This month we’re writing about things that inspire us. In our digital world there are countless innovations, so I’m often inspired by new approaches to old problems.

I’ve noticed a shift in how local services are supplied to consumers and businesses. Until recently, websites vying for the holy grail of bringing local customers and service providers together used classified- or forum-type websites that allow service providers to post what they do generically. Customers were expected to sift through these listings or post what they needed and hope for the best. This paradigm is being uprooted due to rapid advances in Web and mobile technology that put the customer in charge.

The bottleneck of traditional marketing forced companies to create products and services they believed people need or want. Or in some extreme cases, companies created products they knew people didn’t need, and simply used their marketing prowess to convince people to buy their products anyway.

Small or independent service providers have largely followed suit, mimicking the marketing strategies and tactics that have restricted corporations to a limited number of products and services that can’t possibly cater to every daily need of billions of unique individuals.

Innovative local marketplaces now enable consumers to articulate exactly what they want or need at any given moment, typically via a GPS-enabled smartphone, and then leave it up to the service providers to find them and in some cases even duke it out for their business.

The wild increase in personal efficiency articulated by The New York Times is possible due to technology that enables people to tell companies what they want rather than the other way around. Now people of all walks of life make their own hours by doing exactly what people need when they need it for the amount they want to pay. This growing wave of independent providers avoid the waste and annoyance of casting wide nets with traditional marketing. This was a battle they’d never win against the corporations, so rather than keep trying they changed the rules of the game.

Here are a few that stand out:

Zaarly – Post what you want done and what you’re willing to pay. For instance, our own Tim McDonald who helped launch Zaarly tells the story of an Illinois man who needed help fishing his keys out of a storm sewer and got it done for $75.

TaskRabbit – “Do more. Live more. Be more.” People post what they need done and TaskRabbit-vetted service providers make offers to do the work, allowing the consumer to choose the best fit based on their criteria.

Agent Anything – Connects busy, hardworking people who need things done with college students looking to make money.

Will these resources help consumers focus on what they need rather than want? Not likely. It’s not hard to imagine dreaming up all kinds of random tasks you ask to have done, just to see if you can get them done for a small price. This is refreshing in a world over-crowded with group deals, coupons, and classified sites providing yet another place for service providers to sell their wares and creating confusion for consumers who don’t know where to begin.

This post was featured in epiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other epiphany Articles

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Mobile, Technology

I checked in to Walgreens on Foursquare recently (yes I’m crazy like that), and noticed the first mostly altruistic business special I’ve seen to date. They are giving way a flu shot voucher to someone in need for every person who checks in.

I showed it to the pharmacists asking if I needed to do anything else. They exchanged inquisitive looks, but confirmed that they had fulfilled flu shots for a few people bringing in certificates from this program.

A bit more explanation on how to fulfill this would have helped, but I applaud Walgreens for leveraging Foursquare for social good.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Uncategorized

While I’m a frequent traveler to Austin, TX, for music events and family, this was my first time at South By Southwest Interactive (#SXSWi). SXSW is divided into Interactive, Film, and Music festivals, each world-renowned for the quality of talent, content, and fun.

SXSWi is the height of Tech geekery, mostly focused around Web and mobile apps related to social media, such as Foursquare or Twitter. This is my crowd, for sure, and our social media guru Rachel Yeomans was even more plugged in than me due to her incessant and productive use of Twitter.

I dusted off my Twitter account just for the occasion. While I was one of the first people on it three years ago, I’ve found it difficult to keep up, which is a common issue for our clients to which I can relate! I’m glad I brought it out, though, as much of SXSW takes place on Twitter. This isn’t a surprise considering that Twitter essentially launched at SXSW years ago, but what did surprise me was the advanced and consistent use of hash tags to create interactive audience feedback for every session. Moderators would monitor the Twitter traffic for that session and involve the audience as they could.

Most of the big tech brands were present, as were most of the geek celebrities. A highlight for me was getting to meet a childhood geek hero, Guy Kawasaki, who was there supporting his new book, Enchantment. I fondly remember reading Guy’s column in MacUser magazine in the early 90s. As Chief Evangelist for the Mac when it was first released in 1984, he was there right at the beginning. Now he turns much of his attention to helping entrepreneurs, writing, speaking, and VC’ing. I got to meet him at his book signing, pictured below!

The learning, networking, funning, eating, and yes… drinking, all made for a dense and highly worthwhile experience, starting with legos. When we first arrived at the conference center, I found three huge tables full of legos, which immediately put me in a five-year-old state of mind. Perfect! No, we didn’t spend the whole time there, but it was a good way to get the juices flowing.

Me and my amazing creation…

And our friend Miguel Cano, from JSH&A, working on his own…

Presenter highlights included Chicago friend Jenni Prokopy (ChronicBabe) talking about building better health communities. An interview with publisher Tim O’Reilly gave us a glimpse into the future of digital. I learned about everything from social media metrics to text donations for nonprofits to web typography to mobile optimization to user experience process and more. I did make it one film event — a panel with Rainn Wilson for his new movie, Super. And somewhere in there we even made it to a couple of parties!

The food trucks are a highlight of Austin, particularly in the downtown area. Rachel, Miguel, and I walked until we found one with a short line — Turf N’ Surf Poboys. Yum…

Major sponsor and Foursquare competitor Gowalla was heavily represented, though I stuck to Foursquare personally. And vowel-challenged startup SCVNGR had everyone running around finding things for various types of rewards. All this served as real world preview of what is being largely hailed as the “next big thing” — the gamification of pretty much everything. What’s that? Well, it basically means that technologies with built-in game mechanics are more successful at getting people to actually use the technology. The best app in the world is useless if nobody uses it.

Foursquare, in my opinion, is the most successful example of merging game motivation with real-world advertising. While I’ve been using the mobile app for nearly two years, I’ve never seen such an intense concentration as I did at SXSW. People were checking in to everything, everywhere. Every room, event, party, and sometimes cars. I hit a new week record of 403 points! They released a big update to the app for SXSW, so it now tells you lots of good tidbits related to your own data, such as how long it’s been since you were at that location. This intrigues me since I purposefully choose not to broadcast my location to very many people.

The Foursquare people were everywhere as well. Forty of them came to SXSW, including co-founder Dennis Crowley, who I saw interviewed by Mashable SEO Pete Cashmore. In a particularly humbling moment for Dennis, an enormous print of his GAP ad was brought on stage and offered up to the audience member with the best question.

Dennis spoke about the future of Foursquare, and his vision to help you remember and find that coffee shop your friends were telling you to visit when you go to San Francisco, for instance. I also had a nice chat with Foursquare General Manager Evan Cohen after a smaller discussion he led with Lisa Bradner of Geomentum about the future of geo-related marketing and advertising.

Saving one of the most amazing moments for last, Rachel suggested we check out a live recording of The Nerdist with Chris Hardwick podcast at Esther’s Follies, a really fun local venue with lots of history. Fifteen minutes into the recording, Chris said it was time to bring out their special guest, who was none other than John Oliver from The Daily Show! Rach and I just about fell out of our chairs, as we’re both HUGE fans. We were treated to more than an hour of John hamming it up with the guys.

We’re looking forward to next year! Hope to see you there, too.

 This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles 

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

For this Sunday’s Super Bowl XLV, there is a great deal of excitement brewing for the face-off between the Steelers and the Packers. But there’s some bigger buzz going on…and it’s not the half-time show. It’s the advertisers. There are already those out there who watch the Super Bowl just for the advertisements. However before the game has even begun, the online teasers, social mentions, and digital contests surrounding the game and its accompanying ads are almost creating more buzz than the game itself! Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the goings-on in the land of social and digital during this year’s Superbowl.

• Google is featuring a 3D Google Earth model that provides a free virtual tour of the Cowboys Stadium. Just go to Google Earth, type in “Cowboys Stadium”, and let the exploring begin!
• Foursquare is featuring the promoted trending venue, “Super Bowl Sunday” for the duration of the game, and for those who check in and mention the name of the team they’re rooting for, Foursquare will provide them with that team’s themed badge. There will also be a special Super Bowl XLV badge for those who check into the stadium. For every unlocked badge, check-ins will receive a unique redemption code for 20% off select merchandise at NFLShop.com.
• For the fourth year, YouTube will run its Ad Blitz contest for people to vote on ads immediately after the game, and the winning ad will appear on YouTube’s homepage a week later. However for the first time, they will also feature a mobile Ad Blitz site for voting as last year, 9 percent of Ad Blitz views were on cellphones.
• Facebook is also hosting an ad contest dubbed Facebook Replay. It will show Super Bowl ads on its Sports on Facebook page and tally how many people hit “like” on each one to pick the winner.
• Volkswagon leaked its Super Bowl commercial on YouTube, which has already passed 6 million views.
• Visa, the NFL and Twitter created a site where football fans can view popular topics about the game and see Twitter posts from players and sportscasters.

• Audi is including the Twitter hashtag #ProgressIs in its commercial. Viewers who tweet the hashtag and the URL audi.us/ProgressIs will be entered into a contest with the grand prize featuring a test drive of the Audi R8 supercar in Sonoma, California (yes the trip is included). Audi will also award $25,000 to a charity on behalf of the grand prize winner. In addition to the Twitter promotion, Audi will also launch a Facebook program around the theme of an estate sale, where fans can try to tag items shown in that Super Bowl ad. The prize for the Facebook contest is the same as that of the Twitter contest.
• The popular mobile game, “Angry Birds”, will feature a Super Bowl commercial that showcases an embedded code that game players can access to a special level in the game. Users who watch the Super Bowl ad and reach the special level in the game will be entered for a chance to win a trip to Rio de Janeiro to see the movie premier based on the “Angry Birds Rio” app.
• Mercedes has been marketing a “Tweet Race,” that leads up to the Super Bowl. Four teams are racing to Dallas for the game and people can help them win by posting on Twitter.  Prizes will be awarded to the competing drivers, and for those who tweet, 20 MVT (Most Valuable Tweeter) awards will be given at race’s end to those individuals who provided the most “plentiful, premium and timely” tweets during the competition. All MVTs win an exclusive Mercedes-Benz luggage set.

This is only the beginning of what you can expect before, during and after Super Bowl Sunday. And of course, if you want to re-live some classics…

Sources from The New York Times and Mashable.com

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: Marketing, Social Media

A couple months back, I spoke in Miami to members of the Specialized Information Publishing Association (SIPA) about publishing to mobile devices. These are typically niche publishers, each offering unique value to their readers and each with unique editorial and technology requirements. Mobile is an exploding market for content delivery, offering enormous possibilities and potential value.

One of the first major decisions you make when deciding to go mobile is App or Optimize. In other words, are you talking about building a mobile-friendly website that almost any smart device can display (optimize), or do you need apps on various mobile platforms (app)? Here are some tips to help you make the right decision, which will likely lead to better results for you and yours.

App Advantages

• Max control over brand, user experience, and rights management
• Expanded options for ad revenue
• Enhanced feature set for media-rich content
• Enhanced ability to view content offline (plane)
• “Cool” factor

App Disadvantages

• Typically higher production and maintenance cost and time
• Access is limited to devices you can afford to support
• Potentially more difficult to integrate with existing publishing solutions
• Reduced flexibility in a rapidly evolving industry

Mobile-Optimized Website Advantages

• Standard rich content formatting language for Web/Email
• Free, flexible and open – works on most devices
• Typically reduced production costs and time
• Typically easier to integrate directly with existing content management systems (Webany)
• Easier viral distribution and linking, with methods to deter unauthorized copying
• Control viewing access (rights management)

Mobile-Optimized Website Disadvantages

• Lack of complete control over brand and user experience (esp. with RSS)
• Fewer options for flexible rights management
• Fewer embedded/easy ad revenue options
• Reduced ability to add interactive features
• Reduced offline content access without additional software support

The recent iPhone release on Verizon is good timing for Apple since Android had been out-selling it in the last months of 2010. More choices of carriers should lead to an increase in sales.

I hope this was a helpful breakdown of some of the considerations. Our process has helped several clients make the right decisions when going mobile. Let me know if you have any questions.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Technology, Web

You may have noticed a new kind of square barcode popping up all over the place, which are most likely QR codes. Actually there are a few different kinds of barcodes, but they all have the same basic purpose – using your smartphone’s camera to access information encoded on anything in the physical world.

I think of this as putting hyperlinks on any surface you see – anywhere. This is huge.

It’s the best thing I’ve seen bridging the real world of signs and paper to the virtual world of Web and mobile. With the right app you can transfer information such as contact data from a name tag or view the trailer for the movie review you’re reading. The possibilities are endless and they aren’t limited to scanning the physical world since you can scan a code on an LCD monitor and take the information with you.

Earlier this week I noticed an otherwise unmarked white cargo truck with QR codes on the back and sides. I didn’t get a chance to scan the code to see if it was a subtle marketing experiment or used for logistics tracking, but I did get the picture below.

In addition to seeing these pop up in magazines recently, I saw one Tuesday night on a Dance Flight program by DanceWorks Chicago, who recently became an Astek client. The link goes to an extended program with videos and other multimedia material you can’t get on paper.

Try scanning the QR code above. I use QuickMark on my iPhone, which works quite well scanning screens and paper. You can download QuickMark here.

Social media writer and consultant Rachel Yeomans recently posted an article spotting a QR code on Facebook for Net-a-Porter’s new mobile site:

For an example of the Microsoft Tag, which I think is a bit too colorful to be practically incorporated into most branding, I scanned an ad from the current issue of Entertainment Weekly (yes, someone else in the office has a guilty pleasure). Scan the code below to view a YouTube trailer for The Green Hornet on your mobile device. You’ll need to download a tag reader free from Microsoft.

If you’re envisioning a world in which we all wander around scanning each other for information, well, you’re probably not too far off. But this is all an interim step until the technology becomes so ubiquitous that we don’t even need our phones to do the scanning. At that point privacy and social concerns will take over the conversation from technology.

You can generate your own QR code to try out the technology. Post a comment if you’ve seen some interesting QR codes out there or think of any great uses for this technology.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

This month we’re discussing Web analytics and how they can help you construct your website in the manner that will best enable you to reach your goal, whether it’s to generate leads, sell products, express thought leadership, or anything else. There are numerous design and strategic decisions involved in each of these. To help you get started, I’ve provided a simple outline of things to consider.

1. Establish your goals. You must know what you want to get from your website before you talk about how to design or build it.

2. Have a clear call to action. If you want people to buy something, don’t be afraid to make the “Buy Now” button prominent. If you want people to contact you for more information, put your phone number on the top of every page.

3. Study your analytics to figure out what kind of people are visiting your site. You’ll know from where they came, for what they searched to find you, and all kinds of other goodies.

4. Start with a wireframe storyboard to establish the strategy and hierarchy of your site before getting into the design and graphics of it. Using your goals established above, create a rough sketch of the most important elements on the page starting at the top. People still read left to right, top to bottom, so they will see everything “above the fold” before clicking or scrolling. And if they don’t see what they are looking for, they might not look any farther.

5. Design to build trust. Use trust icons such as affiliations, awards, memberships, ratings, partners, and certifications to create immediate recognition of brand value for the visitor.

6. Focus on benefits not features. Every successful company does many things well, and we often focus on listing our features. However, focusing on the actual benefits or value you bring to the table creates a much more compelling point of differentiation. (Thanks, Mr. Schmooze, for that one)

Using this process should help you establish your goals at any stage in the Web design process. The more information you have going into it, the better you’ll be able to communicate your goals with your Web consulting partner.

Here is an example of a landing page we designed for a client’s pay-per-click ad campaign in the data center business to give you some ideas:

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Technology, Web

Mobile marketing has changed a lot in the past couple of years. Geo-targeting uses your smart phone’s GPS to find out where you are, allows you to “check in” to a location, and deliver targeted messages to you based on that information.

Leaders in the geo-targeting space include Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt (plus LooptStar). They are similar in many ways, but each offers a different twist on an increasingly familiar theme. They enable local businesses to find and attract consumers in new ways, such as offering coupons or special offers to regulars based on how many times they’ve come in. Like many start-ups, none have mastered the monetization aspect of mobile marketing, but there are clearly endless opportunities here.

In order to give people incentive to use the apps, various forms of social “rewards” are used that essentially turn exploring your city into a game. We are social creatures, and while some of these rewards may seem meaningless or frivolous, there is an attraction to them as they create an element of social status within communities. A large part of the appeal to people in large cities with lots of friends is to make sure you never miss the action, but I believe the jury is still out as to the real social value of this once the initial allure wears off a bit.

While this isn’t intended to be an in-depth review, I’ll discuss some interesting distinctions of each:

Foursquare – I’ve been on Foursquare for about a year now. It’s been amazing to watch the database of local places grow since it depended on the community to enter locations. Now it’s rare that I go somewhere that isn’t already there. The person who frequents a location the most becomes the “mayor” and some establishments give benefits for that position. You collect virtual badges for achieving certain things, like being in a place with at least 50 other people (Swarm) or hitting 4 clubs in one night (Crunked). You get the idea. Foursquare made a gamble by creating a new database of locations and friends, but it seems to have paid off. The most compelling thing about this is the special offers that are based on your location. When you check in somewhere, the app will tell you if there is a nearby special, or one at the place you are (a free drink for 10 check-ins for example). While Foursquare has exploded in the past year, I haven’t seen a congruent explosion of the specials offered by businesses.

LooptStar is a spinoff of Loopt, which was historically a more informational type of app. Their new entry enters the “rewards” space more heavily. The thing that LooptStar does that I believe will give it an advantage is use Facebook Connect to leverage the largest existing social network rather than wait for everyone to find their friends on yet another new one. They were later to the game, but I believe this will give them an edge in the long run. In LooptStar you become a “boss” rather than a “mayor.” But the rewards look to be more tangible than FourSquare.

Gowalla benefits from being on all major mobile smart platforms, including Blackberry and Palm. They also rely on partnerships with existing travel-related services to offer “trips” and share those with your friends. While Foursquare provides community tips based on your location, Gowalla focuses more on directly exploring your friends’ favorite locations to learn more about what they like rather than the community at large.

All of these apps feature basic sharing with your Twitter and Facebook feeds to let people know what you’re up to. Yelp has entered the space by adding check-in to its feature set and you can bet that Google is going to be all over this with its massive business database and Android mobile platform. The problem these sites have is that they have established brand and culture that make it harder to break into new areas.

While this space is fascinating to watch, it still has a long way to go. The apps depend largely upon smart phones such as iPhone and Android, which represent the minority of the mobile market. Also, I feel that any app that requires you to actively check in to a location rather than simply knowing where you are is going to appeal more to geeks and early adopters than the majority of people. It can be very distracting to interrupt your social experience. “Wait guys… I have to check in here first…”

What’s the alternative? Remember Minority Report, when Tom Cruise’s retinas were scanned everywhere he went? In that version of the future, you didn’t even need a device to tell the network where you were. Cameras were so ubiquitous that they knew anyway. Scary? A bit. Possible? You bet.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology

How do you Google? Chances are you start most of your Internet research at Google.com. You might also have a Gmail account or use Google Calendar to manage your life. And it’s a safe bet you’ve used Google maps and have your own opinion about the street view trucks making sure everyone can see your house. But there is much more to Google than meets the eye.

Google is many things to millions of people. What started as an innovative way to search the Web back in 1998 has grown into one of the world’s largest and most successful companies, now delivering results for more than one billion searches every day using its highly guarded secret sauce. Put simply, Google is what makes the Web usable.

Recently Google has taken great strides to integrate its numerous products and services into a suite of business applications called Google Apps, which can help you with corporate email, shared calendars and documents, groups, websites, and video.

The services are all Web-based, which means you don’t have to worry about servers, maintenance, etc. Just make sure you have a Web connection, get through the basic set-up, and you’re good to go. All the services are seamlessly integrated with each other at a fixed low per-user cost. Google even provides a handy cost savings calculator if you’re using Lotus or Exchange.

As much value as the Business Apps give you, Google’s free apps can deliver even more value. I encourage you to look into:

• Google Analytics to see how your Web site traffic is doing to improve marketing strategy
• Google Alerts to have industry or brand-related articles and comments delivered right to your inbox
• Google Reader to keep all of your blogs and RSS feeds in one place

While Google’s unofficial slogan has emerged as “Don’t be evil,” prominent tech leaders such as Steve Jobs have publicly objected to Google’s claims of holistic do-gooding. Let’s face it, Google is still an enormous company with responsibility to its shareholders. Good and money don’t always line up conveniently in that model, despite the best intentions.

Google continues to face challengers in the search space, such as Facebook, especially as social media continues to fundamentally change the way people access the Web and search for information. More and more people would rather get answers from people they know than the search giant. But stay tuned — Google may just master social search yet.

Keep your eyes open for Google’s latest experiment to revolutionize the way American’s access the Web with the fiber-to-the-home network.

Let me know if you have any questions about Google for Business or increasing your search rankings!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

Last week I was attempting to surprise my girlfriend by taking her to see Leonard Cohen in concert. At some point I must have RSVP’ed to the event on Facebook, as you can see from the screenshot she saw on her Facebook page the day before the show. Facebook invited her to the show by telling her that I was attending! Since I had told her to block off the night, it wasn’t too hard to put it together. (Well, that and the fact that I made her listen to Leonard Cohen songs all week.

This reminds me a bit of the Beacon advertising disaster Facebook tried launching a couple of years ago.

Lesson: If you are trying to surprise someone, don’t tell the biggest gossip hound on the planet — Facebook!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Marketing, Social Media, Web