This week, Paladin participated in the Heartland Mobile Council’s MobileU101 conference. As companies awake to “the year of mobile,” this event discussed strategic approaches to mobile marketing.  But is this really the time of mobile?

Motorola’s Dana Warszona, a panelist, said the mobile tipping point for Japan came about 4 years earlier compared to the US. She and her fellow panelists Andrew Koven, President, E-Commerce & Customer Experience, Steve Madden Shoes and Julie Krueger, Senior Vice President, eCommerce and Direct, OfficeMax felt that the US is just now at that point. They stressed that for retail companies, in particular, this is the time to pull the infrastructure together and to get smart on mobile and to do it quickly. Two-thirds of retailers are already doing mobile or in the midst of implementing it.

They advise moving away from simply the siloed campaign and to develop mobile as a part ongoing strategy and business operation. For consumers mCommerece is coming and it will mean that cash registers and credit cards will become obsolete. Krueger said that mobile will do away with kiosks and that the in-store experience will change radically. Warszona pointed to Best Buy as example of a company that was truly tying mobile into their business operations.

Koven said, “Mobile is the second coming and we’re [Steve Madden Shoes are] going to lead. We’re not going to wait and see.” 

How are these initiative being done? Krueger said that companies are not yet investing in additional human resources needed for mobile. Her current teams are adding it to their work load. But as the tide turns and mobile heats up, we will see companies ramp up the internal resources needed to manage this growth.

Staff, roles and ownership for mobile were reoccurring discussions during the conference. Which departments should own the mobile marketing strategy or execution? Will marketing generalist take mobile marketing on as an additional tool in their tool belt or is mobile best developed and managed by specialists? As Mobile Marketing emerges, we look forward to following this debate and the trends.  We would like your input on the topic. To weigh in, please take our poll - http://tinyurl.com/2bfolsr . We will be happy to share the results with you.

Here are a few recent articles and links related to mobile marketing:

 Mobile Marketers: Just Do Something

Chicago mobile event highlights opportunities of mobile marketing

Heartland Mobile Council

What Apple’s Acquisition of Siri Means for the Future of Mobile Search

Twitter Stream from the event

Over the last few months, several of our corporate clients have discussed significant changes in how they execute their marketing and communications efforts. Several are planning to drastically shift how they use their agency partners and will bring key projects in-house. Others are looking to outsource marketing and creative functions to concentrate on their core business. These clients differ across industries and size including global b-to-b manufactures, financial services firms, non-profit organizations and professional services firms. Because of the number of clients grappling with the same issues, we want to dive in further to find out if these are unique occurrences or growing trends.

We are turning to the marketing and communications community to hear from you. How are you executing marketing and communications efforts?  Take our poll and check back for results: TAKE POLL NOW

In the mean time, here are a few articles I have come across recently on related topics that may also be of value in this discussion. Feel free to share your comments, insights and opinions on the topic here and on our poll.

Tough economy forces marketers to reorganize http://tinyurl.com/yfjghjd

Small ad agencies go over big http://tinyurl.com/yg98soe

Down economy drives small businesses and EAG http://tinyurl.com/yghcv6h

Marketing Business Services in Down Economy http://tinyurl.com/yl8etfc

Avoid the temptation to cut marketing budgets http://tinyurl.com/yf9ahe2  

In-house SEO vs. SEO Provider http://tinyurl.com/yf87yr9

How you communicate can say as much about you as what you communicate.

For example, you may have noticed that people often fall into either one of two contact categories – e-mail or voicemail.  You would do well to find out which one that new client or manager prefers as soon as possible.  Your lines of communication will be that much more secure.

Yet when it comes to e-mail, voicemail, Instant Messaging and even Twitter, there are traps waiting for you.  The way you use these vehicles on a day-to-day basis can be particularly revealing.

Here are some best practices – reminders for some, news for other – to keep in mind.  Don’t worry – they’ve all been field tested:

• You say goodbye and I say hello – It’s a typical scenario: Someone sends you an Instant Message at exactly the wrong time.  Sure, it’s nice to get an unexpected missive from a friend once in a while.  But IM’s can arrive just when you don’t have time to engage with them.  And the sender doesn’t know when to get off.  If the IM conversation needs to go on for more than five or ten minutes, call.  And if someone writes that they’re in the middle of something, let them get to it.

• In cyberspace, everyone can hear you scream – Everyone can tell how you really feel when you dash off that e-mail/IM/Tweet response to something (or someone) that really bugs you.  Write the e-mail if you must, but save it as a draft and read it again later.  Better yet, delete it and start anew.  The ancillary to this is the e-mail written so quickly that it becomes the electronic variation of bad handwriting.  No one will know what it means, so it wastes everyone’s time and says “I’m too busy to care.”  Not a good message.  Take your time, use spell check and review before you send.

• It’s all personal – On a subliminal level, hearing your voice say that you can’t come to the phone right now tells me that you will get back to me.  Hearing your assistant or a “standard greeting” tell me you can’t come to the phone says something else entirely.  Seriously, is it that hard to set up a voicemail greeting using your voice?  Set it up once, keep it brief and you’ve demonstrated a personal touch that speaks well of you.

• Can we change the subject, please? – By now we’ve had e-mail long enough to know that in a long e-mail series, the topic will change.  So either stop replying and start anew or change the subject line to reflect your current topic.  Be specific in the subject line (e.g., “Statistics on sales for October”) rather than general (e.g., “Information requested”) to make it easier to scan and identify.  And like the IM conversations mentioned above, if the series threatens to go on for more four rounds, pick up the phone.

• “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” – Alexander Graham Bell had just spilled battery acid on himself when he made that first telephone call.  Not all of your voicemails are quite so urgent.  Don’t mark them as such unless it’s truly vital.  When every voicemail is special, then no voicemail is special.

I could go on but now it’s your turn.  What are your best practices?

Contributed by: Frank McGee
Writer, trainer, coach

Take the red pill.

In fact, take it now before you really need it.  That’s the lesson I’ve learned about networking.

In The Matrix, our hero is given a choice: take a blue pill and continue on with his life or take the red pill and see life as it really is.  Of course, he takes the red pill (wouldn’t be much of a movie if he didn’t), the veil is lifted and he becomes aware of things that were always there but never seen.

Lately I’ve begun to build on my own network of friends and professional colleagues, coaxing it to take form, and develop.  Actually, I’m helping it grow.  The network was always there; I just never saw it.  Then I took the red pill.

It was April 2006 when I was first asked to join a friend’s network through LinkedIn.  Sounded like fun and a good way to stay in touch with people.  But I rarely looked at it.  The next request came in October 2007.  I was flattered someone would ask me to join a network and, yeah, I felt hip.

But it wasn’t until this past February that I began to build my network in earnest.  I had to; my role had been eliminated and along with so many others folks I was in the market for a new position.

As so many at Paladin attest, you’ve got to get out and network.  This may seem rather obvious but it isn’t something all of us do when we’re employed.  Of course, some roles – from sales to marketing to politics – require networking and maintaining relationships to achieve their goals.  Networking within the organization was key to my last role.

Many job descriptions, however, do not ask you to stay in touch with people who don’t directly affect you or your work.

Because so many people are new to this networking gig, it seemed like a good idea to ask some friends from my network what they have learned along the way.   This list is by no means comprehensive, but it is road tested:

• Get out of the house – My friend Buzz put it as a simple, Nike-esque rule: “You just gotta be out there!  Go out and go to things anytime you can.”

It’s okay, everybody’s doing it.  And by “it,” I mean looking for work.  Here’s the yin and the yang of it: We all know that this isn’t the best time in the history of humankind to be looking for work.  On the other hand, the stigma of being out of work isn’t what it used to be, not when so many people are in the same position.  There’s no shame in being unemployed but somehow it seems a little easier to say “I’m in transition” when the headlines are always talking about yet another round of lay offs.  Just ask all of those former headline writers.

• Don’t be so shy – Of course, once you’re out of the house you’ve got to meet people.  “People want to help,” as my friend Katherine put it, but don’t make it difficult for them.  Give them your personal marketing plan or your newly updated resume to review.  Suggest meeting for coffee so there’s an understanding that the meeting doesn’t have to last for hours.  (And note that just because you say “Let’s meet for coffee” doesn’t mean you need to drink coffee at every meeting – especially if you have several lined up in one day.  Trust me on this one.)

Job seekers and their friends might want to read this article in The New York Times that provides some suggestions for how to give and receive help.  “The most important corollary to this rule,” Katherine points out, “is to thank people for their time and respect their schedules.”

• Be prepared – It’s not just for Boy Scouts anymore.  “Never show up unprepared even for a quick networking meeting,” said Katherine.  “You have to do your research in advance, or you waste people’s time.”  This means knowing about your contact’s business and providing something for them to use (which can be as simple as meaningful article referrals, for example, suggests Leslie).

• Back to basics – It’s all about the prompt follow-up and the personalized, hand-written thank you notes.  Making sure to write down unique reminder information on business cards. (“No,” says Leslie, “you won’t remember who all those folks are when you’re sitting in front of your computer doing the follow-up.”)

• Don’t just do something, stand there – “A lot of people don’t know how to listen,” says Buzz.  It’s not that you just sit back and watch the show.  “If you ask somebody for help, shut up and listen!  Don’t ask for advice and then overwhelm someone with your expertise!”

Here’s a surprise: You’ve already started.  As I mentioned earlier, my network was always there.  Sure, it was a little fallow and needed some tending and weeding.  But at the risk of taking this gardening metaphor too far, let’s just say you’ve bought the land already; employed or not, you need to start tilling the soil.

At a meeting of job seekers I attended, one participant put the benefits of networking this way: “I’ve lived in Chicago for 20 years.  Now it seems like a small town.”

Take the red pill.

Contributed by: Frank McGee
Business writer, trainer, coach