iplanIT - The web now works for you

Help us choose a logo!

todd — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:57:37 +0000

We are in the process of selecting a logo for our upcoming platform named Agatho. Please visit this poll to read the logo design criteria and vote for the one you think is best!

Vote Here!

Hoop FanFest Best Fan Face

nick — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:59:45 +0000

Dear Fans,

First we would like to say thank you for your participation. We captured a lot of great photos with more expected to be uploaded soon.

You can find the photos on the Hoop FanFest website, and on facebook group and the facebook fan page. Also, if you are interested in reading our analysis of you the fans and how the web could learn from you - read our blog post "Everyone Needs Fans".

To our winners - Please contact Nick (email - nick@iplanitglobal.com | phone - 419.957.4114) so we can send you your full sized poster!

We had a great time as I hope you all did. If you have any web needs please feel free to contact us!

Thanks,

-Your iPlanIT Global Team!

Click to view winning photo

Everyone Needs Fans

nick — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 04:12:51 +0000

Recently iPlanIT Global had the privilege to be one of the sponsors for the Hoop FanFest with the Ohio high school state basketball championships. Here is a brief overview of what your online presence could take away by following the lessons we learned from these awesome fans!

Similarities Between Sporting Event And The Web

The venue for a sporting event, be it hockey rink to basketball court is similar to a website or platform - both need attendance for sales/sponsors/advertisers to survive.
In the sport world, those who are best at what they do get more exposure, just like the online world.
However, even if your not the best at what you do, but you hold a strong fan base, the venue changes to accommodate this fact - and advertisers and sponsors take notice as well.

Your Fans Play An Important Role
From each of the 8 state championship winning teams I viewed, the one common statement made by every winning team was a sincere "Thank You" to their fans and community. Without a community of fans we are playing around for fun. I'm not condoning this at all, my only statement is this - a great way to take what your passionate about, having fun with, to the next level is a community of fans! This is a give and take relationship in sports just like on the web - In order to get fans that take us to new levels, we must give them something they enjoy and connect with.

What Fans Need
These are some things we can learn from fans:

"I support the basketball team because they supported my football team"
- Supporting your partners goes a long way
"School pride"
- School = community. Look within your business demographic and see if there is a group that meets up with similar interests. If none, create one!
"I don't know a thing about the sport but I came with my friends and its something to do; but now that I'm here I love it, and will start to go to more games"
- How can your site or platform create opportunity for the band wagon. Whats your plan to peak interest of new visitors and keep them?

Should this not be the dream of any organization, to have people fully clothed head to toe in the brand that is your organization? The only ones more passionate about the event than those screaming and cheering fans were the athletes and coaches participating in the event. The amount of work, dedication, sacrifices and genuine love of the game brings into fruition this type of following. If an organization wants this type of passionate following, they need not look for answers beyond themselves.

What Leonardo Da Vinci can teach us about Social Media

nick — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:37:04 +0000

What Leonardo Da Vinci can teach us about Social Media

Born April 15, 1452 Leonardo Da Vinci was quite possibly the most intelligent man who has ever lived. He was a musician, painter, sculptor, writer, anatomist, engineer, mathematician, botanist, scientist, architect, and inventor. I would say if he were with us today, he would be one of the most influential social media experts – a perceptive blogger, make us think as we follow him on twitter, and could figure out how to properly monetize a social network to name a few.

What he can teach us… Well here are some of Leonardo Da Vinci quotes that can help Social Media newbie’s to proclaimed gurus

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Be it your message or design, this encapsulates the web 2.0 environment standard.

“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.”

Lets first define “social media” to grasp this simplistic yet concise ideal.

so•cial - of or relating to human society or organization and the way people live and work together in groups.

me•di•a – A means of mass communication.

Social Media = our human interactions both in personal life and work communicated through platforms that enable interactive engagement with information.

So just like life, social media is pretty simple. You do stuff, try things and find the best platform that enables your interactions with your community. The key with social media is that you must do, you must engage socially and naturally. What works for some may not work for others and visa versa.

“Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.”

By engaging (or not engaging) with social media, we have to realize that there are different premises of thought in this world that is flat online. We can study all the research that is available to us, teaching us how to engaging through specific platforms or with the industry at large. However, until we experience it, until we engage socially with our audience; our judgments and premonitions hold no validity, it’s only through our experiences do we truly learn, and because of this - experience does not err.

"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast."

Now to jump in and engage community on the plethora of social media platforms available to us without understanding the atmosphere of social communication that uniquely exists within each, can indeed be dangerous. So take it one step at a time. Just like we don’t walk into a business conference holding a beer, we don’t enter LinkedIn with a party picture (analogies are numerous on this).

Final messages I take from Leonardo Da Vinci:

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."

Are you waiting for things to happen, or are you happening to things?

"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions."

Where does your opinions of social media come from, your experience or others perceptions?

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

_____ is never finished, only abandoned. Fill in blank with blog, website or business. Are they organic or stagnate.

"In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time."

What’s your twitter stream look like, what’s your blog post about, what do you communicate on your away messages? To have a unique messages is to separate yourself from the crowd.

“Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.”

I sure hope not!

Social Media… Your business and The New Year

nick — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:15:35 +0000

After my first Tech meet-up in Columbus (more can be found here) put on by John Biggs from Tech Crunch / Crunch Gear I have to say I am excited about Ohio and more specifically Columbus when I look at the energy and understanding of “engaging” with the web.

While the “in” crowd understands the importance and the benefits of connecting with forms of social media, the challenge is translating the techno babel into viable, measurable and most importantly profitable solutions and services for businesses.

This year iPlanIT Global is taking a focused approach to Ohio small businesses to get them online, sell their products/services online and engage them with their online segments. We have a very exciting low cost solution that is in development (Beta tentatively scheduled for February) to tailor to the many problems a business owner faces when looking at this implementation.

We did a research study in the city of Toledo a couple months ago to gather information on this solution. We picked one business category (Art) and found that there were over 50 businesses! Yes over 50, that did not even have websites! Even more startlingly, when I was talking with Michael Chung from MySpace we both paused in amazement during our discussion (the best practices to get advertisers to their platform) that some business owners do not even have email!

The fact is, be it the big players like MySpace and Facebook to the smaller niche platforms, there is an openness to help in any way possible to assist in membership and of course advertiser growth. So in this new year of 2009 we hope that businesses will be willing to work with us on how to translate online hype to ROI.

iPlanIT Global & You

nick — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:39:14 +0000

For some time now we have been working on filtering what exactly iPlanIT Global should become, what we want and what our clients would benefit most from. Turns out the focused model was right under our nose; we just had a hard time putting it into a box because we are out of the box people.

We wanted to take our clients a step further than the rest, helping them enter into the social web effectively. We want our clients to have the necessary knowledge and tools to connect and engage with the hundreds of millions targeted users online. We want to make the public knowledgeable about the social web environment and help individuals and organizations to act purposefully, going beyond just placement and moving toward engagement. So we are now introducing an internal Wiki and blogs from iPlanIT that focus on the social web; and in the future introduce other guest gurus and experts to continually help everyone understand the potential from social web engagement.

In order to implement our clients on the social web most effectively we decided that while spending the countless hours disseminating blogs and news about this industry is important, we needed something more to offer, we needed to connect directly to the sources in which the news and theories were originating from. I mean, if we want to promote the power of connecting and engaging online we have to prove to our clients that we know what we are talking about. So we have established a relationship with some power houses like facebook and myspace who will work directly with us to help our clients. So now we not only work with you in understanding your goals, we take this a step further and work with the platform providers that would best fit in achieving your desired results. This gives us the power to create unique campaigns on multiple places in the web where you would benefit most from. This is big, because now you are not working to fit into the web; the web is working to fit you!

The difficulty is getting clients to take the step online where people actually engage with your information. It is a clash of old meets new.

Think of a billboard. Well now by utilizing our services your billboard now finds, engages and interacts with its viewers, and then follows up with you on measurable results. The challenge is in the consistency of operation and the current way organizations do things. Well we just want to say take a look at the potential, look at the web 2.0 shift, look at the social webs hyper growth in the world – the Internet is not a fad, it is firmly and quickly changing how we do business today.

I’ll let some facts speak for themselves:

Social networking recently exceeded search as the most popular online activity
Social-networking sites reach 66 percent of the total online audience
73 percent of all 18-34 year olds used a social network in the past month
66 percent of the fastest growing private companies said that social media was an important part of their business and marketing strategy
48 percent of brand marketers said they planned to use social-networking and user-generated content marketing tactics in the coming year
Advertisers are expected to spend $2.5 billion on social networking sites by 2011, up from $350 million in 2006

*Information provided courtesy of MySpace research