Interview with Kimber Johnson, Managing Director of Vanity Point, VanityPoint.com

Mobile Marketing this, and Mobile Marketing that, iPhone App this, and Android App that. You've heard all the hype right? So how do you boil it all down and get right to figuring out a) should you really make that investment and b) if so, how? Well, when I have a question like that I turn to my design go-to guy, Kimber Johnson for a bit of clarity. That's one of the things I've found to enjoy about working with Kimber, he keeps it simple. A 16 year interactive design professional Kimber helps us to fulfill the needs of our clients and here I ask him 7 straight forward design and build consideration questions. I hope you find his answers and insights as useful as I always do.

#1 - Why should one decide to create a mobile version of their existing website?

If we are just talking on just a statistical level, mobile is as least as important as your traditional web presence right now and soon will be more important. There are roughly a billion people accessing the Internet right now through mobile devices and there are about 1.2 billion PCs/laptops/tablets in the world. If you look at how rapidly mobile web access is growing each year, it is pretty obvious that a company’s mobile presence cannot be an afterthought any longer. There are over 5 billion accounts with carriers for mobile devices now and everyday devices that are enabled for mobile web access are taking over the mobile market. With smartphone sales growth numbers typically at well over 40% from year-to-year, it’s easy to see that in a short amount of time the mobile web experience will be the dominant format purely in terms of numbers.

"More then 1/2 of the 1 Billion Smartphone users say "Maps/Search" is the number one function they use their phone for." ~ According to Digital Buzz Blog

#2 - What considerations should one make when creating the mobile version of an existing website?

The primary items that I encourage clients to consider with mobile web sites, at least initially, are to keep in mind download times over the 3G/4G networks and how your visitors will be interacting with your site during a mobile experience. Accessing a site via a 3G network is much slower than the cable Internet that most of us enjoy at home or in the office, so you need to build sites that work well in the slower environment, it is similar to how we built web sites in the 18k dial-up modem days. With that being the case, it is wise to consider in what ways a user will want to interact with your business from a mobile site and focus on that. Consider only including the information that is relevant to a mobile experience. This not only keeps your site quick but provides a better user experience by cutting the clutter.

#3 - What types of web sites would be considered the ideal site for a mobile version build?

Typically those businesses that are in an industry where potential customers will want to interact with their web site while on the go are ideal candidates for mobile web sites. If your business offers automotive repair, for instance, or if you have a restaurant, you will find customers are regularly finding your web site via mobile devices if you have a decent position on Google and you will want to offer a quality user experience to those customers in order to be able to convert visitors into clients. Key here is to evaluate your business to see if it is the type of business that can leverage a mobile site. Beyond that, those businesses that choose to engage in optimizing for mobile will want to engage in search engine optimization to increase the numbers of visitors they see at their sites. Users searching the web on mobile devices are much less willing to go deep into Google listings and you will lose those opportunities for client acquisition.

#4 - So search engine optimization is important for the mobile web too?

Search engine optimization is imperative to businesses looking to grow via the mobile web. With download speeds being lower and the fact that users are often on the move, the opportunity to create a contact really only will happen if businesses are on the first page maybe two of Google’s rankings. There are several things about search engine optimization that are wonderful for business owners; first of all, it is typically very affordable. Second, it works for both mobile and traditional web sites at the same time, so you get a lot of bang for your buck. Beyond that, and most importantly, it regularly has tremendous ROIs. Our SEO clients have seen incredible returns from small investments in search engine optimization. If you really want to get people to your site, I always recommend search engine optimization. A solid mobile web experience is how you convert the visitors on mobile phones into contacts, giving you potential clients.

Quick Fact: In all of our various Google Analytics reports, the Android and iPhone Operating Systems consistently ranks in the top three of the "Operating System" criteria.

A weeks stats from a very niche social networking site

#5 - Are there any types of sites or companies that should not bother going mobile?

There are several clients that I recommend mobile applications to over mobile sites. Typically mobile sites are effective for businesses that are in industries where people search for them on the go, but if you are looking to create regular ongoing contacts with your client base, mobile applications are always better. Mobile apps are easier and quicker to access and are a great way to make it very easy for consumers to interact with your business on a regular basis.

#6 - For companies that don't want to create a mobile version of their existing web site, are there still opportunities for them to take advantage of the growth in the mobile sector?

There are a great number of opportunities to advertise a business in the mobile arena. Typically these see very nice returns on their investment. This is for two reasons, first mobile is new, users are not as used to formats and layout so they ads stand out and get attention much better than with traditional or online advertising. We see very nice click rates with mobile advertising and I think that is part of what is driving the meteoric growth of mobile advertising. The other factor is the careful targeting apps allow. With a little homework, it is easy to find a mobile app that caters to your target market very tightly and advertise right to the people who you want to see your ad. For years I have promoted tightly targeted advertising to maximize the efficiency of ad budgets and mobile is taking that to another level. This is very good news for small businesses that have smaller advertising budgets; they will certainly get a lot more out of those budgets right now.

#7 - What mistakes should companies look to avoid when designing a mobile application?

The biggest one I see is that some people try to do too much with their mobile applications. Mobile applications always work best when they are carefully designed around a specific purpose and they make it easy to accomplish that purpose. Users that access media via mobile are likely to read less on mobile devices and have less patience for poor user experiences, therefore it is crucial to make it easy to do what they are there to do and create an environment where they can do that one thing well. Cut the rest out. Don’t try to add in an accounting package just because you think they may want to keep track of that while using your app. They won’t. They have Quick Books or an accountant for that. Focus your app and make it easy to use.

Now, your feedback.

Have you been considering taking your business mobile? Have you already gone mobile, what lessons have you learned? 

Here's one that we're publishing for Culinary Students and Home Chefs to make cooking measurements easier, in conjunction with a good chef friend of ours. The main learning we're taking away from this is how to market a new mobile app. We'll share some of those lessons soon too.

More info on this project at: www.thekitchenconverterapp.com

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What is the trick to driving repeat business? I'm sure you already know just how hard it is, and how much money you might have to spend, to get a customer in the door for the first time. Once you have them, how do you get them to come back and therefore, reduce the amount of money you must spend on marketing to grow new business? 

Let's say for example, I come to your restaurant, You want me to; 1) be greeted pleasantly, 2) be seated quickly, 3) receive quick and friendly service by the wait staff, and so on all the way until I walk out the door and have a warm exit. 

Now what? Now how do you get me to "Come back soon"? How do you stay connected and engaged with me once I hit the bricks? Below are a few strategies that we have seen proven to be successful in the restaurant field.

93% of Social Media users expect a company to have a social media presence. That's great, but now what are you going to do with it?

First things first. I implore you that no matter what actions below you choose to implement you also setup a system to track success. Of course one easy method is to peg the sales of particular events to our promotion of those events via social media channels. For example we know that for one client we were able to increase sales for the night of a key monthly event 4% month to month over the course of three months. Other suggested metrics of course include, "Fan" and "Follower" growth rates, and "Check-Ins" via mobile technologies like Facebook and Foursquare.

Here are a few of our proven techniques for driving customer engagement, and increasing repeat business.

Pictures, pictures, pictures - Whether it's Instagram, Flicker, Twitpic, or Facebook getting your photo's out on the web is a vital part of brand management online, remember it's all about engagement here. The fact of the matter is photo's get viewed, and the best photo's get shared too! Since it is estimated that some 2.1 million Tweets on Twitter link to a photo. think about it this way, when you want to update your friends and family about your life, how do you do that, you send a photo right?

Extra fact:  One of the best ways to give your Facebook Fan page a quick performance boost is through increasing the number of photo's posted. This is due to the way Facebooks current Fan Page algorithm determines what shows in a users timeline. Simply put, the more clicks, likes, comments, and/or shares (also called "Interactions") the more likely your posts are to make their way into a Fans newsfeed. More detailed posts on that later.

Weekly Spotlighting - This comes down to simple story telling. You see your Fans and Followers are that because they want to know more, they want to know who is the chef responsible for the delicious desert you tweeted a photo of last week. They want to know what drives that passion for fine Mexican Cuisine, or fresh roasted coffee. What is the story of your restaurant, coffee shop, or bar? Simple quick behind the scenes "Snapshots", give us the extra access that we crave. Building a simple email marketing system can do wonders for your restaurant with this kind of content. Introduce your customers to your Chefs, FOH Staff, BOH Staff, spotlight the philosophy and/or history of your work, feature select menu items and what's special about them, what gives them that little extra twist. This will further strengthen your customers connection to you and your business and keep you fresh in their minds.

How-To's - One of the golden rules of social media is to provide meaningful content. Offer value, I'm not referring to coupons here, I'm referring to a real meaningful value. Your knowledge as a restaurant owner or chef is powerful to the vast crowds of would-be foodies. Sharing a bit of that knowledge can help you build loyal customers and serious advocates or your brand. One of the absolutely best times for this are the holidays. Share your awesome tip on turkey stuffing, drink selection, or an appetizer that will knock the socks off the in-laws.

Claim your venue, Special Offers, and Promotions - You wouldn't just ignore your Yelp reviews would you? The same holds true for FourSquare, Twitter, and Facebook (Just to name a few). You NEED to at the very least monitor these platforms for conversations and discussions going on about your business on these platforms. But these are the very platforms that allow you the opportunity to directly drive repeat business. Offering easy to redeem check-in rewards, or exclusive coupon codes delivered specifically through your social media channels offer direct instant incentives and just as importantly give you specific data to track within your POS systems. Just turn on those coupon codes and train your staff to enter them in, then once the campaign is offered, run a report to see how many where redeemed during a particular timeframe.

Contests and Trivia - It's important to mix it up a bit too and contests can bring a great dynamic to your social media efforts. This also offers you a great opportunity to see who are your most engaged customers and perhaps reward them. With another of our clients we run a Twitter contest on a particular day every week. We ask their Twitter followers to Tweet a particular message and all those that do are entered into a drawing to win a dinner on the house that evening. The engagement is awesome and has helped to increase their following, but since the contest is specifically related to #TacoTuesday, it's a very powerful reminder of the business and offers the perfect excuse to not cook that night and come eat with the business. This sort of direct engagement drives sales and makes the register happy on what could other wise be a slow week day evening.

Events - Of course it can't all be self-less giving and free-bee's, after all you're in business to make a living. Creating and/or promoting special events gives you a great reason to go nuts tweeting, sharing, and inviting people to events. There are a ton of free event organizing tools like Eventbrite for this purpose too. Got a slow night? Who says it has to stay that way, grab a microphone and some speakers and launch an open mic night, or a poetry/litature reading evening. A simple and powerful way to both build community around your business and boost some sales for the evening. The trick here is patience and perseverance this might take a bit of time to catch on, but with a little effort it should catch on and eventually have a life of it's own.

Power Tip: The Saved Search - One of absolute favorite things about Twitter is the Saved Search function. Try this right now; go to Twitter and type in a search for your business, if you are a restaurant, bar, or coffee shop, just type in your businesses address. What comes up? If you've had any customers check-in on Foursquare recently then often times they'll auto-tweet that check-in as a way of sharing it with their followers. GREAT, that means you can now follow that customer directly and create an instant connection.  This is just one of the many ways to find and engage your patrons via social media. Test it out and let me know how it works!

No matter what specific tactics you employ be sure to follow the general golden rules. 

1. Provide meaningful content
2. Engage and connect with your customers
3. Give before you take
4. Remember this is SOCIAL MEDIA, behave like you would in any other social environment

Pretty much, don't be the obnoxious ass in the corner shouting about how great they are, your actions will speak loudly for themselves. You will build community and driven customer loyalty and serious repeat business, but here's the bonus! Nothing in the list above costs a particularly high amount of money to implement starting today. Just a bit of sweat equity. Of course time is an extremely valuable commodity, so if you're looking for help to grow your customer engagement via social media please feel free to reach out to use. It's what we do.

What great success stories or nightmares do you have that you can share? Let us know in the comments section below!

If you use Facebook Events as a way to let your network know about upcoming happenings they might have an interest in, like we do often, then here's a few changes that you need to know about. The last one is one that you might not like too much.

1. Cleaner Interface

First the interface is a bit cleaner with all actions tucked into one space on the Events page. All the important details of Day, Time, and Location are also more more prevalent right at the top of the event listing. We like simple and clean, so we'll count this as good change. 

2. Removes "Not-Attending"

The "Not-Attending" list (photo below) has also been de-emphasized, or really it seems to have gone away. Which is a nice plus because it removes any sort of potential negative perception of your event that may have been caused by seeing someone who is NOT going. Kind of a weird social psychology "peer pressure" sort of a thing, but it makes sense. I mean there's no way I'm going to go, if Ashton Kutcher or Gary Vaynerchuk aren't going either!

3. Bing Maps

This one might only be interesting to the wonkiest of us nerds, but the new Events module now also supports the integration of Bing maps. This is a nice easy convenience for your guests, but it's also the next step in the Facebook/Microsoft convergence... but that's a whole other blog.

4. and finally,

the one you might hate... removal of the "Share" function.

We're not too sure as to why, but Facebook has decided to remove the "Share" function from the Events module. Why might you hate this change? We'll if you have a large network, and you'd like to share an event with them, but would like to spare yourself the time of inviting each and every person in your friends list the easy solution is simply share the event in your Timeline. With the removal of that function you are now forced into the labor intensive option of inviting one at a time. Of course, there's also the "Hey, I'm going to this" reason for sharing on Facebook, and sadly I don't have a workaround for you on that one...

Fortunately though there are other options. If you run your own social network with a platform like NING, as we do for 562CityLife.com, or Eventbrite.com you can also create your listing there and simply share the link in your Timeline.

Do you create and manage events using Social Media? Do you just like to "Share" were you're going? Let us know what tools you prefer and have found to be the most effective. 

Also, thanks to @rockyvy, @esbulk, and @alainawiens for helping me know I wasn't crazy this morning when this function went missing. Check out @alainawiens blog on the same issue here: http://alainawiens.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/facebook-events-now-include-the-option-to-join-but-not-share/

For the first time ever in 2011 smartphone and tablet shipments exceeded those of desktop and notebook shipments, in fact smartphone shipments grew 60% from 2010-2011. Furthermore, the daily amount of time spent in Mobile Apps surpassed desktop and mobile web consumption. What this means is that Mobile Applications are quickly over taking web browsers for internet traffic, and that traditional websites are now beginning to become overshadowed by mobile app usage. 

So, how do businesses adjust? By no means do we suggest that you do away with or ignore your current website. However as Pete Cashmore, Founder of Mashable.com has said; “We’re living at a time when attention is the new currency. Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value.”.

Here are three tips for brick and motor businesses, like restaurants, to leverage this growth in Social and Mobile Media.

1. Mobile Check-Ins

As we've covered extensively in our Check-Ins Management workshops, rewarding social media check-ins on platforms like Facebook and Foursquare are a great way to build customer loyalty and encourage social sharing. Setting this up is simple and the ROI can be very powerful. Promotions can be as easy as offering 10% off for the first check-in and what better way to persuade your customers to recommend your business to their friends? According to Foursquare's published statistics, the "Food" Category is by far the most popular venue type for check-ins, but shopping, travel, and nightlife are not far behind by any means.

2. Be Friendly 

By this we mean, be mobile friendly. Having your own branded app is probably the pinnacle of being mobile friendly, and the most powerful. If you're not quite ready for a full blown custom iPhone App and Android Application, you should at least be creating alternative landing pages of your web sites critical data that are formatted for mobile optimization. For example one of our clients, Lola's Mexican Cuisine, uses a mobile friendly site to offer special discounts and promotions to smart-phone users. 

3. QR Codes

QR Codes, or Quick Response Codes, are emerging as powerful a way to reach potential customers. When mobile users scan this funky looking bar code with the camera on their smart phone and a reader app, free for downloading and rapidly growing in popularity, the code basically tells the phone to perform an action. Typically this means redirecting the phones web browser to a special landing page with exclusive information just for those that scan the code.

For restaurant owners, and other brick and mortar businesses, it's a great way to direct phones to either your Foursquare Venue or Facebook Page and drive a "Check-In" at your venue. If you are mobile browser friendly already it's also a great chance to point your customers to your mobile site or app. Best of all, generating a code is absolutely free at websites like qrstuff.com.

No matter what you choose to do in the mobile marketing sphere, understand what you are telling your customers. You are telling them that you understand and care about their preferences. Consumers want to connect with you, in fact many today expect it. By demonstrating the willingness to adapt your habits and business practices to them and their needs, you will build a strong foundation for business success for years to come.