webOS gets a promo code system

Promo codes have made setting up reviewers with iPhone apps a snap. But if a reviewer wants to try a webOS or Android app, it gets complicated. For webOS, I ended up reimbursing reviewers via PayPal. Yuck. Android isn't much better as I have to send them a apk file for the application they wish to install. Better, but not great.

I just heard today that there is a new promo code system for the webOS that grants up to 1,000 promo codes per build! Woot! That's far superior than the 50 codes Apple grants which expire after 28 days.

Here's an article on it over at MobileCrunch.

According to the article, the big downside is the location of the redeem field -- right on the buy screen. Buyers see that there is a possibility of entering a promo code to get the app for free and wonder why they don't have a promo code. They leave the screen to go investigate and may never make it back! I agree with the writer -- move the field to some inconspicuous location in the store.

There hasn't been a lot of development action for webOS lately -- at least not among my clients. I really hope webOS can get cooking again under HP. It's still my favorite smartphone platform.

Using Storify to tell your app's story

Storify has opened up for a public beta and I just used it to publish my first story: "Using the iPhone Inbox as a Self-Reminder System".

Storify is another step in self-publishing your own stories -- connecting with people through social media and by-passing traditional media channels.

With Storify, you can consolidate a variety of resources about a story to help readers contextualize it. Storify will aggregate almost everything into your story: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

I found it to be extremely easy to use, but they were short on instructions. I felt like I was pretty much on my own to figure out how to format a story. I had to click on Preview a number of times to make sure the formatting was right. It was super easy, though, to drag and drop information into your story. You'll see in the story I published that I dragged and dropped a YouTube video about MailTones right at the end of the story.

It integrates wonderfully with Twitter. Sometimes a story will have so many Tweets that it can be hard to put them into perspective. With Storify, you can drag and drop relevant tweets into your story to put them into their proper context within the story. 

I'm just learning how to use it and will be creating more context-rich stories to really put it through its paces. I'd be interested in learning how you use it to promote your business or apps! Share!

3 New Ways to Get Your App Noticed

GigaOM's JKontheRun blog posted on 3 new ways to get your app noticed. We all know the struggle of standing out in a crowd of, literally, millions of apps. The three tangible ways the article refers to are Appolicious, which helps people discover apps by using what they call "social graphs" plus an algorithmic search and recommendation engine, Appsfire, which personalizes apps in an app stream like Pandora has done for music, and Appboy, which now lets users "check in" when they open an app to let their friends know about the apps they like and use -- Foursquare style.

Robert Scoble, in response to the post, said, "You forgot the most important way: to get Apple to feature your app. That gets you more users than anything any of these other sites can do. Now, all is NOT lost, though, because if you get everyone else to feature your app, and get some bloggers to say it’s the best thing since sliced bread, then the chances that Apple will feature it go way up."

The problem is there aren't that many featured spots Apple or Google can deliver, but he's right that if your app gets publicized on some top blogs, the gangs at Apple or Google will likely notice it and it will improve your odds of getting featured. But smart developers can't necessarily just bank on this hope -- because there's no guarantees and even if you get featured, it's a short lived spike you'll experience. Smart developers should try a number of avenues to reaching potential users, including Appolicious, Appsfire and Appboy -- and don't forget YouTube videos.

Meet the Android Millionaires

Electric Pig posted a good article with some tips on how to succeed as a developer of Android apps.

1. Make it great


It might sound simple, but quality really matters in the Android market. A dearth of second-rate apps means the great ones really stand out. Android owners will give everything from simple games to handy utilities and even swift iOS ports the time of day, so long as they’re worth the asking price. Make it great, price it sensibly and you’ll see there are greater opportunities for cut-through than in other mobile markets.



2. Sell it in the Android Market

Many Android developers still hawk their wares outside Google’s official Android Market, but that’s a mistake. Recent security scares, and an enormous pace of growth mean the Android Market’s being seen as the only trusted destination. Improvements by Google that let users discover apps more easily will help you out too, and it’s no longer a race to the bottom. Price your app sensibly, and as long as it conforms to point 1 above, you’ll be on the right track.



3. Don’t be cynical

Being motivated by profit isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just don’t try to cash in too obviously. There are already several I Am Rich apps on the Android Market going for anywhere between $99 and $199, none of which appear to have sold any at all. Don’t be that guy, create something worthwhile and have faith in your customers. If you build it, they will come… and pay.



4. Invest in Android now

“Android was always an afterthought,” Will Moore tells us. “The business world wanted iOS; Once an app had been made for iOS, we often made it work for Android too, but it wasn’t the starting point for any project.” As these high achievers indicate however, that’s about to change forever. “Sadly, Android is still seen as the domain of geeks, but I don’t think it will be long before this changes. With Android appearing in everything from fridges to cars, as well as mobiles, the world will be using Android without even knowing it…Android is on the tipping point of big brand adoption.”

Getting Your App Reviewed

Mobile Orchard published a nice post by Jim Bernard on how to get your app published. It's worth a read, and lines up with my own experience. Here's a quick summary, but go over and view the full article:

1. Provide complete information. Every email, website, video should include basic information such as the app name, your contact information, company name, and link to the app store page.
2. Start with a great description. Lead your inquiry letter with a precise description of what your application does, what segment it belongs in (games, productivity, etc.) and why it is unique or interesting. 
3. Include promotion code. Reviewers want a promotion code with your request for coverage.
4. Make a great video. A short video that shows your application in action is perhaps one of your best selling tools.
5. Put your best app forward. If you canʼt take time to polish your application, why should a reviewer take time to provide feedback and encouragement?

Think Global

Other than Winning Rules for smartphone app developers, I write a column for TK Magazine (which I founded and published until a year or so ago) -- also called Winning Rules. That column just focuses on winning rules for small business owners, since TK is Topeka's business magazine. The Spring 2011 issue is out! My column is on page 60 and the rule this time is "Think Global!". I tell the story of Amy Rose Herrick and how she dreamed beyond the borders of Topeka and just opened a branch of her financial planning company in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. What a view she has! The column ends with a Mark Twain quote she had painted on her bedroom wall:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Charlie Sheen publicist quits

In the category of "You couldn't pay me enough", the poor sap who served as Charlie Sheen publicist has politely quit.

I'm so glad to have decent human beings for clients. Then again, if you sign up to be a Hollywood publicist, you've got to be prepared to handle narcissistic lunatics like Sheen.

I've not been sure whether I pity his father or his publicist more. I probably lean to the publicist because Martin Sheen has to take some responsibility for the brat he raised. Then again, the publicist can (and has) quit! Martin is kind of stuck with the kid to a certain degree.

Combining Keywords in App Store Descriptions

Someone asked on a developer's forum the following question:

"Does anyone know if the App store successfully combines keywords? For instance, if I have these keywords: "project, tracking, widgets" and someone searches for "Project tracking" will my App appear? Should I be wasting space with: project, tracking, project tracking, widgets?"

I was glad to see the question and hoped someone would answer because it's one that I wasn't sure about myself. Fortunately, someone answered. Elia Freeman replied:

"You do not need spaces and it does combine keywords. Project,tracking will show your app in searches for project, tracking and project tracking. It will not, however, show your keyword if the search term is project track. I also wanted to comment that Apple uses the app name for searches also, splitting it up into keywords automatically. So the name Gobble for Project Tracking, excluding any other keywords, would find you for Gobble, project, tracking, project tracking and any other combination of those three words."

Playing Nice with Reporters

Way back when I was learning the ropes of PR, my ninny of a boss said we shouldn't care about what reporters think in response to our incessant "nagging" -- they, after all, don't pay our bills. Fortunately I ignored her and treated the journalists that I dealt with as if they were, in fact, my paying clients. I sought to give them the information they wanted -- when and how they wanted it. And before long I was getting calls from other PR agencies trying to recruit me because local journalists told them I was among the best at media relations.

So here are some tips to dealing with your friends on the other side of the Internet:

• Respect their beat. Research what kind of stories the reporter typically covers and either tailor your "pitch" appropriately to their beat or don't bother them at all.
• Help build the story with compelling media. App developers, that means screen shots, app icons and links to videos demonstrating how your apps work in the real world. Which leads to #3...
• Keep attachments to a bare minimum. Set up a Media page on your website and include links to press releases, images and videos that they can access when they want them rather than clogging up their inbox with files they may not want or need.
• Speaking of media, print media will have different requirements than online media. That little low-res screen shot on your website may reproduce fine in a blog but will be very grainy when published in a glossy magazine. If you're contacting print media, be prepared to have higher res images available.
• Don't forget to include your contact info. I forgot this important little 4-line section at the end of one email and was on the receiving end of a scolding because the reporter had to figure out how to get in touch with me.

A nice day for referrals

Ok, I'm going to brag. I hate to do it because it's not my way...but is it really bragging if I'm just reposting the comments of others?

I got this nice referral comment from Joel Evans: I can speak to Kevin's approach as a PR person since I was on the receiving end as the Chief Geek and founder of Geek.com, and now a blogger at ZDNet. He definitely has a unique way about him and has gotten myself and many others to cover apps that we never thought we would.

And yesterday in an iPhone developers forum, somebody was asking for leads on good PR freelancers and Ken Ballenger simply said: Kevin's Talon PR is awesome!

Thanks for the kind words of both Joel and Ken. I try hard to provide a good service both for my clients and those who I want to cover my clients in their news coverage or blog posts. It's a nice relationship when I can help connect those who cover mobile apps with good information from those who produce them.

Mobile app puts a university campus in your hand

From Ragan.com:

“We all foresaw mobile technology really beginning to run the world,” Bucy says. Unlike other universities, he says, Texas Tech’s app isn’t managed by the IT department. “We want this to be run by the students, because it’s an app for the students,” says Bucy, himself a graduate student.

Buy iPad, Cancel Newspaper

Interesting post at Fortune about a survey by Missouri School of Journalism's survey of 1,609 iPad owners:

 

• Using the iPad to follow breaking news reports and current events is the most popular use for the device, with 84.4% of respondents saying this is one of their main uses.
• More than three quarters (78.6%) of the users spent at least 30 minutes during a typical day consuming news on their iPad.
• Nearly half (48.9%) of the respondents said they spent an hour or more during a typical day consuming news on their iPad.
• Among the 931 respondents who indicated that they currently subscribe to print newspapers, there is a statistically significant, moderately strong, positive correlation between iPad news consumption and the likelihood of canceling their print subscriptions. (emphasis ours)
• For example, more than half (58.1%) of the respondents who subscribe to printed newspapers and use their iPad at least an hour a day for news said they are very likely to cancel their print subscriptions within the next six months.
• More than three out of 10 (30.6%) respondents indicated that they do not subscribe to printed newspapers, with another one out of 10 (10.7%) saying that they had already canceled their subscriptions to printed newspapers and switched to reading digital newspapers on their iPad.

Wow...as if the Internet wasn't the first nail in the coffin of the newspaper industry (print edition), but tablets like the iPad give us even less reason to flip through big floppy print pages. It's been tough going for awhile...what kind of business model can be successful when you charge for printed content but give away the same content online for free?

The demand for content is out there in high numbers, but the willingness to pay for something so readily available for free puts newspapers in a precarious position.

Will we have to stop calling them "online newspaper"? If most people read their news online or on tablets, they may need to rename their industry.

Beware of Business After Basketball

Last week, after a long day of work followed by being a taxi cab service for the kids followed by me spending an hour in my role as assistant coach to a basketball team of 9 year olds -- I held a conference call with prospective clients in Singapore. Don't, repeat, don't, ever do that.

I was not sharp. I was dull.

My throat got dry and I couldn't talk.

And they no longer reply to my emails. It doesn't matter that I have proven results (it's MY client that was positioned in the top 5 selling iPad apps of 2010, along with Apple's 3 apps and Angry Birds, thank you very much) -- but I was raspy and not overly articulate and that probably sealed my doom.

This is where international business gets tricky for me. I've got clients in the UK and Russia, but they're lovely people who never want to talk on the phone so email is grand. For those who like conference calls, it's going to require me to somehow live a full life during the day and still somehow present myself as credible when they want to talk at their 10 in the morning and my 9 at night.

And I won't forget the bottled water next time either! I'm going to avoid the situation though because, let's face it, I'm not a night person. Don't judge me when I'm braindead after yelling at 9 year olds who can't make a simple unguarded layup for Pete's sake!

Probably one of my favorite commercials ever...

So clever and well done. Good use of a classic tune to tie it together with the point of their ad. Kudos!

Thou Shalt Not Facebook

Thought this was interesting.

"The Rev. Cedric Miller says much of his recent marital counseling has included infidelity stemming from the social-network website."

Probably online porn is another problem for his parisoners. I can see where Facebook is a problem -- mostly because people get sucked into it and it slowly eats away their life. But also I'm sure old flames are rekindled so to speak. I've found old friends on Facebook that I haven't seen for 20 years -- but no ex-girlfriends.

I liked the comment following the news post: "Facebook doesn't cause adultery - People cause adultery."

Why blog?

Sometimes I get in a blogging funk. Heck, just look at how often I've been posting to this thing! Sometimes I blog in a flurry, and then I ignore it for awhile. Sometimes I wonder why bother -- is there anybody out there?

Well, of course there are. Last night someone responded to a critique of the movie Happy Feet I wrote years ago on another of my blogs (a blog I haven't posted to since 2007!). That one little movie review occasionally inspires people to pop in to tell me how moronic my views were. And it proves that people do find you and are listening!

Today I saw this nice post on reasons to post -- even IF no one is listening to you. Here are my favorites:

1. Search engine benefits. This may be the most obvious business benefit of blogging. Search engines give preference to websites that have fresh, relevant content. HubSpot research shows that sites with blogs get 55 percent more traffic than sites without blogs—even if there are no readers! 

3. Infinite search life. A few weeks ago I received a call from a potential new customer in the Middle East looking to me as a possible marketing consultant. I had to wonder how in the world they found me! Turns out they were looking for somebody who could help explain where the future of social media was going, and when they entered this into Google, a blog post I wrote a year ago popped up! Your content keeps working for you month after month! 

8. PR. Blog posts have the opportunity for massive reach. When one of my posts gets picked up by an aggregation service, my message has a chance to be heard by hundreds of thousands of people. That opportunity would not occur with a press release or status update. 

Making Money with Mobile Apps

Computerworld has a good article on the challenges and how-tos of making money with mobile apps. Since so much of my business is helping mobile app developers make money of them (by getting as much publicity as possible for their apps), I thought I would share this great article on my blog.

It is useful in that it discusses the three models of making money (monetizing) mobile apps: freemium (giving away a less functional version to entice people to pony up for a more feature-rich version); service-and-subscription model (providing a reader for instance, then selling the content on a montly basis); ad-funded model (free version with ads, or pay for a version that is ad-free); pay-for-product (sold!).

The article mainly lacks in how you actually make your app stand out in such a crowded marketplace. What advertising to use, what forms of social media, how to maximize PR (news and reviews), etc.

From the PR perspective, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to cut through the clutter of others asking writers to do the same thing I'm asking them to do -- namely, write about my clients' apps. So I'm getting as much as I can and then helping companies to distinguish themselves in the app store with keywords, well-written copy, and managing social media.

Counting ticks on Twitter

I've said it before, but I'm not much into Twitter. It's a huge deal and shouldn't be ignored as part of a marketing communications strategy, but I've always wondered how much impact a tweet I make might have.

Let's say I have 1,000 followers. If I tweet something, not all of those thousand people will see it. It will likely scroll off their main Twitter page before they see it and how many dig deeper than the first page -- especially if they follow a large number of people? Of those who see it, a chunk of them won't care about it, and of those who may care about it, not many will probably click on a link to explore further.

In an article I saw on Ragan, Katie Paine said "how many of your followers really respond to anything you put out there? I figure it's only 10 or 20 out of the 330,000 people I allegedly 'reach' according to most influence analyzers."

To be effective, you not only need to increase your followers to increase your odds, but you also have to build a base of "quality" followers to target with your tweets. Be sure you are including your Twitter address on your website, forum posts and anywhere else where people who are most interested in what you have to say are hanging out.

BookLover - Great App for Bibliophiles

How Real Are Your Facebook Fans?

There are businesses that help your small business set up a Facebook Fan Page and then invite everyone they know to become a fan of it. I get these requests from two different such companies all the time -- inviting me to "like" a company that has hired them to do just that. But I've never heard of the companies, and sometimes those companies are local retailers in far distant lands!

It never hurts to have too many fans, but if you're judging the success of your fan page by the number of people who like your page and those people don't REALLY like your page (and therefore don't engage you at all or could possibly become a customer) then what's the point?

I'd rather target who I'm inviting -- get real fans who will engage you on your Facebook page and share with others that they really like it. Judge your page more on active users and posts rather than purely on number of fans.