ActiveAccess has partnered with Gas Buddy to provide our users with real-time local gas prices for their area based upon zip code. GasBuddy.com is an online service providing a fuel price forum that consumers can use to find the lowest gas prices in their neighborhood based on their city, state or zip code.

GasBuddy.com can be an add-on to what content you already have listed on your desktop application. Gas price information can be displayed as a menu link or a portal tab; this can also be contained in a branded window so that you can give your advertising more exposure. The gas price information that comes up will stay local because it is designed to correspond with the zip code an end user originally types in when they initially download your application.

Click here to see the 2 minute instructional video on how to add GasBuddy to your ActiveAccess desktop application.

Please contact either Terence Thomas or Tommy Buono and let us know if you would like to add this content to your application or if you have any questions about this service.

Thanks-

TNT Client Services

As we continue to learn more about why mom’s are passionate about blogging and the legacy they hope to leave their children, today we share insights from Christina of A Mommy Story. Christina, a “mom to Cordy the Amazon Warrior Princess and infant Mira, and devoted wife to an actor/writer,” offers her thoughts on the following questions…

GEOFF: The parent blogosphere is  extremely diverse.  You recently wrote about the different levels of prosperity resulting from ads, etc in this corner of the blogosphere.  How does this impact parent bloggers?

CHRISTINA: I think the new monetization of parent blogs has been both beneficial and harmful. Many parent bloggers are now turning their hobby into part-time businesses - or just coffee money - through ads and paid blogging jobs. It’s great that this is now a viable option for parents who stay home with their kids, allowing them to contribute to the family income and feel that what they are doing has some worth (as businesses would see it) outside of their own family. PR firms are also contacting parent bloggers to offer free products to review and trips, such as the recent Johnson & Johnson Camp Baby trip. The opinions of parent bloggers are now sought after by several corporations.

But at the same time, while there is money to be made, few will make a significant amount of money from blogging, and not everyone can go on the trips or get the cool products to review. This has resulted in both jealousy and a lot of newer bloggers wanting to immediately monetize their blogs in the hopes of being the next Dooce. There are a few people who have the uniqueness and/or luck to be a big hit right away, but for most, the path to successful monetization involves hard work, quality writing, and community building. And isn’t community the real reason we all do this, anyway?

GEOFF: Tell us about the parent blogger scene in Ohio? Is it unique, or just another part of the country?

CHRISTINA: At first glance, it may not look like there are a lot of parent bloggers in Ohio. It took me a little while to find any, but since then I’ve met several, some of whom are now good friends of mine. I don’t know if the Ohio bloggers are a quieter group than most or if many of them just haven’t been discovered by the general population yet, but there are some excellent writers here in Ohio. I predict you’ll be seeing a lot more from several of them in the coming year.

GEOFF: In your mind, how does A Mommy Story contribute to the conversation?

CHRISTINA: When I started blogging, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to add to the conversation. My daughter was a year old, and I was a new mom who desperately needed a community of other moms to tell me that the frustrations and joys I was experiencing were totally normal. I spent much of the first year trying to find my voice, a voice I’m still not completely sure of. At the moment, I consider myself one of the voices of reason, trying to tackle controversial topics without letting the passion of my opinion cloud my argument. My How To Be a Popular Mommyblogger post was written after I’d seen far too much complaining about how some people got all the trips and money and other bloggers got nothing. I felt that people needed to stop and think for a moment about why some were getting all of the “perks” and that maybe it was because they earned it.

A Mommy Story is where I can share whatever is on my mind, whether it be about my kids, parenting, or trying to keep my identity beyond that of “mommy”. I also blog about the struggles of raising a daughter with autism. It was a diagnosis that, in some ways, caught me by surprise last year, and since then I’ve answered questions for so many others who worry that their child might have a developmental delay of some kind. Knowing I can help others with my writing makes those more painful posts easier to write, and tells me that what I’m doing is worth every second I put into it.

GEOFF: What could you leave behind in the parent blogosphere?

CHRISTINA: I’m hoping that someday my daughters will read my writing and get a better sense of who their mom is. As a child, there’s so much we don’t understand about our parents. But having the chance to see what I struggled with, what made me happy, and how I felt about them when they were young will hopefully help them see me as a woman who has her own interests and dreams as well as their mom, who has shaped her life around them. I also hope others will find what I’ve written years from now and see it as one of many accounts of motherhood at the turn of the century. What we blog today will be the memoirs that historians look through someday.

GEOFF: What do you hope your children will get out of social media?

CHRISTINA: Well, they’re still a little young to even browse the internet, so it’ll still be a few years. I hope they’ll listen to me and learn how social media can be used to their advantage without falling prey to the dark side. (Geez, I sound like a Jedi Master.) I want them to find their communities, build relationships, educate themselves and have fun. But I also hope I can teach them to not over share information and make themselves too vulnerable to others. 

A Mommy Story can be found at: http://amommystory.blogspot.com/

A recent e-Marketer report says from 2007 to 2012 Web-influenced store sales are expected to grow at a 19% average annual rate, compared with a 12% rate for e-commerce sales. While both brick and mortar and online are predicted to enjoy double digit growth, 19% is significantly higher than 12%.

It’s an interesting statistic because it demonstrates the critical nature of integrating new and old media, that isolated neither will not save the day. We already know that folks need to engage in web presence, and not rely solely on web 1.0 brochureware. At the same social engagement must be developed to compel people to walk into the store. Nineteen percent will be compelled by the web, not junk mail. That means strong online reputation is absolutely necessary.

The web driving brick and mortar sales reminds me of a conversation Toby Bloomberg and I had with Frank Gruber when we were considering a book project. Frank noted that great online properties all have a brick and mortar component to them, whether it’s a tie into someone’s cell phone, delivery to your house (hello Zappos!), or actual retail outlets, such as Apple stores or Dell kiosks.

In essence, as the report says, to market effectively great companies engage in “multi-channeling” information. This only makes sense as we discussed before here and on other blogs. A happy median needs to be found between social and traditional, online and brick and mortar.

From a corporate branding and marketing standpoint, content creation needs to intelligently integrate new and old. A social media tool may need to intelligently manage social and traditional channels. A TV or print ad needs the social call to action. The social media effort may need a webinar or white paper to bulwark value.

Integrate intelligently to achieve cross tie marketing. Remember all of those great Super Bowl ads tat drove people online?), list social properties on business cards and letterhead, tell people about store features using a prominent piece of real estate on a social property, etc, etc.

The word that comes to mind is balance.

Mike Ferrara, Vice President BIA Information Network, LLC

The ActiveAccess team conducted a webinar for our clients entitled, “Finding a Sponsor for your Application” (click to view webinar) which provided advice, tips, and insights on to secure advertising and/or sponsorship for their branded ActiveAccess content delivery platform (download PPT slides). 

The webinar was comprised of four parts:

1. The State of the Online Local Advertising Market keynote presentation by Peter Krasilovsky of the Kelsey Group in which Peter explained that traditional media must embrace the rapid shift of local advertising spending online
2. A case study by Gray Television’s WCTV on how they were successful in securing a local advertiser in their Tallahassee Florida market
3. A presentation by Terence Thomas, Client Service Manager with ActiveAccess on the five key things one needs to know to be best positioned to secure advertisers and sponsors for ActiveAccess implementations
4. Q&A

One of the key takeaways from the presentation was that as advertisers continue to find the right mix of “reach” and “frequency” in terms of the delivery of their marketing messages. ActiveAccess, with end-users keeping the application up and running on average over 8 hours per day, is a great frequency “play” providing advertisers a great platform to deliver brand-building and direct response messages numerous times to an opt-in audience.

Also, as local advertisers continue to dedicate a larger percentage of their budgets to online, they are seeking unique and imaginative ways to reach an elusive media consumer who doesn’t like to be “sold to”. ActiveAccess allows advertisers to sponsor a “fair exchange” in which end-users are able to use the tools and view the content available via ActiveAccess for no charge, courtesy of a sponsor or advertiser. This provides a compelling ROI story for both the consumer and advertiser.

To learn more about the contents of the webinar, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@activeaccess.com.

This post serves a simple reminder that we have started adding the new features to your desktop application. You and your users will be able to download and access these features by Friday morning

You remember the new features right? RSS Reader, YouTube Videos, Interactive National Weather Map, new ad sizes, etc.? If you don’t remember, click HERE to refresh your memory. Here a few more things you should know about the Features Rollout:

1. We added your RSS Feeds for you
To make the process easier for you and your users, if your website had RSS feeds, we’ve pre-populated them into the RSS Reader for you. When your users open the RSS Reader for the first time, they will see a list of your RSS feeds and will have the opportunity to subscribe to any of them.

We did our best to list all of your RSS Feeds, but if you want to add other feeds, just e-mail your feeds to me, Terence Thomas at tthomas@bia.com.

2. Look for the Get Latest Version in Bold Text
We’ve made getting these new features easy. Simply follow this process:
1. Click the Menu button on their application.

2. Click the bolded Get Latest Version link.

3. The lastest version will begin to download.

4. Once finished, the old version will be uninstalled and the new version installed.

5. That’s it! The latest version is 2.0 Build 032. Click the Menu button, then About to view.

3. Click the Red Button to see the New National Weather Map
You can find this red button on the lower left corner of your desktop application. See….

4. TELL YOUR USERS about the new features and how they can access them
You need to inform your users about these new features. There are manye way to spread the word to your users. I recommend using all of your communication channels, such as:

1. Sending crawls and alerts via your desktop application.

2. Sending an e-mail to all of your users.

3. Adding a banner to your homepage that links to a webpage that explains the features in detail.

4. Highlighting the new features in the promotions of your desktop application.