Social Media Brat

“Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?” –Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

There’s been a lot of conversation lately about names and social media. Google caught flak for requiring people to register their real names on their account or risk banishment to some Googlitary Confinement where no one hear you search. There’s also been a lot of discussion around using your real name on LinkedIn (I would advise doing this) and whether or not Twitter would ever require you to use your real name on your profile. If you are thinking that this debate is black and white, you may want to check out this list of social sites before setting up your account to decide if you want to use your real name. One other quick note: This list is for personal users, businesses should always be transparent and disclose their name for branding purposes. Alright, here we go:

Always list your real name on these sites:

• LinkedIn. Why? Because being found is the name of the game here. If you don’t want to be found, avoid LinkedIn altogether.
• Google. Why? Because when your content takes off, people will Google you. Without your real name, they won’t find you. Not only that, the odds are that Google will require it someday anyway, might as well get ahead of the game.

Almost always list your real name on these sites:

• Your blog. Why? Because you want advertisers or organizations to be able to contact you, and you want to make sure your name gets spelled correctly on the check. Why not? If you are only blogging for fun and don’t care if anyone finds it. Also, if your writing may be considered polarizing or place you or your loved ones in danger, you may want to consider using a pen name.
• Facebook. Why? Like LinkedIn, the purpose is to be found, so why not be found?  Why not? Certain professions (teachers, supermodels, security guards at the Louvre) may not really want certain interested parties sending friend requests or messages to them simply to get something out of the deal (an “A”, an autograph, vault access codes). Others may just seek a general anonymity from old flames or may not have a desire to connect with anyone from their past. Be transparent whenever possible, but if you must, you must.
• Twitter. Why? It helps people to connect the dots where you’re consistently transparent and use your real name across channels whenever possible. It also helps when you connect with your Friends From Other Networks (FFON) know who you are right away when you follow them. Why not? Twitter doesn’t require it, so you can call yourself anything, really. Again, if you tweet polarizing or controversial things, better to be safe and use a pen name.
• Foursquare. Why? Again, its connecting the dots when you connect with your FFON to get them to add you in return. Plus, when you get that Mayorship, you want everyone to know exactly who’s the boss. Why not? Three words: Location-Based Stalking.

You can pretty much go out from there with how you dictate your naming-yourself policy, I’ve just hit the highlights. I’d love to her your thoughts on this as well, so as per usual, if you think I’m way out of bounds or am missing something, chime in in the comments!

I love analogies. I really realized my love for analogies around 2001 when I told a school board I was pitching a website to that a poorly designed website was like eating oatmeal without water. I feel that the great teachers and religious scholars in history used fables and parables, and analogies are simply bite-sized chunks in a similar vein of these. When I was doing end-user support, I felt like equating something these folks understood with something they didn’t built a bridge to understanding for them.

Selling via social is no different. Analogies can be a very powerful tool in reaching out to your customers and potential customers because you can build that same bridge to equate something they don’t understand with something they do. True to form, I’m going to give you a quick example and some analogies. Ready?

• Your company sells running shoes, but they also sell rain-resistant hats for runners to wear to avoid catching pneumonia when they run. Your customers are hardcore runners who feel like hats are for wimps, so your hats are selling poorly. You need a strong comparison to help the customers understand the need while helping you sell more hats. So what’s the message to promote? “Running in the rain without a water-resistant hat is like trail running without bug spray.”
• Your Non-profit needs to raise money for building a shelter for homeless kids. Instead of the traditional “1 in 5 kids is homeless…” an analogy works better. Try “leaving kids homeless is like leaving kids hopeless.” See how that makes a bigger emotional impact that calls more people to action?

I use social media as the avenue for my examples, but really they are applicable to any vein of marketing, outbound or inbound. Finding something that reaches your customers and potential customers at a deeper level of connection not only shows that you know and can relate to their passion, but it also might just have the potential to land you some sales. Failing to relate to your customers correctly is like shouting instructions in an empty room…great plans, zero ears.

What’s your secret for using analogies or for selling via social? There are a ton of ways to sell in a less direct way, what makes yours the best? Let me know in the comments!

Imagine a world where it was no longer necessary to carry cash or a credit card, but only carry your smartphone to make payments. Your smartphone already carries your photos, social updates, and email, why not your money too? Using mobile payment technology, it would be possible to not only still use your smartphone for all of its traditional uses, but also as your wallet for making payments.  In this paper, I take a deeper dive into three mobile payment technologies destine to change mobile payments: The Isis service from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, the Google Wallet service from Google and Motorola, and the Magneto mobile Payment application from white-box mobile application provider Magneto. What are the advantages, disadvantages, and services of each?Read on to find out.

You don’t have to look far anymore in the news to see the grim financial news we are facing: roller-coaster stock prices, crumbling fiduciary and monetary systems around the globe, and joblessness all seem to be contributing to a global financial crisis which hits households from Kenya to Kansas. With U.S. consumers alone holding over 609.8 million credit cards and averaging $15,799 in debt per household, we begin to see the makings of a society focused on using credit on a regular basis. Aside from our credit cards, we are also becoming a society focused on smartphones to do more and more for us all of the time. They have become our source for entertainment, Internet access, and social interaction.

Now imagine if we were to infuse a credit card into a smartphone so that you would no longer need to carry a credit card and cash? Taking a look through three current services,each has good points and bad points, but all have the potential to move yourAmEx to your Android.

Isis

The first mobile payment solution is Isis, which plans to launch in the first half of next year in Utah and Austin, TX  at first, but will be available worldwide shortly thereafter. Isis formed as part of a partnership between Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to provide a mobile payment system using Near-Field Communications (NFC) antenna available on select smartphones from BlackBerry and HTC in conjunction with a mobile payment application. Initially, the service garnered little interest from vendors and businesses, at least until the group had agreements with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.
Isis is the first service to havethe support of all four major credit card companies. This is a new venture for these companies, however many within the respective organizations have a great deal of faith in NFC technology, and with Isis having backing from credit card companies and some banks, they have even stepped up their integration timeline and may launch even earlier than next year.

Google Wallet

Not to be outdone, and with partnerships of its own, the recently launched Google Wallet is the search engine’s dive into a competing NFC-based mobile payment technology. Google Wallet uses the same NFC hardware, but instead pairs it with Google’s own proprietary smartphone application. Like Isis, Google Wallet has agreements with Visa, MasterCard American Express, and Discover. However, unlike Isis, Google’s carrier agreement is with Sprint and First Data only.

The major downfall for both Google Wallet and Isis is that there are simply not enough NFC-enabled handsets currently in the market to attain a strong adoption of the service; however Google’s recent purchase of Motorola has many industry leaders feeling very strongly that a rash of NFC-phones are coming soon.

Magneto

Taking a step away from NFC technology, there are several smaller mobile applications vying for preferred status among smartphone users, including an organization called Magneto, who sells an entire white-labeled ecommerce solution for online vendors. Magneto differs from Isis and Google Wallet in that customers are not able to use their smartphones to pay at the register, but they are given the option to buy from a vendor’s physical store, online through their computer, or through a mobile application using the Magneto infrastructure.

As of this writing, Magneto is only available for iPhone, but since the application is not dependent on a handset or a carrier, many smaller vendors can implement the entire ecommerce solution through Magneto for much less than they could if they were to install NFC readers in their businesses. Also, Magneto is available worldwide and able to be implemented in a very short time and with very little infrastructure commitment, making it very appealing for a small business owner who wants to offer customers a multitude of ways to pay for products.

Conclusion

Smartphones have changed our lives, and there is nothing to suggest that people will start resisting that change. As technological advances continue to give us faster smartphones and faster browsing, software applications will continue to grow to best utilize the provided hardware. Mobile payments are a relatively new concept for all of these three organizations and carriers, however market research and continuous customer interactions have ensured the stakeholders in these organizations that they want mobile payments via smartphone, and NFC or mobile payment options seem more than poised to make it happen.

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