Here is my latest video production, a promo video for the Alcoa Mandurah Duel event I organise. This was my first time working with aerial footage and I loved it. It wasn’t the classic downwind race that Mandurah is famous for, rather it was overcast and flat, but it still produced some fantastic racing. The raw footage was very dull flat and grey so I experimented with some filters to make it a bit more vibrant.

The world is going mobile people. The number of mobile devices used for accessing the internet has now equalled the use of desktop computers. Mobile, mobile mobile people! Here is a great article from Mashable.

By Meghan Peters of Mashable.

When I leave the house in the morning, the first thing I check is that I have my phone with me. It’s not my keys nor my wallet, but my phone that I’m most worried about forgetting.

My mobile device has become my lifeline in a lot of ways — and I know I’m not alone.

When I walk outside, it seems hard to find someone who’s not on their phone. Whether they’re looking up directions on a maps app, checking in to their current location on Foursquare or taking a photo with Instagram, many of us rely on mobile devices to get things done efficiently and conveniently — and to stay connected.

Long before Facebook bought Instagram last month, the mobile social networking boom was upon us. The $1 billion acquisition was just the icing on the cake.

This was the jumping off point for a discussion on stage at Mashable Connect with myself, Brett Martin, co-founder and CEO of Sonar, Steve Jang, co-founder, chief product designer and CEO of SoundTracking, and Bart Stein, co-founder of Stamped on Saturday. Here’s a little bit more about what we talked about and why we’re certain mobile social networks are the communities of the future.

Self-Expression in Real Time

Social networks were built on the notion of sharing. Whether we’re revealing interests, photos or life moments, these platforms have become the ultimate vehicles of self-expression.

The features built into mobile devices, such as cameras and GPS, enable even the most casual tech user to easily create his or her own media. Mobile editing and social apps help the content individuals produce to be more sophisticated, while remaining personal.

“I think people are excited to take a bit of their everyday life with their phone and augment it toward something beautiful and emotional to share,” says Steve Jang, co-founder and CEO of Soundtracking. “As long as there is a captive audience that is responsive to this stream of personal media captured and shared on the fly, then I think we’ll continue to see people flock to these mobile communities.”

Thirty-eight million Americans use mobile devices for social networking almost every day, comScore reports. It’s even surpassed gaming as the most-engaged mobile activity, according to Flurry. Like Jang said, these numbers will continue to rise alongside our desire to produce and engage with personal media.

As more people access social networks from smartphones and tablets, they’ll realize these devices do more than make sharing easier and content creation better. They also allow for instantaneous connections.

“It’s no longer good enough for some of us to come home from vacation or a night out to post our photos and thoughts,” says Brett Martin, co-founder and CEO of Sonar. “We’ve become so used to real-time sharing that it feels irrelevant to post pictures of and reactions to things that happened mere hours ago.”

This real-time self-expression was essentially non-existent before the rise of mobile devices — and now it’s the norm. We’ve become accustomed to knowing what’s going on with our friends and family or favorite celebrities and organizations at the moment it’s happening. This allows us to feel as though we’re experiencing these activities with them, radically changing how we feel and, ultimately, connect.

Stronger Relationships

This increased connectedness can help us feel closer to our contacts, both fortifying existing relationships and forging new ones.

Apps such as Face Time allow us to stay in touch with friends and family overseas while others, like Martin’s Sonar, help us discover new contacts through shared connections. These are the users “that know the value of relationships,” Martin says.

But those get togethers with friends where you look up and everyone is tweeting, checking in or uploading a photo instead of talking face-to-face, makes you wonder: Is mobile social networking really helping us make the right connections?

Jang says the stigma of people ignoring their IRL friends to engage on these networks “is outweighed by the benefit of being to stay in touch with a much larger group of friends and family and see, read, and listen to a vivid (albeit fleeting) snapshot of their lives.”

For Martin, it’s certainly a concern. “But the best apps won’t need to hold you hostage to the screen,” he says. Rather, they should add dimension to relationships and enable you to engage with others in unprecedented ways, making it “easier than ever to make and maintain real life relationships,” says Stein.

Enriched Lives

At the core of any community is connecting people with a passion for a common interest.

When it comes to mobile, the plethora of social apps make it easy for users to connect around any hobby or activity, no matter how niche or mainstream. Whether you’re looking for a restaurant or a relationship, apps allow you to do what you want to do better — right along with your community.

“The best communities being built by mobile app creators today are the ones that already existed offline, but hadn’t been provided with technology and tools to enrich their experiences and relationships,” says Stein. “There must be a distinction made between the apps that add utility and improve people’s lives rather than those designed to waste time — the former actually improves relationships and the quality of interactions rather than diminishing them.”

When asked if, as mobile app creators, they consider themselves community builders, Jang and Stein say the goal of each of their apps is to help an existing community build on what it’s already doing. For Soundtracking, it’s helping the music community share and engage with the songs they already love. For Stamped, it’s about providing people who enjoy sharing their favorites with technology that makes this easier.

What’s Next?

Mobile social networks are the communities of the future. So, what’s on the horizon for this up-and-coming space? Here’s what the panelists had to say:

• “It’s all about context, frictionless sharing and push-notification-driven user interfaces. The best apps won’t tell you about every random person or restaurant that you walk by; just the ones that will truly matter.” — Brett Martin, Co-founder and CEO, Sonar.
• “The combination of structured data with your social graph is the next big trend in mobile. There’s powerful structured data around places, objects and things that when combined with a social layer can generate and sustain a whole new class of apps. It’s easier than ever for developers to tap into APIs and publicly available data sources to build new sets of killer applications.” — Bart Stein, Co-founder, Stamped.
• “Moving forward, the mobile user experience of social networking will become more distributed across multiple apps… When Facebook launched its Messenger app, I loved that. It was a straightforward app that did one thing well and let me re-engage with the FB message feature again. Inside the all-in-one FB app, that feature was more difficult to use quickly and easily… It makes a lot of sense to think about a community’s social graph and data as an underlying network upon which you can develop simple, powerful and functionally-specific mobile apps.” — Steve Jang, Co-founder and CEO, Soundtracking.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL

This article comes from David Meerman Scott at Hubspot.

“I run a small business—how can I leverage the power of social media?” A commonly encounter this question.

Maybe you are a local business owner, or an entrepreneur, or a marketer at a small company. How do you make the most of social media to increase your visibility online and attract new customers?

What Is Social Media?

When we say “social media,” do we actually talk about the same thing? People want to define social media as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, argues David Meerman Scott. While this is a component of it, he points out, it doesn’t not portray the entire picture accurately. The emphasis should be placed on the word “social,” which in reality means sharing. “The best small business use of social media is to create things that are worthy of being shared,” David says.

Create Great Content

Content, of course, is one of the best things that is worthy of being shared. It can come in different formats, ranging from video series and webinars to text-based content like ebooks, whitepapers and blog posts. If these content pieces provide your target audience with valuable information, people will be eager to share them further. And the social way of sharing today is by using the tools you are familiar with: Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Social Media Is Not A Stand-Alone Thing

Where a lot of businesses make a mistake is thinking of social media as a stand-alone thing, David notes. Companies focus on the specific tools, creating the right profiles and staying up-to-date with certain features. But if you think of Twitter and Facebook as ways to share other irresistable offers, then social media becomes easy.

So that leads to your marketing tip of the day: if social means share, go and create something share-worthy!

This article comes courtesy of Mashable and is the first in a series looking closely at logo design, a topic I’m very passionate about.

Logo design is one of the first considerations for a founding team of a new company. It’s also a carefully navigated quagmire for an aging brand that needs a refresh.

We’ve consulted a panel of web design and logo experts about the basics and not-so-basics of creating a great logo for new and not-so-new web-based companies. In this three-part series, we’ll share their insights on trends, hiring designers, typography and more.

Our panel includes UK logo designer Graham Smith, designer and logo design blogger Jacob Cass, and Raj Abhyanker, CEO of Trademarkia, a firm specializing in trademarks and logos.

Read on for their advice, and designers, please share your own experiences and opinions in the comments section.

Biggest Challenges for Startups

Cass says that one of the most difficult aspects of logo creation for startups is finding a logo designer whose work is good and who is still within a startup’s meager budget. If you don’t have a stellar logo designer on your founding team, and if your product needs more than a bare-bones logotype, hiring this kind of talent on a shoestring budget can be a challenge.

Smith echoes this concern, stating that startups’ main challenge is “to not look like they have purposefully spent all their money on coffee and code and have not put aside any funds for things like the logo design and other marketing avenues.

“They of course may have limited funds, but unfortunately this will reflect badly on them regardless. Some of these companies just look lazy and uninterested in how their visual identity might fair with the punters.”

As far as a “lazy” logo goes, Smith cites the “classic Beta mode” as a repeat offender in startup identity, calling it cheap and uninspiring. And, he continues, “A truly dire and unremarkable logo can have some kind of festering negative outcome.”

Also, Cass says startups should should think about “if they need to hire just a logo designer or a ‘brand identity designer,’ who would create a full visual system that represents the brand. It’s also important to remember that your logo is not your brand.”

Smith cautions startups to realize that branding can often be the differentiating factor between two companies with similar products and ideas. “Be cunning; assume that another company might come along with a similar startup idea to yours but specifically have a killer logo and identity. If the cards fall right, they will likely create a bigger splash than the original startup.

“Better to put all your resources on the table at the beginning and stake your whole reputation and own confidence in your idea and come out all guns blazing, so to speak.”

He says Flipboard is an excellent example of a carefully planned identity that was inspiring.

Abhyanker takes a similar approach, saying a large concern for startups is “standing out from the crowd, being distinctive and suggestive of the goods and services offered while serving as a marker to identify the logo owner’s company.”

He also introduced the dual concepts of simplicity and distinction as primary considerations for startups’ logo designs.

“A logo is really the first core message, the identity, that any brand provides to the world. And it has to be a logo that will work not just on a website homepage and on business cards but also as its Twitter or Facebook icon. So, you want it be distinctive and yet simple at the same time.”

Traditional Versus Web-Based Company Logos

Abhyanker makes a salient point about one of the main differences between traditional and web logo design. “The web is constantly changing — and at a much faster rate than the brick and mortar world ever has. When you think of websites from early 2000, they look nothing like the web that we know and experience today.

“This means that the web is constantly being redesigned. Finding a logo that can still be relevant (or not feel outdated) in a matter of years, or even months, when we don’t even know what the web will feel like, seems to be a bit more of a challenge.”

Cass on the other hand, says that other than budgets and timelines, “There really shouldn’t be any difference. The process and fundamental principles of ‘good’ logo design should always stay the same.”

As a longtime logo designer, Smith notes that print logo design used to be the bigger challenge. “Now, he says, “with the sheer variety of desktop and mobile devices, platforms and products, designing a logo or icon for the web generally presents more of a challenge.”

In other words, logos need to work for multiple apps, icons, avatars, favicons and other branded collateral — and of course, traditional print business cards, as well.

And don’t think that the color issues of print design are behind you. “Like traditional print,” Smith warns, “color can easily go awry on the web. Color calibration and profile generation across devices and software can leave many people dizzy, and the ensuing results can look pretty awful. As you would need to ensure that your print-based logo reproduces well in CMYK color, you need to ensure that your web-based logo will resize and adapt to various screen sizes and resolutions with color consistency. Creating icons for the complete range of Apple devices is almost a science and quotable job in itself if you are not used to it.”

This article was created by Hubspot and based on US statistics but it applies just as strongly here in Australia.

Yellow Pages used to represent the final stage of the buying process when people were ready to make a purchase decision. But today the buying process is no longer a linear path ending with the book. Instead, it follows the curves and tools of emerging online technologies.

Some Quick Facts:

Since 2007, many states quit printing residential listings or have pending requests: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Traditional land lines are being disconnected at a rate of nearly 10% each year.
Consumers increasingly consider online services before Yellow Pages as they make purchase decisions.
“Yellow Page usage amongst people in their, say below 50, will drop to near zero over the next five years.” — Bill Gates.
Buying behavior is changing rapidly as people shift their research and shopping habits from traditional marketing channels to the Internet. Consumers can educate themselves more than ever about a product or a service before they make a purchase decision. They compare prices, check customer reviews, read case studies and receive instant responses to their queries. It is just a matter of time for this change in buying behavior to hit your industry.

Some Industries Have Already Tipped

The shift in consumer behavior has already reached some industries, such as the travel industry and catering. These businesses rarely buy Yellow Pages ads because calls don’t come in that way for them. In the travel business, a number of online tools have emerged to make the buying process more engaging and educational. All of a sudden, sites like Priceline.com and TripAdvisor offer tons of valuable content for travelers. Couples preparing for their wedding celebrations also gravitate to the Web for catering information and honeymoon destinations.

Some Industries Are Further from the Tipping Point

There are businesses in the Service industries that haven’t fully experienced this shift yet. Plumbers and contractors, for instance, still dominate the phonebook. If you are looking to renovate your bathroom, it can difficult to find enough information about it on the Web. There isn’t enough local content online to provide consumers with the same shopping experience as what the travel industry offers.

But it is a matter of time for this new buying behavior to slowly make its way to all industries. Then, the question you will need to answer is, “Where on that line am I?”

Huge Opportunity Lies with the “Untipped” Industries

A great marketing opportunity lies with the industries that haven’t tipped yet. If you are ahead of the curve and following closely the shift in consumer behavior, you can own this new space and become a trusted advisor online. You will gain a huge competitive advantage rather than trying to catch up with competitors who have been more aware of the changes in buying processes.

As Andrew Quinn, HubSpot’s Sales Training Manager with 16 years of experience in the Yellow Pages industry said, “The market is not going to go backwards and reverse itself.” That means you will need to step up.

When was the last time you used the yellow pages, except for a door stop?

My recent YouTube presentation for the Mandurah PWN was a lot of fun and the crowd was great and very enthusiastic. So I’m expecting to see some great YouTube videos coming out very soon I think!

I showed a couple of example of popular viral marketing YouTube videos that proved very popular so I thought I’d put some of my favourite ones up here to share with everyone. The takeaway from the presentation and these videos proves that it doesn’t matter if your company is B2B or B2C; anyone can create a marketing video for YouTube that will drive traffic to your website.

Old Spice – The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.

We’re not saying this body wash will make your man smell into a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are insinuating it. Followed by over 200 video responses posted on YouTube to Tweets and Facebooks posts from fans, this is possibly the most successful social media campaign ever!

Blendtec – Will it Blend? – iPhone

Everybody knows that the iPhone can make phone calls, play movies & music, surf the web, and a lot more. But, Will It Blend? That is the question. A huge YouTube success story.

The T-Mobile Dance – Liverpool Station

Watch the moment Liverpool Street Station danced to create this special T-Mobile Advert. Life’s for sharing.

United Breaks Guitars – Dave Carrol

A classic example how a customers bad experience and using the power of social media to get revenge can damage a brand. The video went viral with over 9 million views and turned into a PR nightmare for United Airlines. When the video took off United was swamped with thousands of complaints from other angry customers. Pay back is a bitch! It also resulted in a huge boost for Dave’s career!!!

Piano Stairs – Volkswagon

“Take the stairs instead of the escalator and feel better” is something we hear but didn’t often see until this sly video from Volkswagen appeared on the Web. It’s part of an inspiring campaign, The Fun Theory, that encourages people to come up with fun ways to “do good.” The video itself did well indeed, imbuing Volkswagen with a fun new ethos and racking up millions of views in the process.

Inspired Bicycles – Danny MacAskill

Filmed over the period of a few months in and around Edinburgh by Dave Sowerby, this video of Inspired Bicycles team rider Danny MacAskill features probably the best collection of street/street trials riding ever seen.

Extreme Sheep LED Art – Samsung

They took to the hills of Wales armed to the teeth with sheep, LEDs and a camera, to create a huge amazing LED display. Of sorts!

Wine Library TV – Gary Vaynerchuk

While not technically Youtube any more Gary Vaynerchuk took his family business from $4m in sales to $60m by just shooting videos of himself tasting wines and posting them online. He’s up to 915 videos!

This is a really great insightful post showing how businesses and brands are used and seen by people on Facebook. This article was written by Adam Ostrow the Editor-in-Chief of Mashable. Have a read and let me know what you think. How do you interact with your favourite brands or your customers? What’s worked for you.

While much of finding what works for your business on social media sites is a process of trial and error, recent stats from email marketing firm ExactTarget (which recently acquired social CRM platform CoTweet) shed some light on how the Facebook population uses the site and how it interacts with brands.

First, the good news: based on its study of 1,500 Facebook users, ExactTarget concluded that 38 percent of online U.S. consumers “Like” (formerly “Fan”) a brand on the social networking site. And the average fan Likes nine different brands, giving you plenty of opportunity to find your way into potential customers’ news feeds.

The news that presents a challenge to businesses looking to benefit from Facebook, however, is that just because someone has liked you doesn’t mean they’re ready to see your promotional messages. Citing an earlier study, ExactTarget reports that 70 percent of consumers don’t think becoming a fan equates to opting in to marketing.

Fortunately, ExactTarget didn’t stop there, and did some research into what motivates users to Like companies on Facebook. The results offer some insight into what you can do as a business to keep the fans you accumulate engaged and not hitting the “hide” button in their news feeds. Here’s the breakdown of why users might “Like” your brand, illustrated by the percentage of respondents who said that they use Facebook for the listed activity:

40 percent to receive discounts and promotions
39 percent to show my support for the company to others
36 percent to get a “freebie”
34 percent to stay informed about the activities of the company
33 percent to get updates on future products
30 percent to get updates on upcoming sales
29 percent for fun or entertainment
25 percent to get access to exclusive content
22 percent someone recommended it to me
21 percent to learn more about the company
13 percent for education about company topics
13 percent to interact

On the surface, some of these findings seem to conflict with the idea of users being resistant to marketing messages. But the real takeaway is that users like brands for a wide variety of reasons, and the mix of content you post to your Facebook page should reflect that.

There’s a bit more to it than that, however, if you dive further into some of ExactTarget’s findings relating to demographics and usage patterns. For instance, 65 percent of Facebook users only access the site when they’re not at work or school – typically meaning early morning or evening. That means that if you’re making social media only a part of a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work day, you might be missing out on connecting with consumers during the times they’re likely to be online.

There are also differences in how men and women use the site, with women indicating that their primary focus on the site is on maintaining relationships (by a margin of 63 percent to 54 percent), implying that they have less time for engaging with businesses.

Hopefully, by combining some of these broader findings with your own analytics and anecdotal successes and failures, you can refine your strategy to grow both your fan base and your levels of engagement.

You’ve all heard about Social Media and been told “You must be on Facebook”, but how do you do it?

This course will walk you through step by step setting up your own Facebook Business page on the laptop computers supplied and provide you with skills on how to use it as an effective marketing tool.

At the end of the course you will have a working Facebook business page.

The course will consist of the following:

1. Introduction – What is Facebook, how it works and example of successful Facebook marketing.

2. Facebook Pages 101 – The difference between, profiles, pages and groups.

3. Setting up your page – A live walk though setting your own Facebook page.

4. Promoting your page – Letting people know about your Facebook page.

5. Getting the most out of your page – Encouraging discussion and analytics.

The course is only $295 to Peel Chamber of Commerce and Industry members ($350 for non members). The cost is per business and you may bring two people along.

The Small Business Smart Business Training Voucher offers businesses up to $200 to access business training.

Using the $200.00 training voucher means that a majority of the cost of this course is REFUNDED to businesses by the government.

The cost of this seminar is $295.00
The Government refund to the business $195.00
BUSINESSES OWN FINANCIAL INVESTMENT IS: $100.00

For more information on the Training Vouchers contact the Small Business Centre – manager@sbcpeel.com.au

Limited numbers of only 15 bookings per session for only 2 sessions so don’t miss out.

Where: Peel Small Business Centre

Date: Thursday 12th and 19th Oct 10am – 12pm

For bookings contact the Peel Chamber of Commerce and Industry – admin@peelcci.com.au

Want to know how to use video to harness the power of social media?

On Wednesday the 22nd September at Forte Mandurah Quays Resort I’ll be hosting a seminar for the Professional Women’s Network on “How to use YouTube to enhance SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and drive more traffic to your website.

The PWN has opened its doors up to the men again so invite your partners, bosses, husbands and friends to this “too good to miss” event.

Here’s what you can look forward to:
1. Introduction – Samples of successful YouTube campaigns and channels
2. Choosing your topics – what do your customers want to see?
3. Shooting your video – How to make a great 2 min video
4. Creating you own YouTube Channel – Where you will host your epic productions
4. Optimising for SEO – (This is where the power is!)
5. Building a base of viewers – Creative ways to “seed” your video
6. Embedding videos into your website and social media – Sharing the video and creating links.

$15 for Chamber Members, $20 for Non Members
Includes canapés – drinks can be ordered from the bar.

Bookings are essential.

Please book by emailing paulinebright@actioncoach.com
OR phone Pauline Bright on 0413 739196

Bouvard Cruises in Mandurah started their journey down the Social Media marketing road late last year by firstly creating a Facebook business page closely followed by a blog called “Mandurah’s Dolphin Blog”, a YouTube Channel and a Twitter account. The strategy was to use the blog to record sightings using photos and videos then use their Facebook and Twitter pages to share the information and drive traffic to their website.

The Rewards

10 months later and they are now seeing the rewards. Over the 10 month period the Dolphin Blog has become the highest referring website for sending visitors to the Bouvard Cruises website, followed by Experience Perth then their Facebook page. They have seen a 72% increase in visitors to their site since last year and it’s still climbing!

But it gets better!

Using Google Analytics to monitor traffic to their website we’ve seen in the last 3 months their Facebook page has overtaken the Dolphin Blog as their highest referring website, it actually referred 3 times as much traffic as their second referring website. In fact their Facebook page sent more visitors to their website in the last month than the combined total of their next 8 referring sites! As far as traffic sources go only Google is higher than their Facebook page!

So what does this tell us?

A social media strategy used effectively drives traffic to your website.
A Facebook page is a powerful marketing tool. Combine it with a blog for more power.
If you don’t have a Facebook page or a blog or a social media strategy… you are missing out.
If you have a Facebook page and a blog keep using it.
Make more postings, monitor them daily and interact with your customers who make posts and replies.
Make it part of your daily office marketing routine to check your Facebook page first thing every morning and again last thing in the afternoon. Make at least 1-2 post a week and make sure respond to yours fans posts and questions.
Most importantly stick at it!

This all this proves that a social media campaign involving a clear strategy is a very powerful marketing tool that drives customers to your website. Just ask Rod!