Another technology we understand is coming is the bar code reader attachment for the telephone. Every item for sale in the world has a bar code. You’ll be able to scan an item and, using your mobile device, go to the Internet to find where the best deal is on that particular item within whatever
radius you define.

Location-based services will change the way we do lots of things. In speaking about this at conferences, I jokingly recommend that if the boss has provided
you with a cell phone or mobile device and you’re going golfing on Friday afternoon, leave the boss’s device at the office and set it to call forward to your own device. If you’re looking for brownie points, leave it there for the weekend.

The mobile marketplace is significant. There are over 1.8 billion people out there with a mobile device capable of voice, text, image, and Internet communication. This number is increasing at a rapid pace as less-developed countries like China and India are going straight to wireless for their phones. We are seeing swift and wide acceptance with over 350 billion text messages exchanged over the world’s mobile networks each month. The Yankee Group tells us that over 15 percent of these messages are classified as commercial or marketing messages, telling me that there are 52.5 billion marketing messages currently being exchanged monthly.

Mobile marketing is a marketer’s dream. It allows direct, personal communication in real time with the opportunity for immediate, direct response. There are a number of mobile marketing opportunities—instant messaging, location-based services, profile-specific advertising, subscribed content, SMS (short messaging service), MMS (multimedia messaging service), and mobile blogging.

Podcasting is basically a method of publishing audio content via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files usually MP3s. Podcasting became very popular in late 2004. You can browse the Internet to find podcasts that are of interest . you can sample and subscribe to those that you’re interested in and then sync them to your MP3 player to be able to listen to them anywhere, anytime. Once you subscribe to a podcast, your device will automatically check for updates and download new programs to your computer. When you sync your device, all your podcasts are delivered to that device.

Now you can listen to your favorite talk show while jogging. You can listen to the 6 a.m. news at 10:27. You can listen to Susan Sweeney’s Internet Marketing training programs while sitting by the pool. You can listen to movie reviews while standing in line at the theatre.

Blogs are informal great for relationship building. Blogs are easy to m aintain. Blogs are informative. The blog can be maintained by you yourself, or you can allow your Web site visitors to participate. This can be a great feature as long as your customers are going to post positive comments. They are usually updated daily; this may be a problem if you don’t have THAT much news. On the other hand, if you don’t have much Web site traffic, why do this? As with everything related to Internet marketing, always go back to review your objectives, your target markets, and your products and services to determine if this is an appropriate Internet marketing technique  for you and your business.

Many companies are starting to take blogging as a serious form of marketing and information distribution. They know that potential customers are  and the Internet looking for the latest information on their types of products or services. They are looking for recommendations. They are looking for the best deal. They are looking for the latest.

Blogs have been around for a while, but really have come into the mainstream with the introduction of automated publishing systems like Blogger at http://www.blogger.com that made it really easy for Web site owners to add this type of content. Google acquired Blogger.com in 2003. There are all kinds of sites like Bloglin,) that provide you with Web based tools to create your own blog, subscribe to others, and search for blogs that are of interest.

Consumers’ desire to have more control over “real” information as opposed to what the media wants them to have has grown significantly over the last few years. Blogs often are seen to be unbiased consumer-generated content and thus have grown in popularity over that same time period. The technology enables anyone to broadcast information, pictures, and videos worldwide in a matter of minutes. No more waiting for video or pictures on CNN of the latest hurricane or disaster. Bloggers can have the content up instantaneously, others link to it, and it is all over the Web in a matter of minutes.