Writings from Force 5 Basecamp

05/10/11

I was surfing yesterday, catching up on news. I noticed an article about a man who was grieving the loss of his wife years after her death. Having experienced the loss of a loved one taken too early and overwhelming grief, I decided to read the article. The article went on to review the circumstances that lead to the woman’s

05/05/11

UPDATE: Since the posting of this article there has been dramatic improvements by the community and now this is no longer the best way to implement this feature. We now use the “Views Slideshow,” found at: http://drupal.org/project/views_slideshow. We have used this method to create the various slideshows for the City of South Bend at www.SouthBendOn.com. One of the more common

05/04/11

Have you made restaurant reservations online? Come on, using a landline phone to make restaurant reservations is so 20th Century! These days, more and more consumers expect to engage with restaurants online and through mobile devices. Are you one of them? Restaurant operators who don’t build up their online presence and brand loyalty are missing an opportunity to generate higher

04/28/11

In their 2007 classic, Made to Stick, authors Chip and Dan Heath cite an experiment conducted in 1990 by Dr. Elizabeth Newton, PhD. The experiment was the study of a simple game. Subjects were given one of two roles: “tappers” and “listeners.” The tappers received a list of 25 common song names such as “Happy Birthday” and “Star Spangled Banner” and asked to tap

04/27/11

Facebook on Monday launched a new way to share content online – the Send button. While the functionality is nothing new, how you share content with friends may change with this new process of sharing. Facebook’s goal is to be that “pipe” in which you share more and more information, ultimately learning much more about you so it can deliver

04/26/11

A peek at location data sorted on an Iphone For the last week, the tech news has been reporting that Apple has secret files on the iPhone that track user location and store it on the device, without the permission of the device owner. It’s unclear what the data is used for and why Apple has been collecting it in

04/25/11

I recently read an article in MediaPost which had some incredible stats on the mobile users consumption of health information through apps and browsers. 38% of cell phone owners access the Internet using mobile phone — up 52% year over year 55% of cell phone Internet users go online daily from their mobile phones 30% of mobile subscribers use search,

04/21/11

A friend sent me this article from Rafe Needleman entitled, Facebook: Liked to Death.  It appears that advertisers in an effort to gain coveted Facebook Page ‘Likes’ are offering consumers premiums (or access to content) if they will visit their page and give them their valuable  “Thumb Up.”   Sounds like a good marketing strategy … or does it?  I invite you back to Economics 101 where you may have been introduced

04/19/11

Going Mobile? Listen to this projection…. A recent study by Morgan Stanley projects mobile internet users to exceed desktop internet users within the next few years. (2015) Yikes! – – Powerful stat. Believe it or not, the question isn’t “Should you go mobile?” but rather “Can you afford not to…?” Here are some more mobile stats for our Force 5

04/19/11

I recently read an article in Marketing Daily, about the growth in private-label products. No surprise there, right? The figures were pretty compelling with consumers saving 33% off their grocery bills by purchasing all private-label products. I have followed the trend, trying more private-label products than I have in the past. While I haven’t gone all private-label, I have more

04/15/11

 I found this video to be a  really helpful explanation of social marketing business strategy.   Scott Stratten, you rock! Force 5 would be happy to answer any questions you have about Social Media marketing, just drop us a line.

04/14/11

The latest data from Experian Hitwise shows that the number of keywords typed into search engines is declining.  Longer searches, those of 5-8 words, were down last month 3%.  As the data table shows,  1 word searches comprise a full 24% of all searches. 2 word searches are a close second.  When it comes to people finding your business or organization organically on the web,