Marketing Technology 5

Marketing Technology Stories you might have missed

MT5 Edition:  #26

Stories This Week: Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, Chrome on the rise, Google+ SEO tips, text marketing and tablet UX falls short.

BONUS: $100 in free twitter advertising!

1. Regulators to Google: You can buy Motorola, but we still don’t trust you

[arstechnica] US and European regulators wanted to deny the acquisition but didn’t have enough reason to stop it from going forward.  This gives Google 17,000 patents that are licensed by Apple, Microsoft and others.

My Take: Google has been connected to Motorola’s Mobility unit for years, it was one of the first enterprises to abandon Microsoft Office in favor of Google’s cloud offerings.  Google is positioning this as a way to “supercharge Android”.  We’ll see.  What Google really needs to do is eliminate “Android lag” – those precious seconds that the phone takes to respond to a touch command.

Chrome Browser Share

2. Chrome Browser Market Share Has Taken Off

[wikipedia] Chrome browser usage has taken off dramatically. The chart provided shows the change in alternative browsers (not Microsoft Internet Explorer).

My Take: I find Chrome (actually I use Rockmelt which is built off of the open source version of chrome) to be fast and reliable. I like that it has separate threads so I can go into Task Manager and kill independent processes that are hogging memory.

3. Two Google+ SEO Guides You Should Read

[SearchEngineLand] Here are some of the takeaways:

• Fresh content matters: Google+ profiles with no posts within the last 72 hours don’t show up in the “Related People/Pages” section of Google’s search results
• Pages can matter more than profiles: Brand pages with a few thousand followers/circlers can appear in “Related People/Pages” ahead of individual profiles with a million or more followers/circlers
• +1s matter: Lurie says that profiles/pages that get a lot of +1s on their posts tend to show up more often in the “Related People/Pages” results
• Comments and reshares don’t matter as much as +1s in helping to influence who/what shows up in “Related People/Pages”
• Reach/follower count matter a lot

4. Tap Into the Power of Text Messaging

[MarketignProfs] Text messaging has been around for 10 years but it’s relatively untapped technique. Especially given it’s capability to deliver a timely message to customers.

My Take: I like text messaging as a marketing tool because the response rate is so high.  Most phone users have notifications (vibrate, chirp. light) turned on and they are going to see who is texting them. The problem with texting – it is classic “interruption” marketing. If you’re going to interrupt your customer, you better be offering them something of high value – something worth the interruption.

Attitudes Towards Digital Magazines

5. Tablet Magazine Experience Falls Short

[eMarket] The use of digital magazines continues to rise at the expense of paper ‘zines but the increase is due to convenience not aesthetics.

My Take: The responses are pretty good. Digital magazines would benefit from a standard format and advertisers would love “click to purchase” functionality.

BONUS: Twitter Begins Self-Serve Ad Sign-Ups, Offers $100 In Free Advertising

[TechCrunch] Twitter is now accepting sign-ups from small businesses that want to participate in its self-serve ad program.

My Take: Free! What are you waiting for? Sign up now!