What do we talk about when we talk about mobile? Increasingly, the landscape is muddled. At a host of technology conferences over recent months: ad:tech San Francisco, Advertising Week, IAB MIXX and even the Mobile Media Summit, not once did a speaker explain specifically what was being talked about when using the term "mobile."To contextualize any discussion of mobile marketing or media these days, the entire arena must be addressed with a much greater level of specificity. Raise this point with people who live and breathe mobile and the first reaction is, "Oh! I get it. You mean whether it's

Guest Commentary: There are nearly 70 million smartphones in use in the US (Quora Research), and by some estimates, tablets are set to overtake PC use. The mobile internet is burgeoning, devices and platforms are proliferating, and no businesses are more impacted by this digital revolution than those industry sectors that are inherently mobile. Architects and engineers particularly belong to that cohort of workers who can hardly be categorized as having “desk jobs.” They’re on the go when they’re on the job, often bristling with more than one mobile digital device. Google won’t disclose how many of its searches are mobile,

FIRST READ COMMENTARY: Providing valuable, credible information can be the foundation of a sound business model, something the earliest online business learned in a hurry.Take Autobytel, for example. The web’s first car-buying website launched in 1995, supplying consumers with information they’d never before had access to: how much automotive dealers paid for new cars. “The dealers hated it,” recalls Thomas Heshion, a former executive.Autobytel will always be remembered as the first dot-com to advertise on the Super Bowl, but it’s thriving more than a decade later because it supplies information that helps car buyers better understand what they’re buying, and

Guest Commentary:  Images of projects are a critical component of any architect or engineer’s portfolio. Photos of completed work, perhaps plans and sketches for work-in-progress, floorplans and elevations are all stock-in-trade. Often, websites contain media files. Perhaps a PDF download of a notable press mention, or a video or audio file of an interview on a project, or a talk on a panel or at a conference.All are great marketing assets. And online, all these photos, images, files, movies and sounds are all but invisible to search engines. Unless you make them otherwise.Search engines can't "read" anything but plain old

Everyone knows glass is recyclable. Until very recently no one realized just how far glass recycling could go in a digital environment. A video made for a Corning investor event  in early 2011 has (much to the surprise of Corning executives and its agency) gone mega-viral on YouTube. With upwards of eight million views in four short weeks, it’s the most-watched corporate video in YouTube history. Maybe even in all of corporate video history. Every marketer with half a brain knows viral isn’t something you can buy in a bottle. And if it were, it wouldn’t come with a guarantee. But

Graphic courtesy of Junta42 Have you ever picked up a company's brochure or flyer? Watched an infomercial or a shopping channel on television? Ordered a product DVD explaining the benefits of a new mattress or a vacation destination? Leafed through a company newsletter?These are just a few of the ways companies use content to market their products and services to customers.Content marketing is nothing new. Companies having been creating and distributing content for many years, both to attract new business and to retain existing customers. However, unlike traditional forms of marketing and advertising, using content to sell isn’t selling or

Of all professional groups, architects and engineering and construction firms spend the least on marketing (3.1 percent), according to a 2008 study by Hinge, a marketing services firm.

 While the building professions are loathe to print brochures, nearly all have websites. And nearly all operate on a local or regional level. Given how easy and inexpensive it is to optimize a website for local search to help prospective clients find you, it's hard to understand why engineers and builders wouldn't take advantage of local search engine optimization.

 As far back as 2004, local search accounted for up to 25 percent of