Jeffbullas's Blog » Mobile

How Instagram Harnesses the Awesome Power of Mobile, Social Media and Photos: 3 Success Stories

Jeff Bullas — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:47:53 +0000

I have a friend who won’t stop taking photos of food whenever she eats out. It seems that no matter what restaurant (except for McDonald’s or KFC and I don’t think they qualify as restaurants) the experience seems to turn into a full photo shoot.

Every angle is explored and the correct lighting is required.

At this stage there isn’t mood music to accompany the visuals, but I am half expecting a string quartet to become involved at some stage.

The next step is for the agent to show up and a movie director.

Why is this Happening?

The convergence of technology has produced a device (smartphone) that can take the photo in high definition and publish it to Facebook and Twitter before the food is even cold. Five minutes later you can check to see if any of your friends have left a comment, shared or “liked” it!

This visual self expression and sharing culture combines the power of three.

People’s obsession with their iPhone (read smartphone)
Engagement power of Facebook
The love of photos that seems to have been reinforced with the easy availability of the camera in your pocket

The only challenge for marketers is how to harness that through a touch of creativity.

How to Take Advantage of this Obsession

Marketers have realised for a long time the power of images to motivate and engage people. There are many business categories that can leverage social, mobile and photos to make their content contagious.

There is one very unassuming mobile app that emulates the simplicity of Twitter but is starting to make its presence felt that is playing with the power of “3″.

That “app” is Instagram.

Instagram is a free photo sharing application that you can download to your smartphone, that allows users to take photos, apply a filter, and share it on the service or a variety of other social networking services, including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Flickr , and Posterous

3 Instagram Success Stories

Instagram’s success shows the power of simplicity coupled with the increasingly mobile and visual social networks.

Food can be made to look so inviting with a great photo (just ask my friend)

Food – Personal Brand

Lets start with a famous “chef” and personal brand called Jamie Oliver who has over 170,000 followers on Instagram and doesn’t miss the ongoing opportunities to market his personal brand, cooking shows and publications with visual online sharing.

Check out Jamie’s Instagram

Beverages – Coffee

StarBucks as one of the largest brands based on follower count on Instagram with over 200,000 followers realises the engagement opportunities.

Alexandra Wheeler, VP of global marketing for the coffee giant says this about Instagram “Photography plays such an important role in how we visually share Starbucks offerings and experiences,..this will continue to be a great network to connect with our customers as it grows.”

Fashion

Fashion brands are a perfect fit for Instagram. Burberry gives followers behind-the-scene glimpses at fashion shows and photo shoots.

Instagram Ecosystem

There is a complete application and business ecosystem building around Instagram and John Jantsch at the Duct Tape marketing blog mentions the following 6 tools that enhance Instagram.

iDarkroom – This isn’t really an Instagram related tool, but it’s a great tool to use to enhance your images before you upload them to Instagram
Webstagram – This tool helps you search, sort, tag, follow and comment on photos shared by other users. One of the ways to make Instagram pay off is to build a following and part of that is done by finding and following relevant users and adding your comments to their images.
Postagram – Postagram allows you to turn any Instagram image into a postcard with the push of a button. Then Postgram sends your postcard for less than dollar. Think about how you could send product images to customers or showcase a project you’re working.
Printstagram – This tool takes your Instagram images and allows you to turn them into posters, mini prints, and mini books.
StickyGram – This app takes your custom Instrgram shots and turns them into magnets. It’s like having your own little promotional products creator right in your phone, but potentially much cooler.
Canvas Pop – If you want to take up a notch Canvas Pop will take your Instagram images and print them on canvas frames.

How could you use Instagram to spread your brands message and content?

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What is Increasing Twitter Sign Ups by 300 Percent?

Jeff Bullas — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:53:35 +0000

Sometimes the best things in life are the simple things. It may be a ride on a bike in the early morning dawn or a walk on the beach at twilight. Less is sometimes more and a minimalist life without clutter and too much baggage can bring more joy to the daily journey.

Twitter with its 140 characters is a simple and minimalist social network platform in a web world of noise and distractions, where we are enticed by so many videos, images and words.

In 5 years, its simple essence has not wavered or lost focus and Twitter has managed to seize each opportunity as it came its way.

Whether it is in business or life one just one opportunity can produce a benefit and change that can take you to the next level.

You Just Need One Opportunity

It appears that for Twitter that opportunity could be it’s new relationship with Apple, with Twitter now embedded in IOS5 (Apple’s new operating system for mobile devices) that was announced in June and and as reported in an article “Apple makes Huge Announcement about Twitter“. In the article I covered the 5 major implications for Apple and Twitter and a bold prediction.

Twitter is now an integral part of the menu on your iPhone, iPad or iPod. This integration into the native Apple menu has consequently provided exposure for Twitter to Apple’s 200 million plus mobile customers that it never had before with IOS5 now launched!

The Apple Effect on Twitter

At the recent Web 2.0 Summit Dick Costolo the CEO of Twitter, said that the day after the launch of the Apple IOS5 on the market that Twitter had increased its new subscriber sign-ups by 300% over its typical daily rate!

This has obviously been driven by the 24 million people using IOS5 one week after its initial launch.

These numbers consist of more than 4 million new iPhone 4s smart phones which Apple sold in just one weekend (a new record) and over 20 million people downloading the new IOS5 for existing Apple mobile devices.

Some More Facts about Twitter

At the summit Dick Costolo also announced some revealing facts about Twitter usage

The company is now handling 250 million tweets per day which is a significant increase from the 90 million Tweets only one year before
50% of Twitter users are now active every day whereas only 30% of users were active every day in January 2011

Also announced was Twitter’s lofty ambition to be on 2 billion devices around the world and reach every person on the planet.

How do they expect to achieve that?….”through simplifying”

Marketing Takeaways

This embedding of Twitter on Apple devices is in effect the evolution of the humble 140 character texting and SMS medium, where the texts are hyperlinked to websites, blogs, videos, images and music. The simplicity remains on the surface but you can dive deep into what lies beneath the simple but now web linked 140 Twitter characters that texting could never do.

Twitter will become even more viral and powerful and reaching a global audiences either niche or mass will become even faster.
Marketers will need to reassess how to use Twitter in an increasingly mobile and social web that could be a market of over 5 billion smart phones within 5 years.
Credible sources are reporting serious rumours that Twitter will deliver a self -serving advertising platform (like Google and Facebook) could take paid social media marketing to a new level and will need to be seriously considered by marketers in their future plans.
Growing your focused and targeted Twitter followers should become a focus and priority for brands both personal and corporate.

Twitter’s power to create real time online buzz has really only just started!

Are you ready?

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15 Reasons To Use Your Apple iPhone

Jeff Bullas — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:43:29 +0000

I don’t know if you have noticed but there is a global war that has broken out and it is not in Afghanisatan or Iraq. It is taking place in courtrooms and boardrooms around the world.

Apple has had court injunctions temporarily blocking Samsung selling its Galaxy Tablet (which uses the Google Android operating system) both in Australia and in Europe in the last week and Google has just paid $12.5 Billion for Motorola. At stake is a market share for mobile hardware, software, apps and web portals that are in the hundreds of billions of dollars that has taken Apple from almost bankrupt to the most bankable company in the world. Apparently Apple has access to nearly $70 billion cash and liquid assets so I sense that there maybe some acquisitions on the horizon.

A Mobile Social World

These are the first of many skirmishes as the web becomes increasingly mobile and social. Three of the five main features of Google’s new network Google+ are mobile centric and Google+ is available on iPhones and Android phones and indicates where Google thinks where mobile is heading. Apple thinks social is so vital for its future plans that Twitter is embedded within the new Apple iOS mobile operating systrem for its iPhones, Ipads and iPods.

The mobile smartphone has gone from a “nice to have” to a “must have” essential tool that staves off boredom, stops us from getting lost and obtaining real time information when we need it most according to new research from Pew Internet. In fact it has become so vital in our daily lives that leaving it home or not having it handy creates anxiety and angst.

The research also showed that 13% of cell owners pretended to be using their phone in order to avoid interacting with people around them! There you have it, the perfect tool to not talk to that annoying office colleague!

15 Reasons Why People Use Smartphones

Of course we use phones to make phone calls and speak to people in faraway places so it is not on the list as it taken as a given.

Send or receive a text – 92%
Take a picture – 92%
Access the internet – 84%
Send a photo or video to someone – 80%
Send or receive email – 76%
Download an app – 69%
Play a game – 64%
Play music – 64%
Record a video – 59%
Access a social networking site – 59%
Watch a video – 54%
Post a photo or video online – 45%
Do online banking – 37%
Access Twitter – 15%
Participate in a video call – 13%

What would you miss most about your smartphone if you lost it for 24 hours?

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Image by Travis Lawton

How 3 Mobile Gadgets are Transforming our Lives: New Research

Jeff Bullas — Mon, 30 May 2011 22:52:39 +0000

It was 25 years ago and if you wanted to make a phone call you had to do like Clark Kent’s Superman and head for the nearest phone booth and not ‘change’ into leotards and wear your undies outside of your pants but fumble for coins (if you had them) and make that urgent business call. The next challenge was often to find one that hadn’t been vandalized.

Telecommunication companies are removing them and placing them in warehouses ready for recycling or they are sold at auctions for collectors to restore and revive.

The old style phone booths are often displayed as antique pieces in the corner of bars or designer stores as memento and memorial of a bygone era.

The Computer in Your Pocket

How times have changed.. the mobile phone is now your computer in your pocket, your road map to your latest appointment or your movie channel for watching the latest video online. No longer do you have to wait to get home to find out the latest scores you can Google them and even watch the highlights. Contacting your friends is now a choice of do I, SMS, call or Facebook them? Waking up in the morning is quite often not an exercise in turning on the kettle but but logging into Facebook while your head is still on the pillow to check out the latest news from far flung friends and family or polish your ego by quantifying how many new friend requests you have received in the last 8 hours.

The Authors Dilemma

Your books now arrive via ‘bits and bytes’ rather than UPS and if they don’t arive in 2 minutes you start to get worried about the strength of the wireless link or even if you are connected to the world wide web. Publishers and authors are now wondering if they should sell a Kindle version of the book or not, or run with the hardcover release first. Pens must be concerned about their shelf life as iPads are replacing notepads in board rooms and coffee shops. Libraries are desperately trying to work out new business models as people no longer trawl the aisles but stay away in increasing numbers to find their information online while they ride the bus.

So what does the latest research from Nielsen reveal after speaking to 12,000 mobile connected device owners about what we are doing with the 3 mobile gadgets that are changing habits, keeping our eyes ever averted downwards and transforming the way we consume and share information and content

The Tablet

Is the tablet a fad or a revolution? At this stage it is looking like the latter despite critics promoting it as a passing distraction such as Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer (Microsoft don’t make one at the moment so maybe he just has iPad envy) . So where and why are we using iPads?

70% of people use them while in front of the TV
57% while in bed
44% of people use them with friends and family
42% use them while waiting for something
25% in the bathroom
24% use them in the meetings or classroom
21% while shopping and running errands
20% when commuting

The question for marketers here is “How can I engage with the tablet user while they are watching TV and simultaneously on the iPad?”

The eReader

The eReader market is growing at 300% year on year when you compare the first 3 months of 2010 to February, 2011. So where are people using the Kindle and its competitors such as the Noble and Barnes ‘Nook’

35% of people use them while in front of the TV (compared to 70% on the tablets)
61% while in bed
17% of people use them with friends and family
32% use them while waiting for something
17% in the bathroom
10% use them in the meetings or classroom
9% while shopping and running errands
11% when commuting

The eReader is certainly the king of the bedroom and the only question to ask is will the market over time sustain 2 devices (the tablet makes it into the bedroom 57% of the time) for reading as the price of tablets surely will reduce reduce significantly over time.

The Smartphone

The smartphone that is connected to the internet and provides a multimedia mobile device anywhere and at any time is impacting our lives maybe more than any other man made object in history… (well apart from the car, the printing press and the television)

68% of people use them while in front of the TV (compared to 70% on the tablets)
51% while in bed
58% of people use them with friends and family
59% use them while waiting for something
28% in the bathroom
23% use them in the meetings or classroom
59% while shopping and running errands
47% when commuting

What is obvious is that the smartphone is our most pervasive mobile gadget but what is also evident is that the eReader is a bedroom favourite and the new phrase that may be heard between partners could be “Not tonight darling I’m Kindling”

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3 Key Elements Needed To Take Social Mobile To The Next Level

Jeff Bullas — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:56:57 +0000

It was about 25 years ago shortly after mobile phones the size of a small apartment blocks had emerged as the latest technology device, that I had one installed in my car.

I remember making my first phone call to my grandfather as I made my way to an appointment (who in his past life had delivered milk by horse and cart). His amazement to receive a phone call from the other side of the country with no cords attached was palapable.

There is a quote from the science fiction writer most famous for the novel “2001: A Space Odyssey”, Arthur C Clarke (born in 1917) which resonates with me.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

In 2011 my observation and use of the magic of technology continues to surprise and enchant me whether it be the new iPad or flying at 40,000 feet sipping wine while the world flashes below at 600 mph with 200 people ensconced in a metal tube with the outside temperature hovering at -40 degrees.

Apple created the iPhone recently which is a truly magical device that with its big brother the iPad is changing our lives with intuitive and creative mobile devices. The world of mobile cannot be ignored and its implications for the world of commerce, extending and leveraging human relationships and communications are a significant.

In the mobile ecosystem there is another major player that cannot be ignored and that is Google with its Android phone and operating system that is proving to be a serious competitor to Apple’s domination in the smart phone market.

Mobile marketing and commerce is starting to deliver personalized information about

Where you are
What you could do there right now

That can enhance our lives and revolutionize the way we work, play and buy.

But to realize that vision and to deliver such a service at scale (according to an article in the Harvard Business Review by Eric Schmit the CEO of Google) there needs to be three key elements designed, developed and distributed.

Developing the underlying fast networks. These will be 8-to-10- megabit networks, roughly 10 times what we have today, which will usher in new and creative applications, mostly entertainment and social, for these phone platforms.
Development of mobile money. Phones, as we know, are used as banks in many poorer parts of the world—and modern technology means that their use as financial tools can go much further than that.
Increase the availability of inexpensive smartphones in the poorest parts of the world.

Google’s vision is that literally a billion people will be getting inexpensive, browser-based touchscreen phones over the next few years.

How do you think an additional billion people being added to the the web and mobile world in a few short years will do to increased awareness of local and global information and their education?

This world of magic continues to unfold.

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Social Media And Mobile: The Perfect Addiction

Jeff Bullas — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:38:55 +0000

People have been heard to exclaim

“I love my iPhone” !

It is normally spontaneous and can happen in public and in strange and exotic locations!

People’s obsession with technology, iPhone’s and social media is making laptops our sleeping partners and smart phones our alarms. Technology and the web is invading and permeating every corner of our lives ..and bedrooms! Facebook apps sits on your phone’s menu beckoning you and even daring you to caress its button and see if anyone has left a message or wanted to friend you. The Twitter app almost winks at you enticing you to check your latest tweets.

If there is one trend that as a marketer you should not ignore it is the internet connected mobile that is increasingly embedded in our daily life.

How Embedded Is Mobile In Our Daily Lives?

The mobile is now embedded in our daily work and play in multiple ways.

Send a text message
Take photos
Access the news
Mobile wake us up with the built in alarm
Search on Google
Access a website
Use email
Phone a friend
Check the weather
Access a social media site (very likely Facebook!)
Use a software application from work
Look up maps to find the directions to an appointment

What Are The 3 Key “Mobile Market Enablers” Driving This Perfect Storm.

The growth in smartphone adoption (up from 17% to 27% in just 12 months in the U.S.A.)
3G/4G phone ownership reached 50% threshold in November 2010
Availability of unlimited data plans (nearly 30%)

Along with these mobile adoption drivers is the rise of social media in the last few years which is peaking at the same time and is creating an environment and synergy that is an ocean of opportunity for marketers but also a sea of confusion in how to approach these trends to communicate brand messages and spread content and ideas.

Social media usage on mobile is up over 56% in the last 12 months (that equates to almost 60 million users in the USA alone) according to comScore’s “2010 Mobile Year in Review” that has just been released.

In the UK, Facebook is the top accessed site by time spent leading Google by almost 400% with 7.5 million unique mobile visitors spending a total of 2.5 billion minutes on Facebook.com averaging 5.6 hours per visitor during the the month of December 2010.

Digital marketers know that the two obsessions of “mobile” and “social media” is creating a perfect marketing storm.

How do we tap into that?

What I do know is… don’t get in between a lady and her mobile phone especially if it has a Facebook app!

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Why You Should Be Optimizing Your Blog and Website For Mobile

Jeff Bullas — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:46:53 +0000

Amazon has just announced its latest sales results for the last quarter showing sales of $6.57 billion and with that it also provided some figures that revealed in excess of $1 billion of product sales from mobile devices for the last 12 months. That puts the percentage of sales from mobiles compared to desktops at nearly 5% of all its online sales activity.

I have just added a plugin to my WordPress blog that allows readers to go to my blog and read it easily from a mobile, so on seeing those numbers I decided to look at my blogs Google analytics and guess what they were very similar at 4.29%. (here is the screen shot from my Google Analytics)

These numbers maybe don’t seem very significant but getting an extra 4-5% of traffic or revenue (in Amazons case) can add up over time. (the other numbers that I found of interest was that the average time on site is 41% less than normal desktop viewing..so writing snack size articles becomes even more important and that the Apple iPad was by far the most used mobile device.. only 3 months after launch!!).

Some recent research by Morgan Stanley titled “Internet Tends 2010” backs up Amazons numbers showing that the growth of mobile internet far exceeding what the speed of growth of desktop internet in its first 7 quarters with Apple leading the charge.

I have only had my Apple iPhone for about 12 months and I am certainly noticing that my use for all sorts of web activity is rapidly increasing when I am out and about (whether that be for email, browsing or searching) and I don’t think it will be long until my mobile internet viewing will pass 10% of my blog traffic.

In fact Morgan Stanley are predicting that mobile internet use will exceed desktop within 5 years. The mobile internet is here and growing rapidly and cannot be ignored.

So is your blog or website optimized for mobile?

Is Mobile Social Media Making Women Geeks?

Jeff Bullas — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:18:27 +0000

Early last year at a dinner party on the other side of our street I was chatting with a newly made best friend as you do after a few social glasses of wine, about how fantastic it would be to hold a street Christmas party so we could make social acquaintance with our neighbours in our immediate radius. I told him that it would be easy to organize, as my partner is an event executive and was excellent at organizing and facilitating major events.. like a street party! She overheard me and consequently proceeded to tell me that we were on our own, but I had an evil plan.

Fast forward a couple of months later and as planned, our street party committee meetings were being chaired by the event expert.. also known as a thought leader in the social media space.

At the first meeting the number of iPhones were counted on a single finger but as each committee meeting unfolded the numbers of iPhones proceeded to increase until eventually every member of the committee had in their possession an Apple iPhone in their clammy hand.. or purse. At each meeting talk would turn to what app had they downloaded and questions were asked such as, could you view Facebook easily, how was it to tweet or view a blog, or even watch a YouTube video. Discussion has now even turned to syncing and skyping and that is just the women talking.

I remember being at a restuarant one evening and while waiting to pay the bill, I proceeded to count how many tables had groups of women, who were together with their female friends for a night out just having a chat and socializing and as I added up the numbers there were about 2 tables of male friends compared to 30 plus for the ladies. Social media suits the the female psyche as women love to socialize and share their thoughts, feelings and recommendations much more than the male of the species. The statistics show that the fastest growing segment on Facebook are women between 45 and 55 which is not surprising.

Comscore who are one of the leaders in facts, figures and statistics in the technology industry have released a new study that reveals how fast the use of social media is expanding on mobile platforms like smartphones and including the Apple iPhone.

30.8 percent of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, this is up 37% from the same time last year
Access to Facebook via mobile browser grew 112 percent in the past year, while Twitter experienced a 347-percent jump
In January 2010, 11.1 percent of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via a mobile browser
In January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser, up 112 percent from the previous year
MySpace attracted 11.4 million users, approximately half that of Facebook
Twitter attracted 4.7 million mobile users in January, up 347 percent versus year ago

Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile says

“Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser.”

So the growth of the use of Social Media on Mobile will continue to grow in the near future as people become more familiar, experienced and involved with their social media channel of choice and their iPhone.

The challenge and the implications for marketers, is how to assist brands to use that channel and platforms to connect and engage with customers with creative and efficient social media marketing campaigns.

So does the female of our species, in your home, have an obsession for her iPhone … and her social media? Love to hear your thoughts.