Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Bill Seibel, Founder and CEO of Mobiquity (Part 4)

SM: Let’s go to a higher level industry state of the union scenario. In your work, would it be fair to say this whole mobile interface of enterprise app layer is largely missing right now?

BS: Yes, but I think it’s also fair to say, if you would ask most CIOs now, they wouldn’t realize that. With many of the situations that we get into, there’s a belief that the infrastructures are already there and the APIs are already there and all you need to do is to connect into them. Very often, there are huge chunks of what they need missing or the APIs aren’t built yet to access it, or they’re trying to redefine, trying to transform the way they’re doing business. They’re going to use some of the innovative capabilities of mobile because they’re transforming the way they do business. So, it changes the APIs or creates a need for a major change to what they’re legacy systems are or do. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Bill Seibel, Founder and CEO of Mobiquity (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I’m trying to understand what are the customers trying to accomplish. You’re doing a sales training application. So, they’re trying to deploy sales training on the iPad?

Lori Cohen: No. Basically, we spent a lot of time with their sales force to understand what a-day-in-the-life is like. What do they do? How do they spend their time? How can mobility help them in what they do, save them time and make them more productive? We didn’t come in with a preconceived notion of what they needed. We did interviews in the field with managers, with the sales force to get a sense of what they did and how we could help. Then we visualized how mobility could make them more effective and built a day-in-the-life scenario that included applications that would enable them to do their work more efficiently. So, everything from e-expenses, when you meet with a doctor, which they do often, and they never submit their expenses because it takes time out of their days. There’s an application for e-expenses where you can take a picture of the receipt and it gets formatted. You add a note, whom you met with, and it gets queued up. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Bill Seibel, Founder and CEO of Mobiquity (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let me make an observation based on the two examples you’ve given so far, and we can go into other examples. Just on the two that you’ve cited, these are two large companies. In the first case, they are actually transacting business on the mobile device, right, based on the application that you’ve developed for them? This is an application that is directly taking orders and there’s actual commerce going on. Correct?

Bill Seibel: Correct. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Bill Seibel, Founder and CEO of Mobiquity (Part 1)

The convenience of mobile devices cannot be denied. People shop, work, and interact with friends through iPhones, BlackBerrys, or Androids, anywhere, at any time – hence the name of the company I’ll be discussing in this interview. Mobiquity has taken that idea of using mobile for business and run with it. The company, which has offices in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania, helps Fortune 1000 companies devise and implement mobile strategies to help them increase business and do business more effectively.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Bill. Why don’t you give us some context on Mobiquity, and we’ll dive into the conversation accordingly. >>>

The Effect of Facebook’s IPO

By guest author Daniel Burrus

Facebook’s IPO may well be the biggest and most hyped IPO ever … and for good reason. Many people would like to have bought Google or Apple when they first went public, but they didn’t. Now they’re kicking themselves for it. Unfortunately, you can’t go back and undo the past.

With Facebook’s rapid growth and social media dominance, all the people who regret not making those two moves in the past are going to want to buy Facebook. Additionally, all the people who are excited about social media and see it as a key part of the future are going to want to own part of Facebook, too.  >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Jim Ackerman, Founder of Ackermania Creative (Part 7)

SM: That’s exactly why I’m probing. How do you seed it? You have made a very, very clear case of how Orabrush has done a systematic job of creating content, building a channel, episode by episode, and then driving traffic into that channel through PPC advertising and driving subscriptions and so forth.

JA: If you really think about it, if you’re a musician trying to make it and become a big star, you have to realize that your music is your product and you have to treat it that way and recognize that you have to use the same mechanics and the mechanisms and the same opportunities to grow your YouTube channel and become that well-known performer as somebody would have to use your product. There aren’t really any shortcuts. You can opt out of something like pay-per-click, but if you do that, you’re going to have to ramp up the other things that we’ve been talking about. And even then, there’s going to be a limit to what can be done. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Jim Ackerman, Founder of Ackermania Creative (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: In principle I agree with you. But the point that you’re making is true, assuming that the people who come in through pay-per-click into the YouTube channel subscribe to the channel. If they don’t subscribe to the channel, then you have to bring them back over and over again.

Jim Ackerman: Correct. And the same thing is true with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can get them there, but they have to decide to become fans or friend you or follow you or whatever. So, yes, you’re exactly right in every case. You have to get those conversions and what I call mini-conversions. The mini-conversion is get them to take the next step in the buying process. It may not be to actually buy. It may be to just subscribe to your channel or Like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Jim Ackerman, Founder of Ackermania Creative (Part 5)

SM: How does a “YouTuber” push somebody else’s video through her channel?

JA: Just by liking it.

SM: So, whatever video anyone likes gets promoted to that person’s entire channel?

JA: Yes. Other people can see what your favorites are and what your likes are. And just like Facebook and other things, when you like something, it’s posted to your channel, and people can see what it is that you’re watching. >>>