In the era of social media keeping up with broadcasting trends on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest is vital. However, as critical as it is to broadcast a large net on these large social platforms, many brands are neglecting an equally critical tactic that could propel them even further: narrowcasting. Narrowcasting involves a brand sharing content with smaller, more selective audiences. Unlike broadcasting, narrowcasting is about creating content tailored to compel recipients. Data suggests that narrowcasting is a competitive alternative to more traditional broadcast marketing.

Over the last two years there has been a proliferation of mobile messaging apps such as WhatsApp and iMessage, and social media messaging tools like Twitter. These applications allow the user to send and receive text messages for free without having to use up data from a cell phone package.

The average media consumer is buffeted by television commercials, pop-up ads, streaming video on the web, and an array of print ads and other visual distractions over the course of a day. So if you’re trying to build your brand or win an election, it’s hard to get noticed. It’s even harder to surprise people. But there’s hope in one of the great science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s three “Laws”: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

At CallFire we get a lot of questions as to what an SMS gateway is. The many terms used to describe the large network of mobile carriers and SMS gateways can be quite confusing.

Text messaging is a technology that's exploding lately, and the best marketers are taking advantage of all its opportunities. It's instant, it's affordable, it's highly effective at reaching people. Here are some concrete reasons why you should be incorporating SMS into your business's marketing efforts.

Last Friday, CallFire helped sponsor Philanthro Connect 2011-- a great invitation-only event put on by Philanthro Productions in order to connect emerging technology companies with the non-profit community. Since we work with hundreds of non-profits, we were interested in the idea as soon as we heard about, and we're glad we had the chance to make the event possible (as well as attend it). We even roped our CEO, Dinesh Ravishanker, into booth duty.