Drew Carls - Drew Carls

Advertising Age sponsorsed a webinar titled "How Mobile Changes Social: Marketing Effectively to Mobile-Social Consumers" today. Vitrue provided the guest speaker. There were a lot of great take-aways from the webinar focused on the mobile-social user. Here are a few of mine.

When Should I Post?
Vitrue found that the end of the week and the weekend created more Likes for pages. Thursdays and Saturdays showed the most growth. Fridays and Sundays are strong days, too. Vitrue found that most comments were received between 6-7 p.m., 9-10 p.m. ET and 1 a.m. ET. They found Likes to be strong from 10-11 p.m. ET and 1 a.m. ET.

What About the Length of My Posts?
Vitrue recommends you keep your posts short and concise. If you want to share a lot of content, they recommend sharing mulitple small posts throughout the day.

What Are the Layers of Effective Social Mobile Campaigns?
Vitrue said there are three parts to an effective campaign: mobile, social and local. They described mobile as easily digestible content, device functionality and immediacy. Social should create engagement, relationships and have relevant content. And, local. Local should have timeliness, geography and create a personalized experience.

When you merge mobile, social and local Vitrue suggested you have these three takeways: 1) social intiatives must be functional on a mobile device; 2) keep in mind the user behavior on mobile (they cited on-the-go/location as an example); and 3) continue the conversation and create user action.

Should I Use Pictures in My Posts?
Yes! Vitrue's research found that posts that contained on image received 3.8 percent more comments from mobile users when they compared all other types of posts. The next most engagement came from Apps, video, text and Flash. Their main point was text-only updates are less engaging that images. (Think Pinterst, Instagram, StreamZoo, etc. I receive high engagement on those platforms.)

What are your tips and suggestions to market effectively to mobile - social consumers?

Drew Carls |

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Thursday

Mar222012

How To Add Photos to Your iPhone Reply or Forward Emails

Thursday, March 22, 2012

If you are like me, you wish you could attach photos from your iPhone when replying to an email. To send photos I always thought you had to create a new email...until today. I stumbled across a solution.

I discovered that you can copy and paste your photos into an email that you would like to reply to. Here's how.

Step One
Go to your Photos section on your iPhone. Click on the photo to open it. Hold down on the photo until the "copy" button appears. Click "copy".

Step Two
Open your mail app. Reply/Forward to the email of your choice.

Step Three
Click on the spot in the email where you would like to insert the photo. Hold down until the "Select/Select All/Paste" button appears. Click on "Paste".

Step Four
Your photo is now inserted. You can add text in front of the photo or at the end of it.

This is a screenshot of what the email looks like when sent in my Gmail account.

Do you have any tips for adding photos to your iPhone emails?

Drew Carls |

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Tuesday

Mar202012

Review: eBay Instant Sale

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

I’ve been an eBay user for at least 13 years now. Until recently, I listed items I wanted to sell through eBay’s auction. In the early days I had success selling items for a good return. Now my items seem to get lost in the shuffle that is the eBay vastness.

My solution?
eBay Instant Sale. I just sold my iPad 2 to eBay through Instant Sale and my iPhone4 before that. The process is quite simple.

Head over to the site and locate the item you wish to sell. After you complete a condition form, they will make you an offer - it’s contingent upon them receiving the item and reviewing its condition. The offer is usually below market value if you were to sell it yourself but I don’t really mind. The time I save for a guaranteed sale is worth the difference to me (and you don’t pay listing fees or need to worry about shipping it to a buyer). If you accept the offer, a shipping label is provided. Go to the nearest FedEx drop-off and you’re almost home free. eBay will notify you when they’ve received notice your item has shipped, received it at their warehouse and the result. I mailed my iPad2 off Friday afternoon and received a PayPal notice that cash was in my account by Monday morning.

Tip about Pricing
It is important to note that Instant Sale offers can drop sharply within days of a new product launch. For example, I sold my iPad2 to them the first day the iPad3 came out. A few days later the Instant Sale offers are almost $100 lower. Why? Probably because they have purchased enough to supply the market or they know everyone is trying to unload their iPad2s. If you wait days after a new product launch to sell the previous version, I would consider looking at eBay auctions.

Who else is in this marketplace?
Looks like Amazon is taking a similar approach with electronics but you receive a gift card instead of cash. Best Buy is also stepping into the game. I bought my iPad3 from them. If you buy your item from Best Buy, you can purchase into a guaranteed buy-back program. I think it was $50 to enroll – I was able to get them down to $25. Within one year, if I return the item to them, they will pay me 40 percent of the iPad3 price through a Best Buy gift card. After that it goes down 10 percent every six months. If Best Buy’s program pays more than eBay’s, I will probably sell my iPad3 back to Best Buy and apply that amount to the iPad “4”.

What’s your experience with electronics buy-back programs? Worth it?