Nokia, is the leader mondiale for portability in telephony. In order to stay ahead of its competition and especially so in the online world where almost seventy-four percent of the X & Y Generation populace is interacting beyond a borderless world, literally in ottoseconds, its Research & Branding Lab is ten steps ahead of other portability manufacturers, the likes of Apple, Samsung, and Sony-Ericsson.
This article has not been sponsored by either parties herein listed.
The Internet or the Web, as it is affectionately termed these days, is the playground of the Gods. It is a bed of roses for some, and a pig-sty for others. If you build an online presence despite being opened to the world, your site may just be visited by 0.01 percent of the wired populace. In order for your site to reach an avalanche of visitors from that corner of the world, to the other corner of the other world, your graphically enhanced presence needs to be beefed-up with information that may not just attract your immediate family, fraternity or colleagues, but other players in the sandpit. Some will go as far as paying for SEO, or advertising on Google and Yahoo, whilst others may collaboratively network with those of similar interest to harness their presence.
Learning from the Giants, by reading their biographies is one way to be on the right track. The other is to emulate the beginnings, its pitfalls and online future. What would Yahoo, and Google do? What would Nokia, Apple and Sony-Ericsson do? What would your local giant in your backyard do? Where do they spend their advertising Euro, and what would you, as a small entity not do in order not to compete, but to learn from? Competing should not be the objective of having an online presence. If you must compete for Euro, do so in a brick & mortar operative off line, but with a brand presence strong enough to capture at least one percent of the global market online.
Create your niche.
The same goes with all blogs - there are thousands of blogs writing about music, recipes, humour, art, culture, lifestyles, rants & raves; through more specialized topics the likes of telephony, mobility, social media, social networks, web 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etcetera through trends, geo-evolution, space & blackholes, scientific discoveries and entrepreneurial tips & fancies. What makes your site attractive to other visitors, is not so much the cosmetics but the userbility of it being an archive of good information {aka content!}, and having tools that have been proprietarily designed by your programmers, that can be co-branded and licensed for others to use. Another recipe for success is joining forces with an already popular application.
Imagine your widget or application on Facebook. What would that equate to in ROI? For businesses that can afford hiring applications developers, the next best step to jumpstart your brand-wagon is to create killer edu-tainment applications!
“The great benefit of doing a Facebook application that only took three weeks to build is that it’s very inexpensive and your opportunity to experiment is very high,” says Neil Young, group general manager at Electronic Arts. Young says that Electronic Arts has spent less than $200,000 over several months with developer Context Optional to build and run a trivia game called Smarty Pants, a pared-down version of a Wii game by the same name that EA sells.
Remember the rave when favicons came into the picture? Remember the rave when toolbars were introduced having incorporated online Radios, RSS Feeds, and what have you? Remember when ‘branded’ screensavers and wallpapers were given away for free? Remember e-books giveaways were emailed to you for your reading pleasure? Remember how elated you were when Google’s Marketing Director sent you an invite for GMail? Remember when someone you haven’t heard of or seen in your email list sent you an invite to Ryze, OpenBC or Beetnic? Remember when USA.net sent Webmasters who embedded their 120×60 buttons on their websites Tee-Shirts and other goodies if they had the button on for at least 12 months? Remember how the triviliaties such as these sent you reeling into deep space nine?
Remember.
Now put that into practise. Create a widget, a bloget or gadget that will not only make your site interesting to other players, but also at the rate the Web has become, you could be a God, in your neighbor’s backyard by licensing your ‘creation’ or syndicating your content to the masses. KickApps became the talk of the town when it started working with other Open Source Developers, the likes of Drupal, and Joomla. Nokia became the rave even until today when it created Widset - bringing push content to all its devices. Shlumberger came up with something similar, but they did it off line by offering smart cards instead - electronic cards that could be programmed to store currency, and other information for businesses and thus created a wave for brick & mortar businesses to expand by creating a “I want it too” Card to exclusive clienteles shopping at retail stores nationwide.
Consider your brand and chose a value that makes sense for you. The value is the reason that visitors want to keep your content on their page{s} and should be a reason for them frequenting you! Just as location is critical to your brick and mortar business, so too is engaging your visitors online. Just remember the simple formulae to jumpstart either your online or brick & mortar business: Create Your Niche + Remember = Raising Brand Awareness
These are ideas that you can toy with and mind-map your next hit before the next blockbuster hits your Cinema screens.
1/. Imagine if you have a site, and you’re ready to rave about it. You can talk about it to your friends, or plonk an adsense advertisement or print it in your local media. With WidSets, you can literally create a simple “widget”, plonk in a code or two of HTML, and voila. Your visitors click on the button, and they’re reading you via their mobile. Talk about Web 2.0! Nokia Widsets™ started three years ago {2005} and soon became a hit for all content producers wanting to port information beyond the Internet, so to speak - mobility is the next wave that drove content creators in the Soup of Creativity.
2/. Popminds came up with a couple of good online applications that sent web designers and programmers wanting to crave a hint of what could be the next ‘killer-app’ where design is concerned. They created Reflection Maker, Face Roller, Stripe & Tartan Generator amongst others.
3/. Web widgets are portable chunks of the Web that can be easily embedded into a webpage. Widgetbox™ helps people express, connect, create and inform using web widgets that can be easily shared and distributed anywhere on the web.
4/. PoodWaddle has come up with a wad of desktop applications which can be embedded in your blogs, your programs whatever - ideas like these are encouraged because it not only attracts potential clients but tease your existing visitors to come back for more.
5/. Letterpop was founded by three slightly scruffy yet bright friends in beautiful southern California over the Summer of 2006. Creatively designed, LetterPop is the best way to create and send newsletters online and in print for families, businesses, friends, churches, schools, or any other organization.
6/. A journalist and prize–winning newspaper editor, Zimmerman for 13 years created an interactive, syndicated Student Briefing Page for Newsday newspaper to teach young people about current events. Create your own comics, using the MakeBeliefComix was created by Bill, and his team.
7/. Make Your Coat Of Arms is intended to be a source for family gathering, communication and sharing of family values amongst themselves. Wear your Coat of Arms with pride, and have it embroidered on your linen, or printed on your stationery.
8/. Build Rich Browser applications, syndicate your content and market your brand across the digital haystack with Toolbar Application Designers the likes of Conduit, or Best Toolbars.
9/. Airlines are now giving way to e-Tickets when booking online or off line. Do you still fancy touching good stock tickets for your scrapbook, or to serve as bookmarkers? With Omatic Music Airports you can.
10/. Drive site traffic and improve monetization or enhance brand value by extending reach and associating your brand with desirable content. Get into the game with Newsgator Widgets.
11/. The MCast Platform is an end-to-end solution, which includes a comprehensive set of tools and services, for creating, distributing, monetizing, and tracking all types of social marketing applications.
12/. Mobilize your site, and push your content to your target audience by employing Squace, a software for fast mobile access to web links — a unique browser for cell phones. Squace is simply Web 2.0 for mobile devices.
13/. MoDazzle is ClairMail’s dedicated consumer service to help millions connect to their social or professional communities through their cell phones or blackberry devices. Currently the services are available for Facebook, LinkedIn, and VentureSource community users with several free services such as locating the nearest starbucks, directions between two addresses, web search, etc. All through SMS or mobile email
14/. Winner of the Red Herring Top 100 Europe 2008 Award, French Goojet’s “create, install and personalize” goojets {presumably widgets} is an active community and mobile Internet solution that offers content the way your audience wants it.
15/. Want to bring your brand forward, and leverage technology without denting your brick & mortar CAPEX ? Try Beezbox - a French Internet Solution for ready to use and innovative social networking based services. Operating on internet and mobile networks, Beezbox brings a new dimension to social networking business.
By using a widget, you can increase the amount of impressions when you kick off and reignite a campaign — thus driving the brand’s discussion and digital movement. By toning down the media delivery, you watch the viral network grow by itself and, ultimately, become your own fire starter, reaching a broader circle of consumers who will hit the forward button says Amit Rahav.
“I think that if you’re really using the Internet effectively, you’re going to figure out how your brand relates to the individual which is not something that has been a tremendous issue in branding in the past because it has been a one-to-many kind of marketing message outward. ~ Terri Holbrooke, Ziff-Davis”
