advertising products. Getting people to buy in to your product or getting advertisers to place an advert in to your publication, on to your store walls or on your car and so on.

  Sales and advertising is becoming a much more complicated and intricate art. You cannot just sell banners, text links, full page adverts, splash screens, in-video sponsorships or product placements. Social networks and new media businesses need to have a salesperson who understands every aspect of the business. This person needs to be able to cross sell, integrate campaigns, work on new media, old media and media that might not exist yet.

  What does this person need to succeed?

  This person needs to understand CPC, CPA, CPM, CPSA and how to make these models work. This person needs to not only know what CRM stands for but what it actually is and how to make it relevant to the client.

  This person needs to know who the client is or should be and how that clients business or latest campaign fits in to the business of a new media business.

  Sales is shifting as fast as media is shifting and technology is growing and developing. The trick here is that technology, websites, mobile content and advancements can push forward as fast as they like but if there is no team able to monetize the products, there may as well not even be a product.

  It’s time start thinking about integrated salespeople, sales teams, sales in relation to your core business and if sales actually might be your companies core business.

   
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  Nic 11:40 am on October 21, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Mashable (3), Mobile, Wordpress (13)

  Wordpress goes mobile but misses the point.

  Mashable! today reports that Wordpress has launched two new mobile themes. But “mobile” here refers to iPhones and Android handsets not to the mobile market that we, in Africa, are referring to.

  I’m interested to know how many 3rd world (low broadband) countries have Wordpress blogs. What is the number? Is it ten thousand, fifty thousand, more or less?

  The reason I ask is because I have a feeling that if Wordpress was to start focusing on lower-end handset models in the mobile market they would open themselves up to a massively neglected market. The market that can’t afford “smartphones”, the market that can’t afford laptops, computers and fixed-line internet.

  It’s interesting to think that in 1st world countries the term “mobile” refers to iPhone handsets or “smartphones”. What of the rest of the world? What of the people who don’t have these phones and can’t view the content they are looking for because it costs too much.

  Meeting with Marc Smith this month was an eye-opener for many reasons. Firstly he told me that Obama winning a Nobel peace prize was not regarded in very high esteem by Americans. Why? Because if Europeans like their president there must be something wrong him. This seems to echo in the approach of many a large company playing in the online/mobile space.

  Why is Wordpress not going after the African market? Why are they not providing those without fixed-line broadband an outlet for their mobile phones to read and write blogs?

  To me it feels like a lack of insight and foresight.

   
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  Nic 8:52 am on September 11, 2009 | 5 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: conference (2), Mobile, mobile web africa

  Social media’s almost dead so let’s move on to mobile. Presenting Mobile Web Africa.

  OK, so social media isn’t almost dead but the fact remains that mobile is the now, new, next best thing. In fact, it’s not even the next best thing. It’s the best thing since social media and it’s here.

  Vincent Maher just announced on his blog that The Grid is platinum sponsor for the event which will have some of the most prominent minds and personalities in the local mobile industry as well as some African speakers to engage with.

  Some of the local regulars will be present but this time under the spotlight of mobile and the current developments happening.

  This conference is finally something that doesn’t have a social media (web too point 0h n0) slant to it.

  If you think you know, you have no idea.

  Get on it.

   
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  Nic 9:58 am on July 3, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Innovation (5), Internet (9), Mobile

  Innovation is such an exception thing to strive for. And I think that I am incredibly fortunate to land up in the market that I am in. Mobile is an innovative space.

  Let me not get caught up in my own head and clearly lay out what I intend to say:

  It’s simple idea but on that only recently dawned on me. I am fortunate to be in an innovate environment. Imagine if I was still a print writer? I’d be doing the same thing over and over and over, every day. I’d call my contacts, I’d gather information and construct a story from the information, I’d conduct an interview and write the story which would be edited, sub-edited and cut-up by the mechanisms in place. My byline would appear in the paper and the sun would set and rise again to repeat the cycle. Sure the focus of the story changes but more often than not it’s the same mechanisms.

  Let’s look at an accountant, yes there are challenges in every client that an account might audit, but on the whole there is very little innovation in their market. Pascal might come out with an update, a law might be tweaked here and there and if an account is lucky they land an extremely strange client who they enjoy auditing, but the premise is the same, the actions are the same, the results are the same. NOTHING is new from year to year in the way that they do things.

  Very similar situations apply to Lawyers, many GPs (which is a pet hate of mine), Judges and many other careers, career choices, markets and industries. There is very little that drives innovation.

  Then you move in to the mobile industry and the market is booming, filled with innovation and change, constantly. That appeals to me.

  Now don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that other jobs or industries aren’t appealing and don’t have their own, relative levels of what some might term innovation. But where I am right now things change on a daily basis. My job spec today could be completely different tomorrow and in every likelihood will be entirely different next year when my current projects launch.

  This motivates me and this keeps me interested in what I am doing. I hate being stagnant and I hate reaching a point where maintenance of a job is more common than innovation, creation and envelope pushing.