Augmented Reality: the future of Education FOR EVERYONE!

               Remember in the late nineties how we were all so convinced that Virtual Reality would eventually take over how we interface with people, the internet and the online community? Movies like the Lawnmower Man, Tron and the Matrix made us salivate at the possibility of exploring a new frontier of wonder and endless possibilities without even leaving the comfort of our own home. Almost 2013 and most people know they aren't getting any bulky headsets or full body suits anytime soon, and they are certainly not lining up to try Secondlife.com (a virtual world developed by Linden Lab) but there still is something on the tip of any tech savvy person's mind today; daydreaming and imagining the endless possibilities of Augmented Reality! 

               You can imagine A.R (augmented reality) if you can conceive that if Virtual Reality was the complete immersion of your senses into a digital world then augmented reality is less complete immersion and simply a virtual overlay onto the real world. It enables endless possibilities by providing limitless digital data pertaining to whatever you are interacting with through a monitor or a pair of augmented optical lenses, the most well known is the Google Glasses expected to be released sometime in 2013. The Google Glasses utilize smartglass to unify the virtual world of smartphones, computers and the web with the real world of people, places and information. They were an instant hit at Google's I/O developers conference in June/2012 and continue to be online ever since. This is the promotional video released by Google and has accrued more than 18.5 Million views since April '12!  And the buzz will increase steadily as the release date nears, if the can get the expected cost to be closer to the cost of an expensive smart phone (Aprox $450-500) and further from the cost of an expensive 3D TV ($1,500) then I would imagine to turn to much more of a craze! 
  
                A novel idea and all but are the masses really going to race to but the first smart phone you wear on your face? What are the potential uses beyond the capabilities of any typical smartphone? Once the public truly realizes the potential of augmented reality, the Google Glasses will only be the first of a long line of A.R Glasses! At least in the US, you will find them on the face of every student and teacher,  every tech, every engineer, and then virtually everyone else (pun intended!). If you look at this video of the capabilities of Augmented Reality linking a simple child's schoolbook with an interface it isn't very hard to imagine the possibilities for educating our youth! Imagine fusing a young child's will to learn with his/her will to discover in a way no teacher ever could before! 

                 What about the workplace? You think corporations won't jump at a way to quickly, efficiently and economically improve the capabilities and evolution of their workforce? There isn't a single industry in the world that wouldn't benefit from a more efficient and more savvy labor force. Imagine you can optimize all of your employees from day one with step by step individual tutorials with hands on practice without paying a single instructor for a single hour of mentor-ship! BMW has been working on a augmented reality training program utilizing their "datagoggles" a technology similar to Smartglass since 2007! Take a look at this brief tutorial to replace a cooling fan in a BMW 325i. 

                  Absolutely capable of reinventing education it's not hard to theorize that it will also revolutionize reeducation;  it will  be simpler, more efficient and ever expanding. No more will human beings be outmoded to younger, less experienced but more knowledgeable labor. With this new tech the evolution of man will grow in as many leaps and bounds  in the next 5 years as it has in the last 25! This is the retooling that will finally get us out from behind our desks and out in the real world working, blogging, learning, interacting, and interfacing with people, instead of keyboards! 

Almost 2013, Why are SMS Campaigns Still Successful?

           SMS is old news! Now we have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and all of the other social media sites. We have email, snail mail and all of the old school proven mediums in TV, Radio, and Print. Why are we still using SMS? Why do these campaigns still work? What attracts campaigns to use such an old medium? Do people really participate in these annoying text campaigns from these strange numbers? The answer is YES  and because THEY WORK!

           More than 5 BILLION texts are sent per day with 99% being opened and read with 94% in the first 3 minutes! Those numbers are completely staggering! Why wouldn't marketers take advantage of it?! Think about the cost of advertising in print, TV or Radio (not to mention the 1% ROI avg). How much do those Pay Per Click campaigns drain from your budget?! Content management across your social media circles for a really good campaign takes a team and that is REALLY expensive. Email and Snail Mail campaigns are useless, digital or otherwise, you can spot junk mail when you see it! What if there was a quick and easy way to get your message across to your desired audience? What if you could make it short and sweet just to get the point across and at the same time include a short link to more info and more access? What if that little link was 6 times more likely to get the recipient to click through than Email, Search, Facebook, or Online display ads?One that was ridiculously cheap and gave you the best ROI? Now imagine you can track it, interact with it, manage and optimize the campaign at any time from anywhere!

          UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES are afforded to SMS campaigns! The trick to SMS campaigns is keeping the interest of the recipient and avoiding that dreaded STOP reply that will terminate your connection! Think about your social media sites. By now you know that if you constantly bombard your followers with content that its consistently all about you or your business your getting dropped like a bad habit! You have to integrate attractive content with your marketing to keep their attention, by offering 3 times as much attractive content as you do your own marketing it makes the recipient 5 times more likely to look for your content! There's no reason not to follow the same paradigm for SMS! Attract your client with fun and interactive content, throw in a few discounts and sweepstakes, and with smart phones being what they are integrate a few good MMS (multimedia messages) and you got yourself a winner! 
       
              As long as there are 327.5 Million cell phones in the US, SMS will be here to stay! Think about the magic behind the medium, any other form of advertising you need the audience to come to you. If its print they have to open the paper, if its online they have to search or find the site where the ad is located, if its TV they have to turn on the TV, etc. SMS is genius because it is an open portal directly into your audience's pocket! (pun intended!)  So how do you get there? You can purchase a list of phone numbers from any one of a million places but that is an absolute NO NO! SMS will only work if the recipient wants to receive them! So how do you find the audience that wants to receive your content? OFFER IT TO YOUR CUSTOMERS DUH! Odds are you already have your desired audience in your store right now, on your site right now, viewing your ads on some other medium right now so how hard is it to promote a SMS campaign? Honestly its so cheap and so easy that if you can't figure it out you don't deserve to capitalize on it!

             Where do you start? There are two very popular agencies that make it very easy to get these campaigns up and running in minutes,  EXPRESSTEXT and SNAPGIANT, and they both let you try if for free! Where do you run it? EVERYWHERE and with BROAD STROKES! Start small but start BIG, put that 6 digit number on everything! If you want your name on it, your website or social media on it then you want that number there too! What kind of content or offers do you include in the campaign? That's up to you, just follow the very simple policy; KEEP IT SIMPLE! If your texts of more than approx 100 characters your done! If they want that much info they will come to you, include a link in the text for more info or more offers but keep the outgoing messages very simple. Make sure to include a call to action, whether its a sweepstakes, a discount, free stuff it needs to be interactive or it just won't work.

          As I sit here now, enjoying my quad venti macchiato, I just subscribed to Starbucks SMS campaign. I text the word GOLD to 697289 and within 30 seconds I got my welcome message, and it was opened and read. 60 seconds after that I was registered for their content. Not only do I get a free cup of coffee on my birthday, but I was able to link my Starbucks rewards card to my new profile. Linking promotions is the best tool in marketing REMEMBER THAT! Now my profile keeps track of my points for free stuff and even if it is lost I will never lose the points I accrued. Even the big guys don't get it right all the time; they promise no more than 3 messages a month-BAD IDEA! Like I said earlier you don't want to bombard the recipient but you don't want to lose your opportunity to maximize this gateway either! There is no doubt that they will utilize all three of those messages to be Starbuck Promotions so why not double the messages and include non-promotional content to keep their interest? Or better yet, why not include a way to "share" the content with their friends to further the promotion? This will be a tactic utilized in the near future but as of now noone has perfected it. Mark my words that will be the SMS marketing revolution!