ROI or Engagement: Priority in Social Media

If you think social media marketing is just another form of marketing, then you are missing out on a great deal! Social media marketing is here to stay, because it is the best platform to build brand identity and create brand loyalty. All roads lead to ROI and that is what business houses see in social media marketing. To determine whether ROI shall be the sole priority of social media marketing or extensive Engagement is the key to its success, remains still a concern with most businesses.

Every social media campaign has direct effect on your ROI (Return on Investment). The real intention of being social on social media is to make maximum use of your network and drive in revenue. It is about getting (financial) returns on every effort, which can only be the growth in sales and business revenue. To make every penny count, you have to work on your social engagement metrics.

Social Media Engagement is intricately related to ROI. It paves way for businesses to get closer to the target consumers, convert them to leads, and track conversion rate for their goals.  Be it Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, MySpace or Linkedin, engagement level must be high as nothing convinces consumers better than real-time interaction. Product marketing, feasible promises, creating brand awareness, solving queries, and resolving disputes…the more active a business is on social media platforms, better is the chance of getting maximum ROI. E-mail campaigns, social media optimization, unique landing pages, and promotional coupons are some of numerous ways to engage users and generate leads.  

To decide what is more important, ROI or Engagement is a Chicken and Egg situation. The priority must be ‘Revenue’ and the only way to get it is by practicing profitable consumer interaction. 

Adobe AIR for iOS Development

Apple’s decision to lift restriction on third-party development tools has paved way for some notable changes in the world of iPhone application development. To start with, an alternative way of developing iPhone apps without having to write the code from scratch. As developers around the world rejoiced the decision, Packager apps came up with its package of promises. Adobe AIR Development Services is one such third party development tool, which has caught attention of many iPhone developers and with acceptance of Adobe’s Packager for iPhone, things have started to look brighter for flash developers. Before we discuss why Adobe Air is the next big thing for iPhone development, let us get acquainted with Adobe Air and Packager for iPhone.

“AIR, also known as Adobe Integrated Runtime, is a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to use their existing web development skills to build and deploy Rich Internet Applications to the desktop.” And, Packager for iPhone is an important feature of Adobe Flash Professional CSS Software and AIR. It has enabled Flash developers to build and test iPhone Applications. This feature has enabled developers to reuse the existing codes written for ActionScript 3 real fast and efficiently. Then these codes are used to create native applications for iPhone. This means, now all your Flash applications can be converted to iPhone apps without having to write it from scratch. So, once the app is created, all you have to do is get it approved by Apple and put it on Apple Store!

These AIR applications are available for wide range of iOS devices including iPhone and iPad. AIR 2.5 has gone a step further to work for platforms compatible with Flash. This includes BlackBerry (Tablet), Android, and television. It will also work for accelerometers, cameras, microphones and more. However, Flash is not yet available for mobile browsers. Which means, you cannot run Flash content on your iPhone. It only allows iOS apps to be converted from Flash. It is going to be quite some time before you browse YouTube from your iPhone. Adobe is working with its industry partners to enable web browsing using Flash and run complete apps on AIR.

Adobe Air for iOS Development comes with its own set of advantages. Some of them are as follows:

• Automatic Updating: AIR comes with a brilliant feature like automatic updating of application whenever a user comes online.

• AIR enables the user to load, save application and related data on the computer itself.

• AIR has a notification system that allows two AIR applications running on the same system to communicate with each other.

• The SQL databases embedded into it can store all information locally.

• AIR supports Flash Player and it is but normal that AIR has rich support for multimedia, Vector animation, and Audio. 

• If your aim is to create interactive and rich applications, Adobe AIR is one of the best possible choices to build the same.

Adobe Air for iOS Development has made the process of iPhone Application Development Services more interesting and fun for Flash Developers having already stepped into the world of Apple. 

Top Software Technology for 2011

Like every year, the world is ready to welcome the new software technologies yet another time. The Top software technologies for 2011 are not only expected to add edge to your business process but also influence lives to a great deal. As some business and software experts are predicting, this is going to be a year for small and mid-sized businesses. It will be for them to survive and flourish this year. The Top technology trends for 2011 will also be considered by small and big organizations for strategic planning of their business.  Here is a compiled list of new technologies to watch out for this year.

Top Software Technologies for 2011:

Cloud Computing:  This is going to be a year for ‘Cloud’. Atleast that’s what Gartner says. Cloud Software Technology, which not only cuts down on cost but also is also connectable via various hardware devices. According to the industry experts, it is going to be the year of varied range of cloud computing services. It will the year of vendors providing ‘packaged private cloud implementations’ that will implement their software technologies into the consumer’s enterprise. There will also be service providers who will provide management services for cloud service implementation. According to Gartner, by 2012 there will be enterprises managing and outsourcing Cloud Computing Services.

Mobile Apps:  Since, the beginning of it, we knew mobile applications are here to stay. With so many mobile handsets launched everyday and Smartphones capturing the market, mobile application stores are looking forward to do some good business this year. Mobile phones are becoming more of computers and mobile internet connection is really coming up with amazing bandwidth. From Apple to Android, this is the year for mobile application developers.

Social Networking and Communication: 2011 will be the year for businesses and enterprises to accommodate social networking websites to social collaboration and feedback tools to integrate in their applications.  We know websites like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Wikis, Blogs, Youtube and Flicker have gained much popularity with business organizations and this will be the year for them to use these sites to leverage their business.

Video: 2011 will be dominated by videos. According to Gartner, the coming years will see a considerable rise of videos as the popular form of content on business and enterprise websites. This will be a great year for offshore software companies providing media streaming services.

Business Intelligence: This is the year for enterprises to brush up and modify their business intelligence infrastructure. With Internet and web accessed even from the mobile phones, probably this is the time; business processes will shift to ‘Gen-Next Analytics’. This will include running simulations to predict the future outcome.

Social Analytics:  To quote Gartner, “Social analytics describes the process of measuring, analyzing and interpreting the results of interactions and associations among people, topics and ideas. These interactions may occur on social software applications used in the workplace, in internally or externally facing communities or on the social web”. Well, so this is going to be the year of Social analysis techniques like social-network analysis, social filtering, and social-media analytics. This will also lead to a considerable increase in use of Social Analytic Tools to examine social structure.

Context-Aware Computing: The world is moving towards a context/consumer aware computing system, which will find a strong foothold in the year 2011. A system that will cater to unique needs of end users and provide services accordingly.

Storage Class Memory: 2011 will see the rise of storage class memory in various mobile, entertainment, and consumer devices. This will be a Flash memory, which will work even when the power is down or the system is rebooted. This memory will also be used in IT systems and for servers.

Hardware Options: This year is going to see a range of flexible hardware options for software requirements for managing systems.