The second in a series of three, this post will pick up where the first post (Keyword Research App Store Optimization) left off. We’ll focus on how to pick the right set of keywords and get the highest number of downloads possible.
Many have raised concerns about schools investing to deploy iPads in the classroom. Contrarians to these investments argue that there’s no evidence supporting a better education by using iPads. Some even say that iPads make the work of teachers even more difficult by distracting students in an environment where is already difficult to get their attention.
These are valid concerns from a pedagogical perspective but also from a financial perspective. Tim Cook (Apple’s CEO) declared in 2012 that “The adoption of the iPad in education is something I’ve never seen in any technology”. He adds, “Educational institutions tend to be conservative, but we’re not seeing that at all on the iPad”. As a matter of fact, as of March 2013, Apple has sold more than 8 M iPads to educational institutions around the world. These are good news for Apple, but are these good news for the education of children?
In this post, we don’t pretend to present hard evidence about how iPads in the classroom are changing education. Instead, we will show two examples that we hope can serve as as food for meaningful discussions about how iPads in the hands of students and teachers can be used to innovate in education.
The first example is by itself something so powerful that may induce some people to think about education in a new dimension. We don’t really know how old the student that created this class is, but please listen to him teaching math.
A frequent concern about the “hyper-connected” society in which we live has always been that technology makes people more isolated. As my mother would say “People don’t meet with each other in person anymore”…
But technology has started to change this, too. Websites such as Meetup or Skillshare have been helping more and more people meet in person every day. Both sites, are making it possible to meet at different places to share experiences and learn from others.
True. It’s nothing new. Millions of people already participate in continuing education programs at various educational institutions. The big difference here is that the “experts” are not teachers. This time experts are everyday people who are still in the trenches of their given field. And although they don’t make a living from teaching these classes, they do benefit from meeting people and positioning themselves as leaders in their field.
Without having to pay much, anyone can learn anything from just about anywhere. Thanks to Skillshare and Meetup, every week there’s something new to learn like marketing for start-ups, how to present in public or life hacks to improve your well being.
But the story does not need to end after a class or meetup is finished. With bContext, the organizers of these events have started to record their voice and visual presentations to share them privately or publicly after the event. Check out an example of Scott Britton’s class about Sleep Hacks.
It has been more than a year since being able to mirror the screens of an iPad to a TV or projector. Since then, we have made countless presentations about bContext to investors, clients and partners directly from an iPad. We thought it would be interesting for others to hear what we’ve learned in the process. In this post we will cover some of the options to hook-up an iPad to a TV or projector, and some pros and cons of each.
Lets start with a little bit of background. Streaming video was first introduced as a built in feature in the iPad 2. Soon after, Apple enabled wireless streaming (they called it Airplay) on iPads allowing the screen of an iPad to be mirrored to a TV through Apple TV. Since then, presenting from iPads has dramatically changed – the possibilities more dynamic and engaging, and better equipped to capture the attention of an audience. Presenting from an iPad allows a level of interaction with the material which was not possible before. Through the iPad’s touch screen, presenters can add points of reference, by highlighting or drawing directly on the screen, thereby guiding and focusing attention to the key elements. It’s even possible to record the presenter’s voice as they explain each slide. Following the presentation, it’s now possible to cut and edit it – sending the most important parts to all participants. Continue Reading
This week, we decided to share what we have learned about keyword research to conduct a proper “App Store optimization”.This will be the first in a series of 3 posts where we will describe the strategy we implemented to pick a better set of keywords for our app.
Months after the launch of our app, we realized that we had the wrong set of keywords to be searchable by users in the iPad App Store. After doing some quick research about mistakes to avoid, we learned that:
- It’s not necessary to include your brand as a keyword.
- There are 100 characters available keywords.
- Phrases must be included as separate keywords. For example, “take notes” needs to be included as “take, notes”.
Long story short, we ended up with some extra characters to spare. We decided to make some changes to the keywords first used when launching bContext’s in the App store – replacing some, and adding some new ones. This small change allowed us to understand the impact of selecting the right keywords to drive more downloads.
The first day we debuted the new keywords, the results were clear. We were able to increase downloads by 3x. Upon refining the keywords again, we were able to increase downloads by approximately 4x. Continue Reading
The fact that sales representatives are increasingly using tablets during the sales process is reflective of a growing trend. Take sales reps in the medical industry for example. A research report conducted in 2012, consulted 1,819 doctors and found that 65% of them reported seeing sales reps using iPads. This is a significant increase from the 30% in 2011, and underscores the growing rate of iPads as a sales tool.
iPads open a world of new practices that were not possible before. One thing is using an iPad to merely show pictures and another is creating an experience that is truly different for the customer. For the medical sales reps it was the latter. Below is what happened when they added the iPad’s touch feature as a new experience in the sales process with doctors. The results of the Manhattan’s Research report show that:
“Physicians who touched a sales reps’ iPad were significantly more likely to have a satisfactory experience, and more likely to say the experience influenced their clinical decisions”
This may be a good time to ask yourself if your sales team is using the iPad to engage with clients in new ways, or if they are replicating the same behaviors as before but simply using a new tool.
The following are 5 ideas of how iPad apps for sales teams can be used to elevate the entire sales process:
The following are two sections from Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2012 presentation. According to her research, there will be 1 billion smartphone users by the end of 2012 but this still represents only 18% of the total cell phone user base.
Meeker reports that in the first quarter of 2012, the number of Android devices shipped surpassed those of Windows. By the end of 2013, Meeker expects 160 million Android devices, 100 million Windows devices, and 80 million iOS devices shipped per quarter.
Below is the first section of her presentation:
Doctors have always been early adopters of technology. They were among the first to adopt beepers, blackberries and smartphones in the workplace, and iPads have been no exception. In 2012 the adoption of iPad in healthcare, specifically by doctors and nurses, occurred en masse.
A 2012 survey revealed that 62% of US physicians and 50% of registered nurses owned tablets. And the vast majority of these tablets are iPads (approximately 80%).
So what are doctors using iPads to do?:
- Look up drug information
- Show pictures and diagrams to educate patients about their condition or treatment
- Access patients clinical records
- Look up treatment information for specific conditions
- Read journal articles
The following is a voice-slide which presents 3 new ways doctors can use iPads in 2013.
Creating an online course has been made possible by platforms such as Skillshare or Udemy. Here we will show you how teachers, tutors or experts in general can create and share lessons with iPads.
Sharing plain PowerPoint presentations is not enough to share an expertise. But Sahl Khan has proven that the combination of voice, images and hand notations can be effective to guide students through almost any topic. By using bContext experts, teachers or tutors can convert their iPads into virtual blackboards to record lessons that include their voice, and hand notations over document (powerpoint and pdf) to create and share lessons with their students.
These steps will walk you through the ease of creating and sharing a lesson with an iPad to publish it in Skillshare or Udemy.
The steps are simple:
- Open a PowerPoint or PDF presentation in your iPad using bContext
- Recorded sessions capturing your slides, your voice and the written notations used during your lesson
- Once you have finished the recording you have the option to share the entire lesson or to “slice & dice” the class into different segments
- Create a private link to share your content on Skillshare or Udemy
In the “Beginners Guide to SEO” we headline three major reasons for why it’s important to spend time on Search Engine Optimization. First and foremost, SEO allows people to find your content through basic Google searches. Second, it increases your chances to rank higher within these searches. Third, by optimizing content for search you can expand the intent / content intersection. In other words, people will be able to find more of your content through search.
This bFile will walk you through the basics of SEO. By incorporating these best practices, you will increase your chances of being found.