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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

10 Social Sites You're (Probably) Not Using But Should Be

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2013/05/28/10-social-sites-you-re-not-using.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

10 Social Sites You're (Probably) Not Using But Should Be

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The Web is full of social destinations where people come together to answer questions, discuss news and share interesting information with each other.
In fact, aside from the ’Net’s most popular social sites, like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest, there are myriad smaller, alternative networks where people participate in conversations every day. Most businesses are missing these conversations (a.k.a. engagement opportunities), because they focus their resources on the larger, aforementioned social networks. And while it is important to maintain an active presence on popular sites like Facebook and Twitter, reaching out to audiences on smaller social networks can help a brand foster new relationships, generate traffic, and build authority and recognition within its niche.
However, in order to participate with smaller social networks, you must first find them, which is why Website Magazine has compiled a list of 10 social sites that you probably aren’t using but should be. Check them out below:
Quora
This question-and-answer platform recently released a video on its blog that reveals that in just a year, Quora has grown by more than three times across all metrics. Brands can take advantage of this growth by participating with the Quora service, via answering questions, asking questions and creating blogs on this platform.
StumbleUpon
Many people use StumbleUpon to kill time and discover new and interesting things, however, businesses can also leverage this platform to reach new prospects. The social network offers a Paid Discovery option, which allows businesses to deliver content to relevant traffic. Companies simply need to submit a URL and select targeting preferences in order to get their content put in front of a new audience that is actively seeking interesting content.
Keek
This video-based social network allows users to create, share and watch short video updates. The site has grown its audience with the help of celebrity users like the Kardashians. And even though there isn’t currently a specific place for business users yet, individuals can sign up for the service and create brand-related videos, which can also be shared via email, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
Flickr
Businesses can find success on this photo-sharing site by posting share-worthy images and videos, as these will be more captivating than standard product images. For example, brands can show off behind-the-scenes images of their staffs or products being made as a way to better relate with customers.
Sulia
This platform describes itself as “the subject-based social network.” It connects users with the top social sources on subjects they care about. Brands can contact the company to request to have their content featured on Sulia or to advertise within specific channels.
Klout
You may be using Klout already, however, it is important to know that this platform can be used for more than to just monitor your social influence. In fact, Klout recently launched Klout Experts, which is Q&A feature that allows users who are influential in a specific area to answer a frequently asked topic-related question. Then, when someone searches that question on Bing, the Klout Expert insights are displayed, which helps boost the expert’s visibility and authority.
Tribe
Tribe is a social network that connects people with like-interests. While this platform shouldn’t be used to spam other users or push your brand/product, individuals can participate in conversations with this online community, as well as post information listings and events.
HARO
HARO, which stands for help a reporter out, is a service that helps reporters connect with sources. This social service is particularly useful for B2B businesses, who can sign up to be a source and answer relevant questions in the hopes of making it into a popular blogger’s next article.
CafeMom
Many marketers target moms, as this customer segment is typically a household's decision-maker. Luckily, there are many digital destinations to find moms chatting on the Web, including CafeMom. This momma-based social network is full of ladies discussing everyday events. So even if you don’t feel like participating in these mommy discussions (because you don’t want to come off as a spammer), this site is an inspiring place to come up with content ideas for blog posts and email newsletters based on the subjects moms care about.
Foursquare
Although Foursquare has been around for a while, many businesses have neglected this location-based social network for more popular platforms, like Facebook and Yelp. However, this social network’s business tools make it a valuable way to connect with customers and entice them into brick-and-mortar stores. In addition, Foursquare recently launched a business-specific mobile application that allows brand managers to post updates and monitor activity on the social network.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The Truth about Facebook Promotions

http://thesherwoodgroup.com/business-education/the-truth-about-facebook-promotions/#.UZLuVYJAuAE

The Truth about Facebook Promotions


It should go without saying that, if you’re a company competing in social media, offering your audience incentives is the way to go. However, it’s surprising that so few brands using social media actually take full advantage of a site’s features. Facebook Promotions, for example, offers a wide range of options one can use in order to bring in the business, but many companies simply overlook them.


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One of the best features of Facebook Promotions isn’t a single feature per se but rather the option to put a wide range of apps on your page. With the right third-party software and a little creativity, you can easily create an attractive, enticing promotion to increase your fan base and to boost your brand’s profile.

But there are some factors you should be aware of before creating a promotion. Unless your Internet marketing game is great all around, able to attract a large base, then even the best promotions aren’t going to have the effect you’re hoping for. It’s a numbers game in part that you should privy to.

Understanding the Numbers Game
The brands on Facebook that do the best with their promotions usually already have established fan bases and have an ample number of  followers. The more fans a brand has, the more likely it is that a great coupon from a promotion will be shared with members of their network. So to that end, the numbers do play a large role. However, even smaller brands can have ample success as long as they put the time and effort into actually getting things right.

A proper promotion is a process. You can’t simply throw an app together sloppily offering a few percentage points off and hope to attract business. And that’s not even dealing with the fact that Facebook has a lot of rules out there that need to be adhered to.
Running a winning promotion requires:
  1. Reading, understanding and following Facebook’s promotional guidelines
  2. Selecting the right third-party software to create the application
  3. Targeting customers through a promotion with the same detail they’re targeted for products; i.e. catering to a niche’s need with a solution
  4. Creating an offer that’s enticing enough to not only get those likely to be interested to click-through and participate in the promotion, but also making it enticing enough to share
  5. Keeping your promotions sporadic and exclusive in order to give a true “sale” feeling to your company
  6. Ensuring that the promotion you’re running is very representative of your brand
When it comes to promotions, you can select from simple discounts and coupons, prizes and sweepstakes, or you can even hold trivia contests, photo and video-based contests, and much more. It all depends on how creative you are.

You just cannot expect a promotion to be that miracle conversion-inducing step. You have to remain realistic; and realistically speaking, you should be able to see a spike in conversions if you’re offering an enticing promotion that meets the needs of your fan base. You should also see your numbers grow slowly as more people start to share your promotions with others. It will help build trust and engagement with your brand.

Why Brands Should Choose Facebook
So out of every social network you could choose from, why choose Facebook? Is it only because of the promotions you’ll be able to host from the site? Well, that’s certainly one of the reasons, but it’s far from the only reason to focus on this social networking giant.

You have to understand that Facebook is far and away the biggest and most popular social media site out there: a billion users, and they’re growing more every single day. The site also offers a mobile version of Facebook, which is great for your marketing efforts.

Facebook can act as the hub for all social media for your brand. By advertising on Facebook, you can post a wide range of promotional material, you can interweave your entire Internet presence, and compared to traditional advertising methods, social media marketing is a very low-cost way to get your message out there.

Even if you only wanted to use Facebook to hold promotions, it would still be worth it. But with so many great features on the site, you can build up a thorough following and leverage promotions in order to up your conversion rates significantly.

Author’s bio:
Eric Taylor works as a freelance writer and business developer for a Facebook ad tool – Qwaya. The company’s goal it to provide extensive information, tools and up-to-date news about social media marketing strategies, most specifically in Facebook.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Viral's Secret Formula


Viral's Secret Formula

Participants in a flashmob dance an improvised version of the Harlem Shake in front of the Berlin cathedral February 20, 2013

Want to know why things go viral? Why some products get more word of mouth? Let me tell you a secret. It’s not luck.

Viral has become marketing’s Holy Grail. From the Harlem Shake to the Rutgers basketball coach abusing his players, hardly a week goes by without some video or news story going viral. And word of mouth and virality have a huge impact on businesses, large and small. Blender company Blendtec’s sales shot up more than 700% a few years ago after videos of the CEO blending things like iPhones spread like wildfire. But what makes something go viral?

If you ask most social media “gurus,” they’ll tell you it’s all about getting lucky. Viral isn’t a strategy, it’s like buying a lottery ticket. Or they’ll talk about cats. Lots of people share videos of funny kitties, so cats must be the reason things go viral.

All these theories are great, except, well, they’re not really backed up by anything. No data. No analytics. Just old fashioned guesses based on looking at a couple particularly noteworthy successes. It’s like the idea that the Earth was flat. It seemed right until someone actually looked deeper and showed, well…it wasn’t.

Virality isn’t luck. It’s not magic. And it’s not random. There’s a science behind why people talk and share. A recipe. A formula, even.

My colleagues and I have analyzed thousands of news articles and hundreds of brands, all to understand why some make the most emailed list or get more word of mouth. Again and again we found the same principles at work. Six key drivers that shape what people talk about and share.Those six principles are the basis of my new book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On, and the first principle is Social Currency.

New York City is a tough place to open a bar. Competition is fierce and it’s hard to cut through the clutter. There are dozens of options around every corner. But a few years ago Brian Shebairo launched a place that’s been packed since the day it opened. In fact, it’s one of the most sought after drink reservations in the city. Bookings are only available day-of and people frantically hit redial again and again hoping to snag a spot. Yet he’s never advertised the bar. Never spent a dollar on marketing.

How did Shebairo do it?
He hid his bar inside a hot dog restaurant.

Walk into Crif Dogs in the East Village, and you’ll find the most amazing hot dog menu you’ve ever seen. A Tsunami dog with pineapple and green onions, a Chihuahua dog with avocado and sour cream, and a Good Morning dog wrapped in bacon, smothered with cheese, and topped with a fried egg.

In one corner, off to the side, is an old-school phone booth. One of those rectangular numbers that Clark Kent used to morph into Superman. Walk inside and you’ll see a rotary dial phone on the wall. Pick up the phone, and just for fun, dial the number 1. Someone will pick-up the other line and ask you if you have a reservation. And if you do, the back of the phone booth will open and you’ll be let into a secret bar called, of all things, Please Don’t Tell.

Has Please Don’t Tell violated traditional “laws of marketing?” Sure. There is no sign on the street and no mention of it in the hot dog place. In fact, they’ve worked hard to make themselves a secret.
But there’s a funny thing about secrets. Think about the last time someone told you a secret. Told you not to tell another soul. What’s the first thing you did with that information?

You probably told someone else.

And the reason is something called Social Currency. People talk about things that make them look good. Sharp and in-the-know. Smart and funny rather than behind the times. If people go to a place like Please Don’t Tell, or even if they just hear about it, they tell others because it gives them status.

Social Currency isn’t just about hidden bars. It’s why people brag about their thousands of Twitter followers or their kids’ SAT scores. Why golfers boast about their handicaps and frequent fliers tell others when they get upgraded. McDonald’s used social currency to help the McRib sandwich take-off and RueLaLa used it to turn a struggling website into a $500M business.

Want to generate word of mouth? Get people talking about you? One way is to give them a way to look good. Make people feel special, or like insiders, and they’ll tell others—and spread word of mouth about you along the way.

Along with five other key principles (STEPPS: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories), Social Currency is a sure fire way to generate buzz.

Will following these six principles guarantee that 10 million people spread your message? No. But it will increase the number of people who pass it on. Encourage people to tell two friends instead of just one. It’s like a batting average in baseball. No one hits a home run every time, but by understanding the science of hitting you can boost your average.

The next time someone tells you that going viral is about luck, politely tell them that there is a better way. Science. Word of mouth isn’t random and it’s not magic. By understanding why people talk and share, we can craft contagious content. And use it to get our own products and ideas to catch on.


Photo: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

Jonah Berger is a Marketing professor at the Wharton School. Want to learn more about why things go viral? Check out his New York Times bestseller Contagious: Why Things Catch On. Follow Jonah below to stay up-to-date with his articles and updates!
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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Nasty Gal Clothing Retailer

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/naughty-name-only-015034664.html

Naughty in Name Only

LOS ANGELES — If ever there were a Cinderella of tech, Sophia Amoruso might be it.
In 2006, Ms. Amoruso was a 22-year-old community college dropout, living in her step-aunt’s cottage, working at an art school checking student IDs for $13 an hour. Then she started a side project, Nasty Gal, an eBay page that sold vintage women’s clothing.
Last year, Nasty Gal sold nearly $100 million of clothing and accessories — profitably.
For the last seven years, Ms. Amoruso has been courting a cult following of 20-something women. Nasty Gal has more than half a million followers on Facebook and more than 600,000 on Instagram. But it is not yet well known beyond that base. At fashion trade shows, the company’s name still gets strange looks.
“People say: ‘Nasty Gal? What’s that?’ ” Ms. Amoruso, now 28, said in an interview at her new headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. “I tell them, ‘It’s the fastest-growing retailer in the country.’ ”
Back in 2006, she toyed with the idea of going to photography school, but couldn’t stomach the debt. Instead, she quit her job and started an eBay page to sell some of the vintage designer items she found rummaging through Goodwill bins. She bought a Chanel jacket at a Salvation Army store for $8 and sold it for $1,000. She found Yves Saint Laurent clothing online on the cheap by Googling misspellings of the designer’s name, reasoning that anyone who didn’t know how to spell Yves Saint Laurent probably didn’t realize his value.
She styled, photographed, captioned and shipped each product herself and sold about 25 items a week. She named the eBay page “Nasty Gal” after the 1975 album by Betty Davis — not the smoky-eyed film star Bette Davis, but the unabashedly sexy funk singer and style icon Betty, whose brief marriage to the jazz legend Miles Davis inspired the song “Back Seat Betty.”
Ms. Amoruso curated her eBay page to match her own style, which on a recent rainy Friday included a floor-length trench coat, vintage rock T-shirt, no-nonsense bob and blood-red lipstick. Her look and attitude resonated with the type of young, body-confident women who would not be caught dead in Tory Burch.
She created a Myspace page to market Nasty Gal and garnered 60,000 “friends” by reaching out to fans of brands like Nylon, the music and fashion magazine, who she thought might appreciate Nasty Gal’s fierce aesthetic. Every week, her new finds ignited bidding wars among shoppers from Australia to Britain.
She began enlisting friends to model and photograph her products, which quickly outgrew her step-aunt’s cottage. She moved Nasty Gal’s headquarters to a 1,700-square-foot studio in Berkeley, Calif., in 2007, and eight months later moved again — this time to a 7,500-square-foot warehouse space in Emeryville.
Ms. Amoruso also outgrew eBay, which she said was a terrible platform to start a business. Competitors started flagging Nasty Gal for breaking the site’s rules by, for example, linking to Ms. Amoruso’s Myspace page. Fed up, she decided it was time to start ShopNastyGal.com. (At the time, NastyGal.com belonged to a pornography site. Nasty Gal now owns the domain.)
She recruited a friend from junior high school to build a Web site and taught herself to use Photoshop. She eventually abandoned Myspace for Facebook, where she tantalized fans with coming inventory, from cheap shrunken motorcycle jackets to high-end vintage Versace clothing.
She challenged her Facebook fans to come up with the best titles for vintage products and gave gift cards to the winners. She used models who were approachable and “looked like nice people, not dead people,” she said, and had to fire some when customers complained that they looked too skinny or annoyed.
That constant conversation with customers created a loyal following. Nasty Gal has no marketing team, but fans comment on its every Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest post and regularly post pictures of themselves in their Nasty Gal finds. A quarter of Nasty Gal’s 550,000 customers visit the site daily for six minutes; the top 10 percent return more than 100 times a month.
With Nasty Gal having made just shy of $100 million in revenue last year, analysts say they would expect a bigger audience.
“I would expect them to have a few million visitors a month,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester analyst. On the flip side, Ms. Mulpuru said Nasty Gal’s conversion rate must be significantly higher than the industry standard of 3 percent. “It speaks to an engaged audience,” she said. “They’ve figured out the marketing tool. That’s the real story.”
Ms. Amoruso knew Nasty Gal couldn’t grow by selling one-off vintage items forever; customers were asking why she didn’t have more sizes. So in 2008, she posted an ad on Craigslist for a buying assistant and hired Christina Ferrucci, the first person who answered.
The two experimented with buying vintage-inspired clothes from vendors in Los Angeles’s fashion district. Soon, the items were selling so quickly that Ms. Amoruso and Ms. Ferrucci were making the six-hour drive to Los Angeles every other week.
They ventured to the Project trade show in Las Vegas, where fashion brands and buyers convene every August, but higher-end brands weren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of having their products sold by a brand called Nasty Gal. Many dismissed it as an online sex shop. The fact that the NastyGal.com domain was at that time still owned by a pornography site didn’t help matters.
Sam Edelman, the shoe brand, initially gave Ms. Amoruso the cold shoulder. She charged back an hour later, showed them Nasty Gal’s Web site on her iPhone and promised to deliver the brand some street cred. Sam Edelman acquiesced. That opened the door for a deal with Jeffrey Campbell, another shoemaker, which has become one of the most recognizable brands on the site. Nasty Gal fans will tell you Sophia Amoruso “made” Jeffrey Campbell, not the other way around.
A Jeffrey Campbell spokeswoman, Sharon Blackburn, said that the brand was well established before partnering with Ms. Amoruso, but that Nasty Gal created a new channel for its more provocative styles, like the “Lita,” a towering lace-up platform boot with a five-inch heel. “Not a lot of people got it, but Sophia loved it,” Ms. Blackburn said. “She bought it in every color and fabric, wore it herself and opened the door for other styles in our collection.”
By 2010, Nasty Gal started generating buzz among unlikely fans in Silicon Valley. Venture capital firms were pouring millions into e-commerce sites like ShoeDazzle.com, Kim Kardashian’s shoe subscription site, and BeachMint.
But the company had been making money from Day 1. “They would say, ‘We want to invest in a woman-owned business — it’s part of our investment thesis,’ ” Ms. Amoruso recalled of her discussions with several venture capitalists. Her retort: She didn’t want to be part of their “investment thesis” and didn’t need their money.
“I don’t think they got it,” she said. “It’s this bunch of guys sitting around saying, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s start a Web site and put Kim Kardashian’s face on it.’ ”
Ms. Amoruso moved Nasty Gal to Los Angeles in 2011, to be closer to her merchants and models. She shunned office space in Santa Monica, where ShoeDazzle and BeachMint are based, for less glamorous space downtown, where 20-something Nasty Gal employees in mesh crop tops, leggings and platform shoes stand out from the paralegals. (Shortly after the move, one employee was berated by a lawyer in the building who saw “Nasty Gal Creative Studio” and assumed it was a pornography studio.)
Last year, Ms. Amoruso, who had held on to 100 percent of her business, decided she was ready to hear what Sand Hill Road had to offer. She met with several venture capitalists but ultimately clicked with Danny Rimer, a partner at Index Ventures, who had invested in e-commerce sites like Net-a-Porter, Etsy and Asos.
In March, Ms. Amoruso agreed to give Index a slice of equity for $9 million. But by August, things were moving so quickly — Nasty Gal was on track to quadruple its 2011 sales to $128 million — that she raised an additional $40 million from Index and used some of it to build a 500,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Shepherdsville, Ky. Nasty Gal now attracts more than six million visits a month, while e-commerce start-ups like ShoeDazzle and BeachMint are losing customers and executives.
Bigger competitors are taking notes. Urban Outfitters recently contacted Ms. Amoruso about a potential acquisition, according to people briefed on the discussions. Asked about that, Ms. Amoruso said only, “We’re talking.”
Naysayers in Silicon Valley think she should consider the acquisition. Some venture capitalists who would not speak on the record — perhaps because they did not have the chance to invest — say Nasty Gal is playing on a short-term fashion trend that will be difficult to sustain on the public market.
“They’re the hot new thing, but I do think it’s risky,” said Ms. Mulpuru, the Forrester analyst. “With this type of hype, either they are looking for a big fat acquisition or a blockbuster I.P.O.”
Ms. Amoruso is hardly ignorant of the possibility that it could all fall apart. Nasty Gal’s motto is, “Nasty Gals do it better.” But her personal motto is, “Only the paranoid survive.”
At 16, Ms. Amoruso tattooed the Virgin Records logo on her arm. Last year, she enjoyed a small Cinderella moment when she got to show it to Richard Branson. She recently bought a Porsche — with cash — and is remodeling her dream home.
But, she said, the Cinderella story ends here. “It’s been very charmed, but I’m not willing to rest on my laurels,” she said. “It’s only going to get harder to keep building from here.”

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

5 Questions to Ask Your Social Media Consultant

5 Questions to Ask Your Social Media Consultant

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A brand’s social media presence is only as effective as the person managing it.
This is why it is important for social media consultants to not only be well versed in content posting strategies, but also familiar with important metrics that can be used to measure a brand’s social success.
That being said, every social media consultant is different. One person may measure success by the number of followers a brand has, while another might measure success based on fan interactions. This is why it is important for business owners and social consultants to be on the same page with their social media strategies. In fact, by having the same goals and expectations, teams can work together to optimize social strategies in order to obtain better metrics and a better overall ROI.
So whether you already employ a social media consultant or are looking to hire one in the near feature, consider asking the following questions so that you can be assured that you are both working toward the same goals:

1. How do we measure engagement?

Every business wants to post “engaging” content, but how your social consultant measures the engagement of that content is what really matters. For example, do they weigh certain interactions, like “shares”, more heavily than an interaction such as a “like"? Knowing the answer to this question will help you get a better understanding of what your engagement score means and how your content is resonating with your audience.

2. Are we measuring conversions? 

Measuring conversions on social media can be tricky, which is why it is important to know if and how your social media consultant is tracking this metric. Moreover, this metric can show brands which social network contains the majority of customers that are likely to convert. By knowing this, brands can increase conversions by launching exclusive promotions on that network.

3. What type of content receives the most interactions?

While the answer to this question may vary by network, this is an important question to ask because it can help teams optimize their content production strategies. For example, if videos receive more shares than other content types, then the brand’s social media consultant should relay that information to the content production team. By doing this, the content team can focus more of their time on producing videos and not as much time on producing less influential types of content.

4. How do our follower numbers compare to our competition’s follower numbers?

A social media consultant’s job is not to only manage and monitor your social accounts, but also to monitor the social accounts of your brand’s competitors. By doing this, the consultant can gain insights into the content and promotion strategies of these brands and collaborate with your team for ways to stay ahead of the competition.

5. What tools do we use to measure our social success?

Most social networks have some type of analytics offering, however, the ’Net is full of robust tools that can provide even further insights into your brand's social success. By discussing which tools are being leveraged, you will be able to make sure that none of your brand's valuable metrics is going to waste.