In the battle to beat the iPad lets take a look at the Kindle Fire and weigh up its chances. Has it got the guts for glory?

Amazons seven-inch Kindle fire is more akin to the Blackberry Playbook than the iPad in size. In fact, it’s about the same size as a decent novel. No surprises there coming from Amazon, considering they now sell more ebooks than hardcovers.

Firstly consider the cost, at just £130 it is almost £220 pounds cheaper than the cheapest iPad. At that price there’s also far less concern about loosing it, sitting on it, spreading jam on it or getting mugged for it. That makes it affordable to a much bigger audience.

Then there’s the operating system: Running Android it’s sharing a platform with the majority of the smart phone market. That should let users hook into the Android store and benefit from 1000’s of apps. Another reason, in my view, why the Playbook is a less attractive device and the Kindle Fire is more of a threat to Apple.

The device itself is basic, with 8GB of storage, a 7” display and no onboard camera, microphone or 3G connectivity. You certainly get what you pay for, but if your looking for an eReader that taps into the Amazon marketplace and gives you access to the Android app store, then you should be content to put up with a lower spec device than the iPad.

If anything is going to give Apple a run for its money, it has to be this. Windows have failed to make any kind of meaningful impression and the much-hyped Playbook is very disappointing in my opinion. A device like the Kindle Fire could be perfect for turning the masses onto tablets, and could even see the balance of power edge away from Apple. Maybe.

It’s looking unlikely that we will see this device launched in the UK before Christmas, which is a shame, as I can think of a few people, my parents and children included, whom this device would be perfect for. If you happen to be in the States you can grab one on 15th November or thereabouts.

Previously, on the Critical Path….

Everything I ever wrote on mobile, or a really specific article on Android vs iOS and 101 ways to count market share.

It’s Thursday morning, 0600 and I’m on my way to work. I’m probably not as perky as I could be, despite having a nice cup of tea for company. General outlook for the day is good, but my thought for the day is another matter:  I’m wondering, what the hell is digital marketing?

Marketing has always been about communication, regardless of the strategy. Sometimes that’s sneaky-phsyco-spooky communication marketing that makes your dream of a new pair of Nikes’ and sometimes that’s shitty junk mail on your doormat style marketing.  Whatever you think about those efforts to make you fall deeply in love with brand X, they are plain and simple marketing and plain and simple marketing is communication. Or am I missing the point?

The first “Digital” marketing project I worked on was way back in the days when they used acoustic couplers on phone handsets to link modems to the WWW. I vividly remember several pitches where nothing worked and I was left entertaining the room while the tech-heads searched for a longer bit of string. It certainly wasn’t digital then, and it was probably only marketing in the loosest sense of the term. Actually, back in those days anything online was like showing fire to cavemen – total shock and awe. But I digress….

Sometime after that we all started getting email. Then we started email marketing, or spamming as the cognoscenti often call it. It still wasn’t “digital”, but it was marketing. A few years later things really started to hot up, when some donut at Macromedia invented Flash. In one fell swoop we doomed ourselves to years of zero usability self-indulgent dross. But man, it was cool dross. Despite that coolness, we still weren’t called digital marketers (although I did have a great Casio digital watch that told the time in 5 countries and 3 languages….)

Around about that time I remember a brief, and quite successful run at a new world order. A group of marketers and techies so smart, so savvy, and so bloomin awesome became “New Media” experts. I was so “New Media”, right down to my CD-Rom’s but I still wasn’t digital.

“New Media” is now normal-everyday-media and those of us that fancy ourselves as a bit too cool for school are very definitely taking up the “Digital Marketing” moniker and wearing it with pride. But, going back to my original question, “What the hell is digital marketing?” More importantly, how long before it’s so retro that none of my staff have heard of it (I have a special rule, if you are too young to have heard of something I joke about you have to laugh politely and secretly Wikki it or lose you job…..I think that’s fair).

You would have needed to be deep in hiding for a very long time to have missed the latest technology. Everywhere you look everything is digital. Someone bought me a book last week and I found myself turning it over in my hands, subconsciously trying to work out what to do with it. I used to love books, but don’t they come on Kindles these days? My kids have never known a world without iPhones. They assimilate technology into their lives without pause for thought while taking it all for granted.

So why are we using the term “Digital” to describe what we do?  Surely “Digital” is about ready to go the same way as “New Media” and become “Normal”. Then again, we are marketers, and so perhaps it is natural we search out new and exciting brand names for ourselves.

Thanks for reading Phillipjenkins.co.uk, A blog about normal marketing

Previously on the Critical Path

Digital Marketing engagement strategies

Digital Marketing skills and qualifications

It is understood and well documented that Google likes social signals. These provide evidence that the online community is talking about your brand, sharing your content and engaging with you in a meaningful fashion.

For many, building these is seen as the job of the SEO or the social networking manager.  However, I believe that coaching your business to engage in a meaningful way is a better long-term strategy for success.

Broadcasting the latest news about your business isn’t going to work unless your lucky enough to be a super brand like Apple or Nike. That means you need to reach out and engage with your customers, and that engagement needs to be targeted and meaningful. Your business probably works across multiple verticals, each with it’s own interest groups. Your engagement strategy should be personalised and tailored for each of these groups, ideally by a person and not a corporate logo.  Don’t try to second guess your audience or assume that Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the only places people exchange news and views.

Stop and sense check your thoughts. Are people actually interested in what you’re planning to say? Look for similar groups and people, coach your spokesperson to follow them and engage with them and become a valid member of their communities. It’s here that a well-coached subject matter expert will beat a marketer every time. We are talking about communication. Conversation. This is nothing new and the best people to take part are the most informed.

“Stop and sense check your strategy. Are people actually interested in what you’re planning to say?”

When you understand what makes these communities tick, start creating solid, engaging content for them. This isn’t about trying to game Google, this is about real people and real value. I think it is reasonable to work around a theme focused on your brands keywords, but forget about filling pages with old school SEO style copy. You need an editorial approach to build copy that people will genuinely want to read and link to. Info graphics, videos and industry insights all provide added value, so be prepared to give something away to get something back.

Content can come in many ways and doesn’t necessarily need to be on your website. Consider offering solutions to the many questions posted on linked-in groups for example. Find a good tool to monitor Twitter and look out for phrases or #Tags around your area of interest. Remember, you don’t walk up to strangers in the pub and offer them your products; you talk to them about whippet racing, or whatever. When they realise your not a nutter the chances area they will be happy to discuss your business.

As your online circle of influence builds you will become more trusted and people will be more likely to link to your content though re-tweets, likes or discussion groups.

It’s important to have on-going analytics in place to understand when you are getting it right, and where you can improve. As you grow your network the social signals will grow with you. Google will begin to see you as the authority you are and will rank results from your website accordingly. This isn’t a once only process; this needs to be a state of mind that becomes pervasive in your business. It is an extension of your communications strategy and should be thought of as such.

Building social signals isn’t about smoke and mirrors; it’s about creating communities, sharing great content and taking part in discussions with like-minded people. Like anything digital, if you build a solid, well-researched strategy and take a focused, iterative approach and you should be rewarded with higher search rankings and more engaged customers.

“We are talking about communication. Conversation. This is nothing new and the best people to take part are the most informed.”

Previously on the Critical Path…….

Kick-ass digital engagement strategies, everything you needed to know but were too afraid to ask

Content strategy and linkbuilding: It does what it says on the tin

It would seem we all have more in common than just our jobs, as our choice of computer and favoured browser seem strangely similar too. I noticed last night that on average 67% of traffic to my blog was from Apple devices as opposed to just 30% on Windows. The popularity of iOS certainly helps to swing the balance here. When you merge the two operating systems in use from Apple together, the dominance really become apparent.

I can’t say I am particularly surprised at this. I work in Covent Garden in London and often eat in Soho, home of many creative agencies (and a number of other “creative” industries). It is rare to see anything other than Apple on display here. In fact, when I was in Starbucks in Brewer Street yesterday, almost every table had a MacBook of some description on show.

Browser choices also surprised me and again it was an Apple product on top with 47% of traffic from Safari. I would have expected Firefox to be closer to the top slot here. With its arsenal of plugins it is a digital marketers dream. However, it trailed in behind Chrome responsible for just 17% of traffic.

I suppose it’s no surprise to see this kind of dominance from Apple, considering their long association with creativity, advertising and online development. I’m typing this post on a MacBook and using an iPhone to provide a wifi hotspot (probably for the entire train). What does surprise me is how quickly Microsoft seems to have lost dominance in the market place. It’s clear they are still the driving force in business, but how long before CEO’s start demanding Apple products on their desk, rather than the super uninspiring DELL’s and IBM currently in favour with CTO’s the world over?

Previously, on The Critical Path…..

Android vs iOS – the battle for market share

If your wondering where to start, or considering building an iPhone app to promote your organisation, these 10 key steps will help you get started. Often the hardest thing is figuring out where to begin and the pitfalls your going to want to avoid. Find your purpose, understand how to add value, keep it simple and the path will be considerably smoother.

More Critical Path ideas on Mobile, apps and digital marketing:

Mobile app building tools

Android vs iOS

One of my own apps, the No.1 rated free business apps (for a while)

Digital engagement strategies

You may think the question completely irrelevant, but the fact is that many potential employers are now asking, “what qualifies you to work in digital marketing?”

Although online has been around for sometime, the digital marketing professional, as we know them today, is a relatively new beast. Part uber geek, part ultimate marketer, these are the people bringing creative, content and branding to us with technology led solutions. So where have these people come from, and what gives them the right to call themselves digital marketers?

For my own part I started studying design before the days of the Internet. I followed many of my peers into the early days of web design, and ultimately, some years later, got an MSc degree in information systems. That knowledge allowed me to understand the databases, programming languages and usability that went into building successful eCommerce solutions. It enabled me to look objectively at digital solutions, to see past the cool designs and answer the pertinent question:  “Is the solution fit to deliver it’s intended payload?”

I have interviewed people for digital jobs in Japan, Singapore and the U.K. this year and feel I have seen a good cross section of people looking for digital roles. These digital professionals have fallen broadly into two camps:

Uber Geek

The uber geek has spent way too many nights in his/her bedroom hacking away at code, building websites and perhaps even apps. They only really come to life when you start talking about the jackrabbit content repository behind the enterprise level CMS and the bag of restful web services you can call into play to serve up content to your latest app.

I love uber geeks and there are many occasions when I would be happy to consider myself one.

Ultimate Marketer

The ultimate marketer has served at the frontline: hacking email templates, haggling display costs and stressing out the night before a big event. They may well be CIPD qualified and know and accept the time honoured marketing team hierarchy. They could have been “the one” team member who could actually make sense of the web analytics report, or the person who worked with the agency to build the new website. Either way, they have tasted the good (digital) life and want more.

The ultimate marketer is the foundation of our industry and I feel as closely affiliated to them as I do to the uber geek.

More alarmingly, There also seems to be an increasing number of people who have a passion for facebook who feel that qualifies them as social media experts and grants them membership to the digital camp.

Digital Marketer

For me, the ideal candidate is an integrated marketing professional without boarders or distinctions. It is essential they understand the full marketing mix and appreciate that digital is just one aspect of that.

On the technical front they should be able to hold their own with web developers, but not necessarily be one themselves. They need to be able to cut through sales talk and see the values of a solution (CMS, SEO, PPC, Social, Email, etc.), both for the technical and marketing benefits it will bring.

They must be completely at home working in digital and should be able to prove this with reference to both work achievements and a personal online presence. But most importantly they should appreciate that as marketers we bring value to a business by communicating with relevant people in an appropriate manner, and not by broadcasting on the cool channel of the day.

I have yet to meet anyone qualified (in the academic sense), to be a digital marketer. However, what is exciting it that I am seeing more blended candidates. Primarily mainstream marketers who are smart and savvy and have assimilated the skills required for digital life.

Marketing has changed for the better but we have been slow to keep pace with the skills required to leverage this to our advantage. I don’t see the future as being split between online and offline, I see it as one entity with content as king. It’s the message that’s critical, get that right and everything else should fall into place.

For those of us involved in business in China, news is out that Baidu, the Chinese search giant with 80% traffic share have partnered with Bing to provide the results for English language searches.

“Baidu has about 80 percent of the search market in China — a nation with almost half a billion Internet users and still only about 30 percent penetration — after Google left mainland China in a high-profile fallout with Beijing over censorship.” Jason Subler and Georgina Prodhan / HUFF POST TECH

Up until now most brands with an interest in SEO in China have been able to rely on the presence of Google.co.hk to provide English results. However, with a big name alternative like Bing attached to Baidu and the obvious dislike of Google by the government that could well be set to change.

Most of my efforts in China have been focused on providing good, Chinese language websites. The common mistake people seem to make is to forget about pages addresses and meta data and end up with sites that look Chinese to the user but English to the search engines. To be honest, displaying page addresses in Chinese was a major CMS victory for the development team and is something none of our direct competitors have managed to pull off yet. That said, it is just the beginning of a long journey.

Rightly or wrongly I have largely ignored Bing until now, but I guess this is the excuse I have been waiting for. On a positive note that means with the work on Yahoo for Japan, Bing for China, and the Google preference around the rest of the world I will at least have a broad knowledge base on all the key search engines.

Being the guy responsible for the digital marketing strategy I will be looking to leverage whatever competitive advantage I can from this knowledge. Next stop, social media.

Also Read:

For Digital Marketers, strategists, engagement supremo’s and anyone else vaguely interested:  here’s a post on web 2.0 in China with an overview of the key Chinese social media channels.

It’s the weekend so here’s a quick weekend post on the new LinkedIn app.

First things first: It’s an app, it’s for iOS so it lives in the iTunes store. Pretty simple, so far and so simple to find I wont even bore you with the link. It’s also free, so there is no need to worry about app to cash value ratio calculations. Worst-case scenario you can just delete it and pretend you were never foolish enough to download it in the first place.

Once it’s downloaded, fire it up, enter you LinkedIn username and password (or register for an account if for some bizarre reason you haven’t already and your good to go.

The load screen does a little song and dance, which serves no purpose other than to allow the developer to brag to his mates in the pub about the great song and dance load screen he made for no apparent reason. That fanfare sets the scene and presents you with four key options.

Updates: Does what it says on the tin and provides you with a flow of your LinkedIn updates.

You: All your personal information, recent activity and connections.

Groups & More: A window into all of your groups.

Inbox: Errm, your inbox.

The UI is really well designed and thought out and all four sections are well designed and deliver just what you would expect. The only issue I had was how to get back a level (you press the arrow at the top of the screen). This really is a great example of an app well done, and a pleasant surprise among a sea of mediocre user interfaces and dubious usefulness out there.

With over 425’000 apps now available to download it would be nice to see some control mechanism that rewarded quality and pushed apps like this to the top of the pile. You could argue that the ratings systems does this organically, but in my experience ratings are often no more than bitchy remarks by rival developers / businesses and do little to give a true indication of quality.

This is a great app. If your still using LinkedIn, and have an iOS device then you should probably stop reading and download it now. When you have done that, you can read my post about maximising your LinkedIn profile and turn yourself into a kick-ass, digital savvy, networked professional. While your at it look me up and Link in to me. Im always keen to connect and share ideas, thoughts and recommendations.

I was recently helping a friend make the all-important jump from PC land to MacWorld when she asked, “What about PowerPoint?” Like me she is a marketing professional, and like me she spends a significant percentage of her time presenting stuff.

It was a fair question, and for once I was at a loss for a quick and snappy answer. I used PowerPoint full time on my Mac until the iPad, then in the early days before Keynote for the iPad was .pptx compatible I moved to Keynote. This allowed me to work across both devices seamlessly. Whilst there are still a number of issues exporting Keynote presentations into PowerPoint, it is now at least possible.

So which presentation platform rules the roost?

Opening Moves
On opening you are offered a selection of templates (Theme Chooser and PowerPoint Presentation Gallery) from both platforms, there isn’t a lot to choose between them and both options cater for the professional, creative and quirky among us. At a pinch I would push Keynote just ahead of PowerPoint, although the later does allow you to select from a number of colour pallets and easily open recent presentations.

Starting Work
Once you have selected the theme both products present an opening slide and prompt for your presentation title. Keynote is a no fuss full screen layout, which is easy to manage, even on my small MacBook Air. PowerPoint launches you into a split screen (sorter, notes, presentation) option, which can seem more confusing. That said, it is simple to adjust the view on both products to produce a similar user experience.

Getting Creative
Inserting an image is straight forwards with PowerPoint, just click on the image icon in the presentation template or from the file menu click insert / Photo. Keynote is less intuitive and will leave you scratching your head looking for a sign. You can use the media browser from the tool bar and drag in your image or the very non-intuitive Insert / Choose file menu option.

Both tools allow a reasonable amount of creativity with text manipulation, shapes, backgrounds and colours with Keynote also providing some lovely 3d Graphs. However, if you are coming to Keynote from PowerPoint you will get frustrated. Even something trivial like removing a bullet can seem impossible without significant exploration. That said, you could achieve more or less anything that takes your fancy, you just need the patience to learn how to use the tool. Once you take the pain and learn how to do things Keynotes way life gets much easier. Coming at it the other way should cause few problems as the majority of PowerPoint menu items are fairly self-explanatory and deal with concepts already well understood.

Animation
Again, both products handle animation well but PowerPoint just feels more intuitive. It does have more options available, which to some could be a disadvantage but it delivers complex animations without huge effort.

The big pitch
Both products handle rehearsing and recording presentations well and here I would turn to Keynote if given a choice, simply because it is so simple.

Summary
If you were to score both products across all areas, and assuming you could find someone without exposure to either MS Office or Apple products to run the tests (surely they don’t exist?) I think PowerPoint would come out on top, but narrowly. Keynote shouldn’t be considered to be a poor cousin, it does everything you need it to, and quite capably at that. It’s just not quite so intuitively in some areas.

The big decider though is cost. The difference in price is quite simply astronomical. PowerPoint cannot justify the extra cost for the difference in functionality.

Read More

I also wrote this post about Pages vs Word some time ago. Surprisingly it is one of the most visited pages on my blog!

If your wondering where to start, or considering a review of your digital marketing strategy these 5 key steps will help you get started. Often the hardest thing is figuring out what your purpose is and where you want to go. Stick to the fundamentals though and you can’t go wrong.