Apple I-Pad_Boom or Bust

Unless you did not notice Apple launched its much awaited I-Pad yesterday in San Francisco. As with all new Apple releases from a design and business perspective it's worth paying a little attention.

The debate lingers over where it fits in the current marketplace and what is the Apple strategy? Is it just another gadget, is it filling a void in the marketplace, is it a stepping stone to something else?

I have read several reviews and honestly I am still a little confused but I welcome your comments and ideas.

Saludos:
Jerry/CMT

Business Growth_ The Winner Is?

Today we attended a breakfast meeting with about 300 people which started at 7:30am and ended at 9:00am.
The sponsor of the event was the Houston Hispanic Chamber of which we are proud members. We have watched their organization sky-rocket in less than two years so being a student of business growth, I asked several of the key members what they have done to obtain their growth, what mistakes they have made and what are their plans for future growth:

• Personal networking and being actively involved in our local business community
• Leadership at all levels of the organization with open lines of communication between departments
• Provide value to their corporate sponsors while not forgetting about their small business base
• Integrate their marketing across all media mediums effectively and outsource to their members 

Certainly there's more but what I took away from our conversation is that clear leadership with specific goals implemented strategically while blending a warm friendly "do business here" attitude always wins.

Saludos:

Jerry/CMT

The real time web — what’s in it for you?

There has been tons of media attention paid to all of the companies that have entered the real time web. And, in addition to all of the new startups, companies like Google and Bing are now mixing real time results into their engines. However, what about the user? What can the user get out of the real time web?




Fresh news on your subject of choice:

The main thing users can get out of the real time web is information. You can find out what is being said right now about any particluar subject. If you want to see what people think about a sports event, movie, celebrity, or any other breaking news - a real time search will inform you.

You can head to Twitter’s homepage to perform a real time search. Twitter makes it very easy to see what is being said about a respective subject.It is also interesting to see which links are being shared on the real time web.


Hot trends

In addition to seeing popular links and what is being said, it is also interesting to see what the hot trends are this moment. Often times, real time trends can show you breaking news before major media outlets pick up the story.


Find related topics

Lastly, users can use the real time web to see topics related to a given topic. If you head over to Tweet Cloud, you can enter any keyword you’d like and see other topics that are being discussed alongside this topic. In addition, you will notice that certain words are larger font - which means that this respective keyword has been used more often along side the initial keyword that was searched for.

As more and more users take advantage of the real time web, understanding how it works and the places you can go to will surely benefit any internet surfer.

Internet search is a moving target so it's a good thing to keep up and decide what's important for your business. Any questions or comments we're available..

Saludos:
Jerry/CMT

Don't Make Conan's Mistake

Five years ago, Conan O'Brien chose to stick with NBC because they promised him The Tonight Show. Now he's bitterly disappointed about the recent turn of events. We sympathize — but none of us should be so naïve.

It is certainly painful to witness an employer's callous treatment of a man who patiently served season after season until it was his moment to shine. But as we all shake our heads in righteous indignation at NBCs treatment of Conan O'Brien, we should take a moment to think about Hideki Matsui. Because, while Matsui's departure didn't generate a public outcry, the bottom line is that that the situations are really quite similar. Hideki Matsui was the New York Yankee's 2009 World Series MVP. After a postseason that any major leaguer would die for, the Yankees chose not to renew his contract. Where was the love for Hideki? Where is the love now for Conan? There wasn't any, nor should that surprise us. Both were business decisions based on the facts at the time. Despite the obsessive water cooler discussions about the Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien saga or our individual opinions on who's better suited for the job, the harsh truth is that it's not personal — it's just business.


So what's in your best interest? How can you avoid making Conan's mistake?

• No organization can make reasonable promises of future placement — you're setting yourself up for disappointment trusting an organization to honor that agreement. 
• Don't make assumptions about what you bring to the table.

The take away is in today's business environment results that are tangible, viable and meet objectives are real and never assumed...Cover your Assets!

Saludos:

Jerry/CMT

Branding with Promotional Products

Do you do business in other languages other than English? Are you considering opening new markets?
Do you need to brand your business in a foreign country or get your offshore organization some branding material in their home language?

Industry stats provided by ASI, Advertising Specialty Institute, point to the importance of rewarding clients while branding your business. The promotional products business continues to grow and evolve and it;s no longer just a pen but eco-friendly, green products that are functional, stylish and at prices we all can afford.

At CMT, we provide our clients not only products but concepts built around our clients promotion. We brand the product, assist in the creative and finally meet your budget and delivery requirements. Also, CMT has help brand products for the Hispanic and Asian markets. We all know the power of opportunity in these markets.

Talk to us, let us help you define your promotion and present some viable options. Please see our branding website full of promotional products, http://cmtmarketing.net/Branding.html.

Saludos
Jerry/CMT

 Different Promotional Gift Ideas Can Improve Your Business

Is Your Website Ready for the Mobile Web?

Longer than usual but worth looking at as mobile browsing becomes very important.

As the use of cell phones and smart phones expands, so do the number of options for consumers to discover and interact with brands. From web browsing to email to social networking and even shopping, more people are using their cell phones as portable computers. However, most sites are not optimized for hand-held devices such as cell phones.

There are really two things to consider;  web site design and how customers are going to find the web site through mobile search.

How do you design for the mobile platform? The good news is that in most cases, you don’t need a separate site, you just need a cascading style sheet (CSS) attached to your website that feeds up specific instructions to a mobile browser. For the most part, mobile browsers are a lot like the web used to be; mainly text and links. Granted, as the iPhone, Google/Android Phones and other more advanced devices come along, the browsing features also advance. Most smart phones like the iPhone view the web as it should be without anything stripped out. But, since everyone doesn’t own a smart phone just yet, it’s worth focusing on the what the mass mobile market has, basic handheld web browsers.

When designing your CSS for handheld web browsers, here are a few things to consider:

You have very limited screen real estate. About 2×3 inches or so.
All fonts should be in their most basic format. Forget about color and typography.
All images should be striped out, unless they are absolutely necessary.
Remove all advertising as you already have limited screen space.
If you don’t need it, hide it. Remove any Google Friend Connect, Facebook Fan Box or other third party services. Focus on your content.
Remove all background colors. Basic black text on a white background is good.
Create basic forms, if you choose to keep them. My advice would be to remove them and just showcase the phone number. They are on their cell phone after all.
Remove Flash, Java and any plug-in content unless absolutely necessary.
All in all, simplify.
If you run a WordPress blog, you can use a WPtouch iPhone Theme plug-in to automatically create a small-screen friendly version of your blog.

If you want to view your site as if you were on a mobile browser, here are a few choices:

Web Developer extension for Firefox. It allows you to overwrite the web style sheet with the handheld one if a site has one. If not, it’ll just show the site without any CSS styles.
iPhone simulator called iPhoney. It looks cool, but since the iPhone really doesn’t render a striped down version of a site, it’s more of a toy.
Opera Mini browser. There is an online version and it’s free. Simply put in a URL and it’ll render a website as if it was on a mobile phone.
From my testing, the Opera Mini browser was a great experience. It has a small screen, shows handheld versions of style sheets and all in all, it does a great job at giving you what a real phone will show. Here is my before having a handheld CSS and after experiences on the Opera Mini browser.


So where does SEO fall into all of this? Is there a separate ranking algorithm for mobile devices? No, not from what I can see.  While smart phone users can type or speak their search queries, the sort order rankings are fairly consistent between a search on a phone and a search on a computer.


The best way to ensure you are found on mobile devices is to make sure your site is in all the local search directories with full and accurate profiles. Places like Google Local and Yahoo local probably receive more traffic from users who want to find business in a certain area. When I’ve used my phone to search the web, I was searching for specific businesses to visit.  Social networking through mobile is also popular and through links, can drive web site traffic. A combination of search and social is the direction where I see the bulk of mobile traffic going.

Mobile search is an area of the Internet that is finally heating up which is supported by predictions made by eMarketer. Some marketers are putting a lot of stock into mobile marketing as cell phones and smart phones become more widespread and offer more capabilities. However, site owners are not always taking those platforms into account. To ensure your site is mobile ready, get listed in local directories and add a handheld CSS file to your site. These two easy items are a great start for optimizing your site for handheld web browsers.

Saludos:
Jerry/CMT

Google In China Who Wins?

Google China (谷歌, pinyin: Gǔgē, literally "valley song" or "cereal song", though it is only a transcription) is the subsidiary of Google, Inc., the world's largest Internet search engine company, in the People's Republic of China.


Who wins..Who Loses in the worlds largest economy and what does it mean to everyone else?


Here's a link to a video:http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/01/12/business/1247466517265/google-may-close-operations-in-china.html "CNBC Video: Interview With Google's Chief Legal Officer". The company's investigation into the attack showed that at least 20 other companies had been similarly targeted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China.


My partner is Chinese and several of our clients from Beijing their take does not seem to be as reactionary as the Western view.
I think this will be a very interesting topic to follow as it unfolds. I believe a comprised Internet is not how it was designed. What are your thoughts?


Saludos:
Jerry/CMT 

Marketing,Branding and Just Good Strategy

• Do one thing well. A small business has to do one thing well. It cannot be all things to all people for two reasons: first, it’s hard to do many things well. Second, it’s hard to communicate that you do many things well.

• Make it a fun thing. Picture this: you’re pushing and shoving 100,000 of your closest friends to see the latest OLED TV, and you stumble upon a booth with USB missle launchers and aquariums. Who would not at least smile, if not stop, to learn more?

• Think different. I didn’t search every square foot of CES to find other USB missile launchers, but there was a sea of iPhone and iPod case manufacturers that I zipped past. It’s much better to be the one USB-fun-device company than the umpteenth iPhone accessory company.

If nothing else, Satzuma proves that by doing things this way, you can attract attention in something as large and noisy as CES. Truly, when it comes to small business, if there’s a skill, there’s a way.

Saludos:
Jerry/CMT

HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR SITE FOR PHONE CALLS

Here's a basic that is sometimes overlooked in the planning and final execution of your website.
Make it easy for your customer to reach out....That makes sense! Don't you think?

 One of the recent comments was about optimizing your site for phone calls: how to place your company number to start getting calls.


I don’t know any extraordinary hacks (if you do, please share) but here’s what I know about why and how to make your telephone number visible:

Do you actually need a phone number on your site?
Usability:

A phone number is an effective way to get your visitors’ instant feedback (view the number of calls you get daily as an indicator of the website usability especially after the redesign or some tweaking);
A prominent phone number on a website builds the trust and confidence (the Internet is impersonal enough: adding some evidence that there are real people out there – like the physical address and the phone number) makes people feel more comfortable). The telephone number offers an additional, convenient way to order, but most importantly it implies that a live person is ready to assist.


SEO:

A telephone number might be one of the on-page trust identifiers. One of the facts supporting this theory for example is that one of the old Yahoo criteria for listing was a valid phone number on the site contact page. (Some editors would even try the number to make sure it is legit);
Search engines are often believed to associate local area code as the local search rankings factor.
Stick to the easily recognized formats:
A U.S. phone number separates the area code, exchange, and number into three fields. Parentheses surround the area code field, and a dash separates the exchange and number fields. Thus the correct way to format a US phone number to make sure the US-based visitor instantly recognizes the format is:

(XXX) XXX – XXXX

To make it universally recognizable, the phone number should contain the country calling code:

+1 (XXX) XXX – XXXX

Helpful tip: if you are wondering about your country standard, try checking a local search engines to see which format they are sticking to. This  local search engine is good option for Canadians, for example.

Mind the placement:
There are traditional (obvious) placements of your company phone number:

Contact page;
Help page;
About-us page, and the like.
What should be noted here is that the best thing you can do to make sure your visitor is going to like you and your company from the very start is to make sure the phone number is easy to find. Often the owners seem to do their best to avoid the phone calls: look at this example (the phone number can only be found after the second click):

Contextual phone numbers

Some really essential steps in the buying process may require additional help or just re-inforce the feeling of confidence:

Order page (Is there actually a person behind the site?);
Checkout process (Is the site secure enough to entrust it with my billing details?);
Service description (Are there any custom solution to fit my needs?); etc
Increased visibility:

It often makes sense to make the phone number visible sitewide (in the head banner for example).

Adding the phone number in the title tag (as well as meta description) might also make sense (both FireFox and IE will make the phone numbers clickable within the search results to make the listing stand out and thus more clicked ):

Call Me!
Saludos
Jerry/CMT

Google's Nexus One has arrived

Did Google get it right? Is the Nexus One phone a viable business tool? Open source for your business what does that mean for you and your business? What are your customers saying?

Here's the link to the Google consumer page and Google's take on the buying process:
Well, today we're pleased to announce a new way for consumers to purchase a mobile phone through a Gowww.google.com/phoneogle hosted web store. The goal of this new consumer channel is to provide an efficient way to connect Google's online users with selected Android devices. We also want to make the overall user experience simple: a simple purchasing process, simple service plans from operators, simple and worry-free delivery and start-up.

Maybe we all can learn something from Google? What do you think?


Saludos:
Jerry/CMT

Is Your Brand Being Ignored?

We all work hard on brand positioning, differentiators and what makes our company unique. In the end, we have a vision of who we are in an increasingly chaotic fragmented world.

Next, we execute our marketing plan which includes going digital, we send e-mail which looks like any other e-mail in your best customer's box. Then, we finely tune the colors to match our brand(even though you can't
calibrate how color appears on any one monitor) or you include photography and graphics(which don't
download until the users request them) or you include the all important link to your heavily branded Web site
(although fewer than 10% click through.).

So its not the optimum branding experience..but its cheap! Then the economy picks up and sales do not jump up as much and we ask "why aren't are customers loyal anymore? We understand its not a uncommon problem but how about putting something in your customers hand something branded. Imagine that all your strategic work right there at their fingertips. A magnet, a pen..who knows? A piece that says , " Hey, I know you" and this reminds your best customer why he or she came to you in the first place and that;s what a brand is all about!

Old school in the 21th century....

Saludos:
Jerry/CMT