Mobile Marketer  and Google’s howtogomo.com (link is further down the post) offer some convincing stats on mobile usage in 2011 and mobile’s growth. You’ll find these stats among others on Mobile Marketers’ website.

Mobile Stats 2011

• Mobile social media
• 166 percent increase in Facebook Mobile users in the first half of 2011
• 103 million wireless tweets were posted each day
• 1 billion foursquare check-ins
• Mobile commerce sales 
• Predicted to reach $6.7 billion in 2011 – a 91.4% increase over 2010
• In 2012, sales will rise another 73.1% to $11.6 billion
• Mobile email  
• Open rates increased 34% in 6 months during 2011
• Open rates on iPads jumped 73%
• Mobile video  
• Consumers are spending 29 percent more time watching videos on their mobile devices

Easy and not-so-easy ways to make your website mobile friendly

1. Begin by assessing your website with Google’s How to Go Mo Initiative

Test your site for important mobile features on the GoMo Meter. This test will assess your

• Website Page load speed (should be less than 5 seconds)
• Images’ and how they appear on mobile
• Text and whether it can be read without pinching or magnifying
• Website buttons and if they are thumb friendly?)

You can take the test at Google’s How To Go Mo. 

2.  Install a WordPress Mobile Plugin

There are several plugins that you can use to adapt your WordPress website to mobile. Adding a WordPress plugin is the easiest solution to solving your mobile-unfriendly site. Here are a few options for plugins.

1. WPTouch: This plugin is the cadillac plugin for mobile. I use it on my site.  I use the WPTouch Pro version of the plugin. Prior to installing it, I was using the free version and it was giving me some difficulty. Read about WPTouch here.
2. Mobile Press: Read about it here.But WordPress.org reports that it is only compatible to version 2.8.6. I know it is being used for sites updated past 3.0
3. WP Mobile Detector: Read about it here
4. WordPress Mobile Pack: Read about it here.

3.  Take a Mobile Site Build Workshop

Another option for you is to take a course on how to build a mobile site. This course is for those of you (and perhaps not me) who are comfortable in the website development world or who are familiarizing themselves with WordPress web development. I know of one course offering in the Toronto area. Ladies Learning Code teach a weekend day class. A colleague wrote about her experience in this post.

So if 2012 is the year of Mobile, do you plan on doing anything about it?

Photo Credit for top image: Flickr – Langwitches.  Smaller stock image courtesy of Pond5.

According to the psfk blog, the idea was imagined by an agency in Stockholm and approved by the government. The goal is to increase tourism in Sweden by enriching Sweden’s ‘personality’ through different perspectives.

As a creative director of the agency in Stockholm said, “What we’ve done instead is said; all people living in Sweden are in essence ‘Sweden’ so they’re a good representation. So together the total of us give a multifaceted view of what Sweden is all about and very personal – high and low, funny and stupid, intelligent, stupid, funny, quirky.”

This initiative is brilliant for several reasons.

1. The initiative epitomizes the ethos of social media. Tweeting by everyday people will make the @Sweden account more social, personal and interactive.
2. The initiative is a grassroots approach. The government is willing to let any ordinary citizen have a say about “their” Sweden.
3. The initiative will make tweets more personal – and therefore add a personal feel to learning about Sweden. Having everyday people tweet whatever they want to about ‘their Sweden’ is more likely to bring a more personal and “real” feel to the tweets.
4. The initiative may produce more entertaining tweets and more attention. People search the web for information and entertainment. How many entertaining videos went viral last year? Remember the one about the dog owner torturing his dog with amazing food he wasn’t sharing?

It is a bold and risky move to hand over branding to your population, or is it? I no longer think it is risky because a move such as this harnesses the power and appeal of social media and acknowledges that some elements of branding are a direct result of customers, clients and anyone who interacts with you.

What do you think about Sweden’s experiment? Would you be willing to hand over your Twitter account? Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

If you are interested in the Globe and Mail article, you can read it here.

If you found this post interesting, you might want to check out:

• Blogging and Social Media
• Social Media and Social Activism
• Camping Social Media Style 

Like my image? It’s a stock photo courtesy of .

Have you heard of this event? It’s Blog World Expo and New Media Event.  At BlogWorld Expo LA, I’m going to “learn how to create better content, grow my brand, my audience and revenue online from the world’s most successful New Media experts & Social Media innovators.”

Sounds pretty exciting, eh? But what is even more exciting was the backstory to my attending #BWELA.

Two days ago, while cruising some of the blogs I read on a regular basis, I read a post on John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing blog, “Why You no longer need a blog.”  I was intrigued by the title. And found out that John didn’t really mean it.  You can read his post here.

Then he invited people to finish this sentence… The future of blogging is…

He offered 3 great prizes for writing your take about the future of blogging in his comments. 1 Full-Access Pass, 1 – 2-day Pass, and 1 Expo Pass.

Next day, I received an email saying that I won the Full-Access Pass so guess what folks -  I am going! I’ll meet amazing people, gain amazing insights and enjoy L.A.

And, thanks to John Jantsch and the Duct Tape Marketing Team.  Can’t wait to meet you in L.A.

P.S. If you want to see the winning comment, click here and scroll down below John’s post to find it!

P.P.S. I’m planning on tweeting and blogging my way through this conference. And I’m bringing home lots of fresh ideas that I’ll be eager to share with you.

• creating circles and adding my contacts to them
• sharing existing content on Google+
• adding content that I thought might be interesting to people in my Circles

One of my challenges so far is that many of my clients and friends are not yet using or interested in using Google+.  If you’re interested, please send me an email and I will send you an invitation.

But today was a horizon-expanding day.  Why you ask?

Once a month I join two colleagues to participate in a social learning event.  We get together to share new web tools, apps and products that we have encountered in the previous month.

We have a great time catching up but most of all we have a blast learning from each other.  Social learning is one forum where everyone contributes.  We explore and experiment and share our learning as we sit together. Today is one great example of that.

Here’s a brief summary of what I learned about Google+ along with my colleagues.

My hope is that this will help others who are “on” Google+ but who feel overwhelmed by having to “learn” a new social media platform.

Google+ Hangouts

I think Hangouts take video calling to another level. Want to know why? You can invite as many people as you want to a hangout but a max of 10 people can be there at a time.  For a quick intro to hangouts, check out this video.

Making it work for you

1. Scroll down your stream and on the right hand side of your page, you’ll see Start a Hangout.
2. Click on it and then invite your friends to join in.

You can choose a circle or you can invite select people. Your choice.  Nice feature.

In a Hangout, you can watch YouTube videos as well as have a regular meeting or Hangout.  You can use the chat function as you watch a video (left side of page).  I’m not sure yet about screen sharing. If you know, please leave a comment.

Some other things you might want to know about Hangouts:

• When you invite people to a Hangout, a post will appear in their stream telling them that there’s a hangout going on, along with all the people in that hangout currently.
• If you invite less than 25 people, they’ll receive a notification. Over 25 and it appears in their Google+ stream.
• To open the Hangout, you’ll receive an IM in chat with a live link

Hangouts demonstrate greater sharing possibilities than Skype – because of the video capability and because of the ability to invite multiple people. With Skype, conferencing calling is a Premium account feature.

Twitter and Google+

During our social learning time, we found a great browser extension that allows you to add Twitter to your Google+ account.  Grab the Google+ Twitter extension here.  At this point, you cannot send your Tweets to Google+ – I think that’s still in the planning phase in the Google+ project.  Look forward to that in the future.

Making it work for you

You have to download and install the browser extension. Head back to Google+ and refresh. You’ll see a new (Twitter) icon beside your Home icon. Click on it, sign in with Twitter, it will sync and then click on Go! You’ve now integrated Twitter into Google+.

You can send your Google+ updates to Twitter by selecting “I want Tweet my G+ post automatically!”

There’s still a lot more to explore in Google+.  I suggest that you get together with a friend or colleague so you can explore together. You learn more and you can enjoy the adventure together.

I’d love it if you would take a moment and tell me about your Google+ adventure so far. Can you see yourself using it in the future?

Photo Credit

This morning, as I was wondering around on the web, I came across this visual (thanks to Mark Smikilas at Intersection Consulting for it).  Mark probably used it in another context, but when I looked at it, I was reminded that if you are trying to reach your customers, you better be where they are and begin to build relationships with them there.

Where are your people online?  Are they reading or creating blogs? Do they hang out at Camp Twitter? Some may have not even ventured from Camp Newsletter (good reason not to give up that newsletter yet).  Your mission – should you choose to accept it, is to find where they are and camp with them. Spend time and build relationships with them.

As you build campsites in different locations (your blog, your newsletter, Facebook, Twitter or Flickr) you don’t have to keep your camps separate. In fact, one of your goals should be to cross-pollinate.  As content creator, you can invite folks to visit other camps.

At Camp Newsletter, provide opportunities for people to visit Camp Facebook.  At Camp Twitter,  you can invite folks to Camp Blog. In this way, you introduce your audiences to one another, enhance both their online experience and find new ways to engage with them. You are helping to build audience interaction.

Where are your audiences? And how have you set up your camps? Do you cross-pollinate? And how is that working?

Let me know!

Photo Credit: Intersection Consulting

I’d started this post a couple of weeks ago but I took time to rewrite it as a follow on to Mark Evan’s post The Dangers of Social Media Ignorance.  I believe that we, as social media engagers, need to find palatable (aka non-threatening) ways to explain social media to those who are still not convinced of its value.

I believe that Groundswell is a piece in that convincing puzzle. So this post offers a meager introduction to Groundswell as a way to make social media more accessible for businesses and individuals not yet engaged in nor convinced of social media’s value.  I hope this post will tempt you to read Groundswell so you’ll either be tempted to explore social media or to share the book with your non-social media people.

Groundswell defined

The authors define the groundswell as:  “…a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions.” A kind of reshuffling of the power cards.  That’s the groundswell.

And how does this groundswell play out? Well, your customers talk about you online on social media sites – they create parodies of your commercials and post them on YouTube and they complain about your lack of customer service on Twitter.  Social media can be a scary prospect when your customers can publish content and complain about you publicly. BUT, companies can use the groundswell to their advantage – take a potential negative (press that is) and turn it into advantage.  Ignoring social media will NOT make it go away.

Businesses may shy away from social media from worry about the ROI (is there any?) or from the belief that they don’t have the time, skill or manpower to begin to engage.  But many businesses only need to tweak their sales, marketing and development activities to enter the world of social media.  In the table below (borrowed heavily from Li and Bernoff, p. 69) you can see how many typical business activities can be migrated to the web.  For example, research moves from focus groups to Twitter and Facebook or a company blog. Or marketing becomes more of a dialogue than outbound communications.

Typical Business Activities & Online Alternatives

Traditional Business Activities	Matching Groundswell Activities	How Things Are Different Online
Research	Listening	Instead of focus groups and surveys, you monitor customer
Marketing	Talking	You initiate and/or participate in conversations between your customers (not just outbound communications)
Sales	Energizing	You find ways to help your customers sell to one another
Support	Supporting	You assist your customers to support each other
Development	Embracing	You help your customers work together to generate ideas to improve your products or services

The groundswell is here to stay. Businesses need to embrace and use it to their advantage.  Perhaps a good place to start is by reading Groundswell. A second step might be to wade into blogging, Twitter or Facebook.

Have you or your company embraced the groundswell? Will you consider it?  Leave me a comment and let me know what you’re thinking.

Blog-Life

I’ve been in business writing for a long time. I’ve written proposals, customer communications and marketing material – among other things.  So I thought that blogging was going to be easy. But you know what? It hasn’t been for me.

I’ve tried to figure out what my problem was and I’ve realized that there are a couple. First, you have to find your voice online – or should I say, I needed to find my voice. Blogging is more casual than business writing. And less formal writing also means a little of YOU showing through.  Showing more of yourself also means having more confidence.  And I needed some of that.

Solving the lack of confidence and finding voice can be solved by doing it.

Second problem -  as a writer, I was only ever involved in the final text product.   I knew that great blogging required more than just good writing.  Blogging is about all the content – not just the words.

For years, I’ve called myself a techno-peasant because I don’t have a tech (web) background.  So when it came to blogging, I felt stuck.  Stuck because – as a blogger – you need to know how to make your blog interesting for people – giving them all round good content – not just good text.

I needed to figure out how to break the barrier into good content.  And I needed to build my confidence.  So what’s changed so that I now think of myself as an emerging blogger getting a blog-life instead of a techno-peasant?

Here’s the scoop.  I’ve been using Twitter (and writing posts) pretty unspectacularly for the last 18 months.  I took a break for a few months.  I wanted to evaluate whether I wanted to keep tweeting.  Some days, it felt like the social pressure that I have always tried to avoid.

After a hiatus from Twitter (I took the summer to check my bellybutton lint) I decided to return for one last shot.

When I came back to Twitter, I stumbled upon (pun intended) a Twitter chat every Tuesday evening #SBT10 (Start Blogging Today). I’d been following a couple of people from the chat for a long time.  I searched #sbt10 and discovered that it was a chat to help people (just like me) learn how to blog.  These folks are talking about the very things I wanted to know more about:  How can I save time blogging? How can I optimize my blog? And lots more.

Now I have only been in two chats (just discovered this awesome chat 2 weeks ago) but I’m telling you – these people are helping to change my blog-life. The chat is moderated by the folks at Start Blogging Today.  So far Grant Griffiths (Twitter handle: @Grant Griffiths) has headed the chats and they have been great – informative.

I highly recommend that you join the Twitter chat #SBT10. Or you can read my posts sharing what I’ve learned from the weeks before.  I’m planning to share what I’m learning for all of us Blog-newbies!

What are your experiences in blogging?  Any funny stories to share?  Anyone checked out #SBT10 want to share something? I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Photo Courtesy of Mexicanwave

A couple of weeks ago my daughter was channel surfing on YouTube – her favourite for fun stuff, entertainment and – sometimes – information.  She has a few YouTube channels that she checks out regularly like Livelavalive.

When she landed at Livelavalive she clicked on and watched a promo video Livelavalive (aka Mitchell Davis) was asked to make for Tom’s Shoes.  To date the video has been viewed 151,637.

The One Day Without Shoes event invites everyone to take their shoes off for a day to spread awareness about kids going without shoes.

• And ODWS promotes understanding about the experience of children in the developing world who live without shoes.
• And informs people about Tom’s Shoes business model of a double bottom line – making a profit while giving back to the global community.  Tom’s Shoes gives away one pair of shoes for each pair that someone buys. Pretty Cool.

She wanted more information.  So she went to another site and learned more about One Day without Shoes.  Once she found out all the info about the event, she promoted the event on her Facebook wall, joined the Facebook group and invited all her (over 250) friends to join.

That was not enough for her. She called three Toronto radio stations – two stations picked up her event and she was interviewed on Virgin 99.9 and KISS 92.5.  The interviews were aired several times over the Easter weekend.

She made announcements at her youth group and her school. Almost everyone at her group went barefoot at school and showed up barefoot for youth group.

A girl, committed to a social cause,  used social media like YouTube, Facebook,  Facebook groups coupled with traditional media (radio) and personal interest groups to inform and motivate a lot of people.   She used media that was available to her and her friends and she  used it effectively.

Check out the chain of events.  She found out about One Day without Shoes on YouTube.  She posted it to her Facebook Wall.  She joined the Facebook Group and invited all her friends (over 250).  She was articulate enough to have her interviews aired on radio.

I have to tell you, I am proud of my daughter and I am amazed at the impact she had through her social media savvy.

What do you get when you cross social media, a social cause and a girl committed to that cause? A mini grassroots, successful, cause marketing campaign.

What can you get when you multiply that mini campaign by thousands?  A cause campaign with the possibility of going viral.   Just imagine the potential impact and inspiration.

P.S. You can purchase Toms Shoes in Canada.

For a front-end, gaining-in- knowledge WordPress convert, I learned a lot at WordCamp. I appreciated Jeremy Wright’s keynote address about social media.  Jeremy talked about some of the “failures” of social media – but really he was pointing out how we have cheapened social media.  He mentioned

Jeremy Wright Keynote WCTO2010 flickr.com/photos/blucier

• SPAM problems – spamming is counter to SOCIAL media
• people having a mob mentality (we’re too influenced by who is saying what)
• the rise in Twitter Interns and how this changes social media from SOCIAL media to social MEDIA – we put the emphasis on the wrong idea
• An entitlement mentality – sometimes we’re just looking for the next handout
• Twitter Followership – we are still working for numbers – we’ve forgotten about the social part

Jeremy suggested some ways that we can filter all the noise so that we can focus on social media basics.

1. If someone is talking all the time, they aren’t listening.
2. Social media is all about  ‘how can I help’
3. Listen first, then get involved when it makes sense (then exchange business cards)

Then he gave some great SOCIAL media reminders:

1. Listen more than you talk – don’t expect to get until you give
2. No boasting – don’t paint the old as new
3. Don’t steal – give credit to people (whether it is photos, text, ideas… anything)

I may have missed some of his other really important points.  But I have to say that I didn’t miss his main point.  I can’t stop other people from cheapening social media and turning it into “what can I get from it”.  But I can look at my own social behaviour and ask myself  “Am I making social media into social MEDIA or am I keeping it as SOCIAL media?”

On a more personal note, Jeremy and several other speakers made a similar important point for me.  For WP newbies (and I kind of consider myself one of them), he stressed that we should just get started blogging … don’t step back and develop some big strategy – find something you enjoy – figure out what you want to say and then start saying it – work on strategy later.

I heard this so many times this weekend that I couldn’t help but think of the adage that when the student is ready, the teacher shows up (or something like that).  So I am going to relax, blog about what jazzes me instead of trying to write blogs about what I think I should be writing about.

Thanks Jeremy for bringing me (us) back to SOCIAL media basics and thanks for speaking to me directly (even though we didn’t even meet f2f!).

Last week, I was challenged by someone on Twitter, to update my blog, with the promise that he/she would drop by to visit once the blog was updated.  I waffled back and forth between excitement that someone had taken the time to look at my Twitter profile and website and mild annoyance that someone was coaxing/recommending that I update my blog.  As a classic rebel, I don’t always do well with good advice.

So I got to thinking about Twitter and that one small interaction.  It was my first person to person interaction.  I was happy that I was not just speaking into the Twitter cloud along with all the other Tweets. I was talking to someone and someone was talking to me… it wasn’t a lot of white noise conversation.  And it has made me rethink how I will use Twitter….  Here is what I have learned.

• DM’s (direct messages) are better than putting stuff out there – you might get real interaction.
• I was using Twitter to learn from others – now I will not only gather info but will thank people for their tweets when I use their information or find it beneficial.  How can you build a relationship with someone if you don’t thank them for what they have given (didn’t my mother teach me that?)
• Ask people to let you know (using DM’s) when your information is useful.
• Be one-on-one with people – at first I put out tweets that were like standing on a soapbox. Now I plan to engage.

So I am grateful for that interaction last week. I will no longer use Twitter as a platform to gather information, but as a platform to engage with people.  I know, I know  -  it was intended to be used that way in the first place.  But for some reason I wasn’t using it that way.

So thanks, Twitter friend, for that small interaction.  It moved me away from being an onlooker to the place of wanting to engage. 

Where are you at on the Twitter spectrum?  Are you an onlooker – an outlier? Engaged? Information gatherer?  I would love to know where you stand… and while you are at it, tell me what you have learned.