Recently the Portland Business Alliance hosted their Annual Business Awards celebrating globally focused businesses. We were thrilled to take home the 2011 Mayor's International Business Award for Software. Following a video interview clip (below) Mayor Sam Adams presented the award to Alex Yoder, Webtrends President & CEO.
Alex shared his thoughts about receiving the award and attendance at the event "I loved the level of cultural and ethnic diversity in the room - with esteemed colleagues, representatives and consuls from around the world. It made me incredibly proud to be a citizen and business person in such a globally connected city as Portland."
Members of our international sales and partner teams were present that night along with our executives. Bruce Kenny, our EVP of Technology and Hosted Operations said the evening was a delight and "...was very impressed with the Oregon Consular Corps and their commitment to ensuring Oregon is recognized as a global business center. We are honored to be recognized for our strong international business."
Many thanks to our customers and partners across the global, along with a special thanks to the teams in the states and across our worldwide offices - Seattle, San Franciso, London, Toyko, Sydney and Uppsala, Sweden.
*Does this iPad2 finally have a formidable competitor? Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition review
*This just underscores how important mobile devices are to retailers ... better have a solid smartphone and tablet strategy and an effective means of measuring mobile traffic to enhance user experience. eMarketer: Tablets Beating Smartphones For Mobile Shopping, Commerce | Mobile Marketing Watch
*HTML5 offers a great deal of promise. Whether it will encourage brands to forgo the app store is a question that won't immediately be answered. But, fascinating to see what's being done in this arena. Can Modern Mobile Web Apps Loosen Apple's Grip on Tablet Publishing?
*Not only are smartphone sales up but it's pretty clear that together with tablets --they are becoming an effective platform in reaching the wealthiest Americans . 61pc of wealthiest Americans own smartphones: study - Mobile Commerce Daily - Research
*Driving the explosive growth of the mobile marketing industry. Smartphone Sales Up 85% Year-Over-Year
If you’ve got questions about mobile for Mike or topic you’d like to see covered here – share your thoughts with us below or any of our social channels (Facebook, Twitter or in our User Forums)
Last week at Webvisions, we shared the 5 key tools for effective Facebook marketing: Website integration, Pages, Ads, Apps, and Analytics.
To be successful at Facebook marketing is to drive user engagement and to equip your power users to market on your behalf. Thus, smart advertisers leverage Facebook's ad and application platform to create endorsements that are kick-started with paid media and then spread virally. The takeaways from the session were:
* Website Integration: Like buttons are an extremely powerful tool for marketers. They drive traffic and create audience segments that can power ad targeting. Tap Facebook's audience through smart integrations with you existing website.
* Pages: Fan pages, place pages, event pages, and more offer different functionality for brands. Set up your brand presence to maximize the kind of value you need. Boost your post quality score to maximize the reach of the wall posts you publish on your pages.
* Ads: How many people are in each demographic or interest category, how many fans do competitors have and why? Segment users into fans, friends of fans, and potential targets by tying in appropriate messages to each group. Image selection: Which images work and why. How to combat ad burnout and create an ad testing framework. Using connection targeting to grow the fan base quickly.
* Apps: Apps are the landing pages for social campaigns. We'll discuss how to use reveal tabs and social widgets to drive fans on and off the Facebook page, with and without ads. Facebook contest rules: what is allowed and not allowed, plus which strategies drive sharing. Building your email list with Facebook Connect: collect user information without any forms. Other engagement apps: scoring, quizzes, nomination, badging, spin the wheel, face off, and others. In which situations do each of these apps perform best?
* Analytics: What is the value of your Facebook fan page? How to use Facebook Insights and the Post Quality Score metric to measure engagement and troubleshoot problems. Facebook marketing in tandem with other marketing channels: how to attribute credit when there are multiple touches. Determining who are the the most influential fans and how to adjust campaigns to get more of them. 
How can you be 100% certain that your mobile app is what your customers want? Launch it and watch how they actually use it. Join us for a webinar tomorrow to learn how The Telegraph in the U.K. followed their iPad app data to prove many of their strategic plans were correct, and refine the experience for continued growth and investment.
Mark Challinor, the Director of Mobile will address: