We’re very proud and super excited to announce that our mobile platform and the apps created on it have already been recognized for several distinguished awards this year.

Horizon Interactive Awards

The Horizon Interactive Awards is a prestigious international competition recognizing outstanding achievement among interactive media producers. The competition recognizes and awards the best websites, videos, online advertising, print media, and mobile applications. Each year, the Horizon Interactive Awards receives thousands of entries from all over the world.

This year we are honored to have picked up six awards for apps created on the Conduit Mobile platform. The apps run the gamut from business to charity organizations, music, and education.

Sweet Relief Musicians Fund – Business; Silver Award

Rivershore Golf Links – Productivity; Silver Award

Basketball Manitoba Scoreboard – Entertainment; Bronze Award

Waka Flocka Flame – Entertainment; Bronze Award

Sunriver Experience – Business; Bronze Award

Judson ISD Connect! – Education; Bronze Award

The Webby Awards

Established in 1996, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. This year there were over 11,000 entries from all 50 U.S. states and over 60 countries.

We are exceptionally proud that two Conduit Mobile apps were announced as Official Honorees: Waka Flocka Flame in the Music category and Judson ISD Connect! in the Education & Reference category.

We’re delighted that the apps created on our platform are being recognized in their respective industries. (But we’re definitely not surprised!) Their excellence in design, user experience, functionality, and innovation demonstrates that when an intelligent idea is teamed up with our platform, the sky is the limit.

So as we toast to another great year, we’d like to say that we are committed to continuing to provide industry-leading mobile services to ensure that the apps you create through Conduit Mobile keep shining in the spotlight.

If you haven’t created your mobile app yet, it’s about time you did. Get started with Conduit Mobile now, and we just might be talking about your award-winning app in 2014!

Here are five Vine users who do it best:

1. Adam Goldberg
When the cool kids are saying you are the King of Vine and “totally winning at Vine,” you must be doing something right. As usual, talented character actor Adam Goldberg certainly is. An early adopter of the Vine app, the “Dazed and Confused” veteran is considered the first auteur of the nascent art form.
 

2. Riff Raff
Riff Raff is mostly known for trolling James Franco in online episodes of “One Life to Live,” but he is also a Vine pioneer. It is hard to say if the aspiring rapper is a buffoon or ironically self-aware, but in a six-second loop he is oddly compelling. Videos like “iM BUYiNG A PORSCHE TOMORROW” and “JEAN CLAUD VAN DAM OPERA SiNGER” show how little talent it takes to entertain people (for six seconds) if the tech and passion are there. 

3. Matt Swinsky
It only takes Matt Swinsky six seconds to scare the pants off of you, which is why his Vine, “LazerAndDonald Close Shave,” is one of the Tribeca Film Festival’s #6SecFilmWinners. Swinksy’s success is proof that Vine can be used as a stepping-stone for obscure filmmakers. If horror is your thing, Swinsky provides consistent entertainment in six-second blood spurts (disclaimer: this one’s not for the light of heart).

4. James Urbaniak
Simply put, Urbaniak, who plays the voice of Dr. Venture on “The Venture Brothers,” is creating some of the most interesting Vines out there. While some of his videos are nothing more than six seconds of cat footage, often you have to let them loop several times before you get the joke. And sometimes, it’s just fun to hear his voice.

5. Jackson Holland
Holland is an up-and-coming Vine talent who produced one of the most badass six-second videos to date. Seriously, how did he do that? Granted, he is a bit of a goofball, but it seems that prolific goofballs are destined to be the future of entertainment. The kid is definitely funny.

Have you seen any Vines recently that made you go “wow”? Share them with us below!

Once you’ve whipped up the perfect app, how do you make the most of it? One of the questions that the Conduit Mobile support team is encountering more and more frequently is, “How do I effectively monetize my app?”

It appears that “monetization” is the buzz word of 2013 in the mobile industry, and quite rightly so. With over 825,000 apps in the Apple App Store alone, it’s becoming increasingly hard to make a name for yourself in an app market that shows little sign of slowing down.

At Conduit Mobile, we’ve wasted little time in cooking up all the tools you need to benefit from your app and stay ahead of the competition. Whether you’re a small business or own a restaurant, here are two useful techniques to help you develop your own successful monetization strategy:

Monetize Your Business App

Simply the fact that you have a mobile app for your business already puts you at an advantage over your competitors who have not yet gone mobile. According to Infographic List, 74% of consumers make a purchase based on a smartphone search, 70% of consumers use their smartphone while physically in a store, and 54% use it to find a retailer. Having a mobile app enables users to purchase your products and services directly through the app when you add an e-commerce page. It doesn’t get any more convenient than that! To further increase your revenue, be sure to add any other online stores you have on eBay, Shopify, or Etsy so you can sell your goods through as many channels as possible.

Monetize Your Restaurant App

We know that the restaurant industry thrives on bringing in new customers and enticing them to spend money in your restaurant rather than the competition down the street. Lucky for you, we provide a wide selection of tempting restaurant features for your Conduit Mobile-powered app or site so customers can order food and buy products directly from their mobile device. You can easily integrate restaurant services such as Grub Hub, Seamless, Eat 24 Hours, or OLO, allowing users to view your menu and order food on the go. Just add the OrderFood page to your app and follow the simple instructions there.

Staying ahead of your competition is arguably more difficult than ever before, so making sure that your app is equipped with the most relevant and appealing technology is vital. Stay tuned for more exciting releases in the coming weeks! 

In the meantime, monetize your app today with these great new features from Conduit Mobile!

 Engaging 

The research wizards at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business decided to dig deep into the nature of attachment and aversion by studying three brands – Apple (of course), Manchester United, and a grocery store chain in Austria. They measured consumer attitudes and actions in three areas:

1. Would consumers defend these brands when they were criticized by others?
2. Would they participate in a charity event as a way to demonstrate support for a brand?
3. Would their moods change based on good or bad things that happened to the brand?

The researchers found that the strongest emotional attachments – the deepest engagement, in other words – came from three different levels of appeal.

The first appeal they identified was what they called “self-enticing”– which includes both aesthetic benefits (like Apple’s design) and sensory benefits (like the taste of chocolate).

The second level of emotional affinity was created by products that solve customer problems, and by doing so allow people to “feel power over their environment.” The authors of the study labeled this “self-enabling benefits.”

The third dimension of engagement is a result of benefits that “resonate with customers’ beliefs or values and support their self-identities.” This can range from a brand associated with your hometown, or an aspirational brand like Rolex.

These three E’s – enticement, enablement, and enrichment – lead to the fourth big E: engagement. Given that I think about and write about engagement all the time, it’s nice to see someone actually researching it.

Enraging

A piece in The New York Times last week covered the recent epidemic of bad taste in advertising, which has gone way too far in the pursuit of the hip and edgy. Stuart Elliott writes:

“Some of the biggest names in marketing, including Ford Motor, General Motors, Hyundai Motor, Reebok and PepsiCo, have been forced recently to apologize to consumers who mounted loud public outcries against ads that hinged on subjects like race, rape and suicide.”

It’s hard to imagine the absence of judgment that allowed someone at Mountain Dew to green-light an ad that “…featured a battered white waitress trying to identify her assailant from a lineup that included African-American men and a goat.”

Why are we seeing this? Why did Mountain Dew reach out to rapper Tyler, The Creator and clearly give him instructions to push the ol’ envelope?

Simple. We’re in a marketing arms race for attention. The Times is right that we’re seeing these ads due to “…the growing anxiety on Madison Avenue to create ads that will be noticed and break through the clutter.”

What’s enraging to me is both the bad taste and the lack of creativity. This boils down to a sheer absence of imagination that confuses offensiveness with engagement. Most people are more intelligent than these lame efforts at viral trends take us for. We are engaged by more than off-color jokes, crass visuals, and references that are wildly provocative but neither smart nor funny.

A video may go viral in the short term, but a video that’s constantly forwarded can actually send a brand racing backwards. When it comes to successful engagement, brands need to pay more attention to the enduring value of the three E’s rather than short-term – and risky – shock value.

For example, if your app is targeted toward businesses, it may be best to concentrate your efforts on LinkedIn. With tools such as a LinkedIn Poll, you can receive valuable (and cheap) feedback from a professional community before you even launch. What’s more, by advertising on LinkedIn you can reach a global audience of hundreds of millions.

Viddy, Instagram, and YouTube are equally vital to going viral—especially for your visually oriented users. Used correctly, they have the potential to expose your app to millions.

Twitter, with almost half a billion members, has the power to make your app go viral more quickly than virtually any other social media site. All it takes is a tweet from the right person at the right time, and his or her social network does the rest. Indeed, building a community on Twitter can take time, but if you get noticed by the right blogger or, better yet, celebrity, your app is sure to make waves.

Google+ has great potential as well. Even though this relatively new social network has “only” about 250+ million users, it is run by the biggest name in search. (Enough said.) So with the right use of links and keywords on your Google+ About page, you can increase your discoverability organically and gain invaluable publicity.

Once you’ve pinpointed your target audience and most suitable channel, it’s time to drive your app on the viral highway by promoting it constantly. Try to be the “go to” figure in your field. In other words, whenever a topic that relates to your app is raised in cyberspace, make sure that your name and app are synonymous with that subject. This can be accomplished via continuous web exposure, such as savvy commentary on relevant articles.

Your social media strategy must not be an afterthought; it should be integrated into your app, giving it that human face that makes your app personal rather than just another piece of software. Build a real social community (not one that is solely focused on your app) and you are well on your way to putting your current—and future—apps on the viral highway.

Here are some examples of how you can use your app’s social channels to the fullest extent:

• Post items such as career opportunities with your company
• Show correspondence from satisfied users
• Include postings from users in different countries—even if the postings aren’t in English, they make users feel part of a large, global community
• Update your online friends about issues or deals that may be of interest, even if they are not necessarily related to your app
• Request user input to give your users a chance to contribute
• Add pictures and diagrams to break up the monotony of text
• Add and update content on a frequent basis

And now…real-life examples to give you some ideas for using YOUR social platforms effectively: 

(Viber re-tweeting a customer’s tweet about their product, comparing Viber to FB and Twitter)

(WhatsApp showing great customer service – avoiding thousands of predicted complaints)

(Rovio, the masterminds behind Angry Birds, are staying hip and relevant with mentioning the viral hit “Harlem Shake”)

(Subway Surfers are keeping their followers engaged with the content of the popular game)

(Mailbox keeps people enthusiastic about their app with an Instagram contest)

(Twitter is celebrating its 7^th birthday with a Facebook status, showing that they aren’t afraid of the competition while engaging their community)

Here are six ways apps are changing the way we experience music festivals.

1. Create your own schedule.
Most summer music festivals include several stages and a massive list of performers. Instead of frantically running from stage to stage, festival apps allow you to create your own schedule using the provided lineup. You can easily plan which shows you want to see and prioritize bands based on performance time. Better yet, some apps allow you to see how many other people also chose to attend a performance, so if you were debating which artist to see, you might go for a less crowded option.

2. Never miss a beat.
After you have added artists to your personalized schedule, some apps let you create alerts so that you will be notified when one of your favorite bands is about to go on stage. This is especially handy when you’re debating whether to grab a bite to eat or another beer. You won’t have to lose your place in line when you know ahead of time that the headliner is going to start in 15 minutes!

3. Capture the memories.
Considering that most attendees are likely to post photos from the festival on Instagram, official festival apps make it easy to Instagram photos and personalize them with the festival’s logo and customized filters. 

4. Stay connected with friends.
Of course all the apps allow you to stay updated and connected via Facebook and Twitter. However, apps like Lollapalooza’s official app provide simple access to group texting. Assuming you can get service among the crowd, group texting is a great way to coordinate plans with your friends during the shows.

5. Enjoy more than just music.
Many brands target music festivals for their high volume of attendees. In an effort to promote their company or product, brands often organize giveaways and contests, giving attendees an opportunity to win a variety of prizes. App users get access to all the contests, as well as receive alerts when prizes are being handed out. 

6. Share the experience.
In the days of Woodstock, it would have taken a considerable amount of time to get your film developed and then share the photos with friends and family. Today with mobile apps, you can take a photo live at the event and instantly send the image as a postcard to any one of your friends or family. 

If you are heading to a music festival this summer, be sure you have the official app downloaded beforehand and enjoy all the benefits it has to offer. As always, we invite you to share with us your thoughts on festival apps and how you plan to use technology at music festivals this summer!

Delivery For All is a web and mobile-based food delivery service that partners with local restaurants in several cities around the U.S. (The service is currently available in the greater Phoenix area, with plans to incorporate hundreds of restaurants in San Diego, NY, Des Moines, and other major metropolitan areas in the next month). With their new mobile app, customers can place an order for delivery directly from their mobile phones – which means wherever you go, so doth dinner.

Delivery For All was created to help hungry customers find the food delivery services they were looking for while helping restaurants increase their presence in their community. The company recently grew out of Tempe Takeout, a local service in Tempe, AZ, and connects people with their favorite restaurants online. They decided to create a mobile app to satisfy the cravings of customers on the go.

In today’s mobile world, as more and more customers turn to their mobile devices to find information, shop, and make reservations, it is crucial for brands and businesses to remain in the minds and pockets of their customers. Delivery For All has found the perfect way to leverage web and mobile technology in order to reach customers and give them what they need wherever they may be – whenever hunger strikes.

As Delivery For All CEO Trevor Way explained: “We live in a time when technology is more and more important in people’s everyday lives. To stay with the times, and try to stay at the front of the industry, it was an easy decision to make a mobile app.”

The company decided to build an app with Conduit Mobile after researching several options. According to Trevor, the final decision to use Conduit Mobile was based on the platform’s “ease of use, along with the pricing structure and great customer service. From the very beginning, the Conduit Mobile platform made it easy to walk through the steps needed to build the app. Helpful instructions throughout the app-building process made sure we were on track until we reached our final product.”

Perhaps best of all, with Conduit Mobile, Delivery for All was able to seamlessly transition from the web to mobile, all while maintaining its unique brand and engaging service.

“Between the ease of use of the Conduit Mobile platform, and the ability to connect to our software on our website, the mobile app makes for a great customer experience,” Trevor said. “We were just surprised how easy it was, and how quick we could get our own mobile app up and running…and we could do it without hiring an IT person! We haven’t done any marketing for the app yet, and we were very surprised to see downloads already happening. WOW.”

We say “wow” to Delivery For All for their great mobile app, and wish them all the best as they continue to capture the hearts – and stomachs – of their satisfied customers. Speaking of which…who’s up for ordering some pad thai? We know a great app for that! You can download the Delivery For All app here.

Want to create a custom mobile app for your business? Get started with Conduit Mobile now!

 Here are some basic terms and rules you should keep in mind before posting images.

1. Determine Photo License

• Public Domain: Free For All
  Photos that are in the public domain are not protected by copyright, and require no permissions. They’re the exception in the image world.
• Royalty Free: The Gift That Keeps on Giving
  If you download a royalty-free image, it’s still under copyright, but you don’t have to pay every single time you use it. This is good news for bloggers with multi-post projects.
• Creative Commons: Share and Share Alike
  Typically, you’re allowed to use images licensed through the Creative Commons (CC) organization (which includes most Flickr photos) for free, but there are certain stipulations you need to remember. You must give the artist credit, the images may only be licensed for noncommercial use, and artists can indicate whether or not the image may be altered in any way.

2. Ask Permission
Depending on the kind of license your image has, you may need to contact the artist for permission to use it. If you can find an email address for the artist, a simple email will suffice. Make sure you post a link to the photo and indicate where you’ll be using it on your blog.

3. Credit the Artist
Finally, you need to post the artist’s name and a link to the original source. You can do this in a number of ways, according to the folks at Tent Blogger:

• “HT author-name” (link)
• “via author-name/URL” (link)
• “Originally uploaded by author-name/URL” (link)
• “This photo, “title of image” is copyright © 2011 author-link and made available under a attribution-type-here” (link)
• A link in the post referencing the original creator or site
• Add a description with the text and link
• Link to the direct Creative Commons license in use
• Title of the work and any other derivative works, if it is one

Don’t forget: When you’re mining photos for your blog from simple Google searches, you need to pay close attention to licenses, terms, and limitations. It’s often easier to rely on a site like everystockphoto.com, which draws from multiple image websites. Even then, you need to check the individual licenses for each photo (but the info shouldn’t be hard to find).

Good luck and happy image hunting! 

Over the last couple of weeks, members of our product development team have locked themselves deep inside our Mobile R&D Lab. Fuelled on biscuits, a constant supply of coffee, and a bizarre but nevertheless energizing playlist featuring “Imagine” by John Lennon, “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke, and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” they recently re-emerged with our latest feature to make your app that much more engaging.

So without any further delay (drumroll please), we’re excited to announce our brand new feature: Mobile Forms.  

A Mobile Form is a practical feature that provides an instant communication channel between you and your users, allowing you to gather feedback and information from your app users. You can use one of our ready-made Forms, or create a custom Form according to your needs. The feature is simple to use, yet very versatile because the options are endless for how you can use it to further boost your business and engage users.

Here are just a few ideas to get you started:

• Allow your app users to sign up for your mailing list right through the app.
• Collect feedback and comments about your products and services from your app users.
• Enhance your customer service by offering a direct communication channel for contact forms, service requests, or product queries.
• Let your customers schedule appointments or make reservations while on the go.
• Get detailed reports of accidents and other incidents, along with the user’s exact location and photos. 

Once you’ve added the feature, you’ll notice that managing your Forms is super easy, too. You can:

• Edit & design your Forms with our intuitive app editor.
• View the data from all your Forms in one convenient location. In one click, you can view full details of each message, including who uploaded it, the description, location, photos, etc.
• Export your Form data as a CSV file for further analysis.

For some inspiration, be sure to check out how the Judson ISD used our Forms feature in their award-winning app. Their adaptation of the feature enables the school community to report incidents of bullying, including a description of the incident, a map of the location, and the website in the case of cyber bullying.

Look out for our upcoming enhancements to the Mobile Forms feature, such as allowing you to integrate your Forms with your email services, like MailChimp, or letting you get all your mobile reports sent directly to your email account for a quicker response.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started now and add some “engagement power” to your app with your very own Mobile Form!

True, you can’t beat the simplicity of daily deals.

Even in its decline, no other model can send hundreds of customers your way with nothing more than your “go-ahead” required.
These sites have accumulated hundreds of thousands of email addresses in their database, meaning lots of impressions for your business, regardless of how your deal sells.
If you’re a small or seasonal business, a coupon deal can stimulate profits even in the most challenging of off-season months.

But the negatives of bulk deals are becoming more and more apparent.

The profit-share ratio has always been sharply tilted toward the coupon platform. If a restaurant offers $40 worth of food for $20, Groupon will take 40% of the sale plus taxes and fees, leaving the restaurant with around $11. Even at a typical 30% markup, the restaurant or retailer is losing out big using this model.

The other problem with daily deals is the clientele. Those who still use them regularly tend to be hard-core bargain hunters who only come out of hiding to pounce on your desperate attempt to bring people in by any means necessary. These are not repeat customers—and to make matters worse, they may have overblown expectations that result in poor or nonexistent tipping!

As this reality sets in, we have seen the quality and quantity of businesses that use the Groupon model decline dramatically. The site that once offered amazing discounts on retail and dining has been relegated to a flea market version of its former self, offering up more wax jobs, both auto and Brazilian, than the types of deals that initially attracted so many. The daily deal model ultimately makes little sense for the retailer or restaurant.

As the online marketing game evolves, here are a few tips to keep you ahead of the curve:

1. Offer mobile coupons. Smartphones are already where the action is in 2013, and by 2014, one in four people in the US are expected to redeem a mobile coupon. Sites like MobileCoupon.com and CouponSherpa.com are offering easy, cost-effective means to send bulk deals to mobile phones, guaranteeing an immediate impression that doesn’t require opening an email or scrolling through an overloaded inbox. With mobile deals, you can set your own terms! Offer percentage discounts, free items with purchase, cash off minimum sales, or inform clients of weekly specials. No other marketing tool allows you to reach your customers in such a direct way.
2. Try other deal sites. Along with the popularity of a few daily deal sites has come a swarm of similar platforms, often boasting friendlier profit-share models to businesses. New online coupon sites are popping up in every market, many created in direct response to the backlash from businesses gouged by the 40% profit-share ratios.
3. Use email marketing. Email marketing can brand your business and reach customers in a way that a daily deal never could. By building your own database of customer email addresses, you can create a personalized email blast that can have the powerful impact that you’re looking for. Get creative with your emails, using personalization, colorful images, and of course, valuable deals to reach customers. While this will require more work than hiring a turnkey online coupon site, the results will be more tangible, as repeat customers respond to ads, allowing you to tailor your discounts to what (loyal) customers want.

In 2013, the key to success is looking past the bulk deal model to focus on establishing real customer loyalty, and not simply a one-time surge. By thinking outside the daily deal model, you can avoid the pitfalls and offer deals on your own terms, without having to “pay your dues” to the big coupon companies.

But wait, there’s more…

Tablet users are now an Audience you can target with any Wibiya Action! Show them custom messages to increase your app installs, suggest recommended content to grow your mobile page views, and display a Facebook Like button to get more Facebook fans!

Wibiya is now optimized for the world’s leading tablets, including the iPad 2, iPad 3, the new iPad, the iPad mini, Windows RT tablets and the Microsoft Surface.

We would like to thank our publishers for sharing your feedback and ideas. We love you guys!

Engage smarter.

The impetus for this business was, like many entrepreneurial ventures, a moment of personal insight. As David explains in the FT piece, he had received a CV that appeared suspicious, but performing the required resume forensics took about four days.  

“The guy seemed to be too good on paper, but I knew there was something fishy with the CV.” 

Obtaining validation from the university that the shady applicant claimed to have graduated from wasn’t easy. David went on to say, “Often universities can’t reply immediately…they are too busy, they have departments to run.” 

If necessity is the mother of opportunity, then frustration is its biological parent as well. The result is Smart Diploma, what the FT describes as “a standardized, digital, secure system to ‘grant, ensure, monitor and protect’ people’s credentials – in other words, a digital academic passport.” When an employer sees the Smart Diploma seal, they know the CV is verified.  

The compelling logic behind this innovation is clear and therefore worthy of my “engaging” commendation. We’ve all heard stories about resume padding and – even more egregious – degree invention. Scott Thompson will probably remain the poster boy of self-destructive hyperbole; his claim that he had a computer science degree from Stonehill College got him canned from the CEO position at Yahoo.  

So creating a simple process for degree validation, with built-in incentives for both schools and their alumni, is certainly clever and meets an unmet need. Who can argue with that? The harder it is to verify a truth, the easier it is for a truth to be stretched. (Consider that my aphorism of the day.) 

But – at the same time – there’s something inherently enraging about this as well. Just think: an entire startup built around the phenomenon of lying. Yes, yes, I know – people have over-stated their credentials since the ancient Greeks. (Aristotle probably claimed to have a Ph.D. in philosophy thousands of years before the first doctorate was granted.)  

But it feels different now. It feels like we might have lost our bearings, that we don’t know the difference between right and wrong anymore, that we’ve become overly skilled and schooled in the arts of self-justification and rationalization.

It’s not all that unusual for one phenomenon to trigger both an engaged and enraged reaction, because we live in a complex and interconnected world. Nonetheless, this story struck me as a particularly salient example because it uses the power of entrepreneurship to solve a problem that wouldn’t exist if people were simply more honest and trustworthy. 

It’s amazing how we are constantly developing innovative, new ideas in the world, to keep up with the ever-evolving ways to take advantage of the world. That’s one cycle that we can’t count on stopping any time soon.