We get asked a lot of questions by clients, friends, students, colleagues, you name it, so we want to bring our knowledge to the masses.

This Thursday (3/21) from 1:00 – 2:00PM EST, Laurie Vitas, a lead developer at IQ, will answer any questions you have related to web development, responsive design, HTML, CSS, and more! This will be the first of a series of Q&A sessions over a range of topics.

Tweet @IQ_Agency with the hash tag #TalkIQ and you’ll receive a quick response from a true expert in the field!  

For the first time this August Instagram beat Twitter in daily active users. Not only that, but users spent 50% more time on Instagram than users did on Twitter. Hopefully this makes Mark Zuckerberg feel better about the botched Facebook IPO and lousy performance thereafter. It does support his avowed focus on mobile bolstered by the battery of new attributes that Facebook has launched recently. These include their mobile ad network which uses Facebook Connect as a way to tap into outside apps and deliver ads targeted to individual profiles (so that’s why they did it!) and the new Facebook mobile app which has been rebuilt with new technology. Using HTML5 wasn’t fast enough, so the updated version now loads your newsfeed and images twice as fast (the #1 user complaint before). But other than demonstrating that the brains at Facebook, along with a lot of other people, noticed that mobile was going to be big, what does this news tell us about the changing dynamics of the web? Most clearly it underscores the power of the visual web. Continue Reading

With 2011 in the rear view mirror it’s time to take stock and look ahead. If your company has been sitting on the sidelines unconvinced of the need for a social media strategy, then 2012 brings you the gift of clarity. The answer, of course, is yes, you need one; your customers, your sales force and even you investors demand it. And if that doesn’t convince you, just watch your competition.  So for all you laggards and wallflowers let’s talk about getting social.

We understand if you’ve been a bit hesitant about diving into what appears to be an uncontrollable, unpredictable world. But this is no longer an early adopter situation. The fat part of the bell curve is here and if you’re not in, you’re out in the cold. But other than just jumping on another bandwagon what are the compelling business reasons to get on board?

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Last week, a lot of news broke out of Penn State.  It broke quickly.  Almost too quickly and without enough facts for everyone to wrap their head around.  With this in mind, I decided to start fresh this week and try to gain a new perspective on this social event by checking out the sentiment on Twitter to see who everyone is blaming for everything that’s gone wrong with my alma mater.  I want to discover people’s perception of why Penn State now finds itself up to its Nittany ears in bad, bad press.   Is it solely Jerry Sandusky, the alleged pedophile?  Is it Paterno?  Is it the assistant coach Mike McQueary who didn’t break up the abuse?  Is it the media?

Each Tweet below represents a different person, group or thing that is catching some of the blame for the Penn State scandal (I can’t believe this hasn’t been dubbed a catchy nickname yet). Continue Reading

I’m a Gen Y content pusher. I love to share content online and do it all the time, probably more then most people. One of my favorite types of things to share are photos and I do that mostly via my mobile phone (iPhone 4/AT&T). As a part of the most social audience and largest content creator group online, I wanted to share the following flow as a use case on understanding behavior and motivation for creating and sharing photos using a mobile device.

A Few Things About Me Before We Get Started
- I’m not a photographer.
- I don’t take my phone camera photography seriously.
- I’ve never been a hardcore member of the Flickr community.

+ I am a content pusher.
+ I push a lot of various content online besides photos.
+ I push content across multiple online sites.
+ I segment my audiences by site and push particular content for each.
+ Most of my sharing is driven by self expression and trend setting.
+ I take photos to share them.

1. In most cases, when I decide to take a photo, I launch the iPhone system Camera application.

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1. Weapons For Entrepreneurs

2. Top Web Designers

3. Creatives To Watch

4. Web Innovators

5. Brands

6. No Blab Just Design Links

7. Anthropology
Short, curated list of high signal-to-noise ratio folks studying culture, ritual, characters.

8. Awesomesocial
Builders of the next generation awesome social apps, platforms, and experiences.

9. Twitter Giants

10. Story

So I am sure we have all seen all over the media all the massive coverage about Twitter and its popularity.  I think part of the popularity is that every news organization is telling us how popular it is therefore driving more traffic.  But I do think there is a phenomenon going on here, Twitter has been reporting staggering, staggering analytics for the month of March – and while I do think that this won’t always remain the case I do think there is something of interest that we should all take note.  Our media consumption habits are changing.  We still don’t know long this explosion in Social Media will continue or when it will normalize, but it serves us as communication strategists to take note that where we get our news and information will forever change after it.

Recently Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) had a “war” to see who could get to 1 million followers first.  So yes, a celebrity and a respected news organization went head-to-head to see who could reach a milestone for Twitter.  You will probably not be shocked to learn that Ashton Kutcher won.  And while this first started as lark, he realized in his campaign the shift that this signifies  in consumption habits.  Oprah took note, and she asked Ashton to break her into the world of Twitter (@oprah,) so it is now official that everyone is on Twitter.

As a consumer, I think everyone is open to experiment with Social Media to learn how it best fits their needs.  As a Marketer, I don’t think that every brand should be out there because it is the hot new thing – case in point Second Life and My Space.  However, think about where your customers are consuming information and who breaks news to them.  Whether they read about your earnings from a Corporate web site or you hear about it from MC Hammer (@mchammer) on Twitter, you have to be prepared to know that we no longer hold the reigns in this conversation.  Companies who will be successful are those who are flexible and nimble enough to respond to this and welcome their advocates as champions of their Brand.  Word of mouth and corporate communications are merging into one voice through sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  And whether or not these sites are still thriving 2 years from now or not, our behavior will have changed.

Post by Beth Ventura

I know it’s not cool for an upstanding member of the congregation to in any way doubt an article of faith like social media, but for now you can call me Thomas. Yes, Facebook and MySpace are huge, and yes, Twitter is catching on like wild-fire and yes, people like to talk to people about everything, BUT….that doesn’t mean they will.

First I believe there is a fad dynamic that is particularly active with new digital things. We are all fascinated by new digital doodads. We like to play with them, try them on for size and show them to our friends. It’s part curiosity, with a touch of wonder, and part trying to stay in with the digital in-crowd.

But the big but is, do we stick with it over time? Does it remain as central and important to our lives or is it replaced by the next new thing? Are Twitterers twittering as much as they twittered at first? Are they finding the time investment in reading zillions of Tweets a valuable use of their time compressed lives?

Don’t misunderstand me, social media has a vital place in the digital world, I just think that it is one of many threads in a complex tapestry, and the key is keep your eye on the evolving big picture.

Post by Tony Quin

Social media is in the news a lot these days. It seems that everyone is “following” everyone else and the mindset is if you don’t Twitter, blog, and review products you must be living under a rock.

Well, a lot of businesses don’t have social media quite figured out. Our work with clients big and small has shown us there is no single prescriptive approach that works for all businesses or even all audiences. But the approaches that do work have something in common: they are rooted in a defined strategy with clear, measurable objectives.

Which brings us to the point: forays into social media should be based on a customer-centric strategy. We’ve found a few guidelines that work well to create social media strategy:

#1: Listen before you talk.

Understand what is already being said about your company. Implement a formal listening program to monitor blog posts, comments, Twitter feeds, and all the other myriad social media components where customer dialogue is happening. Listening can be accomplished in a low-fidelity way by simply searching on keywords related to your company on Google, seeing what comes up, and tracking it over time. Subscribe to RSS feeds for those where a lot of activity is happening so you can hear what is being said. A higher fidelity – and higher cost – listening program could use a service like Radian6. Whatever means you choose, start listening. And keep an open mind about it…be kind to your customers, no matter what.

If you are on Twitter, follow the real Shaq – he’s great (@THE_REAL_SHAQ).

Next up is #2: Know what you want.

Post by Kelley Mitchell