Inalign's Blog

Happy Holidays – Let’s Look Forward to 2010!

Posted in Uncategorized by Gregg on December 21, 2009

Happy Holidays!

2010 looks to be a very fruitful year. We’re seeing alot more interest in mobile apps, web development, and SharePoint demand is still very strong. Everyone is shaking off the dust from 2009 and getting back into the swing of things.

Here at Inalign we have many new activities in the works-including an updated customer portal, and the start of bi-weekly webinars for all of our clients.

We’re very excited about the webinars-it gives us another way to connect with our clients,  and will we use these to continue to educate about our technologies and software development.

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iPhone Apps are Taking Over the Web

Posted in iPhone by Gregg on December 18, 2009

Remember years ago when companies were just getting into the ‘internet’ and they started to put their URL into every ad? Print ads, TV ads, whatever, their URL would show up.

Now, the change is to promote the iPhone app. Just another indicator that the iPhone is taking over the world.

For example, Pizza Hut now has an ad on TV that promotes ordering pizza via their iPhone app. The ad doesn’t even talk about pizza or why their’s is better-it just promotes a new convienent way to order. (As a side note, some of Apple’s iPhone TV ads show the Pizza Hut app as an option on the iPhone).

Ease of ordering is still king!

With big companies like Target, BestBuy, eBay, and Amazon all having iPhone apps, you have to start to wonder how much traffic is going to move from the traditional desktop browser to a mobile app.

Another strategy for mobile that seems to be gaining steam is the concept of the mobile-web application. Unlike an iPhone app, which is written specifically for the iPhone and downloaded from Apple’s app store, a mobile-web application runs in a browser on a phone.

The Safari browser comes installed on the iPhone, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car has a wonder mobile-web application than looks very nice in Safari and lets you, among other things, rent a car.

The added benefit of the mobile-web approach is that the same app could run on the Android or some other mobile device, and you don’t have to worry about developing code for one particular device.

Either way, what we’re seeing is more sales channels. Companies are giving consumers even more ways to order their products and services.

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Understanding Social Media

Posted in Social Media by Gregg on December 7, 2009

I am constantly asked if Social Media works. Before I can say ‘Yes’ there is usually a requirement to explain what it is.

In a nutshell, it’s a way to get your message in front of more people, quickly.

Hopefully, by now, you’ve been updating your website on a regular basis. Social Media simply gives you other distribution channels to get out the same message, over and over again.

The most popular sites for this are YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the Blogging software of your choice. Having elements of your message on these sites is a no-brainer. It’s quick to setup, and it’s becoming almost the def-facto standard to have a presence at these sites.

LinkedIn will connect to your Blog and display the titles of the your recent blog posts on your LinkedIn page. Again, just another way to get the word out there to multiple sources.

You’ll find more and more that people are searching in far more places than just Google. We have clients that are getting alot of traffic from their Facebook site, as well as their LinkedIn site.

So, people are clearly searching for products and services in more places than Google. The great thing about social media is that it puts companies and people into ‘groups’ and let’s you market to groups of people that have indicated that they’re interested in a certain product of service.

The group concept is what makes social media so social-people are opting-in for information.

Some other info that I found interesting about Social Media on a Social Media website (you could consider posting slideshows up here as well):

http://www.slideshare.net/thebrandbuilder/olivier-blanchard-basics-of-social-media-roi

http://www.slideshare.net/ischafer/social-media-is-mature-no-its-not-2055062?from=email&type=share_slideshow&subtype=slideshow

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