Category: Internet

Thoughts on things happening on and around the Internet and the good ol’ World Wide Web.

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Should Your Business Be Using Facebook Deals?

Last week Facebook held a big mobile event at their headquarters in California where they made several announcements that could potentially change the way consumers, businesses, and web developers interact with the the site while on the go. The announcement of the location based Facebook Deals platform may be the one that makes the biggest immediate impact. So, should your business be using Facebook Deals?

Yes. And start today.

Facebook Deals allows local businesses to offer discounts, freebies, and more to customers when they check in to their business with their mobile phone. Offers can be given for repeat visits, visiting with friends, or you can donate money to a worthy cause in lieu of a discount for the customer. There are many options but set up is easy and accepting coupons in store is as simple as looking at the customer’s phone.

All that sounds great, but how is that any different from any other sale or coupon you could offer? Like everything else with Facebook the deals are social. Every time a customer redeems a deal, all of their friends are notified that not only are they at your business but they’ll also find out that you’re running a special promotion right within their news feed. They can then click to learn more about the deal and about your business.

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Trending: The Luxury Treatment, Expanding Your Brand Through Social Media, Advanced Search, and More

Some scattershooting this week covering online marketing, social media branding, and the usability of advanced search. Read on to learn a little more about what I’ve been paying attention to recently.

The Luxury Treatment

eMarketer: Giving Affluents the Luxury Treatment Online
Luxury Daily: Why luxury automakers increasingly rely on iPad’s large canvas for engagement

A pair of articles on marketing to and serving affluent customers online covering web experience expectations, iPad apps, and luxury brands using (or not using) Twitter. Luxury brick and mortar stores offer intimacy and elegant product presentations and customers expect a comparable experience online. It is important that if you sell high end products or cater to a high end audience that your online presence creates an engaging experience as well.

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Cisco Show and Share: YouTube for the Enterprise?

Last week at an event in Las Vegas, Cisco surprised the tech blogs when they announced their new Android-based tablet dubbed the Cius. Without a cool new gadget to go with it, their new social video system didn’t cause as much of a stir but may end up having the bigger impact on the way companies communicate, collaborate, and educate their employees. Cisco Show and Share could be YouTube for the enterprise.

Show and Share looks to make it easy for employees to upload, share, and edit videos within the security of the corporate network. Videos can be synced with presentation slides making them great instructional tools or a way to archive meetings for those who could not attend. Uploaded videos can be made available only for certain users and extensive viewing statistics are available, great for making sure everyone has seen the important video from HR or the marketing team has watched the new training video.

Perhaps most importantly, speech to text technology can automatically create searchable transcripts of uploaded videos. Once videos are transcribed, categorized, and labeled in Show and Share, employees will have easy access to the knowledge of coworkers both down the hall from them and across the country.

Knowledge sharing is one of the most important components of the modern corporate intranet and that doesn’t just mean making files available in a central repository. Increasingly, multimedia and connecting employees to each other to encourage communication are becoming the preferred way to promote knowledge transfer and to stay on the leading edge. Video tools such as Cisco Show and Share could go a long way in not only making the information available, but also making employees actually want to use it.

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