Today’s idea: Old media still has not learned that new media has a place at the table.

You might have saw the story the other day about how a woman follows Google Maps “walking” directions, gets hit, then sues. While this is once more proof of our litigious society and maybe our fall from general common sense there is one thing about this story you might not know.

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When you think about the state of marketing these days it can give you a dizzy feeling. With new technology, new networks, the slow death of old media, and most recently the release of the iPad. I’ve included a video below that clearly demonstrates why it’s sometimes not too wise to be an early adopter to a new platform. I mention this now because here in a few short months Twitter will be releasing their sponsored Tweets–and what I see soon to follow is a rush by other platforms and the search engines to sell us on real time search marketing.

Let’s get back to the iPad. Apples and Steve Jobs answer to the sad state of mobile and iPad advertising is what is called the iAd. What is the iAd? Here is Apple’s press release:

“iAd, Apple’s new mobile advertising platform, combines the emotion of TV ads with the interactivity of web ads. Today, when users click on mobile ads they are almost always taken out of their app to a web browser, which loads the advertiser’s webpage. Users must then navigate back to their app, and it is often difficult or impossible to return to exactly where they left. iAd solves this problem by displaying full-screen video and interactive ad content without ever leaving the app, and letting users return to their app anytime they choose.”

 When Steve Jobs talked about the release of the iAd mobile marketing platform he virtually said it was going to create a perpetual motion machine… okay he didn’t go that far but he did have the room think this was a drastic change in marketing.

To be fair it does improve mobile marketing by leaps and bounds. But I wanted to cover a deeper issue here. That is the issue of early adoption.

Since Tomoson.com gives bloggers the opportunity to review products for Free we have added another value proposition to the mix.  If the promoter agrees to it, the blogger can run a contest on their website giving away the product they just reviewed for FREE.

There are two benefits to this system.

The Blogger Benefit

As a blogger you want more people to follow your blog and what you’re writing about.  What better way to increase followers then giving away a FREE product to the readers of your blog!  As a blogger you can run the contest anyway you want and in the end you simply need to contact the promoter in Tomoson.com with the winner(s).  Once you do this Tomoson.com will update the promoter to send out the products.  As the promoter ships products out he/she can update Tomson.com with tracking information so you know your readers are getting the products.

The Promoter Benefit

The benefit of Tomoson.com is that it gets your product in front of thousands if not millions of people with minimal cost.  Besides millions of people seeing your product bloggers will link to your website increasing your search engine ranking by building backlinks (a critical component to any SEO campaign).  When you allow a blogger to give away a product in one of their contests it gives your product exposure twice, so you (the promoter) gets twice the views and twice the links for SEO.

Simply put contests are one of the reasons we feel Tomoson.com will help promotes sell more products.

Bloggers Register Go Here: PREREGISTER NOW

Since the point of Tomoson.com was to make managing promotional marketing easier.  We needed a better way of answering blogger questions about a products promotion.  Enter the tomoson message center, using ajax we allowed users to see multiple questions in one area and reply to multiple questions with one post.   The user could click on read message and it will expand the page vertically so the user could read all messages at once and reply in one shot.

After you create a message you will be able to select if you want to post the answer to the question on the promotion profile page with the question that was asked.  The advantage of this is if you are getting the same question over and over again.  You can simply answer it once, reply to everyone that asked the question, and post the question AND answer on your promotion profile for everyone to see in the future.

Sorting your messages easy with the Tomosn message center.  You can sort by:

1. Promotion
2. Date
3. Sender
4. Whether the blogger is approved or not

Register For TOMOSON.COM

To help generate feedback on tomoson.com we are allowing select bloggers to preregister for the site. Right now the system will just allow you to register and update your account information. As new updates to the system occur we will be updating these select bloggers to test the site and give feedback on what’s being done.

We truly want this to be a useful website for bloggers and promoters alike so getting comments directly from you will help us make things better.

To Register Go Here: PREREGISTER NOW

After you are done registering an email to verify your email address will be sent. Simply click on the link in the email and you’re all set. After that you can come back to tomoson.com and see the updates to the website happen right before your eyes.

IMPORTANT: The site is NOT fully operational yet and most of the functions/ links don’t work. As we add more functions we’ll let you know so you can comment. ALSO THE PRODUCTS CURRENTLY ON THE SITE ARE NOT REAL.

We hope you enjoy the website and see how we’ve tried to take a very simple approach to development. When tomoson.com is all done you, the blogger, will be able to get FREE products to review, so please start spreading the word about tomoson.com to get more products on the site.

Our graphic design team finished the Character Design that Evan Carmichael requested.  Evan is an entrepreneur & an international business speaker.   He may be most known for his interviews with famous entrepreneurs & small business experts.

An  internet marketing consultant from our company is a forum moderator on EvanCarMicheal.com and was asked if WebBizIdeas could help him with annual blog review.  This year Evan is publishing the top 50 social entrepreneurship blogs!

Anush, our lead graphic designer took images of Jill Fehrenbacher, Tom Zeller Jr., and Ethan Zuckerman and made them each into cartoons “hugging the earth.”

Thanks Evan for letting us be a part of your social awareness project!

Keeping organized is a major component of promotional marketing.  When you’re dealing with thousands of bloggers, figuring out who wrote what, when to send out a product, and how you should rate your bloggers is critical.  We developed a control panel that shows all the stats necessary in a simple to follow format.

Promoters Control Panel: Overview of Promotions

When logging into tomoson.com you will first be able to see an overview of your promotions and what’s happening with them.  This birds eye view tells everything from how many promotions you have to what products you need to ship out.  Each of the promotions on the overview page will have links going directly to the stat or information details.  The best part of the overview is you can see the total POTENTIAL traffic, twitter followers, and facebook friends who are part of your promotional network.

WIREFRAME OF PROMOTION OVERVIEW CONTROL PANEL

Promoters Control Panel: Blogger Stats

As a promoter you want to know what each of the bloggers are doing for each promotion.  The blogger stats page will show who is writing reviews, if you need to enter a tracking number on a product shipped, and the traffic each blogger has.  After each blogger writes a review you can view each review, see the amount of keywords written in the review, and if the blogger created any links tracing back to your website.

Shipping products is also easy with the control panel.  From the blogger stats page you can mass upload tracking numbers using an excel csv file.  This way you can manage large numbers of products being shipped daily.  The system can also export blogger shipping information into the same easy to manage csv file.   This can be uploaded to any shipping module like stamps.com for quick shipments.

WIREFRAME BLOGGER STATS

Blogger Control Panel: Overview of Promotions

Bloggers can also see what’s going on with the promotions they’ve applied to.   An easy to view display will show if they’ve completed all the steps to apply for a product and when they need to review a product.  When a promoter ships a product the blogger he/she gets notified and can log back into the system to see the tracking number.  Once the review is written the blogger can verify the review on the system with a few clicks.

WIREFRAME BLOGGER CONTROL PANEL

Next week we will be reviewing the custom message center which allows promoters to answers multiple blogger questions with one message.