Year: 2012 (Page 2 of 7)

Social Media: Creating a Voice and Personality for Your Brand

October 26, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Gilbane Conference Workshop: Social Media: Creating a Voice and Personality for Your Brand

Instructor: AJ Gerritson, Founding Partner & Social Media Strategist, 451 Marketing
November 27th, 2012 at the InterContinental Boston Waterfront

For consumers, brand interaction on social media platforms is no longer the exception, it’s the expectation. In order to stay relevant, companies must develop digital tactics that boost the brand’s overall communications strategies and marketing campaigns. When utilized effectively, social media marketing enhances your brand’s voice and personality, making you more approachable and transparent to your target audience. But, how can your company devise a social media strategy that entices audiences and encourages interaction? Which platforms make sense for your brand? How can you monitor the effectiveness of a social media campaign?

In this interactive session, 451 Marketing founding Partner and Social Media Strategist, AJ Gerritson, will outline the major social media platforms, strategic approaches, best practices, time commitment, and measurement tools and techniques necessary as part of an effective social media strategy. Using industry statistics and case studies, AJ will teach attendees how to structure a successful social media strategy that can be easily integrated into your brand’s existing communications campaigns.

Frank Gilbane interview on Big Data

October 15, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

Big data is something we cover at our conference and this puzzles some given our audience of content managers, digital marketers, and IT, so I posted Why Big Data is important to Gilbane Conference attendees on gilbane.com to explain why. In the post I also included a list of the presentations at Gilbane Boston that address big data. We don’t have a dedicated track for big data at the conference but there are six presentations including a keynote.

I was also interviewed on the CMS-Connected internet news program about big data the same week, which gave me an opportunity to answer some additional questions about big data and its relevance to the same kind of audience. There is still a lot more to say about this, but the post and the interview combined cover the basics.

The CMS-Connected show was an hour long and also included Scott and Tyler interviewing Rob Rose on big data and other topics. You can see the entire show here, or just the 12 twelve minute interview with me below.

Private Companies and Public Companies – Sizing up IT Spending

October 15, 2012 / hhenry / 0 Comments

One aspect of the Global 5000 company database is that we include all types, shapes and locations of companies including those that are publicly listed as well as private firms. For those who sell to corporations (as opposed to consumers) there is a great deal of interest in private companies. A lot of this can be attributed to the fact that public companies have to disclose so much about their size, shape and all aspects of their organizations – most everyone knows or can find out what they need to. Privates, on the other hand, are less well known and hold the allure that there is great, undiscovered opportunity in there.

To get a sense of the dynamics of the public/private we examined a number of metrics related to companies in the Global 5000 database. It is true that more large companies are publicly traded. Of the 5000 companies, nearly 4,000 are public and just over 1,000 are private. That is the inverse of the market as a whole where most companies in any country or industry are private. Here are a few facts about each group.

The average revenue for a public company in the Global 5000 is $10.3 billion while the private companies averaged $10.6 billion
Public companies reported an average revenue per employee of $214,000 while private companies were just over $282,000
For both 2010 and 2011, revenue for both public and private companies grew by slightly more than 11.5%. Virtually no difference.
In both cases, IT spending per company is over $290 million and approximately 2.7% of revenue.
Total IT spending for Global 5000 public companies is approximately $1.1 trillion while private Global 5000 companies will spend about $300 billion.

The bottom line here is that big is big. It does not make much difference if the company is public or private, the big guys will spend a lot on a wide variety of products and services including IT products and services. The real difference is in the number of these large opportunities there are. Just because we find a few of these nuggets among the privates, does not mean all privates look alike. Most are quite a bit smaller.

Learn more about more the Global 5000 database

W3C Web Platform Docs – a new resource for web developers

October 13, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

W3C announced Web Platform Docs, which promises to be a valuable new resource for web developers of all levels. Imagine a single site that you can depend on for up-to-date, accurate, and browser and device neutral answers and advice for both simple and complex questions. It is brand new and “alpha” but already useful. Below is info from their announcement and a short video. For those of us that prefer textual info see this blog post from Doug Schepers: http://blog.webplatform.org/2012/10/one-small-step/

W3C, in collaboration with Adobe, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera, and others, announced today the alpha release of Web Platform Docs (docs.webplatform.org). This is a new community-driven site that aims to become a comprehensive and authoritative source for web developer documentation. With Web Platform Docs, web professionals will save time and resources by consulting with confidence a single site for current, cross-browser and cross-device coding best practices.

Gilbane Boston Early Discount Deadline Extended

October 11, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Plan to be in Boston for the 9th annual Gilbane Boston Conference and you still have time to SAVE!

Save up to $400 for Three Days, Four Tracks, 45 Sessions & Labs, 6 Workshops with One Objective: to help you understand what technologies can and can’t do, what practices succeed or fail, and how to plan for the rapid changes in market and technology evolution.

Today, you need to be flexible, agile, and ready to incorporate web and multiple mobile platforms with different form factors and capabilities, and you need to combine engaging content and interfaces with small devices and big data – this is not the same challenge you had last year.

To help you keep pace and be able to cut through hype and make informed decisions we bring together a diverse audience of technologists, marketers, strategists, business managers and analysts to learn, share, and debate best practices and strategies. Our conferences have sessions designed for attendees in marketing, technology, business units, as well as analysts and consultants.

Just sign up by October 31st and use discount code GILBANE. Learn more http://gilbaneboston.com/conference_program.html

2012 Technology Showcase Hours
Wednesday, November 28: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Thursday, November 29: 10:00 am – 2:00 pm

See the conference program:
http://gilbaneboston.com/conference_program.html

See the current list of speakers:
http://gilbaneboston.com/speakers.html

See this year’s in-depth pre-conference workshops:
http://gilbaneboston.com/workshops.html

See the current list of Sponsors & Exhibitors:
http://gilbaneboston.com/exhibitors_sponsors.html

Sign-up today to make sure you receive your $200 discount! Just use discount code GILBANE

Or sign-up for your free Keynote and Technology Showcase Pass.

Tablet market evolution and mobile development strategies

October 10, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

It was only about a year ago that the tablet market was only really about general-purpose tablets. There was the dominant iPad, and the fragmented Android market. Ebook readers were a separate animal altogether, although the anticipated release of the first Kindle Fire raised the question of whether it would bridge the general-purpose and ebook market.

In some ways it did, adding enough apps and internet access that it was hard not to sneak in some work email or web research even when your laptop or iPad was purposely left at home for the weekend away with the family. But of course Amazon’s business model was/is different – a subsidized device to increase the sale of content. And Amazon’s use of Android was significantly more customized than other Android tablets.

The folks over at Tech.pinions continue to be a must-read for anyone following/investing in the tablet market. John Kirk in Battle of The Tablet Business Models: Lessons Learned and a Look Ahead, argues that the future of the tablet model will be determined by the business models behind them, and points out some consistencies and lack thereof between the major players, Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung and Microsoft. He is surely right that too often commentators and analysts have focused on hardware characteristics and software and not paid enough attention to business models. However, product capabilities can either create new business model possibilities or prevent their success so also help determine the landscape. For example, a non-glare, color display with low power requirements that combines the best of an iPad and a Kindle will certainly have a material effect on the market. In any case John’s post contains a number of nuggets.

Another aspect to consider in tablet market evolution is the difference between enterprise and consumer tablet markets. We’ll look at that in another post.

So You Want to Build a Mobile Content App? or a Better App?

October 8, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Gilbane Conference Workshop: So You Want to Build a Mobile Content App?

Instructor: Jonny Kaldor, Managing Director, Kaldor Group (creators of Pugpig)
November 27th, 2012 at the InterContinental Boston Waterfront

With the continuing and massive adoption of tablet devices, content owners have a dizzying myriad of ways to disseminate content to employees and customers alike in a way that is faster, broader, more engaging and more actionable than ever before. Business models for content owners are being revolutionised, and tablets are now offering a truly viable alternative to print. But it doesn’t stop there – whether you’re pushing content to consumers or disseminating information across your enterprise, you can reap tangible benefits from publishing on tablet devices. This session will dive into the key aspects of conceiving, designing, building and launching your mobile content app, whether you’re targeting your employees, clients or consumers. We’ll cover both the opportunities and the many pitfalls that you will encounter (and nimbly jump over) as you set off of your content app journey…

Key topics:

Where to start?
Translating print or web to mobile – it’s not so easy
Designing an engaging and really useful user experience
Avoiding building a whole new team to manage the mobile channel
Aligning your web and mobile strategy and operations
Webapp vs native vs hybrid – which should I go for?
Adaptive design / responsive design”
Business models that work
Making sense of multiple devices and marketplaces
Using the big players to your advantage (Apple, Google, MS, Amazon)
Keeping your users happy

See the full pre-conference workshop schedule at Gilbane Boston, then [button link=”http://gilbaneboston.com/registration_information.html” variation=”red”]Register[/button].

Frank Gilbane on Gilbane Boston 2012

September 28, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Frank Gilbane describes Gilbane Boston 2012 in a short off the cuff video after being caught walking by the studio. See the Gilbane Conference program.