In today’s age of transparency and real-time communication, why do so many small businesses still shy away from social media?  Not only is it a viable communication channel, it is the de rigueur way that people communicate.  Most have migrated to consume information, exchange perspectives, discover companies, seek services, check out product reviews, and they use a broad spectrum of social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, YouTube, etc.

SMBs are supposed to be lean, mean and nimble, so what gives? The irony here is that Fortune 500s have jumped in with both feet to harness social media, leaving their smaller counterparts to continue relying on traditional media channels. According to a report conducted by the Society for New Communications Research titled, “The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America’s Largest Companies,” Twitter was the social media channel of choice last year.  The report found a 300% increase from 2008 to 2009 in the number of Fortune 500s linking their corporate blogs to corporate Twitter accounts.

In his recent post titled, “The Socialization of Small Business,” Brian Solis cites two major hurdles of social media for 31% of small businesses.  Many believe that their customers are not hanging out on social media channels, and that as business owners, they do not have the time or resources to throw at running a successful media campaign.  Ad-ology’s report titled, “Small Business Marketing Forecast” had some interesting findings, including approximately 50% of SMBs ranked generating leads, monitoring what is being said about their business, and improving customer service as — “not beneficial.”

Being on the PR side, we recommend and work with a lot of our startup clients around building efforts to integrate social media with traditional PR and communication channels.  In some cases, it is an ongoing struggle, because some clients are digging their heels in, believing otherwise.

One SMB client of Ignite’s believes that their customer base is not hanging out in Twitter, and therefore, this channel is irrelevant to their business. With a quick real-time search in Twitter, Ignite found on the first page of results that included two tweets from prospects revealing interest and seeking recommendations for the type of service our client offered, one blogger mentioning our client in a very positive manner, and one competitor trash-talking our client. None of these tweets were related to each other.  Despite this snapshot evidence, our client still isn’t convinced. Ignite even proactively secured the client’s Twitter handles so that they wouldn’t be taken. But by choosing to refrain from adopting social media channels, we can see how this apprehension has impacted our client vis-à-vis its competitors.  Our client’s biggest and smallest competitors have essentially left them in the dust with respect to actively participating with communities in social media channels and having a much stronger market presence.

The road to social media will be a slower route for the SMBs likely for a range of valid reasons: time, unfamiliarity, professional network not as tech savvy, trust, etc.  We’d recommend Twitter as a good first step. It’s free, easy to learn, and isn’t as taxing on entrepreneurs.  Any small business, mom and pop, or neighborhood shop could use Twitter to gain more customers at hyper-local level by offering tips, best practices, coupons, promos, etc. According to a Twitter Brand Survey done by Peter Sorgenfrei and Warren Sukernek, 60% of respondents said they would recommend a brand based on their presence on and usage of Twitter. What’s more, 78% of respondents said they’d be more willing to purchase products from a company that had a relationship with them on Twitter.

Edelman’s annual “Trust Barometer 2010” report says we are no longer living in a shareholders’ world but are instead in a world where all stakeholders are of equal importance.  Meaning, companies need to do more now than ever to actively employ a mixed bag of communication channels to stay on top of not just investors and prospects — but all stakeholders.

As they say, the power to define and control a brand has indeed shifted from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities.  So whether you like it or not, whether you’re prepared to engage with constituents who have migrated to social media channels, or whether you choose to stay on the sidelines, do know that people are defining and controlling companies’ brands and perceptions and that includes yours.

The mobile apps arena is hot – red hot.  Here’s a snapshot of the last 6 months to see how fast the landscape is changing and growing:

September 2009: Gartner sees PC shipments declining 2%, being outpaced by laptops, smartphones and other mobile devices, and in a similar vein, an RBC analyst estimates that smartphones are on rapid clip to outpace PCs by 2011.  The biggest news comes out of Apple, announcing 2 billion apps downloaded from its iTunes app store.

October 2009: Verizon announces plans to carry Motorola’s Droid, bringing the total number of Google Android-powered mobile devices available on the market to more than a dozen. In lockstep, Gartner forecasts that Android will leapfrog Apple’s iPhone OS for the no. 2 spot by 2012.

November 2009: Apple counts more than 100,000 apps in its iTunes app store. Pizza Hut generates $1 million in sales with its iPhone app and eBay rakes in nearly $400 million from mobile buyers.

December 2009: Nearly 54 million smartphones were sold in Q4 2009, up over 40% from the same period in 2008.  Wall Street Journal shares a survey finding that nearly 1/3 of consumers are using, or considering using, mobile financial services in 2010.

January 2010: Apple unveils the long awaited iPad, setting the stage to completely transform mobile computing, and to boot, announces 140,000 apps and 300 million downloads from the iTunes app store.

February 2010: 50,000 descend upon Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. Demand for mobile developers grows 180% with the hottest growth happening in mobile software and services.

In less than 6 months, consumers, business and power users alike downloaded more than 1 million mobile apps from the iTunes app store alone.  The International Telecommunications Union reported the number of mobile phone subscriptions is on pace to pass 5 billion in 2010, representing a penetration rate of 67% worldwide (closer to 100% in developed countries).

It’s no wonder why developers and businesses are jumping at the opportunity to extend their web-based apps to mobile devices and cash in on this mobile Gold Rush.  Some of Ignite’s clients are taking advantage of the emerging market opportunities in the mobile apps arena and are well positioned to become leaders in their spaces.

Appcelerator is a growing player in the one of the hottest mobile areas of growth: application development.  With Appcelerator’s Titanium platform, web developers, ad agencies, ISVs, and enterprises can take advantage of the explosive growth in mobile, desktop, and tablet applications.  Appcelerator’s community of 25,000+ developers and growing are using Titanium to quickly build cross-platform desktop and mobile apps using standard technologies and by leveraging the open source developer community. Incidentally, since Appcelerator formally announced its support for Apple’s iPad less than one month ago, more than 7,000 new developers have signed up to use its highly-regarded Titanium platform.

Last month, Appcelerator polled its developer community on the impact and implications of Apple’s iPad in a survey about how Apple iPad Developers will radically transform computing.  Here’s just a smattering of news and blogger coverage that Ignite PR secured around Appcelerator’s report findings in business and trade press, as well as some of the most influential blogs:

BusinessWeek

New York Times

Bloomberg

Christian Science Monitor

TechCrunch

VentureBeat

Scobleizer and a 2nd follow on video with Scobleizer

Wired

The Register

eWeek

InfoWorld

IDG News Service

Wireless Week

Fierce Mobile Content

Another new Ignite client is a promising startup in the mobile apps arena named  Urban Airship, an early mover in the emerging mobile app infrastructure services arena.  Similar to when Amazon pioneered its EC2 cloud services to enable developers to scale with an affordable pay-per-use model, Urban Airship is the first to offer scalable, on-demand mobile app infrastructure services that reduce developers’ costs for implementing advanced smartphone features such as push notifications and in-app purchases.

What’s admirable about Urban Airship is that from Day 1 of business, this young upstart actually had secured their first paying customer!  Now only 9 months old, Urban Airship has seen rapid adoption of its services, signing more than 1,600 customers and delivering over 130 million mobile messages across 10 million devices.  The company recently announced a $1.1 million Series A round led by early stage venture firm True Ventures.  Aside from their rapid growth and customer traction, True Ventures invested in Urban Airship as they see that while most of the focus to date has been on really cool mobile apps, what is equally pivotal is the underlying infrastructure required to enhance these mobile apps and enable them to run reliably and scale. Here’s just some highlights of recent news coverage that Ignite PR secured for Urban Airship:

New York Times

Mobile Marketer

Alarm Clock

Adotas

ZDNet

Seattle PI

Enterprise Mobile Today

Internet News

VentureBeat

So what can we expect in the coming year? A Gartner analyst commented: “Looking back at the announcements during Mobile World Congress 2010, we can expect 2010 to retain a strong focus around operating systems, services and applications while hardware takes a back seat.” It will be interesting to watch major mobile players make their next moves (Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, et al) in the highly dynamic mobile landscape.  Be sure to check out the continued progress and leadership from innovative companies like an Appcelerator and Urban Airship that are delivering compelling and invaluable products and services to squarely address their customers’ needs in the burgeoning mobile app market.

Since 2008, interest in “cloud computing” has increased 3,233%.  CIOs are making adoption of the cloud a priority in 2010, and industry analysts predict that by 2012 cloud computing will be so pervasive that 1 out of 5 businesses will be completely in the cloud.

The advent of cloud computing has clearly made the economies of launching a business far more affordable, spurring hundreds of startups across many industries to offer a wide range of cloud-based services and solutions.  In lockstep, we had an opportunity to work with some innovative tech startups that are pushing the envelope by enabling companies to be far more nimble and competitive at how they operate their business and enable their users to be more efficient. Here’s a snapshot of 3 Ignite clients that are playing a unique role in the cloud computing landscape.

Syncplicity

Syncplicity is the leading provider of centralized file management, backup, instant synchronization and collaboration — all in one integrated solution. The company seamlessly integrates desktop files and apps with the cloud, eliminating the problem of multiple islands of data across users’ multitude of computers, devices, and web stores.

Backed by True Ventures, Syncplicity’s cloud service just announced a partnership with Google, expanding its Business Edition’s cloud-to-desktop functionality by deepening its integration with Google Docs and Google Apps. While Google Docs allows each user to store up to 1 GB each for free into Google Docs and file sizes can be up to 250 MB.  Through Syncplicity, Google Docs and Apps customers can store any size document in the cloud today, and can store any amount of data with no limits in the cloud. Syncplicity is essentially bridging the desktop-cloud divide across more than 5,000 joint Syncplicity and Google customers, who are using their products together to sync nearly 1 million files each day.

LongJump

Ignite showcased our client LongJump, an early player in the cloud market with a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering. When LongJump launched in 2007, the company quickly moved to the forefront, introducing the industry’s first on-demand database (DaaS). LongJump is continuing to cultivate its expertise in the cloud domain and pundits are taking note.  LongJump has been called the “Holy Grail in Cloud Computing” for its flexible hosting options (enterprises can choose to host the platform on-demand, in the cloud, or on-premise), and in 2009, the company earned industry validation, including:

• The only company with a PaaS offering positioned in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers
• The only PaaS provider named by Gartner a “Cool Vendor” in its Cloud Computing report
• The recipient of XChange’s XCellence award in the category of “Most Innovative Technology”
  

Reductive Labs

Reductive Labs is a leader in next-gen, enterprise IT automation. Its flagship offering, Puppet, is an open source software framework to automate infrastructure, which fundamentally changes how companies can configure, provision, manage and scale their IT infrastructure using software tools rather than IT staff.  While both virtualization and cloud computing offer cost-effective ways to expand storage, services and processing capacities without further cash outlays for new hardware infrastructure. Puppet’s automation capabilities alleviate management complexities and expenses introduced by both of these technologies. IT departments can leverage Puppet to flexibly move services back and forth from the cloud to behind the company’s firewall.

Gartner estimates that enterprise software delivered in the cloud as a service will total over $12B by 2012 and grow at 17.7% each year.  It will be interesting to see how the market shakes out – with stalwarts looking to more aggressively add cloud computing strategies and initiatives to their war chests (ie: acquisitions).

A recent McKinsey & Company survey found that 55% of marketing executives planned to cut spending on traditional media.  In lockstep, Marketing and Public Relations departments at companies are moving their dollars online.  Startups and large companies are increasing spending for email campaigns, online advertising and social media, as well as online search analytics.  Mashable recently reported that even while some are slashing budgets, dollars are still being thrown at social media. 

Despite the economic woes, it’s still essential for companies to find ways to create and maintain brand awareness and mindshare.  This blog post points out that Marketing and PR efforts during a down economy extends awareness with customers and drives sales, and suggests this can be done by using a small, lean and mean outside agency.  One key point from a recent survey by Aberdeen Group notes that in previous downturns, the firms that learned to market smarter fared better than those that decreased their marketing budgets. Further, after the economy bounced back, those firms that marketed during the downturn also yielded better profits.

Here’s a relevant and timely article in the Wall Street Journal that talks about how startups and board members are clashing over whether to save or spend in down times. One insightful quote from the article comes from a board member of a startup noting, “”Companies can’t just save their way to success.”

For tech startups, in particular, or for any company comfortable navigating the social web, there are a plethora of online vehicles to meld with your company’s Marketing and Public Relations efforts that won’t break the bank.  At Ignite PR, we are helping our clients,which range from startups to established public tech companies, undertake various social media activities to stretch their marketing dollars more effectively. 

Which camp does your company fall into on this debate: the save or spend camp?  Equally important, what are your competitors currently doing to expand their business amid this lingering recession?

 
Click Here to take survey

Twitter’s greatest value is that it is a place for conversations.  Where brevity rules, a pitch in 140 characters is just too limiting and cannot typically provide enough context. Clearly, there might be an exception here – perhaps with a breaking news announcement and the public relations rep reaching out to targeted press and bloggers that are visibly available on Twitter.  The norm, however, is more likely to be a simple tweet to a journalist that could potentially spur interest, but for the idea to become anything bigger, then the conversation would eventually have to transition over to email or phone. Additionally, most workflow productivity occurs around email, and Twitter is nowhere near supplanting email as the preferred communication tool to drive business.  Lastly, while conversations on Twitter can suggest sentiment around a topic, the signal to noise ratio on Twitter is so high it is difficult to sift through.  The odds are just much greater for a pitch to get lost in the heavy volume of tweet streams than via email.

There are, however, appropriate ways public relations people can use Twitter to interact with press and bloggers.  Here a few examples.  Follow key influencers who cover your clients’ industries (i.e.: mobile, cloud computing, online search, etc.).  Monitor their tweets and read the articles they link to.  Share links or participate in discussions they’re tweeting about from a market-centric standpoint and not a vendor-centric one.  If a bi-directional relationship is established, send the reporter that specifically covers your client’s space a heads up on a pending news announcement.  Show reciprocity and retweet (RT) a journalist’s article or blogger’s post that you found insightful or provocative.  

However, using Twitter to blindly spam journalists with off-target tweet pitches will kill PR people’s opportunity to engage with media and bloggers in a meaningful way.  Twitter’s novelty has opened up new opportunities for key influencers and public relations folks to connect.  If poor pitching practices carry over to Twitter, media will quickly find a way to disconnect PR from this channel.  We remain hopeful that Twitter doesn’t become a hotspot for unsolicited, endless public relations pitches polluting the micro-blogging channel.  Leave that dirty work to the spammers who push seedy content and get-rich overnight schemes.

A special shout-out and thank you to Kristen Nicole (@KristenNicole2), Nick Hoover (@iweeknick) and Anthony Ha (@anthonyha) for sharing their thoughts with us on this topic. If you’re not following these bloggers and reporters on Twitter, we highly recommend that you do.

Steve Rubel previously blogged about the social media job landscape, which at that time – circa 2006 – the highest trending opportunities were in podcasting, blogging, RSS, and wikis.  Fast-forward to today and there’s a new landscape of job opportunities under the “social media” term. Blogging, podcasting, RSS and wikis are still valuable social media components, but the migration of companies moving to understand and tackle social media more holistically seems to be taking root. 

Social Media Job Opps On Rise

With Twitter expected to swell to 50 million users by this summer (that’s 60 days from now!), you can appreciate why companies want their new social media hires to be fluent in Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, LinkedIn, community building, etc.  Equally important for marketing and public relations teams is building and managing communities and networks in social news and bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Newsvine, etc., developing and sharing creative content across multimedia channels like YouTube or UStream, and attracting fans or building out groups on Facebook and MySpace, and so on.

Companies need to first identify where their customers and prospects are “hanging out” online and what type of social media tools they are using. Are they active in a particular forum? Are they participating in a Yahoo group or a Friendfeed room?  Is your target market one that would be receptive to consuming online videos or are downloadable reports and presentations more appropriate?  It’s important to weigh, prioritize and focus your social media efforts around that to ensure your Marketing, Internet marketing and public relations messages and activities are strategically integrated with your offline, traditional efforts and activities.  For example, an automaker showing off its fastest car can convey its speed much better in an online video uploaded to YouTube.  Talking about how fast the car goes via a tweet on Twitter just isn’t as compelling.  On the other hand, a company such as AAA would benefit from using Twitter, and not YouTube, to update customers on say transportation discounts.  The point nonetheless is: now is the time to act. Establishing a social media strategy and then selecting the right mix of social media tools to integrate with your traditional marketing and public relations efforts is absolutely a step in the right direction.

Still don’t get Twitter? Send us a tweet @IgnitePR and we’ll be happy to send you 10 ways to leverage Twitter for Marketing & PR.

The Twitter phenomenon is growing at breakneck speed, reaching nearly 10 million users in February 2009, up more than 700% from a year ago.  Twitter’s runaway growth points to people’s behavior and preference to proactively communicate with others in real-time. FriendFeed most recently rolled out a major new UI and service enhancement, overhauling their static users’ comments to emulate Twitter’s real-time updates.  Clearly, it’s just a matter of time for other sites (ie: MySpace, LinkedIn, Yelp) to recognize this shift and meet users’ preferences for real-time information — not static data. The arrival of the real-time web will impact a host of players in the businesses of information.  Net/net: the real-time web has arrived so strap in your seat belts for an interesting ride that is about to take off.

As PR professionals we agree and see tremendous value in engaging both our clients and ourselves in real-time conversations that are happening 24/7 through Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc.  Over the past year, startups and the biggest brand name companies have begun to harness social media tools in order to stay connected with customers, employees and constituents online, pay attention to what customers, partners, and employees are saying, and be part of these conversations.  If this is all new to you and perhaps moving too fast, or you don’t know where to start, we’ll point you to Scoble’s twitter @scobleizer, suggest subscribing to his friendfeed, or check out their upcoming Building43 online community.  Arguably Scoble is one of the biggest early adopters and users of the ticker tape of web-based tools and mobile apps surfacing so just following him is a good step to staying in the know.

For example, if a client’s CEO is participating in a panel along with a number of highly regarded industry experts, it is a good idea to inform the public relations team and not keep them in the dark until the day the panel is taking place.  Another example might be having advance knowledge about a significant partner’s plans to do a major initiative in which the company can ride the cocktails of the announcement either by offering perspective or invaluable insight. Marketing needs to be highly attuned to all of the various activities planned and understand that they might also be solid opportunities that the public relations team could tap, so it’s important to at least run it by PR early on.  No harm done with good planning.  At worst, PR will tell you that there is not enough substantive “meat on the bone” so to speak.  The art of being sensitive, opportunistic and agile to potential news opportunities and working closely with your public relations team can a) beat your competitor to the punch when media seek additional or insightful perspective and b) enable the company to exploit an unfolding opportunity before it happens and successfully wire itself into the subsequent news and blog posts that unfold.

Staying highly attuned to market-centric opportunities can payoff handsomely in building greater awareness for the spokesperson as a thought-leader or keeping the company top-of-mind with media and bloggers that cover certain beats, be it security, social networking, online paid search, etc.  That’s why you want to have your PR fully aware of even the most mundane of upcoming corporate and marketing activities, because they are the most attuned to recognize strong news potential; if there’s nothing there-there, they will tell you that it’s too fluffy, but at least they can easily inform you early on and not after the opportunity has been largely missed.  Certainly not all marketing activities are going to be newsworthy, but your public relations team should know about it in advance and will be able to counsel the company on whether it merits doing any proactive outbound activity or guerilla marketing to successfully leverage the opportunity.