Yesterday on The Mike Hackmer Show, I had the opportunity to talk a little bit about social media and widgets with Terence Thomas. During the interview, Terence and I talked about where widget technology is a bit lacking, and what some of the companies Terence interacts with are looking for in widgets or desktop applications. The interview was part of a larger discussion that occurred that day on social media.

CLICK TO HEAR A PODCAST OF THIS INTERVIEW

The Mike Hackmer Show is on WEBR, Fairfax, VA. The show airs every Sunday at 12:00 pm Eastern time, and is dedicated to talking about traditional media, new or social media, and the world of marketing. Listeners can listen online at: http://www.fcac.org/webr

Posted by Terence Thomas
Interactive Marketing Manager, ActiveAccess

For the past year or so, I have found RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to be a really simple and helpful way for me to stay on top of news and information that takes place throughout the day.

I thought a few of my clients, who are Marketing professionals and Web Developers from a forward thinking university, would be familiar with this technology as me (it’s been around for 2-3 years)…but I was wrong. As I started to explain the RSS technology to them, I was instantly met with blank faces and stares until finally someone had the courage to ask me: “What’s RSS?” I was shocked by not only the fact that I had assumed they would know what I was talking about, but that I had to start at Square #1 and explain what RSS stood for!

I wish I read the recent BtoB Magazine article entitled “Success metrics evolve with RSS” for if I did, I would have known that there are many other people in business who have still yet to embrace the RSS phenomena like I have.

Here are 3 ways that I am encouraging my ActiveAccess clients to embrace RSS technology:

Encourage them to USE RSS technology

What better way to learn about something than to just do it? ActiveAccess clients and users have access to the RSS Reader in their desktop application.I’ve already pre-populated their readers with their own company’s and blog site RSS feeds. By asking them to use their RSS Reader for a week or two, they will get more familiar with how it works they are with the technology, the more willing they’ll

RSS Is Better Than Email Announcements and Drives Traffic to Websites

RSS will never supplant e-mail as the quintessential online communication tool, however, RSS can ease the amount of e-mail is sent by converting their communications to RSS.

I try to get clients to imagine using RSS to communicate to their audience, instead of using e-newsletters. RSS will cut through the inbox clutter while driving more traffic to the websites where the full RSS Stories reside. More traffic means more eyeballs. More eyeballs means more advertising dollars.

Promote their company’s RSS Feed to their Audience

This is probably one of the most difficult tasks for ActiveAccess clients to execute, particularly the clients who have had the application for a while. Almost all ActiveAccess clients have RSS feeds on their websites, or they have blogs that use RSS technology. But these clients say it’s difficult to find the time to to highlight the benefits of RSS and then help shepherd their audience through the transition. Our newer clients do not have this trouble because as they roll out the ActiveAccess technology to their audience they highlight the RSS features and encourage users to explore.

Posted By Terence Thomas
Interactive Marketing Manager, BIA Information Network
Email: tthomas@activeaccess.comOver the past year or so, we at BIA Information Network (BIN) have been working hard to improve ActiveAccess. There’s a lot that goes on “behind the scenes” here to make this application better for you and your users. On March 19^th, 2008 we held a webinar to showcase we announced four new features that we’ve added. Click here to watch and listen to the event: http://www.activeaccess.com/webinars.Our new features offer a pretty wide range of functionality and capabilities, all designed to enhance the experience for your users.RSS ReaderWe’ve added a new RSS Reader so that users can stay up to date and simplify their online reading experience, while still utilizing your application. You have the ability to pre-populate your own feeds into the Reader and your audience can easily add RSS Feeds from their favorite websites and blogs. The Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content. Whether a site updates its RSS feed daily or monthly, you can be sure that you won’t miss a thing, and it presents your users with all of their news sources in one convenient.

Interactive national weather map

We’ve created a new National Weather Map that is more interactive and provide you more detail regarding weather conditions all over the US. Weather conditions will be color coordinated and 3-Dimensional, plus you will be able to highlight, zoom in and zoom out of the counties experiencing bad weather.

Right-click capabilities inside Portal Window

Open the Portal Window and right click on the window to cut/copy/paste/print almost any web content that you see.

Privacy Statement and End User License Agreement (EULA)BIN takes the privacy of our customers (and the security of their Personal Information) very seriously. That’s why we will provide our Privacy Statement in all our application because you have the right to know what Personal Information we collect, how it is protected and used, and the circumstances under which it may be disclosed. You can find the Privacy Statement and the End User Licensing Agreement by clicking the Menu button.To get all of these new features, simply launch your application, click the Menu button and then click the bolded Get Latest Version link. Your application will automatically uninstall the old application and install the newest version with all these features.

Posted By Terence Thomas
Interactive Marketing Manager, BIA Information Network
Email: tthomas@activeaccess.com

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Terence Thomas, and I’m the Interactive Marketing Manager for BIA Information Network. I assist our clients in successfully using their ActiveAccess applications to create communicate and build strong, social connections with their audiences.

Back in November 2007, I was chosen to sit on a panel at the Ad-Tech Interactive marketing conference in NYC (http://www.ad-tech.com) where we discussed Word of Mouth (WOM) or Viral Marketing.

We had about 100 people in attendance and we spent the hour answering questions such as:

· Is the word “Viral” still relevant?

· Can something be made viral?

· What have been our experiences with Word of Mouth marketing?

· What are some tips that we can share in creating a viral campaign?

Everyone on that panel talked about viral videos, viral campaigns, viral zombie bites on Myspace pages, but I took a different approach. In explaining my experience with going “viral” I shared the following:

1. Going viral does not always mean your content (blog, video, e-mail, etc.) needs to be shocking, funny, or over the top in order to be compelling. You just want people to talk about your content with others.

2. For something to be viral, you need the following elements:

· an audience

· a compelling or relevant piece of content for that audience

· to teach your audience how to pass this compelling content on to others

· the audience to actually pass the content on to friends/family/colleagues, and

· to have the ability track the referrals

All this leads me to the ActiveAccess content delivery channel.

ActiveAccess has a word of mouth feature called “Share With A Friend” (SWAF). All “referrals” through SWAF are tracked, so if I send you an “invite” to download the app and you sign-up, download and run the app, your name is recorded in a database and I’m listed as the one who referred you. This is a tremendous benefit to our customers, because not only can they spread the application virally, they know who is helping to perform that task. This means they can develop and execute marketing campaigns around this feature – rewarding the best viral marketers from among their users.

Based on our research we are finding that almost every client has some amount of success regarding the use of the SWAF feature. We’ve noticed that the feature, when used, has a whopping average close to 80%. That’s HUGE in the world of viral marketing! This means that 8 out of 10 referral messages that users sent to friends and family encouraging them to sign-up and download the app, actually led to application downloads and later, use of the application.

We are trying to keep this momentum going through more training and awareness about the SWAF feature.

Imagine…. Instead of our clients doing all the heavy lifting to marketing their desktop applications, our clients can nearly double their user base by asking their audience to share in the task of promoting the app to their friends and family by using the viral marketing feature in their applications.