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, Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, ePiphany Featured Story

The Astek team is pleased as punch about our latest iPhone app, a flashlight that takes advantage of the new LED camera light in the iPhone 4.

But Light Beam is much more than just a flashlight! It’s the app that could save your party AND your life!

Light Beam is the iPhone 4’s brightest and easiest flashlight using the built-in LED flash! It includes a strobe light and SOS emergency beacon.

Features:

• Uses iPhone 4 built-in LED for brightest light possible.
• Intuitive, elegant design.
• Flashlight: Auto-on when app is opened for quickest access.
• Strobe Light: Bring the party with this ultra-bright strobe light. Or increase visibility for extra safety on your bike at night. Easy-touch slider allows you to control the speed.
• Emergency SOS Signal: Activate with the tap of a button. Beams a repeating SOS Morse code signal via the LED light.

Download Light Beam for iPhone 4 now!

Here’s a screenshot of Light Beam:

Check it out and if you don’t have an iPhone 4 please tell your friends!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Gadget, Technology

My great and talented friend, Aarti Sequeira, proves that social media can help make your dreams come true. She turned her homemade YouTube-based cooking-variety show, Aarti Paarti, into a spot on The Next Food Network Star, premiering this Sunday, June 6, at 9p/8c on the Food Network.

Aarti’s show features original how-to recipes with distinct India influences that just about anyone can make. I was fortunate to interview Aarti and learned a few things I didn’t know about her fantastic journey from laptop to living room. Enjoy!

What first inspired you to create Aarti Paarti in early 2009?

I was floundering at the time — my career in journalism had evaporated, and I hadn’t had that fire in my belly to chase it. I had just finished co-producing Sand and Sorrow, one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life; I’d had the chance to work on a story that really impacts our humanity, for a Peabody Award-winning director, narrated by George Clooney and eventually bought by HBO. How can you top that?! I tried to find more documentary work, but that was right as the economy was shrinking, so there wasn’t money or interest in doing “another Africa documentary.” Isn’t that sad?

Anyway, at that time, cooking had grown into a real passion in my life. I had completed a part-time cooking program, interned at a James Beard Award-winning restaurant (Lucques, helmed by Suzanne Goin) and realised that restaurant life was not for me. I was totally stumped about what I supposed to do with my life, and it was depressing me. Here I was, a Northwestern graduate, a former CNN employee, a documentary filmmaker… with no drive to do anything but make dinner. Finally, one day, my friend said, “You need to do a cooking show, a cool one, where there’s someone in the kitchen with you and you’re chatting through the whole cooking process.”

My husband, Brendan, ran with the idea, and within a day, had written a complete one-sheet with a solid concept for a show called “aarti paarti”, where I would be cooking for a bunch of my friends, who we’d cut away to as the food simmered or roasted — since all my friends are actors/performers, they’d be doing something amazing. We shot it one day, and we got 13 hours of footage. It was unrealistic to try to put that together into a pilot by ourselves, so months later, I got so frustrated that I just picked up the camera and shot a quick 10-minute episode myself. My husband shot the next episode and we started incorporating the variety show angle, which I just love. And the rest is history! We’ve shot over 30 episodes so far, featuring everything from a uke-strumming juggling clown to singing puppets to a belly dancer!

(I made a cameo [4:20] in this episode, which for some strange reason has more views than any other…)

What equipment/knowledge/materials does someone need to produce a show like this?

We borrow the camera, a Panasonic dvx100, an older model that still shoots beautifully, but not in HD. It’s our dream to upgrade to an HD camera — can you imagine how good the food will look in HD?! Those cameras don’t cost more than a few hundred dollars these days, but you need a good cameraman to shoot, which normally is pretty expensive. Luckily, I’m married to one! Tape is pretty cheap, $100 for a box of 64-minute tapes. We also borrow mics whenever we can, because good sound psychologically makes your visuals look better.

I edit the show on my Macbook Pro, using Final Cut Pro, which is pretty expensive but wonderful. I taught myself how to use Final Cut by using the classes at lynda.com, which is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $20 a month. Food costs are pretty low, about $50 per episode, and we get to eat it afterwards!

What advice would you pass on to someone starting their own YouTube show?

Make your show look good — get someone who can really shoot, who’s got a steady hand, who can shoot from different angles. I can’t tell you how many shows I’ve seen where the cooking show host is just facing the camera head on for the entire video. So boring! And stuffy! Make your show as fluid as possible.

Also, make sure you get close-ups of all the food and action, and capture any natural sound too — they make for nice breaks in the action, just like a little breath. And speak normally, in regular English… don’t try to be anything you aren’t. The more you try to fancy yourself up, the stiffer you’re going to come across.

How long was the show posted before it started to get attention?

At first, my videos got about 100 views, and that stayed pretty steady until I started doing videos for Goodbite.com a couple of months into it. Then the numbers rose to somewhere in the 300-400 region. I realised that when naming my videos, I had to include words/phrases that people would be searching for. For example, my samosa episode got about 1000 views, probably because people were searching for a good samosa recipe. Now that the Food Network Show is about to start, I assume I’ll get somewhere in the region of 10,000 views, fingers crossed!

(Great SEO instincts, Aarti! Learn more about SEO)

Is it difficult to keep up with the schedule and come up with new ideas? What keeps you motivated?

It *is* hard to stay motivated. Toward the end of each season, I inevitably feel like I don’t have any energy or ideas left. But having your husband as your producer is good (and bad!!) for that, because he pushes me when I don’t feel like I have anything left to give. Every season, we try to have the recipes and the variety acts planned out before we start shooting, so I’m not scrambling at the last minute. But, that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the ideas for recipes come effortlessly. Sometimes it’s much harder. Usually that’s when I’m overthinking it. And Bren is great at coming up with the variety acts.

What other social media tools/sites/channels do you use to promote the show? Are these critical to its success?

I update my Twitter and Facebook accounts when a new video is up. I also created a fan page for Aarti Paarti on Facebook, and I put the video up on that page first. And, I send out an email to over 500 people with a link to the video. Oh! And of course! I write out the recipe with a back story on my blog, aartipaarti.com.

Why did you go with YouTube over other video sites?

I wanted to put them up on ONE venue so that I wasn’t splitting viewers between sites. I much prefer the video quality and layout of Vimeo, and the cool community of artists gathered there, but I found that some people’s computers couldn’t play their high-quality videos. I also wanted to garner the most eyeballs possible, and since YouTube is still the biggest outlet for videos, I figured that when people want to see online cooking videos, they’d go to YouTube before they went to Vimeo.

How much professional cooking experience/training have you had, and is that more or less important than just getting right to the experiments?

I trained at the New School of Cooking — I find that essential in understanding the science behind cooking, so that when I want to make food with particular flavours and textures, I know how to get there. It shortens the experimentation process. My journalism training definitely helps me write on my blog and stay comfortable on camera.

How important is collaboration for your show?

I couldn’t do my show without collaboration. Full stop. My husband is just as vital to the show as I am. And I couldn’t do it without all the artists who perform on my show!

Did Aarti Paarti help you get selected by The Food Network?

Aarti Paarti gave me weekly practice at my dream job for about a year! Every week, I got a little more comfortable talking to camera, whilst preparing food, which is a little bit like rubbing your tummy whilst tapping your head. That meant, by the time I sent in my application video to the Food Network, I had gotten pretty good at letting my personality and my food style shine through. Being on camera is much harder than you think!

Check out Aarti on The Next Food Network Star premiere this Sunday on The Food Network at 9p/8c, Sunday, June 6.

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

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, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web, ePiphany Featured Story

People have been serving customers in “real time” ever since there have been customers. So this is not a new concept. In fact, we’re using technology to correct a problem that technology introduced–distance between company and customer.

If someone walks into your store with a problem, you fix it immediately. If a customer calls you on the phone, you talk to them (hopefully) immediately. But what if someone posts something negative about you on Twitter or to an Internet Forum? What then?

Real time search allows you to monitor those types of interactions, complaints, and complements. It’s still your responsibility to respond, but the time needed to find such messages has been greatly reduced.

The lines between marketing and customer service are blurring. Quickly responding to someone on their own turf in a respectful manner has potential not only to set them straight, but also increase the likelihood they will tell other people about your remarkable effort to make it right. And your public response will serve as a permanent record for anyone else who sees the comment.

Twitter is currently the primary source of real time content, but expect others to get on board quickly. Twitter’s success has driven the major search engines to add real time search features to their products. But Twitter still manages the majority of real time traffic, so you can use Twitter’s built-in search engine as a place to hear what people are saying about you. Otherwise, expect popular online listening tools to start accommodating real time search in the near future.

This certainly won’t pre-empt any traditional forms of customer service, but people are out there talking about you online one way or another. You’ll be better off if you’re aware of it, since it’s not just going to go away on it’s own. At the end of the day, you should view this as an opportunity to serve people better.

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

A few weeks ago I was interviewed about Astek by Alice Truong from Medill. She wanted to write a story focusing on how a small company like Astek gets through a tough recession. We’re very happy with the way it turned out, and encourage you to read on.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Marketing, Web

The right CMS allows you to focus on your website content rather than the tools that run it. Numerous options meet the demands of countless websites. Astek designed Webany for you.

By now you should know why you need a CMS and how you can use a Content Management System to keep your website up to date. I wanted to share some tips about choosing the right CMS to make your Web life easier and more productive.

There are four basic types of CMS:

1. Open source applications that require configuration from a Web professional
2. Boxed desktop software that allow you to edit your website from one computer
3. “Boxed” hosted software that requires configuration from a Web professional
4. Hosted software as a service (SAAS) applications that relieve you from the burden of worrying about the backend

Here is some more info on each type of CMS to help you make the right decision:

1. Open source means that the code used to create the software is publicly available and takes advantage of a huge pool of resources (programmers) to develop. There are advantages and disadvantages to open source software. Since development is not regulated by a single entity, it also means that version-control isn’t 100% predictable or reliable. Typically this weighs on the side of advantage since there are a number of passionate, dedicated developers to fix problems that arise.

Open source developers create add-on modules or plug-ins to provide extended capabilities including forums, blog, wiki, web-stores, photo-galleries, contact-management, e-commerce, etc. It can be time-consuming to find the right plug-in, verify it works with your website and does what you need it to do, but chances are there is a solution out there for you. You will typically need to work with a developer to install, configure, and develop an open source CMS for you to use.

We like to use Wordpress for blogs, which is an open source CMS for publishing. For blogs it’s nearly perfect, but we find that for creating more complex websites it has some limitations that inspired us to create Webany.

2. You can purchase boxed CMS desktop software like you would a word processor and run it from your computer. Adobe Contribute is a fairly capable desktop-based CMS. Typically these are designed for one person to manage one or more websites from one computer. While they can sometimes handle multiple users, this gets expensive quickly since you have to purchase additional licenses of the software for each person.

Some boxed CMS products are far more expensive and do offer a greater array of features. These also require set-up from a knowledgeable professional and rarely work perfectly “out-of-the-box” as their packaging might suggest. Again, these products are usually not designed to handle highly complex websites like our solution.

3. There are a few “boxed” hosted solutions out there that are not open source, but may still offer a suitable range of options for your Web needs. These are “boxed” solutions in that they are purchased as a single license, but are not designed as do-it-yourself products. You will need the help of a Web developer to install and configure these products on your Web server, as well as train you to use them. Telerik’s Sitefinity is a good example.

4. That leaves us with SAAS or hosted Web CMS. These have a big advantage in saving you time and money with set-up since they are maintained by the company who provides the service, which means you don’t have to worry about it! Some hosted CMS’ have pre-made templates for you to use, and only a few allow you to use a custom design.

You may still need the skills of a Web professional, especially if you are custom-designing a website to match your brand and specific needs. Astek specializes in this type of development, but we were consistently disappointed with CMS solutions that sacrificed features for ease-of-use, or packed in so many features that that they became cumbersome to use. Rather than settle for another solution, we decided to make one that meets our ideal for a CMS.

Webany is just right. She offers more flexibility than you’re likely to need while maintaining an intuitive design that makes managing your website a snap. You can update anything from words to photos to movies to custom forms without any knowledge of HTML. Use a custom design from Astek or anyone else.

Most importantly, Webany makes sure that your updates won’t counteract the effort and money you put into creating a custom-tailored look and feel. Auto-archiving and user workflow ensure a painless approach to website maintenance.

If you’re interested in learning more, please contact us for a Webany demo.

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

Corporate blogs benefit greatly from a collaborative effort to produce and maintain. While it’s easy for anyone to start a personal blog in seconds, a company blog takes considerably more thought and planning to execute.

We are fortunate to have talented and engaged clients and want to highlight a couple of our most successful blog launches for The Alter Group and Bliss PR, which each benefit from multiple contributors. These projects engaged talented designers and thought leaders outside Astek who were essential to the end results. Both blogs run on custom installations of Wordpress.

Astek’s focus on helping our clients produce blogs over the past few years is especially rewarding since the client has so much influence over the life of the end product, which changes nearly daily.

Case Study #1
Alter NOW and ALTER+CARE Inspire blogs featuring podcasts
Business Focus: One of the nation’s preeminent corporate real estate development firms.
Blog Focus: Corporate Real Estate, Finance, Economy, Healthcare
Approx. Combined Monthly Visitors: 4,800+
Original launch: April 10, 2008
Redesign and ALTER+CARE Inspire launch: April 6, 2009
Featured in: Alltop.com

Astek worked closely with The Alter Group team over several months to hone the voice and focus of the blog, identify and train contributors on software, design the feature set needed, and deploy a flexible platform for growth. The initial budget was low to make sure appropriate resources could be committed consistently and to prove ROI before “going big.” Once the process and message proved stable, we engaged a designer to add the finishing touches that make the blog what it is today.

Dramatic color and imagery set Alter NOW apart from other blogs:

Consistent and careful use of relevant imagery in each article pulls the reader in:

The footer of each article features a ShareThis link for easy distribution across email and other web sites (important for viral growth to reach new readers), the author photo, name, relevant categories and tags, and a link to leave a comment, which invites readers to become part of the ongoing conversation blogs present. This article also features a link to the corresponding podcast on the subject.

The sidebar features easy subscription links, quick links to the podcasts, and prioritized standard blog features such as search and recent posts:

Both blogs are featured prominently on The Alter Group home page for easy access:

Case Study #2
B2B Bliss » PR for Thought Leaders blog
Business Focus: Business-to-business strategic media relations and marketing communications
Blog Focus: B2B marketing, public relations, professional services, financial services, and healthcare

Working with BlissPR to design and launch their blog was, well, blissful! They had been planning this launch for some time so the overall strategy and content development were in good shape. BlissPR primarily needed a partner to help with design, production, and blog deployment and integration strategy.

BlissPR wanted to integrate the new blog into their existing Web site, which presented a unique set of design opportunities and challenges. The new design features a prominent masthead for the blog with subscription links and a search box. Each article on the home page is clearly delineated with a green title bar, photo of the author, and crafted abstract leading to the full story. The “Share” link has plenty of room to breathe, highlighting the importance of this word of mouth feature.

The side bar focuses on the people behind the blog to provide context to visitors. A brief description of BlissPR is immediately followed by photos linking to bios of all the authors. This is a great way to add personality to your blog. The sidebar is followed by standard blog elements like tag cloud and recent posts.

We’re very proud of our clients’ ongoing success with these publications. Please check them out and remember to leave a comment!

Alter NOW and ALTER+CARE Inspire
B2B Bliss » PR for Thought Leaders

Here’s a succinct list of five things you can do to improve your corporate blog. The three blogs featured above stand as testimony to these recommended tactics.

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

The theme of the week is showing off our clients’ successes. Recently, L.A.-based VeriFacts Automotive received some nice press for their ongoing efforts to increase the quality of collision repair work through coaching and therefore increase the safety of cars on the road.

Read more about VeriFacts and President Farzam Afshar, interviewed in Parts & People magazine.

Afshar says his company’s goal “is to go into shops and evaluate their work quality and coach their technicians on what they’re doing right and wrong rather than waiting for a repair issue to get them into court and conflict.”

Astek supports this goal by providing Web consulting, back-end development, and maintenance for the organization’s custom Web applications.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Technology

The best thing a customer can do for your business is give you feedback — good or bad. The reality is that bad feedback greatly outnumbers good feedback. It’s just human nature. We love to complain when something doesn’t go right, and are often too busy to go to the effort to tell someone that something does go right. Even when complaints are justified, the business sometimes never hears them because the customer voiced his or her opinion in a private medium, such as telling a friend how awful the service in the restaurant was, and never giving the business a change to make it right. Word of mouth works for negative feedback even more powerfully than positive.

Mistakes happen. But even beyond mistakes, customers are a business owner’s objective barometer for knowing how well products and services are received. I’ve developed a mantra lately to help me remember this: you can’t argue with perception.

Social media provides unprecedented opportunities to listen in on some of those private complaints from customers that otherwise would never make it back to the business. You should make an effort to respond quickly to a complaint and do so publicly so that others reading the complaint can also benefit from your response. Think of it this way: the complaint will be out there whether or not you respond, so you’d better do something about it.

For large companies, the major cultural shift needed to effectively and genuinely reach customers through these channels may be more difficult than a small company who can do it with one or two people. The rules are the same in either case:

1. Engage people on their own turf. They’ll be impressed when you show up unexpectedly to help them solve their problem.
2. As with all customer service, keep your cool and “take the high road” whenever you can. Don’t get sucked into meaningless and unrelated tirades.
3. Remember how hard it is to control tone through text-based mediums such as email. Lean on the side of being extra nice.
4. Try to put a positive spin on the problem, so long as it’s genuine. Talk about future plans to remedy it.
5. Don’t discount suggestions, but also don’t over-commit to adding everything people request.

A few years ago Microsoft was getting a lot of public flak about its open source software initiatives. They stayed strong, responding to the comments on their blogs and others, and over a period of several months began to sway the tone of the comments. Eventually the community actually started sticking up for them. This took a lot of time and effort, but it helped to “humanize” Microsoft.

Comparing social media campaigns from Target and Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart failed so miserably that they chose to bow out not-so-gracefully in the face of hundreds of negative comments from students looking for roommates. If they’d stuck it out, I imagine they might have been able to turn it around or save face. Target got their campaign right from the start, creating a “party” for discussing dorm survival, which speaks to the culture and brand perception of the companies going into the campaigns.

The bottom line is to be true to your brand, your service, your customers, and your mistakes. The customer is not always right, but they always have the right to complain. Listening and responding will save you a lot of trouble down the road and probably lead to more business in the short term.

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