Product Development, Design, Online Marketing and SEO Services

Product Management and Strategy

joe — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:36:53 +0000

Planning, building and bringing a product to market requires a well-planned and executed product management strategy. This plan must include all that is involved with designing, developing, testing, marketing, selling and servicing the product from engineering to sales to customer service. The strategic product plan needs to research, evaluate and define a customer need and then detail a product direction and solution to solve that need. As such, the role of product management is a strategic. However, product managers are often pulled into tactical directions and activities given their expertise in the marketing place.

Typically, developers want to prioritize requirements, marketing wants to write copy, and sales wants demos and training. These are all important and necessary tasks. The problem is that product managers get so busy supporting their products within the organization that they less time to focus on strategy product growth and customer satisfaction. I believe that a product strategy defines to how an organization plans to deliver on the business strategy. The role of product management is to ensure that product and strategy remain inline and in support of the business direction.

Thoughts? Comments?

Social Media Presence Management

joe — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:55:59 +0000

There’s a lot of buzz about online presence management or social media presence management as it’s sometimes called. It’s a relatively new name for a problem that’s been an issue since the consumer web had more than 10 users – how is your brand managed and perceived online. In the new world of social media and 140 character tweets, maintaining brand integrity has become a challenge for organizations to manage. A big part of the problem is simply being able to ‘listen’ to all the chatter across the many outlets of user generated content – Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Blogs, LinkedIn, etc. The other part of the equation is the social strategy an organization deploys to engage in the conversation . Do we only participate when we have a new product to promote? Do we engage our customers in open conversations on Twitter? Do we allow our employees to blog about products, services, etc?

Answering these and other questions related to your overall social media presence and online marketing strategy can help to inform how you manage your brand presence online. I feel that a company needs to be vigilant in monitoring the conversations about it as well engaging in conversations with customers and followers. I don’t think you can’t afford not to participate and actively manage your brand’s presence through social media — it’s going to be there whether you’re engaged or not. A plan, a commitment and steady involvement helps you manage your online presence efficiently and effectively.

Are there ideas you would add or change? How does your company handle social media presence management? What’s your take?

User Centered Design

GoPoint — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:57:46 +0000

User Centered Design (UCD) is the process and strategy of designing any application, website or tool that places the person, “the user”, at the center of the design and engineering effort. It’s a focus on the cognitive aspects of a users interaction and behavior with the application including perception, memory, problem solving and learning. Rather than requiring users to adapt their behaviors in order to learn and use an application, an application can be designed to support its intended users’ existing beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors as they relate to the tasks the application is designed to support.

Designing and building killer apps is critical to adoption, marketing an ultimately loyal of a user. So ask yourself, who are the users? What are their goals? What kind of experience do they have? What functions do they need? How do my users thinking this should work?

Keeping UCD at the center of the process will ensure that what you create are both useful and usable by actual people — not just engineers.

GoPoint Partners with Faro Media Group

GoPoint — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:25:09 +0000

GoPoint has partnered with Faro Media Group, a leader in international marketing solutions, 2D/3D animation and original content. GoPoint will extended Faro’s reach by adding mobile, software, technology and social development capabilities to the overall solution set.