At Idea Spring we've found three main issues common to most organizations:
Online marketing seems to hit almost all of those categories.
Today, it takes diverse skillets to launch, run, and manage effective marketing campaigns. And just as you've tuned your marketing strategy, and everything is humming along -- the rules suddenly change. What worked as a best practice yesterday, could tank your results tomorrow.
Since marketing and marketing automation are no longer just something the "big businesses" do... it is something that everyone needs. I'd even argue that is more true for the small businesses and solo-entrepreneurs. Marketing automation is vital for companies with limited time and resources.
Idea Spring has worked with a number of the leading platforms, and our consensus is that it's really a function of finding the right tool for the right job. However, none of the platforms are a good choice if you don't have a solid marketing and content strategy developed first.
The more integrated the platform, the less agile those systems are at dealing with both strategic and technological change. That's why our platform takes a modular approach to content management and automation. We look at the functionality of each component and wire them together to build the right solution based on budget and need. As the technology or rules change, we can then substitute for a different individual tool instead of the entire system.
As a result, our tip to anyone needing to maximize time and resources, and considering making the important move to marketing automation -- the best first investment you can make is to start with your marketing strategy and content strategy. Finally, when you know your game plan, you find the right platform.
Try something new with your hashtags.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.adweek.com
Hashtags are also great for automating business efforts. Support is one example (and alluded to in the article) where you might tell your customers to use #support when contacting you for help via Twitter.
Then using automation software (like Zapier) you can automatically detect messages that reference your Twitter name that include the #support hashtag. Using Zapier, you can then do any number of things such as opening a ticket using something like Zendesk, or send that support message to a support channel in Slack.
The important part is that using social media for more than just broadcasting is important -- be sure you have a good method for staying on top of growing inbound messages too.
Feel free to try it out on us... just send a tweet to @ideaspringbiz and include the #tangocard for your chance to win a $25.00 Tango Card gift card. (We'll randomly pick someone on July 31st, 2015 and let you know by Twitter if you've won.)
By 2030, technology will have become so deeply integrated in our lives and ourselves that we simply won’t notice it anymore
Sourced through Scoop.it from: medium.com
Interesting article on how the Internet of Things (IoT) and predictive analytics may make our lives easier and actually push technology into the background.
We can see small snippets of this in our apps already. For example I have apps on my phone that are contextually aware of when I'm driving, and when I've stopped driving. One app I use, MileIQ automatically detects when I am driving (versus walking around with my phone.) It tracks each start and stop, and provides a list of my drives, showing me dates, times, geo location, and best guess as to the actual location name.
This makes it incredibly easy for me to categorize my personal and business trips. Applying the type of artificial intelligence @randhindi mentions would mean integrating additional data to make things even more automated. In the ubiquitous computing paradigm my calendar, e-mails, and other points of data would be used to automatically categorize my trips for me. So I would have the app technology... but it would disappear into the background, maybe even automatically posting the entries into our accounting software.
Of course there is a long way to go, but we can see how some tools are already making things easier. Look at sites like dweet.io (think Twitter for devices sending data) and Freeboard.io which can visualize data sources. As a quick test, in a matter of minutes I connected my phone to the the Freeboard.io dashboard, and made a quick map of my wandering around the house and backyard.
Taking the transportation examples even further, one of our clients Spangenberg Partners is providing solutions under their Roadwise Systems brand for trucking industry that are really quite amazing. Products such as MobilEye that uses amazing artificial intelligence to alert drivers (and what I believe is the future of technology for driver-less cars vs. Google's approach.) And MacoPoint that automates load tracking and tracing. And with shortage of long-haul drivers we're going to need as much automation and efficiency as possible.
It is truly an exciting time for technology, data, and connectivity. But as much as I love technology and data, that passion is driven by using technology and data in a way that positively impacts lives. So I really do welcome the ubiquitous computing world where the technology gets pushed to the background, and we can focus more on what matters -- human interaction.