Mario Fantoni's Blog

Top 10 iPhone apps for marketers

2009-11-11T11:03:13-08:00

Ahh, the iPhone. One part cell phone, two parts Internet device, four parts customized application craziness. It's hard to find someone who hasn't filled their shiny Apple device with pages upon pages of free and paid-for applications. To that extent, I am going to make it easy for you marketers to combine your profession with your portable. I've rounded up some of the best iPhone apps that marketers should have on their phones, everything from the real-time searches of social media to Web analytics. I've left few stones unturned–with tens of thousands of apps in the Apple iPhone store, it's always tough to find the gems. Here are a few of the best:

SEM Calculator (Free)

This application builds in a number of calculators that you can use to evaluate different parameters of a Web marketing campaign. You can evaluate potential cost-per-thousand and cost-per-action figures in a number of different ways, including direct cost-per-click to cost-per-thousand analyses and an evaluation of the maximum amount of money you should be spending on CPC based on your goals and conversion rate.

Analytics Pro ($3.99)

Want the power of a Google analytics database at your fingertips? Analytics Pro is perfect for the marketer who just can't get away from the stats and figures: Carry your website's traffic measurements, target goals, and visitor details wherever you go. For a slightly pricer version with a different interface and feature-set, you can also check out Analytics App ($5.99).

SalesForce Mobile (Free)

If you rely on the comprehensive databasing functionality of the SalesForce platform to manage your business relationships, then you'll appreciate the ability to pull this information onto your mobile device. Navigate customer records, send emails, call contacts, and create queries, amongst other features–all you need is an unlimited SalesForce account or one with a working mobile license.

TweetDeck (Free)

If you're serious about marketing, it's imperative that you know exactly what your customers are thinking and saying about your brand at any given moment. Enter TweetDeck: Unlike most other Twitter clients for the iPhone, TweetDeck allows you to structure incoming Tweets in a column-based format. You can set up real-time searches for specific words and phrases in addition to the general Twitter functions like friends lists and customized groups. It's the easiest way to know exactly when JoeSmith01 is hacked off at your customer service or, for that matter, when he's praising your efforts to all of his 341,402 followers.

Pokeseo ($0.99)

It's not extremely comprehensive, but this 99-cent iPhone application does deliver a quick way for checking the page rank of any website on Google. You can also see just how many links are funneling into your site on Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, and AOL. For access to Alexa data as well, check out the Domain Tracker app (free).

Domain Scout (Free)

Looking to build out a new Web presence? Have a great idea for a new website on-the-fly, but you're not sure whether the name is actually available for purchase? Check out Domain Scout, a free application that tells you if your potential domain name idea is free or purchased. A full history of your searches allows you to go back and stalk old ideas that might have lapsed past their renewal dates.

Ember ($9.99)

Contribute to your company's Campfire network with this helpful application. This application (and Campfire) is a great way to save and archive corporate communications from anywhere in the world–a solution that's far more elegant than your typical instant or text messaging conversation. Keep your team on the same page without having to scroll through endless email replies in your already overflowing inbox.

OmniFocus ($19.99)

This expensive organization tool is the crème de la crème for keeping your busy life in order. You can keep track of your tasks by categories, locations, involved people, or dates. And like the iPhone's native calendar integration, you can synchronize OmniFocus wirelessly via Apple's MobileMe or a WebDAV-supported server. Never miss an engagement again.

Scribble ($0.99)

Ever find yourself having trouble articulating a concept in a business meeting or lunchtime discussion? Can't find your pen? Wouldn't you love a way to diagram your thoughts without having to turn to the back of an easily lost napkin or non-existent whiteboard? That's where Scribble comes into play. Draw your thoughts into a quick, finger-scribbled diagram, then email your doodle to all interested participants.

Air Sharing Pro ($9.99)

Transform your iPhone into a portable storage device by connecting it to your company's wireless network and mounting it via your laptop computer or any connected Internet browser. From there, you can transfer files to your device and–better still–view these files on-the-go. The application supports documents like PDFs, Microsoft Office files, iWork files, and more. It's a perfect tool for practicing your PowerPoint presentation sans laptop.

Have any favorite apps of your own? From marketing to games, what tickles your iPhone/iPod Touch fancy? Let me know, and I'll feature your submissions in a future post!

Twitter click-through percentages: Fool’s Gold

2009-11-03T11:44:19-08:00

Everyone sure loves talking about Twitter. I am certainly as guilty as anyone else—just check out the tag cloud on the homepage for an inkling of just how much this chat-soup service has pervaded our business and personal lives.

For the longest time, I’ve convinced myself that the secret to success on Twitter is the f-word: followers. Back when I was in the 200s, I assumed that few people were sending traffic to my links and/or retweeting what I had to say because the audience pool was more akin to a drop in a bucket than a roaring river. As I’ve grown through the Twitter ranks, I’ve noticed a little more success coming my way, but nothing near the 500+ hits per link and 50 retweets that I would prefer to see. “Just hang in there, Mario,” I keep telling myself. “Once you hit thousands of followers, your every word will be like scripture for the Twitter masses who follow you.”

Will it?

Thanks to one of Twitter’s little twists, you can see exactly how many people are clicking on the links passed from a specific Twitter account. And, unfortunately, it ain’t lookin’ good: Save for the usual outliers, Twitter traffic scales—and that’s not a good thing. Whether you have a million followers or a hundred, you just aren’t going to see the kind of massive clickthroughs that you’d expect given your direct connection to that many people’s lives and/or online chat environments. Forget about the message, forget about the audience. The Twitterverse just isn’t doing that much clicking.

Here’s a quick rundown of how this works. As mentioned, Twitter defaults to the URL shortening service bit.ly whenever you paste a huge link into your update box. One of the neater features of bit.ly is that it’ll give you a full breakdown of who’s clicked and talked about your link–in essence, a detailed statistical look at just how popular your shortened link has become. Acquiring this information for any bit.ly link under the sun is as easy as appending a plus sign (+) to the end of any hyperlink that starts with http://bit.ly. Voilà. Instant statistics.

Applying this information to a tweet I sent around some time ago (http://bit.ly/3vMCOm), we can quickly see that my post on Twitter generated a grand total of 67 outbound clicks. That’s not too shabby, I suppose, given that my twitter feed has 1,184 followers. And, for what it’s worth, I did have a single retweeter helping me out on his own Twitter feed (cough, cough). But if we want to widen the scope of Twitter click patterns, we might as well go for the big guns—the service’s most-followed users. After all, if I can get a pretty good ratio of people clicking on a link, that must mean that a user with a million followers will essentially command an army of clickers, delivering massive traffic to whatever he or she links to on Twitter. Right?

Wrong. In the interest of time, I’m going to take a random sampling of links from Twitter’s top five users (as of now) and show you just how the ratio works out.

Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk)
~3,800,000 followers
Link: 15 Funniest Videos Of Fans Rushing The Field http://bit.ly/6SriX
Total clicks: 5,328
Percentage of followers clicking: 0.14%

Britney Spears (@britneyspears)
~3,400,000 followers
Link: Check out Brit’s amazing cover of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” from her show last night. http://bit.ly/4lvpKe -Adam, manager
Total clicks: 25,768
Percentage of followers clicking: 0.74%

CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk)
~2,800,000 followers
Link: Rio to host the 2016 Olympic Games http://bit.ly/16L69T
Total clicks: 8,912
Percentage of followers clicking: 0.23%

Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian)
~2,500,000 followers
Link: Check out my Letterman look!!! http://bit.ly/2lfRbM Had so much fun on the show!
Total clicks: 43,547
Percentage of followers clicking: 1.74%

Twitter (@twitter)
~2,400,000 followers
Link: Thanks to all our investors for sharing our long term vision. http://bit.ly/tWPDc
Total clicks: 9,130
Percentage of followers clicking: 0.38%

Obviously, different Twitter accounts will find different success rates with whatever it is they’re tweeting. But let’s not jump to conclusions and assume that everyone out there in Twitterland is hitting a 60-percent success rate with whatever it is they link to. There are still viral exceptions to the rule. There are still users who, for whatever wit or reason, can capture the attention of a large percentage of their user base. But, for the most part, even content that many could find engaging—fans of Kim Kardashian checking out her new outfits, breaking news like Rio’s Olympic Games victory, or a link that’s proven successful on other huge social media entities like Digg—simply isn’t. Forty-thousand people clicking on a link is pretty good. That’s still an insignificant amount when you have access to an audience of millions.

So how do you do it? How do you hit that Twitter golden age of immense popularity and user follow-through? You don’t. Twitter is not a panacea. It’s just one more tool in a marketer’s arsenal. If you can find some unique way to make yourself known on the service, that’s great. But don’t rely on Twitter as the end-all, be-all pathway between the general Internet world and your new marketing dreams. If you’re finding more and more that you’re getting increased attention on the service, then shift your resources to address your audience from that angle. Just don’t make Twitter the single tank in your army or you’re liable to get crushed…by indifference.

YouTube to enter rental movies on demand business

2009-09-02T16:29:18-07:00

Sounds like Google has found the best way to monetize YouTube yet, and it puts itself in a pretty competitive spot versus the likes of Netflix, Amazon VOD, and Apple's iTunes movie store. According to Wall Street Journal, the company is currently in talks with Lions Gate, Sony, and Warner Bros. studios over putting their content on YouTube for a rental fee, likely $3.99 (the same price as Apple's SD movie rentals). Even more interesting is talk of getting some titles online day and date with the DVD releases. Some options could still be free with advertising, but as for paid content, Google's enticing studios over to their way of thinking with a proposed minimum fee of "just under $3 per title viewed." A three-month beta testing is scheduled to begin soon among 10,000 Google employees.

Now it is finally clear why Google spent $106 million in stock on August 5 to buy On2, a maker of audio and video compression software. On2 powers YouTube's so-called High Quality or HQ service.

With Google presently under some earnings pressure and internet advertising flat, the company has to enter new markets with new services to gain new profit centers. It happens all the time in more mature companies.

What keeps people from switching to Macs

2009-08-31T09:47:33-07:00

Apple's share of the U.S. personal-computer market nearly tripled from 2004 to 2008 but hasn't gone up significantly since then, and now stands at around 8.5 percent, according to IDC. So Apple needs a fresh reason for buyers to get excited about Macs, but adding social capabilities to the Address Book is unlikely to provide that. What holds them back from switching from Windows is still the relatively high price and limited selection of Macs and third-party software.

Is Facebook past its prime?

2009-08-05T06:51:13-07:00

Is Facebook on its last legs? Is it going to pull a MySpace on us? Will Facebook be the Internet’s hip site du jour one day, then suddenly lose the love and affection of most of its followers the next?

Already, in the first quarter of this year, the “bounce rate”—the percentage of visits to Facebook.com that consist of a single page view and then a quick exit—has grown by 19 percent, according to Internet traffic research firm Alexa. Though that statistic hardly qualifies as conclusive proof of Facebook’s imminent demise, it does raise the possibility that a large number of Facebookers are surfing over to the site, finding little there of interest, and promptly leaving.

Here are some reasons Facebook might be losing its grip on people's online networking lives.

Facebook veterans are defecting to Twitter.
People who actually have lives don't use Facebook.
In the real world, people often have good reasons for losing touch with old friends.
Having too many friends takes the edge off Facebook postings.
After that ‘25 things’ note, there's not much left to say.

Illustrating this depressing fact is the recent, hideous Facebook trend of using quiz results as status updates. “Which kind of partier are you?” Result: “The hot girl throwing up in the bathroom!” ... “Which kind of animal noise are you?” Result: “Ribbit, Ribbit!” Facebookers are clearly wiped out of material. There is nothing more to say.

Facebook’s long-term survival is up to the people who use it. The first order of business might be to just say “no” to publishing the quizzes. Quiz results are no match for original content, even if it consists of your latest report on making the bed or washing your hair. Another key issue is to choose your friends carefully. Is the prospective friend (your boss, your grandmother, your ex) going to force boringness on your future updates? Is this newcomer’s presence going to require you to censor your wall? If so, click “ignore” in response to the person's friend request. More is not necessarily merrier when it comes to Facebook. It’s the old quality over quantity thing: The quality of the content people share at Facebook may contribute to the longevity of the site far more than the sheer number of people who connect with each other.

Why Apple's marketing sucks

2009-07-29T01:23:51-07:00

In these rough times disposable income is down, and consumers and businesses have to make difficult purchasing decisions. Since Microsoft is winning back market share from Apple, it appears that Microsoft is winning the war. That is, Apple’s marketing of cool, elegant design, ease of use, and less trouble… isn’t working anymore. That means that intelligent consumers do not believe that the cost of an Apple is worth it any longer. Apple is not making the case… and snarky commercials are not helping. In fact, I think they may just be sounding like some spoiled kids bragging about their newest toy and giving the finger to the establishment (that’s me and you).

It is time to kill the whole Mac vs. PC campaign. Watch the future ads here.

Twitter loses advertising virginity

2009-07-06T11:06:52-07:00

There was something innocent and pure about Twitter's total lack of income. But don't worry, the microblogging startup's first advertisements are sufficiently adorable. Twitter has taken to selling off the "concepts" it defines under user profiles. If the ads are a bit twee, well, Twitter's take probably is, too. But the company is determined its ads must be innovative, and revolution is never free.

1,000 followers on Twitter

2009-07-03T17:30:23-07:00

Today is the day I reached the 1,000 followers milestone on Twitter — I’m not sure how important this is, but it did give me a small thrill (very small.) If you want to jump on the bandwagon, I am mariofantoni on Twitter. For a list of Twitter tips for complete beginners check Top 10 Twitter Tips for Beginners and Top 7 Mistakes New Twitter Users Make. Find topics on Twitter from the local search page. Search with a hash mark (e.g., #Independence+Day) to limit your search to topics. Happy Tweeting!

10 iPhone apps I use every day

2009-06-07T20:46:25-07:00

Here is a list of my favorite 10 iPhone apps. These are all applications that relate to my life so I’m sure they will be of use to you. Enjoy!
1. TwitterFon
TwitterFon is my iPhone twitter app of choice. One plus side is that it is free! When using Twitter from my phone I want to easily be able to tweet, @reply and retweet and TwitterFon allows that! It does a lot more than just that allowing for Twitter search, location search, profile viewing, tweet url’s (that are automatically shortened) and post photos. TwitterFon has an excellent clean look and is in my opinion a perfect Twitter application.
2. Ego
Since I launched OfferMaxima.com in 2003 I have been an absolute statistics nut. Ego costs $1.99 and allows you to track your Twitter, Feedburner, Google Analytics, SquareSpace and Mint accounts. It does all this while looking stunning with a MAC dashboard look about it. Ego is a classic example of what, in my opinion, makes a great iPhone app -- it does one thing but it does it really very well.
3. Instapaper
Instapaper is a bookmarking service for your iPhone, allowing you to save web pages for later to read offline. I use the free version but from what I see the paid versions extras really aren’t options I would need.
4. Evernote
Evernote gives you all the major tools of its desktop and web software in its iPhone app—add text, snap a phone cam shot, record a memo, or upload a photo, and it's all available for organizing, tagging, or searching later. New in this interface is a straight-forward voice recorder. Did I mention it is free?
5. NetNewsWire
NetNewsWire syncs with NetNewsWire (Mac) or FeedDemon (Windows), meaning you won't read the same items twice. There's a "Clippings" feature for setting items aside for later (or when you'll be offline) that also syncs to your desktop, and the interface is straightforward — and that's about it. NetNewsWire is free.
6. AroundMe
If you ever find yourself in an unknown location AroundMe will let you quickly find out information about your surroundings. It uses your GPS signal to work out where you are and finds the nearest amenities around you. You can choose from a number of options including banks, bars, coffee shops, gas stations, hotels, etc. Results can then be put onto Google maps with directions or their contact info can be displayed. You can even email the location to inform others of where you are headed. Best of all, it is free!
7. Shazam
Shazam is a magic little app that works out the name of the track that you point it towards. After hearing about 10 secs of music it will then present you with the artist and title. The option is then there to buy the track among other things. All I know is that not only is Shazam free but it’s a very cool app to have on your phone!
8. Air Sharing
Air sharing allows you to connect your iPhone to your computer via WI-FI or your computer's browser, from here you can drag files over to your phone and use it as a storage device. It also allows you to view a huge array of files from your phone. It costs $2.99.
9. Flashlight
If you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with a full bladder and had to go on an intrepid journey through the blackness of the night because of your sleeping partner or if you are 40 plus and have trouble reading restaurant menus at those romantic dinners Flashlight can help you. Basically, it displays a very bright color onto your iPhone’s screen lighting up the path ahead.
10. Ocarina
The iPhone has many cool apps but Ocarina is especially new age. It has "holes" that you cover with your fingers, as you would the holes on a flute. Then you blow into the microphone hole at the bottom of the iPhone, and presto: the haunting, expressive, beautiful sound of a wind instrument comes from the iPhone speaker. Different combinations of fingers on those four "holes" produce the different notes of the scale. But wait, there is more! If you tap the little globe at the bottom of the screen, the screen changes to a map of the world--and you start hearing the Ocarina performance of one person, in one city (indicated by animated sound waves on the map), who's playing the thing right now. It's a amazing to know that you're listening to someone else playing Ocarina, in real time, somewhere else on the planet. (And then you realize that someone, somewhere might be listening to you!) It creates a world wide musical experience.
Now it’s your turn…I would love to see your iPhone app suggestions. What application do you use the most on your iPhone? What app would you just not be able to live without? Share your thoughts with everyone in the comments below.

An example of interruption

2009-03-03T06:26:01-08:00

Today on my way to work I saw that somebody had piled some garbage cans in a very artistic way, a la Andy Goldsworthy. It made me stop my car and take the picture on the left. Drunk teenagers? An angry neighbor? Doesn't matter - it interrupted my momentum to get to the office and attracted my attention. I can't say the same thing about the outdoors I see...are you listening marketers?