Archive for March, 2009

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CollegeRecruiter.com Launches Mobile Site

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

CollegeRecruiter.com has launched a new mobile Web site, www.CollegeRecruiter.mobi.

While typical mobile sites are usually stripped down and basically no more than mobile brochures for the company’s underlying Web site, CollegeRecruiter.com’s mobile site has virtually all the functionality of its traditional Web site.

“We’re soft launching the initial version of CollegeRecruiter.mobi site to work through any unexpected kinks that we may find,” Steven Rothberg, president and founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, said. “Given that there are virtually no job boards with fully functional mobile sites, we’re expecting to find some kinks but aren’t expecting to suffer any serious problems. We anticipate driving a substantial amount of traffic to it within a few months when we go live with phase two – job alerts via text messages.”

When the company re-launched its Web site in May 2008, they deliberately designed a site with a minimalistic, Google-esq look and feel. The company did this for many reasons, one of which included making it easier to launch a good mobile site.

All of the job postings on CollegeRecruiter.com also are on the company’s mobile Web site, and you can apply for jobs with a Web-enabled phone. The mobile site also includes all the articles, blogs, career videos and other content found on the regular site.

Rothberg said he’s seen many news stories indicating that company’s that launch mobile versions of their Web sites see a 10 to 15 percent increase in traffic because of mobile traffic. He said he anticipates an even bigger increase from CollegeRecruiter.com, because the company’s target audience, Gen Y, is more likely to use Web-enabled phones than Gen X and Baby Boomers.

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SlideShare Goes Mobile

Friday, March 27th, 2009

SlideShare – the world’s largest community for sharing presentations – has launched a mobile Web site.

The new site, m.slideshare.com, is powered by Yahoo Blueprint. The site allows mobile users to view presentations, download presentation files to your phone, log in to your SlideShare account, get the latest from contacts and search through SlideShare presentations.

SlideShare mobile currently doesn’t display comments and doesn’t allow you to upload items from your phone. The site does not require you to download or install any new software on your phone, as long as the phone is running a supported browser.

The site works with all smartphones, including iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia high end phones, HTC, Google Android phones, I-mate, HP iPaq, Palm and all phones running Windows Mobile or the Opera Mini browser.

SlideShare, which is based in San Francisco, allows individuals and organizations to upload presentations to share their ideas, connect with others and generate business leads. Using the traditional site, anyone can find presentations that interest them, as well as tag, download and embed presentations into their own blogs and Web sites. Here’s the mJob Mobile Recruiting Overview slide show.

SlideShare also has begun a series of Presentation camps, with the next scheduled to take place April 4 in Seattle. Other upcoming events on SlideShare include: Museums & the Web April 14 in Indianapolis, the 5th International TYPO3 Conference April 16 in Dallas and the Next Gen Data Center Conference April 22 in Beijing, China.

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Workopolis Partners with Mobile Provider

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Workopolis, Canada’s largest job board – or at least it’s best known – has partnered with Rogers Wireless, which provides wireless voice and data communications services across Canada to more than 7.9 million customers under both the Rogers Wireless and Fido brands.

“We understand that job seekers can’t always be at their computers and that’s why Workopolis was the first job site in Canada to go mobile last November,” said Max Tremblay, Vice President of Marketing, Workopolis. “We wanted to provide job seekers the opportunity to access our job postings when, where and how they want to. Helping to connect Canadians to their next career will be that much easier with Rogers Wireless on board as our partner.”

Checkout the mobile review by MobileSyrup:

“As Canada’s largest wireless provider, Rogers Wireless is committed to continuing to bring Canadians innovative services and products that add value to their lives,” said John Boynton, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Rogers Wireless. “The wireless device can be an indispensable tool to the increasing number of Canadians who are seeking work. Not only can they be available for calls from potential employers, they can now browse jobs from Workopolis directly on their handsets, for free until May 31, when they’re out and about.”

Access to the site is free thru May 31. No specific news on a cost afterwards, but it will likely be individual mobile minutes.

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2.3 Million Can’t Be Wrong

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

A recent WSJ article entitled, Big U.S. Companies Tap Into Mobile Wave, outlined how some of America’s biggest brands are leveraging mobile to connect with users and prospects. It’s a fantastic wake-up call to the groundswell of mobile that all organizations should be paying attention.

Personal highlight:

We want to move with this fast-moving tide, said Douglas Brown, senior vice president of mobile product development at Bank of America Corp., which now has 2.3 million customers doing their banking via mobile devices.

Let me read that again. Yep, it says 2.3 million. That’s a lot of people doing something that arguably is an at-home activity or something relegated to ATM visits. I’m always amused at anyone who says people won’t checkout employment opportunities on their mobile device. Au contraire, I retort.

Wonder if the recruiting team at Bank of America is utilizing mobile to recruit? Doubtful. I know most people aren’t there mentally – especially employers who are slow to innovate and take risks in relation to marketers – but mobile is simply not a niche market. Checkout this quote from the story:

“The audiences we serve are using mobile devices non-stop,” said Allen Duan, vice president of digital distribution at MTV Networks. “Mobile is essential to reach our audience, and it’s also a revenue driver for us.”

Mobile is an idea whose time has come. Hey, if The Wall Street Journal says it, it’s gotta be true.

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MySpace Mobile Gets Facelift

Friday, March 20th, 2009

With the number of people headed to social networks on their mobile increasing, MySpace is looking to give users added reason to connect with a recent redesign. myspace-mobile-update

According to a recent e-mail message, the redesign makes MySpace Mobile “faster and easier” to use than ever. New or enhanced features include text alerts, photo uploads and video. Here’s more:

  • Update Your Status by SMS – Update your status by texting it to MYSPC (69772) and your status is instantly updated on MySpace!
  • Text Alerts – Get free instant text messages sent to your phone whenever you receive new MySpace messages, comments or friend requests.
  • Photo Uploads – Want to instantly send photos from your phone to MySpace? MySpace makes it easy. Here’s how.
  • Video – Now you can view videos on m.myspace.com. Here’s how.

Of course, some of these only work on select phones.

With MySpace losing the desktop war to Facebook, it’ll be interesting to see if they can fight them off via mobile devices. If you believe the social network with the most people actively using the site wins, then MySpace is dead on any device.

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Mobile Boosts Retailer’s ROI 377%

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

Clothier Planet Funk revealed that it achieved a whopping 377 percent return-on-investment with mobile coupon campaigns launched during the holiday shopping season.

The Burbank, California-based retailer, which targets trendy young men and young women, also saw a staggering 91 percent redemption rate on the coupons. The campaign was launched on November 21, 2008 and ended on December 21, 2008. Twenty percent of revenue for the month of December was generated by the almost 2,000 coupons that were generated, and which were sent as text messages, or SMS, via the mobileStorm digital marketing platform.

“Mobile is a natural fit for our customers and being able to give them such coupons—both in the store and online—that can be instantly received on their phones is a no-brainer,” said Kitiri Lomaka of Planet Funk. “The results we experienced proved this and we look forward to continuing our partnership with mobileStorm to drive future mobile campaigns. We now realize that mobile marketing can not only be affordable for companies like ours, but also wildly profitable if handled the right way.”

Planet Funk only sent the coupons to people who subscribed to receive text messages from the company. It advertised the promotion with signs inside its stores, on its website and blog, and on the websites of numerous malls where Planet Funk shops are located. Besides immediate revenue, the company also set the stage for future campaigns: 15 percent of coupon-redeemers opted in to receive future SMS marketing messages from the retailer.

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Mobile Internet Becomes A Daily Activity

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

New data from comScore, Inc, a leader in measuring the digital world, shows that the number of people using their mobile device to access news and information on the Internet more than doubled from January 2008 to January 2009. Among the audience of 63.2 million people who accessed news and information on their mobile devices in January 2009, 22.4 million (35 percent) did so daily; more than double the size of the audience last year.

Observed Mark Donovan, senior vice president, mobile, at comScore:

Over the course of the past year, we have seen use of mobile Internet evolve from an occasional activity to being a daily part of people’s lives. This underscores the growing importance of the mobile medium as consumers become more reliant on their mobile devices to access time-sensitive and utilitarian information.

Social networking and blogging have emerged as very popular daily uses of the mobile Web and these activities are growing at a torrid pace. We also note that much of the growth in news and information usage is driven by the increased popularity of downloaded applications, such as those offered for the iPhone, and by text-based searches. While smartphones and high-end feature phones, like the Samsung Instinct and LG Dare comprise the Top 10 devices used for news and information access, 70 percent of those accessing mobile Internet content are using feature phones.

In January, 22.3 million people accessed news and information via a downloaded application. Maps are the most popular downloaded application with 8.2 million users, while search was the overwhelmingly favored use for SMS-based news and information access, with 14.1 million users. Overall, 32.4 million people used SMS to access news and information in January.

Young males are the most avid users of mobile news and information, with half of 18 to 34-year-old males engaging in the activity. The mobile Internet is also quite popular among females in the 18 to 24-year-old demographic, with 40 percent accessing it at least once in January.

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2-D Barcodes for Mobile Marketers

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

A recent article in Advertising Age touted the use of 2-D barcode technology as an innovative way for marketers to move into mobile. Their first case in point, Mexican restaurant, Qdoba, which used the technology as a way to market to college students – a veritable digital version of coupon clipping.

Qdoba used the technology from Jagtag, which enables consumers to request and instantly receive on-demand digital content directly from a variety of advertising means: print, out-of-home, point-of-sale, direct mail, collateral, packaging, products and physical structures. According to Jagtag’s website, the process is seemingly simple:

The mobile consumer:
(a) sees a brand offering content (in Qdoba’s case, newspaper ads and promotional posters)
(b) scans the barcode into their phone (by either using the camera phone or a barcode scanner)
(c) sends a text message to the number advertised
(d) instantly receives a mobile coupon (for instance, a buy-one-get-one-free burrito) via SMS

JagTag calls it “interactive brand engagement.” Qdoba received a 52% coupon redemption rate.

The 2-D Barcode, also called QR Code – for Quick Response Code – was developed in Japan, where most cell phones have the technology already built in.

The technology is catching on a little more slowly in the United States, if only because downloading the applications required to read the codes seems like an extra hassle for consumers.

According to AdAge:

Jagtag is trying to solve that problem by making it easier for consumers. Rather than downloading an application, they take a picture of Jagtag’s 2-D barcode and send it to a short code, and Jagtag sends back a URL, coupon or other media via multimedia messaging service.

But analysts and Jagtag competitors agree that for 2-D barcodes to gain any meaningful traction, the code reader must come preloaded on cellphones — and only the wireless carriers can make happen, as they dictate the specs to handset makers.

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Cliffs Notes: Mobile Recruiting Webinar

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

If you are a recruiter or a company rep interested in beginning a mobile recruiting strategy, you were probably present for Michael Marlatt‘s webinar “Unleash the Power of the Third Screen.” If you missed it, here’s the takeaway:

There are 265 million mobile users in the United States. 240 million of those users have text-enabled devices. 65 million users have both text and web-enabled phones. People are more mobile than ever.

Marlatt noted 10 important reasons on why mobile recruiting matters:

  • It’s personal. A prospective candidate carries their mobile phone around at all times. Can you say the same for a laptop?
  • Intimacy. Mobile marketing gives you the flexibility to target your campaigns to a particular audience.
  • Confirmed identity. You know who’s on the other end.
  • Convenience. Candidates can read SMS messages at anytime of the day and respond in a quick and timely manner.
  • Actionable. Craft a compelling “call-to-action” message along with your campaign to see the best results.
  • Persistent and Viral. Candidates have the ability to forward your messages with a few simple buttons.
  • Opt-In. Candidates can decide the level of interaction they wish to have with you and can easily opt out of your campaigns.
  • Builds relationships. Mobile allows you to be creative while maintaining that ‘personal touch.’
  • Organized. Candidate management during high-volume peaks.
  • Powerful. Measurement, analytics, and digital services tell you exactly how your campaign is faring and allows for control and change.

To begin your mobile recruiting campaign, you need to map out a plan of attack and to discern what options suit your needs. Marlatt defined four great tips that you can guide your preparations:

1) Define the goals and prepare. Develop a strong call to action that creates a reaction within target audience. Think about developing a mobile version of your site, whether it be for your company or job board. Develop a program that is RELEVANT to your audience. Relevance is key to gaining participation and seeing success.

2) Select the appropriate tools. Marlatt suggested some web-to-text options, which are web sites that allow users to send messages through SMPP. Joopz, 3Jam, and Hellotxt are mentioned as viable resources. Marlatt also discussed using a short-URL service like BudURL to shorten your URLs and track analytics. Finally he encouraged investing in recruiting-focused mobile providers like mJob and Recruit2Mobile.com to assist with campaign goals and strategies.

3) Launch the program. Integration with other marketing strategies is of the utmost importance to achieve the best ROI. Incorporate your mobile strategy into your career fairs, online and print ads, brochures, and emails. Be sure your message is consistent across ALL channels.

4) Measure your progress. Consider using a CRM tool to track your successes and failures.

Remember – Integration is the key to success. A stand-alone mobile marketing campaign won’t work. Be sure you integrate your message across all channels, whether it be through emails, print, online ads, or at career fairs to maintain a consistent message.

If you missed the webinar, it will be repeated on April 23 at 1 p.m. EST. To register, click here.

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mJob Mentioned on Jobacle

Monday, March 16th, 2009

The good folks at Jobacle gave us a shout out during their March 15 podcast.

Featured in The Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Nielsen and others, Jobacle provides a forum for its readers — and listeners — to “speak your mind on everything work related.”

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