In business development, nothing beats meeting a client, partner or colleague in person. While electronic communication and phone calls are a great way to keep in touch, making time for face-to-face communication is an important part of solidifying a deep connection and/or closing a deal.  Attending industry events and trade shows is a great way to simultaneously catch up with existing contacts and meet new people.  I used to attend trade shows/ conferences to learn about what was going in web and wireless, but that’s less and less the case. The conventional conference format is growing stale, and is less relevant in our ‘real-time information’ driven culture.  The only reason I go to shows these days is to focus on relationships, and it seems I’m not alone. (more…)

Next Wednesday, October 21st at 9am, I’ll be talking with Motorola’s Randy Ksar in the second installment of MOTODEV‘s Podcast on “Social Media Marketing Tips for Mobile Developers”.  We’ll explore how mobile application developers can incorporate social media into their apps to boost downloads and increase user engagement.

What: Social Media Marketing Tips for Mobile Developers  Part II

When: Wednesday October 21, 2009 at 9am pacific / 12pm eastern

Where: Tune in to blogtalkradio.com/motodev

Ask your questions by calling in to +1 347-826-9350, tweet your questions to @motodev with hashtag #socialmedia, or via our G-SNAP! chat.

I was excited to be the eyes and ears for Wireless Internet Partnerships (WIP) at DEMOfall 09 in San Diego last week – especially since WIP has been a DEMO marketing partner for years. Below, I recap my thoughts on the latest DEMO from a mobile enthusiast’s perspective and offer a few presentation tips for start-ups based on what I saw at the show… (more…)

The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook acquired Friendfeed today for for nearly $50 Million US.  Friendfeed is a useful real-time social media aggregation and commenting service, and it’s easy to see why it caught Facebook’s attention.  Over the past several hours there’s been plenty of speculation by tech bloggers about why the acquisition took place and what this means for Friendfeed and Facebook users… (more…)

I just updated the background on my Twitter profile, and thought it might help to share some of what I learned in the process. Here’s how my new Twitter background looks:

Recreating this look (or a variation of it) is VERY easy, if you’ve got Photoshop. You really don’t need to pay someone to do it for you to get a decent result.  Here’s how I created mine: (more…)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the value of social media monitoring tools in brand and marketing campaign management.  Having now demoed a number of social media monitoring solutions, I’ve realized that while there are a lot of great tools out there, there is still a lot of opportunity for product improvement – especially around mobilization and social media response. (more…)

UPDATED 7/31/09: Below, you’ll find a list I compiled of mobile developer relations professionals on Twitter.  It’s interesting to see how many mobile companies are starting to use Twitter to engage with their developer communities.  The most prolific developer relations tweeps seem to be from Windows Mobile (which lists Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as communications channels on its site), the  Symbian Foundation (which has devoted a whole page on its website to list its Twitterers), and Motorola’s MOTODEV (which also runs communities on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn).  Twitter is rapidly becoming a great way for developers to aggregate the latest news and information about the various developer programs they participate in, without having to separately check in with each mobile developer community site. (more…)

Over the past few months, I’ve received an increased number of LinkedIn ‘connection’ and Facebook ‘friend’ requests from people I don’t know and with whom I don’t have an obvious mutual connection but often have common professional interests.  I assume that these requests are coming from people who read this blog, as the increase started when I transitioned my old blog from Vox to WordPress and added the social icons you see in the right banner, linking to my public profiles… But, I don’t know for sure, as the requests rarely include a note. (more…)

Yesterday, in researching the list of The Europas’ (TechCrunch Europe Awards) nominees for my last post, it hit me – there are still a lot of start-ups with great products that just don’t understand basic marketing.  Without calling anyone specific out on their mishaps, here are the top 5 basic marketing lessons you can learn from some of the The Europas’ nominees’ mistakes: (more…)

TechCrunch recently announced the nominees for The Europas, the awards ceremony celebrating technology innovation in European companies, to be held in London on July 9th.  I was excited to learn that one of my clients, ShoZu, was nominated for the Best Mobile Application in EMEA (shameless plug: you can vote for them in this category here).

While browsing the list of The Europas nominees, I noticed TechCrunch doesn’t provide company descriptions or links to each company’s website or page on CrunchBase.  I can’t imagine anyone besides the guys from TechCrunch and maybe a few VCs being intimately familiar with all of these companies (and I can’t imagine anyone besides me being interested enough to research such a long list).  So, to help you make a semi-informed decision before voting, I’ve done some company research for you.  Below you’ll find URLs, descriptions and CrunchBase listings for The Europas tech company nominees (Note: I have not included descriptions for the VC or founder awards). (more…)