Trend Spotting
Catherine Russo Cobb • catcobb@mac.com catcobb@mac.com
Kathy Perryis a social media
expert in Tampa with more than 20
years sales and marketing experience.
Perry also is an author, consultant
and speaker and has two books
soon to be launched – “A Woman’s
Guide to Social Media Marketing”
and “Stepping Stones to Success,” a
book she has co-authored with several
others including Deepak Chopra. She has worked with large corporations
such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, MasterCard, General
Motors, Time, Inc. and JC Penney.
Perry, who also founded a social networking site for women called
iWomanLife.com, says the most important thing for businesses to know
is that social media is not a fad.
“The number one activity on the internet is social media. It has overtaken
porn! It is definitely not a fad,” she says.
The biggest problem businesses have with internet marketing, she
says, is they tend to use a shotgun approach. “What one really needs
is a focused approach, so defining that upfront is really important,” she
says. “The number one secret to social media success is to have a laserfocused
strategy that supports the sales cycle.”
Another important aspect: maintain brand visibility. “This is the
image that people are creating online, where they have the opportunity
to establish themselves as an authority or expert,” she says.
Finally, a business must control its online image.
“Someone could post something about you that might not be flattering.
It could be one little thing that could easily morph into a big thing,”
says Perry (www.kathyperry.com).
She points to the United Airlines guitar incident, where a country
singer’s guitar was damaged during baggage handling, and United
reportedly would do nothing about it. The frustrated owner produced
a video on YouTube.com called “United Breaks Guitars,” posted it on a
Monday, and by 11 a.m. that day the video had more than 100,000
views. United reportedly made amends with the guitar’s owner.
“Corporate America is learning the hard way that social media is
giving people a voice. If a customer is not happy, they can go viral, and
damage control is really tough at that point,” she says.
Engineering Water Savings
Tampa’s King Engineering has branched out with a new and separate company designed to be a “smart” irrigation product, called the WaterOptimizer.
The company says its new product uses soil moisture technology to provide just the amount of water a landscape technology to provide just the amount of water a landscape needs, but no more. Tom O’Connor, president of King Engineering,
says the patent-pending product’s inception came about two-and-a-half
years ago.
“Due to the work we do in both the public and private sectors,
a lot of our clients have seen challenges in water conservation.
We thought we could solve that problem, and we have,” says
O’Connor. “ The WaterOptimizer is efficient, it works well, it’s
easy to use and it tracks the amount of moisture in the soil.”
The target market is primarily residential, he says, but also The target market is primarily residential, he says, but also includes large military housing bases, with some installs already includes large military housing bases, with some installs already at bases in Colorado. The system (www.water-optimizer.com) is as simple to install as a regular irrigation system, O’Connor is as simple to install as a regular irrigation system, O’Connor
says, and costs $380. He wouldn’t specify product development says, and costs $380. He wouldn’t specify product development costs, but says sales are somewhere between 100 and 150 costs, but says sales are somewhere between 100 and 150 units.
King Engineering has about 85 employees in its Tampa and King Engineering has about 85 employees in its Tampa and Sarasota offices. Sarasota offices.
New Product for Tattle-Trail
Tattle-Trail LLC, which last year introduced a product alerting Tattle-Trail LLC, which last year introduced a product alerting drivers to potential towing hazards, has introduced a next generation product with the added benefit of being waterproof. tion product with the added benefit of being waterproof.
The product is specifically designed for drivers pulling trailers,
fifth wheels, campers, boats or horse trailers, says Jim Aid, cofounder
and president of the Largo-based company. founder and president of the Largo-based company.
The new product, the Tattle-Trail TTK 550wr,
was in development for about six months and
is priced at $649, compared with $598 for
the base unit. The five-employee company is
already working on another product that Aid
says it hopes to launch in the next few months.
Sales are picking up, he says, and the
number one and two companies in the trailing
industry have approached Tattle-Trail about
distribution of its products. “It is an exciting
place to be, but we haven’t made a decision
yet,” he says.
The company (www.tattle-trail.com) was
founded in 2006 and is located in STAR TEC.
Self-Healing PC
Tampa’s Persystent Technologies, developer
of an automated PC recovery solution,
changed its name to Persystent Software and
released a new product.
Mary Maloney, chief marketing officer,
says the name change is part of a dynamic
new brand identity designed to reflect the
company’s focus on providing software solutions
to a broader market, including its latest
product, Persystent SOLO, a high-speed PC
recovery product focused on individuals and
small businesses.
“Our old name didn’t reflect the broader
market focus,” she says.
Maloney says the company’s new SOLO
product is ideal for smaller companies not
connected to an IT network. It’s designed to
perform PC repair on demand, in 30 seconds
or less. The cost: $36 per year.
“We are finding large enterprise companies
like the idea of purchasing SOLO, too,
because many have ‘computers in the wild,’ or
salespeople on the road, and it helps cut down
on sales calls in the field. We had a hunch that
it would work, but we didn’t expect positive
feedback so soon,” she says.
The 25-employee company (www.persystent.com) is still selling to large businesses.
For example, the U.S. Postal Service is a
new customer that’s loading the company’s
Persystent Suite product on all of its computers
nationwide, according to Maloney. “We
are ending the third quarter as the best in the
company’s history.”
Tech FYI…
The New York based Nielsen Company (www.nielsen.com), which has a
large presence in Oldsmar, announced a new multi-year agreement with Time
Warner to provide audience measurement and research for all its properties,
including online and mobile audiences…Sarasota’s atLarge (www.atlargeinc.com) was selected by Clearwater’s Ruth Eckerd Hall to spearhead its new digital
strategy…The USF Health da Vinci Center for Assisted Surgery (http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu) announced the opening of its $4-million facility.
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