I’ve been using a Blackberry since 2005. Back when the blackberry was blue, hard-covered and didn’t fit into a normal sized pant pocket. True story. Over the last 5.5 years, Research In Motion’s blackberry smartphone has come a long way as a medium to communicate information via email, phone, text and internet applications. There is a tremendous amount of utility in using a blackberry for socializing internet marketing.
Blackberry Apps for Internet Marketing
1. Google’s Mobile Application – Google Reader
Like other digital natives, I don’t read the newspaper in it’s traditional form. I use my Google reader. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) allows me to subscribe to any news, blog, and/or website that I want to read with the Google Reader. When new content is created from an RSS feed that I subscribed to, that content will be distributed to my Google Reader (my own personal, customized newspaper). Google’s mobile application includes access to Google Reader and my own custom mobile newspaper.
2. New York Times
I can’t get through a day without reading the business and technology sections of the New York Times. One of the most well respected newspapers in the world has a blackberry application with the best visual appeal of any reader application. Each article has a picture on the left and large font for simple reading. In fact, I think the Google Reader blackberry application needs to take a page out of the New York Times blackberry application book with respect to the visual appeal and ease of adjusting font size.
3. WordPress
Content creation is in our DNA as internet marketers and WordPress is the largest blogging platform on the planet. Whether you have a personal blog or a corporate blog powered by WordPress, it’s very simple to navigate, create and upload content to your site while on the move. Blog ideas come to mind at all times and the ability to create a draft for a blog post on the fly is essential for capturing ideas.
4. UberTwitter
Before Twitter had an official “app” for the blackberry, UberTwitter built a killer twitter application. I started using UberTwitter and remain a loyal user. UberTwitter is a blackberry application for Twitter’s micro-blogging platform where you can share up to 140 characters and upload photos or videos from your blackberry. The ability to leverage Twitter’s original retweet function is huge in my book, too. It’s great for sharing snippets of content from live conferences or events.
5. FourSquare
Twitter was the hot topic of 2009 and location-based gaming applications like FourSquare have been a hot topic of 2010, thus far. Foursquare rewards users that check-in to locations with points, badges and mayorships. A major marketing benefit to FourSquare is bringing online connections offline, in real life. If there is an industry conference or a local conference, you can check-in and meet up with other marketers that you have met online. Offline networking is invaluable and location based gaming applications like FourSquare make these real life interactions fun.
Internet Marketing with Blackberry Mobile Devices
Blackberry Mobile devices certainly do not get as much press as the iphone or Android, but they are widely used and add a tremendous amount of value of internet marketers. The good news is I only have 1 more year until my 2 year contract is up and I can get a discounted Android. Until then, I will be preaching the good news about blackberry mobile devices for internet marketing.