Mashable Reports That GiftRocket Allows Giftcards To Be Accepted Anywhere
Posted By: Kerry Phouthavong
GiftRocket is providing consumers with a faster and newer way to send gift cards to friends and family. A recent article on mashable.com, written by Sarah Kessler, helps explain what makes this new startup to be more convenient than the ordinary tangible gift card that we’ve all been accustomed to.
The article states that GiftRocket’s version of the gift card is place-specific, but not in the traditional sense. It allows gift givers to send gift cards to anyone via email for any thing — such as drinks, skydiving or a spa day — at any venue, regardless of whether the retailer sells its own gift cards.
Here’s how it works: the giver picks a place in a specific region, as sourced from Yelp’s business listings, via the GiftRocket website. Let’s use Peet’s Coffee in Marina Del Rey as an example. The gift giver then builds the GiftRocket by filling out a few key details like amount ($20), recipient name (Scott) and email, and a personal message. Finally, the buyer pays for the gift with his credit card.
Our lucky recipient, Scott, is notified via email of his new gift. The next time he visits Peet’s, he can press “redeem” on his smartphone (no app required) to cash in his gift card. After verifying Scott’s exact whereabouts, GiftRocket will approve the request and automatically deposit $20 in Scott’s PayPal account. Scott’s next lattes are on the house, theoretically.
The GiftRocket idea, which slightly overlaps with the likes of Gifi from Venmo, was big enough to win Graham over. Now, the founders have a chance to demonstrate that their fun gift card alternative can grow into a viable business.
Sincere Thanks To Philip Gesue, VP of Real Estate Development of Orient Express Hotels, Inc., For An Amazing Testimonial For Jennings Social Media Marketing’s Work in St. Maarten
Posted By: Valerie Jennings, CEO & Founder of Jennings Social Media Marketing http://www.jenningssocialmedia.com
Thank you Philip Gesue, vice president of real estate development of Orient Express Hotels, Inc., for selecting Jennings Social Media to promote the Arts in the Plaza Festival in St. Maarten. We greatly appreciate the wonderful opportunity to work with you and the Orient Express Hotels group in New York.
The Marketwire press release, posted on msnbc.com via marketwire.com, stated that the project included viral Web videos which Jennings Social Media Marketing directed, produced and viralized; search engine optimization; viral Web press releases; media outreach; and consulting. Gesue said, “We selected Jennings Social Media Marketing for their specialization in the social media marketing arena, in particular viral media campaigns. They spent a tremendous amount of time brainstorming with the team, working remotely in St. Maarten filming the artists, consulting and offering guidance. I know that Valerie Jennings has been involved with viral media since the beginning of the trend and knew how to deliver the right product on time and on budget. My experience with Jennings and her staff was great and I recommend them highly.”
Jennings Social Media Reviews Video Interview: Guy Kawasaki Talks With Mashable at SXSW
Posted By: Jamie Sutera, VP of R&D
I would like to share this video regarding well-known author, venture capitalist and former Apple luminary Guy Kawasaki.
At SXSW 2011, Guy Kawasaki sits down for an interview with Mashable’s Christina Warren. In the wide-ranging discussion, he talks about his new book,Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions, and points out useful tools he’s discovered at SXSW this year. Along the way, he talks about his two different stints working with Apple, musing about what might have happened if he had stayed with the company (http://on.mash.to/eILzqG).
Thank You to Angle Bush, Radio Host of Your15Minutes Radio, For Interviewing Valerie Jennings, CEO & Founder of Jennings Social Media Marketing, in Celebration of Women’s History Month & International Women’s Day!
Thank You to Angle Bush, radio host of Your15Minutes Radio, for including Valerie Jennings, CEO & founder of Jennings Social Media, during a panel discussion: “Blueprint for Success” with Diane Hansen and Pam Brossman on International Women’s Day in celebration of Women’s History Month (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/your15minutes).
Listen to show:
Here is a partial transcript from the radio interview –
Angle: Valerie, tell us about the beginning of your journey.
Valerie: I started my company when I was 24 and will have had the business eight years this June. It has definitely been difficult starting at such a young age because there were some things that I had to learn and overcome, from being a female business owner to starting at age 24. I will say I had a ton of support from the community and Johnson County, Kan. There were a lot of people who invested time in working with me and it really helped me advance my career as a business owner. To both the men and women who really supported and talked about the success that we had with our clients early on, I just want to say thank you for being so supportive in those early stages and now to all of the wonderful companies we work with today, almost eight years later. It has been a lot of dedication and commitment not only on my part but everybody that works here, which is a pretty small social media marketing and pr firm. There is so much to be learned no matter what age you start your business at. There are some unique challenges when you launch that early in the game.
Angle: So you have gone through some things being 24 with people probably misjudging you like ‘she is only 24’
Valerie: Yes, that is probably fair.
Angle: One of the buzz words that many business owners are hearing at this moment is branding. We had a show on branding, discussing the book by Mr. Damon John, “The Brand Within.” I want to know from each of you, how important is branding and what does branding look like for each of you. When a client comes in and says, ‘I have a business but I don’t have a brand. Right now I’m an item. I haven’t gotten into the branding stage just yet. What do you do to assist that client that has not built their brand and is just starting out?
Valerie: It is incredibly important because without a brand you don’t have a message. There is not a story to share with your audience. There are all kinds of aspects that you need to review when building a brand and one of them is search engine optimization. What I mean by that is somebody jumps on Google and researches either the owner of the company, the product, the service they better find information or that organization immediately. It shows people in about 30 to 60 seconds if you have a brand presence and that you are dominating the search engines on either your company name or the owner of your company.
We spend a lot of time looking at the brand and most of the companies we work with do have a brand that’s been created and in existence for a while. Every now and again there is a startup that comes through here and we talk about how they are going to build up their brand. One of the first steps is to make sure you reserve all of the social networking sites for your organization on YouTube, Twitter Facebook to make sure that nobody else takes it down the road, or that a competitor takes it. That does happen and we see the brand hijacking going on. So once you have your brand going, protect the brand and cherish the brand. You can shift throughout the course of your company and change directions with branding and reinvent the brand. There are a lot of things you can look at overall it is such an incredible component. From a story telling standpoint and a marketing standpoint that brand has to be solid so you can understand how to advance your company farther down the road.
Angle: What in starting your business overall do you wish you knew then that you know now.
Valerie: I think overall it’s a resources concern. It’s one of things that you have to look into multiple components to building the business. I started when I moved into the Kansas City market and I really didn’t know anybody. I wish I would have a little bit better database of connections of people I trusted. I wish I would have been able to call on people who had established businesses that could have been trusted advisors. I felt like I was fumbling a little bit in the beginning because I just didn’t have those resources to call upon people and lean on them. I feel completely blessed to have those types of relationships now and there are so many people that I can call up anytime and I feel super supported. I think that is such a hard thing for many business owners who feel like they are going through this alone and if they don’t have those relationships or resources it can be really scary.
Angle: Last thing I want to know, tell me Valerie, what is your blue print for success. We want to know, how do you become successful when you are pursuing your passion.
Valerie: It’s commitment overall. It’s so hard to stay focused on everything that you want to accomplish. You have to look at the bottom line. If this is what you want then you have to be committed to it and that sounds like a generic response but I just have to tell you that it’s the most important thing to any business owner. If you don’t like what you are doing then you have to change it.
Listen to the Interview: with Valerie Jennings, Diane Hansen and Pam Brossman on International Women’s Day!
Thank You to Maureen Kedes, Radio Host of PR Insider, For Interviewing Valerie Jennings, CEO & Founder of Jennings Social Media
Posted By: Kerry Phouthavong
Thank you to Maureen Kedes for interviewing Valerie Jennings Friday on PR Insider. During the interview, Valerie discussed how she started Jennings Social Media Marketing by transforming it to a more non-traditional way of approaching PR. Although she still incorporates the standard components that make up for a typical public relations company, Valerie embraces her work more through social media and the art of online storytelling. Here’s a brief transcription of the interview.
Maureen: Today I have an expert on the show in social media storytelling. Her name is Valerie Jennings, Founder and CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing.
Maureen: Tell us how you started before the birth of social media?
Valerie: My background is as a journalist. I was a print reporter and I did some on-camera work. I worked on the government side; I did some public affairs, media outreach. I got more training on the traditional side. Even though I’m not a senior entrepreneur, I started my business at the age of 24. I did give us a huge boost from competitor’s standpoint. When I first started the business, it was traditional PR–pitching, press releases, media coaching, prepping for interviews, and looking at what’s going to sell.
Valerie: We experimented with a PR Web and we used a a lot of search engine optimization to capture the story; what was interesting and what was going to drive traffic.
We’ve continued to expand what we do, and we still do a lot of traditional. But we’ve maintained the social networking side as a way to penetrate some of the traditional aspect. For example, we have a great blog post; we’re a great video to produce for a client. We’re going to maximize that on the client’s Twitter site on a social media press release on Facebook, whatever it is. So we talk about success in an exclusive client list, and we’re really looking for companies that have amazing stories. We try to figure out what is a possibility and we figure out what is trending. As a journalist, if people aren’t looking for it, why would they be paying attention?
Valerie Jennings 
Cassie Stubs
Katie Stumpf
