InformationWeek.com Reviews Tips for Business Facebook Pages During the Holidays: 51% of Consumers Are More Likely to Buy From a Company After Becoming Their Fan on Facebook
Posted by: Micah Pratt, director of social networking R&D
The holidays are just around the corner, and businesses are finalizing their marketing campaigns to optimize the shopping rush. Here is an article from InformationWeek.com, written by Kevin Casey, about how companies can prepare their social networking sites in time for the holidays.
4 Tips: Prep Your Facebook Page For Holidays
Will your company’s Facebook page help you take advantage of the holiday shopping rush? Consider these tips for SMBs and fine-tune your strategy.
Small and midsize businesses (SMBs), like Santa Claus, should be making a list and checking it twice. But rather than sorting out who’s naughty or nice, consumer-focused concerns should fine-tune their Facebook presence in advance of the holiday shopping rush.
Among the reasons: The bevy of market research showing shoppers increasingly turning to social sites before they make purchase decisions. Consider this recent study, which found 51% of consumers are more likely to buy something from a company after becoming their fan on Facebook. With the annual flurry of capitalism known as holiday shopping looming large, it’s time for retailers and other consumer-focused SMBs to make sure they’re ready to reap the rewards.
That means doing a bit more than putting up a page and hoping it connects with customers, according to Laura O’Shaughnessy, CEO of SocialCode, a social agency that emphasizes a quantitative approach to performance advertising, with a particular focus on Facebook. The firm recently added LinkedIn to its mix, and is considering the likes of Twitter and Google+.
Socialcode itself has an interesting SMB story. The 50-person agency was born as an internal department of The Washington Post Company, which owns–in addition to the flagship newspaper of the same name–a number of media, education, and other businesses. O’Shaughnessy said that the results of Facebook programs for the company’s various brands were so strong that it began shifting money away from its Google adverting and spending more on social. Later, Socialcode was spun out as an independent subsidiary and began signing on external customers.
In an interview, O’Shaughnessy shared these four tips for optimizing your Facebook activities in the coming weeks.
1. Set goals. The businesses that get the most out of their Facebook presence are the ones that have goals behind it. “Step one is deciding: Is my goal to drive people into my restaurant, is it to drive people into my store, is it to introduce a new product, is it to get people to buy my product?” O’Shaughnessy said. Without a clear sense of what they want to accomplish, SMBs, can’t make efficient use of their resources.
2. Design a campaign with a “viral accelerant.” O’Shaughnessy said the most powerful, effective Facebook campaigns place heavy emphasis on sharing. That often means developing an application, game, or a related microsite to encourage people to spread the word–no matter what the word is. “You want to make sure you’re taking advantage of the sharing activities that are going on,” O’Shaughnessy said.
While a development-intensive application might require a bigger budget, O’Shaughnessy noted that there are sharing-oriented things marketers can do on a smaller scale. She gave as an example a nonprofit client that found strong results simply using a light application aimed at sharing badges on Facebook walls.
“The most important thing about Facebook is really perpetuating that social sharing–getting one friend to spread, in this case, a badge to another friend,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Then all of that person’s friends see that action, so you get this immediate lift.”
The Future of Google+: Integrating Brand Pages with the Social Network’s 40 Million User Profiles
Posted by: Micah Pratt, director of social networking r&d
Last Wednesday at the Web 2.0 conference held in San Francisco, Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president in charge of Google+, discussed the possible changes coming to the social networking site. One of those changes included the idea of Google+ brand pages for companies anxiously waiting to reach out to the more than 40 million users. Here is an article from Mashable.com on what Google+ brand pages could look like when made available to companies.
What Google+ Brand Pages Could Look Like [PICS]
A few weeks ago, Mashable contacted some ad agencies and asked them to imagine how brand pages on could change in light of that platform’s planned redesign.
Just as Facebook was announcing its tweaks, though, Google was on track to add brand pages to Google Plus. Though it looks like that will happen any day now, the integration hasn’t been announced yet. Meanwhile, a handful of brands, including Ford, are already enjoying the possibilities.
There are several barriers to designing brand pages for Plus. For one thing, it’s hard to stand out the way Plus looks now. The somewhat rigid format has a leveling effect. But Colin Murphy, director of social for Skinny, one of the agencies that accepted our challenge, says there are potential advantages to Plus, too. “A primary gripe among Facebook and Twitter users is that brands bombard them with messages they don’t want or care to see,” said Murphy. “In its current form, Plus doesn’t solve that problem, but Plus Brand Pages might, if they implement Public Circles.”
Skinny outlined how this might work with a hypothetical example for Mini, the auto brand. In this case, a Mini Countryman fan could join the Countryman circle and see just Countryman updates in her feed. “This level of selectivity isn’t possible on Facebook or even Twitter, unless of course you are a fan or follow the specific product you’re interested in — but there’s a major drawback to that method because the user has to seek out content streams,” Murphy says. “With Google+ it’s all in one place, and the all the admin has to do is feed pertinent content to the appropriate circles.”
In addition to Skinny, Fantasy Interactive created some fictional Coca-Cola and Starbucks brand pages. Are these on the mark? We’ll know soon enough, but in the meantime, let us know what you think of these agencies’ vision of how Google+ can accommodate brands.
Social Networking “Friends” Politics: How to Make Facebook Ads Work to Political Candidates’ Favor
Posted by: Micah Pratt, Director of Social Networking R&D
The 2012 presidential election will be like one never experienced before. Social networking sites are playing a role in these elections that wasn’t imaginable four years ago by hosting debates, facilitating the political conversation and connecting candidates with voters in the digital world. Here is an article from CMO.com, written by Kim Soth, senior vice president of business development & marketing at Jennings Social Media Marketing, on how to get Facebook ads to work in your favor.
Five Ways to Make Facebook Ads Work For You
There is much talk in social-media circles about how to build your audience organically and that, for the most part, it is the best way to build an audience. It is certainly a good way, but it shouldn’t be your only strategy. We suggest that if you are a new company or are launching a product, you can do a great job of building fans with Facebook ads, which offer a great alternative to your marketing strategy. What’s more, Facebook ads are not nearly as complex as Google AdWords—but don’t let the simplicity fool you. For our campaigns we’ve found that Facebook ads, on average, deliver a higher click-through rate than Google AdWords.
For example, we were brought in to help promote a senatorial race. After a month of struggling to gain fans on Facebook, we eventually doubled the candidate’s fans in a week by running ads: We picked up 1,500 fans for a total cost of around $1,000.
So if you think this strategy might be for you, here are five tips that will help you make Facebook ads work for your campaigns.
1. It’s about testing. Always run multiple ads targeting the same “Likes and Interests,” and keep your Likes and Interests the same while testing different ad copy, headlines, or images. What needs to remain the same as your control for a general test is your Likes and Interests keywords. You can test many controls, but the simplest is Likes and Interests. Facebook targets audiences off of two variables: Users and Likes and Interests: If you change these in two different ads, then you don’t have an apples-to-apples test.
2. Likes and Interests matter. Likes and Interests are essentially keywords you are targeting for your campaign based on what shows up for a user. You don’t want to use random Likes and Interests keywords. To make Likes and Interests work for you, it’s important to target based on what is associated with that individual in some way—associations they belong to, things they like, where they work, what they are fans of, or what they’ve written on their walls.
It’s is important not to get carried away and add a hundred Likes and Interests keywords just because it’s cool to see the numbers of possible audience continue to rise. It would seem that big numbers of audience is a good idea, but it’s actually counterintuitive. You want to choose highly targeted Likes and Interests keywords that are tightly associated with your ad copy. Don’t choose a keyword just because of its audience reach. You want to make sure it matches everything you know about the ad copy. Just because someone rides a motorcycle doesn’t mean he is interested in a Harley. One person might buy sports bikes, another might buy BMW motorcycles, while another might be really into Harleys. So it does no good to blast all of them with a message about Harley gear.
Jennings Social Media Marketing Reviews Mobile Apps’ Usage: 50% of Mobile Consumers’ Prime Time Overlaps With TV
Posted by: Eric Johnson
As the popularity of smart phones continues to rise, it was only a matter of time before the mobile screen began to catch up to the big screen in terms of usage. A new study conducted by a mobile analytics firm, Flurry, points out that approximately 50 percent of mobile consumers are utilizing mobile apps during TV’s prime time.
Flurry also reports that mobile applications currently reach more than 20 million U.S. consumers per hour and the number of active iOS and Android devices in the U.S. is estimated at 110 million. These numbers reflect a significant impact to prime time viewing habits.
For TV broadcasters, prime time is 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. In radio, programming and advertising are all about morning “drive time.” On the Web, the popularity of social networks like Facebook, instant messaging like Skype and video-on-demand services like Hulu are pushing up usage in the evening.
So what time of day do mobile apps find their biggest audience? A new study by the mobile analytics firm Flurry shows the audience for iPhone and iOS apps rises steadily during the day and peaks at about 9 p.m. That’s when half the U.S. app audience is using apps. “Mobile consumers are using apps either instead of, or along-side prime-time television and the Internet,” stated a Flurry blog post on the study.
The finding contributes to a growing body of research suggesting that two-screen viewing is becoming increasingly common while people are watching TV. The relative size of the TV audience during prime time was larger than that for mobile apps, at more than 60%. But app usage remained higher than TV from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and higher than the Internet almost all day. The Internet’s reach peaked at 7 p.m., when 40% of the audience for that medium was on the Web.
Mark Zuckerberg Reveals Major Facebook Updates at F8
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
Over the years, Facebook has been known to make small changes to how users operate on the social networking site. With Google+ becoming a threatening competitor, Mark Zuckerberg made serious changes to Facebook. On September 22, Mark Zuckerberg explained exactly what the 800 million users could expect from the new and improved Facebook at its annual developer conference including:
•Timeline: a stream of information about you
•Facebook Gestures: turning any verb into a button, similar to the “like” button. Example: Reading a book.
•Open Graph: third-party companies can connect their apps and services to Facebook using a one-time permission from the user to share stuff on Facebook
•Subscribe: subscribing to strangers or celebrities to receive posts from them without being Facebook friends
•Ticker: a real-time list of what your friends are posting
•Media: watching TV and movies, listening to music and reading news all within Facebook
How Social Media Has Changed the Game for Search Engine’s: 1/4 of Twitter’s 5 Billion Tweets a Month Contains Links to Content
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
Sharing and finding content over the Internet has become easier then ever, and now social media is changing the ways search engines track quality content. This article from Mashable.com takes a look at how social networks have impacted search engines.
How Social Media Affects Content Relevance in Search
Old school SEO pros cover your ears, or be prepared to adapt your craft: Search engines are changing, and social media is a huge part of that change.
Bing, Google, and an increasing swath of nimble little search engines like Blekko and DuckDuckGo are incorporating social data into their results. This is potentially great news for new businesses trying to achieve visibility in search. It’s less great news for sites that rely heavily on link buying (illegal, but hard to catch), producing huge volumes of borderline-useless content (long-tail, content farm approach), or just really old domains (previously an SEO trump card).
Both Bing and Google admitted in interviews that their search results are positively affected by social signals, such as tweets, Facebook Likes, and +1s.
“As ideas, thoughts, questions and answers are shared more freely and easily than ever, the increased amount of information from social sources provides great benefits to users,” says a Microsoft spokesperson for Bing (who asked to remain anonymous).
“The links that you build through social media, the references, the authority — all can have an impact in various ways on how you are ranked and listed even in ‘regular’ search results,” says Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, in an email interview. “Social media allows for people to provide more trusted signals.”
Search Engines Adapt to SurviveSince the early Internet days of Excite and Webcrawler, the principal goal of search engines has been to help people find what they’re looking for. Google rose to dominate the industry by tracking better indicators of content quality than anyone else. It developed a complex algorithm that measured which websites were “voting” for others by linking to them.
Essentially, it was social media, but for websites rather than people. If your site had lots of links from relevant sites, your Google rank climbed. Plenty of other factors, like putting keywords into headlines and titles, remained in play (and continually evolved), but the game changer of the last decade was links.
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry emerged to help webmasters play the “me rank higher” game with Google. On the one hand, website owners attempt to adhere to Google’s standards and prove they are high quality (creating relevant, high quality content and formatting it to Google’s taste). On the other hand, shadier sites try to trick Google’s secret formula, “pretending” to be good content without having to bother with creating useful stuff.
Location-Based Mobile Services Becoming Increasingly Popular: Over 25% of Americans Have Used Location-Based Services for Recommendations
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
Using location-based services to find the closest restaurant or to get directions is becoming the newest trend in mobile technology. Here is an article from The Washington Post on how Americans are using location-based services.
Over a quarter of American adults use mobile location-based services
Not many people are “checking in” using services such as Foursquare and Gowalla, but over a quarter of Americans are checking out their surroundings using location-based services.
The latest research from Pew’s Internet and American Life Project found that 28 percent of American adults have used mobile or social location-based services to get recommendations such as the best-rated nearby cafe or directions from their current location.
Only about 5 percent of those surveyed used services that post their current locations, though smartphone users were more than twice as likely to signal their location to their friends. In a similar vein, about 9 percent of all users used the location-tagging options on social media.
As once might expect, younger smartphone users are more likely overall to use check-in services, but there was no clear divide on age when it came to hitching a location-tag to a Facebook or Twitter message.
CNN: Smartphones Make Up 35% of U.S. Mobile Market
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
According to a recent story on CNN.com, smartphones still do not make up the majority of the U.S. market. However, we cannot ignore the value, power and influence of these mobile devices that are about to change the way we conduct business, review products, make buying decisions, and most importantly, interact with our friends.
Why smartphones still haven’t taken over the U.S. market
Smartphones may attract nearly all of the marketing hype and news coverage, but comScore’s latest statistics show that smartphones still comprise only a minority of the U.S. mobile market — about 35%, as of July 2011.
The other 65% of U.S. mobile handsets in use are “feature phones” — which tend to be much less expensive to buy and own. Often, these phones do not require a pricey two-year wireless service contract with hefty early termination fees.
Even though smartphones cost much more, these devices have been getting popular with U.S. consumers, even in light of the country’s economic recession. After all, a 35% market share is nothing to sneeze at — especially considering that smartphones have only been widely available in the U.S. for about five years.
At some point, a majority of U.S. mobile users will indeed own smartphones. But that shift won’t happen as quickly as early forecasts anticipated.
Back in March 2010, the Nielsen Company proclaimed that smartphones would overtake feature phones by 2011. Specifically, they predicted that by the end of Q3 2011 (about a month from now), most U.S. mobile users would own smartphones.
That ambitious prediction doesn’t seem to be panning out.
For over a year, comScore has been publishing monthly mobile-market-share statistics that show the percentage of U.S. smartphones. I’ve been tracking these figures. Based on this data, it looks like it’ll be roughly October 2012 before smartphones actually take over as a majority of U.S. handsets.
Social Media and Mobile Applications: 8 Best Practices for Deploying a Top-Ranked Mobile App
Posted by Micah Pratt: social networking research and development
The convergence of social media with mobile applications has led to cross promotional marketing, and if done correctly, can lead to major success. Here is an article by Krishna Subramanian from Mashable.com about eight ways to make sure your mobile application gets noticed.
8 Best Practices for Deploying a Top-Ranked Mobile App
Developing a mobile app is the easy part. Getting that app noticed is difficult. And getting the app to go viral is like winning the lottery. Yet many developers get millions of downloads time after time. How?
It’s all about app store SEO, and some developers have mastered it. Here are a few tips and tricks of the trade to help get your app to the top of heap.
Time Is of The Essence
The first two weeks of an app’s life are critical and will likely determine its future visibility in the app store. Top applications develop popularity within two weeks of release, and most applications have a tendency to drop in chart position over time. Remember, whatever you do — marketing campaigns, cross distribution and so on — the quicker you do it, the bigger the impact.
Jennings Social Media Marketing’s Press Release Picked Up on Major News Sites Including Businessweek.com, Yahoo!Finance.com & Reuters.com: Veterans Funeral Care Triples ROI With Jennings Social Media Marketing
Veterans Funeral Care tripled its Facebook “Likes,” organic SEO, engagement and exposure via Jennings Social Media Marketing during a promotional campaign (www.jenningssocialmedia.com).
Jim Rudolph, president and CEO of Veterans Funeral Care, said they hired Jennings Social Media Marketing for social media promotion of their company and for a specific event. “It should be said: I waited until the last minute. Team Jennings jumped in and in 24-hours was working magic. We had around 200 people who ‘liked’ us on Facebook in two weeks and there were more than 800 ‘likes’ shortly after that. Valerie (CEO & founder) got our Marketwire press release on MSNBC. You can put me down in the ‘very happy’ category. This is my second project with them, and I’m a believer,” said Rudolph.
The goal of the Veterans Funeral Care social media project was to create brand awareness by getting new Facebook users to “Like” the page (http://www.facebook.com/Veteransfuneralcare), generate search engine optimization (SEO) and engagement. A targeted Facebook ad ran, focusing on veterans, veterans groups and Flag Day which resulted in the Veterans Funeral Care page tripling its Facebook “Likes” in a few weeks to 815. For organic SEO, a targeted Marketwire press release was written and distributed to generate traffic, millions of impressions and get picked-up by major news websites including, but not limited to, MSNBC, Reuters and Yahoo. The Twitter strategy focused on re-tweeting, sending @mentions, tweets and following veterans’ organizations.
Jennings Social Media Marketing is a full service company that utilizes the art of online storytelling with the science of measuring quantifiable results. Jennings creates comprehensive social media marketing and Web advertising strategies from website design and development to viral videos. The company represents publicly traded to medium-sized businesses across the U.S. and overseas including technology, sports, sustainability, entertainment, travel, financial, health care and real estate (www.jenningssocialmedia.com).
Thank You to Thinking Bigger Business Media & David Conrads for Interviewing Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing, On How to Handle Employees’ Online Social Media Activity
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing, was recently interviewed on how to handle employees’ social media activity. The emergence of social media has given many employees the same capabilities and tools as their employers which can be both beneficial and risky. Business leaders are wondering how to control the social media activities of its employers and to what extent. Here is an article from www.ithinkbigger.com, by David Conrads, on how to handle social media in conjunction with employees.
Social Media: Handle With Care
Do you need a policy to guide employees’ online activities?
While the benefits of social media are great, there also are risks—particularly as employees have access to the same tools and audience as the company.
As with so many things having to do with technology, social media is evolving so fast that businesses are scrambling to not only grasp its full potential, but also understand the risks and to come up with a consensus on best practices for its use.
The casual way in which many employees share their personal lives online can give a business owner nightmares. After all, TMI—“Too Much Information”—is one thing when it comes to an employee’s social life, it’s quite another when it involves company business. Leaders can’t afford to ignore the potential problems.
More Questions Than Answers
What are appropriate guidelines for what company information employees can share online? What liability is the company exposed to from employee posts that flow through the company’s server? How does a company protect its reputation from offensive postings by an employee on a personal account? Even large corporations are just now exploring answers to these questions.
“It’s an ongoing management problem,” said Valerie Jennings, CEO and founder of Jennings Social Media Marketing in Kansas City. “Social media has really cost a lot of organizations time, energy and money on so many different levels. It’s a blessing to have these resources, but the risks have to be managed or they can really hurt the brand.”
Valuable Data: More than a billion opinions posted online about products & services last year
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
Today, more and more marketers are turning to online marketing programs because of the noticeable role that peers play in consumers’ purchasing desicions. What many of these interactive marketers are failing to realize is the volume of social data created by the influence of peers in purchase decisions. Here is an article by Nate Elliott, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, about how to effective utilize social data.
HOW TO: Utilize Social Data More Effectively
Last year, American consumers posted more than a billion opinions about products and services online, according to data collected by my company. With peer influence playing such a prominent role in consumers’ purchase decisions, it’s no surprise many interactive marketers are tapping into that influence via viral marketing programs and influencer outreach.
However, the vast majority of marketers ignore the staggering volume of social data all this influence creates. And those who do study social data typically use it for the wrong reason: to measure the brand impact of their marketing campaigns.
Social Data Is Often Based On Small Sample Sizes
With so many opinions posted online, you might assume it would be easy to find a reliable sample of data to analyze for brand impact. But even popular consumer brands often find it difficult to collect usable social data.
For instance, I recently reviewed a listening report for a global sporting goods brand — one that sponsors leading teams and athletes around the world and has strong brand awareness. I was surprised to see that the brand was mentioned in social media only a few hundred times each week in the U.S., and less than 100 times each week in other key markets around the world.
To make matters worse, the low quality of many social sentiment analysis tools reduces sample sizes further. When listening tools can’t decide whether comments are positive or negative, they’re usually labeled as having “no sentiment.” Three-quarters of the mentions for this brand were tagged as such, leaving less than two-dozen weekly usable posts in some markets.
If you asked your market insights team or your survey provider to analyze 25 consumer survey responses, they’d tell you it’s impossible to find statistical significance in such a small sample. The same standards must be applied to social data as well.
ecommerce-guide.com Announces The 2011 Social Shopping Study
Posted by Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing
Social media has changed the way consumers shop. Now, approximately 40 percent of shoppers follow social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook for special offers. Here is a recent study regarding social media and shopping that may make an impact on your next strategic roll-out.
Here is the study by ecommerce-guide.com. Thank you for the outstanding review!
3 Consumer Shopping Trends Online Retailers Need to Know
By Vangie Beal
July 14, 2011
The world of online shopping is a never-ending barrage of fads, trends and change. Just when you think you have a handle on what’s new, along comes a new (or revived) trend to negotiate.
New research published earlier this month by PowerReviews in conjunction with the E-tailing Group gives online retailers unique insight as to how consumers research, select and purchase goods online and helps to identify the best strategies for connecting with consumers.
The 2011 Social Shopping Study
The study, The 2011 Social Shopping Study, is based on a survey of more than 1,000 consumers about their online shopping habits, as well as their level of engagement with brands and retailers across various online channels.
In the survey introduction, Lauren Freedman, president, the E-tailing Group said that 2011 has been a volatile year for ecommerce with a multitude of dynamics in play from social media and community to mobile.
“This year’s survey explored consumer utilization of social media across a range of merchants and channels to understand perception, interest, and propensity to buy based on that engagement,” she wrote. “We wanted to know the implications for researching and shopping behavior, particularly as it relates to Facebook, which is the beneficiary of much of the community attention.”
Trend #1: Product Research Remains Top Purchasing Decision Tool
One consumer shopping trend the survey set out to determine was if user-generated content (UGC) continued to play a role in consumer shopping choices.
Findings suggest that consumers do invest greater time in online research before making a purchase, as 15 percent of respondents said that 90 percent or more of all online shopping time was spent researching products (compared to just 21 percent in 2010).
Respondents confirmed that search engines, like Google, are still the main starting point for research by 44 percent, followed by gathering information from retailer and manufacturer websites. To that end it is apparent that search engine optimization (SEO) is still a crucial task for online retailers.
The important take away for merchants is knowledge of where consumers start their product research. Nadim Hossain, VP of marketing at PowerReviews, said that the first step in the research process for consumers is Google.
“Google is where people start, so SEO is really important to online retailers. Our research found that product reviews are the number one factor impacting the buying decision,” explained Hossain. ”
Trend #2: Social Shopping and Customer Reviews as an Influencer
Another big question playing on the minds of many retailers is just how much influence social media has on the customer’s purchase decision.
Social shopping and social media has been a huge topic for online retailers this year, but only 2 percent of respondents used Facebook or other social recommendations as their main research starting point. Forty-nine percent of those surveyed said they have never researched products on social sites.
Where social media does shine is in Facebook Business Pages and Facebook newsfeeds, with 13 percent of respondents saying those social tools impacted their buying behavior.
“Merchants are testing social media by trying to integrate it and understand how to monetize it,” said Lauren Freedman. “Retailers typically evaluate then go first for the promotions to increase their fan base, in a way that is similar to email list building.”
When it comes to user-generated content, a number of community and social tools impact buying behavior, customer reviews (user-generated product reviews) influence purchasing the most with 59 percent of survey respondents, followed by customer Q&As (42 percent) and community forums (26 percent).
Consumers still favor writing product reviews as an activity. The survey indicated that 70 percent of respondents participated in “rate a product purchased” compared to 49 percent who engage in using the “Like” button for a retailer or manufacturer.
Trend #3: Mobile Phones Empower Consumers In-Store
Mobile phones are also a popular influence in customer purchase decisions. Usage in the retail store is also increasing as mobile phones give consumers immediate access to research, price shopping and promotional coupons for immediate redemption.
Merchants are interested in the mobile phone and the tablet audience because these are the consumers who are going to shop and consume. Lauren Freedman said that retailers see the traffic penetration coming from this demographic and online retailers view mobile shoppers as an audience ripe for business.
What’s most interesting about the mobile portion of the study is seeing the break-down of how consumers use mobile phones. In response to the question “How likely are you to do each of the following using your mobile phone when researching a product while in a physical store?” the top three answers were:
Access promotional coupons for redemption at the store (38 percent)
Look for competitive pricing at Amazon (36 percent)
Look for competitive prices on products at retailers online other than Amazon (36 percent)
Other activities shoppers use their mobile phone for include scanning bar codes, scanning QR Codes (quick response codes) or use mobile apps to receive points, rewards or badges.
“Mobile phones are the merging of the offline experience in-store, and it all goes back to pricing,” said Freedman. “Consumers use a mobile phone to check sales and specials, to look up store information pre-visit and to scan reviews for product information while in-store.”
Predictions for Mobile and Social
In the coming year both Hossain and Freedman predict that mobile phones and social tools will grow in importance as more consumers use these mediums for product research and shopping.
“The mobile piece will continue to accelerate fast but the social will be more challenging for the retailers to understand, explore and monetize,” said Freedman. “Retailers will continue investment in both areas and see continued sales growth in mobile versus exploration in social.” See Article
How to Reward Your Twitter Followers: 6 Easy Ways Recommended by Mashable
Posted By Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing
Mashable.com reviewed several ways to excite, reward and support your Twitter followers.
According to the article, consumers follow their favorite businesses on Twitter to get an inside look at the business, to find out about new products, earn discounts and be a part of a community. Businesses have the potential to turn these fans into brand ambassadors by making their followers feel special and appreciated.
Here are a few:
1. Offer them a freebie
2. Give them control
3. Give them a shout-out!
How To Use Web Videos For SEO & Ecommerce: Mashable Article Shares 8 Reasons Why Every Ecommerce Site Should Get Serious About Video
By Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing
Web videos are one of the most beneficial marketing tools online to generate higher search engine rankings, website traffic, leads and conversions.
This mashable.com article, written by Yaniv Axen, offers 8 reasons why every Ecommerce site needs Web videos.
Mashable Article: How to use Web video for ecommerce
1. Video Attracts New, Relevant Search Traffic
2. Video Assets Can be Easily Syndicated
3. Videos Encourage Sharing
4. Video Engages Site Visitors
5. Video’s “Halo Effect” Drives Conversions
6. Video Increases Customer Loyalty
7. Video Creates Online Personalization
8. Video Production Costs Are Falling, ROI Is Rising
Mashable Announces: Unfazed by Facebook, Google Rolls Out Social Search Globally
Posted By Jared Cook:
Here is a recent post from Mashable, written by Stan Schroeder, about Goolge expanding their social search feature to 19 more languages.
Unfazed by Facebook, Google Rolls Out Social Search Globally
Google will roll out its somewhat controversial Social Search feature to 19 more languages next week, the company announced on its official blog.
Launched in October 2009, Social Search is a feature that combines regular search results with publicly available data created by your friends’ social media activities.
Your “friends” are quite loosely defined and include people in your Google Talk friends list, your Google Contacts, people you’re following on Buzz and Google Reader and other networks you’ve linked from your Google profile or Google Account. Google can also find your friends on public networks such as Twitter and Facebook and gather the data from their public connections as well.
The feature was recently the subject of controversy, as Facebook hired a PR company to push negative stories about Social Search in the press. Facebook claims that Google’s practices raise “serious privacy concerns,” and it’s unhappy with the fact that Google can use Facebook data for its service without Facebook’s permission.
For the most part, Google has stayed silent about the issue, although it’s noticeable that in its latest blog postabout Social Search, Twitter is mentioned three times while Facebook is nowhere to be seen.
Social Search should be available in 19 languages next week, with more languages on the way. Check out a video overview of the feature below.
Thank You to David Day from ithinkbigger.com for Featuring Valerie Jennings’ article: Promoting a Green Brand
Posted By: Jamie Sutera, VP of R&D
Thank you to David Day from ithinkbigger.com for featuring Valerie Jennings’, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing, article: Promoting a Green Brand.
How to drive a key message without greenwashing.
By Valerie Jennings
Most businesses that are focused on sustainability are doing the right thing for the right reason. These businesses also want to share their efforts with consumers without looking too self-promotional.
In April 2008, a corporate sustainability study sought to determine the greenest eco blogs, websites and other social networks.
The research scored more than 100 green websites for recommendations on which blogs, websites and other communities were the “darkest to lightest” green. This scoring model is not new. In fact, in 2008, Experian announced the greenest (most committed to the environment) to the brownest (very little concern for the planet) consumer markets.
Both of these projects required reviewing corporate green behaviors, attitudes and other forms of promotion to get the word out that green was important to companies. The lessons learned through these types of studies by national brands and large corporations can be applied by small businesses in promoting their own green efforts.
Key Lessons in Marketing Your Greenness
-Be truthful, and you don’t have to worry about greenwashing (i.e., making misleading claims or promoting superficial environmental efforts). Use disclaimers, be honest and use your brand to advance education, awareness, media exposure and promotions. -Use social media to promote green messages, connect with green bloggers, tweeples, social networks and press.
-Reach out to the Earth Day Network.
-Marketwire, a PR distribution platform, works. Green reporters research subject matter experts online for article sources. Use this tool to connect.
-Measure success via Google search results, media coverage, Twitter followers, blog traffic, contests, Web video views, Facebook likes, e-mail opt-ins and leads.
-Reach out to green bloggers who are appropriate for your brand. The most green or most liberal environmentalists may not want to hear about a medium-green product, company, service or expert.
-Stay focused on where the key listeners are around the product. Use blog or PR research to speak with the appropriate reporters and engage the right community.
Learn from the ‘Big Guys’
Proctor & Gamble has made a continuing commitment to greening its corporation. Its website has a long list of eco goals, but the reporting is still lax, difficult to read and challenging to evaluate.
The best online green results from a major brand, on the other hand, are from Coke. At a green conference several years ago, a presentation by Coke’s VP of marketing was packed with data, published timelines to make an impact on cutting back on Coke’s water usage in developing countries, information on their execution plan and ways they were working to get the plan moving. Coke’s website still has the goals published, and the results from the past few years are available. Go Coke! It appears Coke has decreased its water usage every year since it launched its sustainability plan.
Follow Coke’s example and share your green goals, timelines and progress with consumers by posting on your website. Promoting your green efforts is another way to differentiate your company from the competition.
Valerie Jennings is CEO and founder of Jennings Social Media Marketing, a full service company that utilizes the art of online storytelling with the science of measuring quantifiable results. Valerie@jenningssocialmedia.com // Twitter: @valeriejennings //www.facebook.com/jenningssocialmedia //www.linkedin.com/in/jenningspr
The Royal Wedding Breaks Record for Live Streaming
Posted By: Jared Cook
Here is a recent article from Mashable, written by Adam Ostrow about the recent Royal Wedding breaking the record for live streaming.
Royal Wedding Breaks Live Streaming Records
The Royal Wedding has already taken over trending topics across the web, and we can now report that it has broken at least one record: concurrent viewers on Livestream.
The company says that its livestream of William and Kate’s wedding topped 300,000 concurrent viewers at 6 a.m. ET on Friday morning. CEO Max Haot tells us that he expects “at least 2 million” unique viewers by the time the broadcast is done. Livestream partnered with the Associated Press, UK Press Association, CBS and Entertainment Tonight for its coverage.
Akamai reports that the event broke broader live streaming records as well. A representative for the company — whose network hosts some of the web’s largest news sites — reports that “concurrent live streams of Royal Wedding on Akamai surpassed the 1.6M peak set by World Cup in June of 2010.”
However, the event does not appear to be the biggest news event in web history. While the 4.6 million page views per minute reported on the news sites Akamai delivers content for this morning surpass the total for Barack Obama’s presidential election victory, they fall well short of the 10.3 million page views per minute record set last June when a World Cup qualifying match and the longest Wimbledon match in history took place simultaneously.
Jennings Social Media Marketing Office and Staff Photos on CNN iReport
Posted By: Jared Cook
Recently, we uploaded some pictures of the Jennings office and staff on CNN iReport.
Here was our message to iReport
iReport —
Hi CNN,
Thank you for this great opportunity to share our office with your viewers.
We are located in the Kansas City metro area. Here are the names of the individuals in the pictures, who work at Jennings Social Media Marketing (www.jenningssocialmedia.com).
Valerie Jennings; CEO and founder
Jamie Sutera; VP of R&D
Jared Cook: VP of marketing
Ben Parks: senior VP of Web design and development
Micah Pratt: social networking R&D
Mikimoto: office dog
Here are the pictures. Enjoy!
Facebook Tests Deals Program in Austin, Atlanta, Dallas, San Diego & San Francisco
Posted by: Jamie Sutera, VP of R&D
According to an article from http://news.cnet.com, Facebook launched its social-buying program today. Facebook Deals offers members local deals they can buy and also share with their friends on the network. The test launched in Austin, Atlanta, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco, but may be expanded to include other cities.
Facebook Begins Testing Social-Buying Program
Facebook announced this evening it is ready to begin testing its new local deals offering–the social-networking giant’s effort to cash in on the feverish interest in social buying.
Users in the five test cities will be able to learn about offerings through e-mail and notifications, by clicking on the Deals tab on their Facebook home page, and through their News Feed when friends like or buy a deal.
Facebook is working with a passel of other deals sites in the venture, including Opentable, Gilt City, Tippr, PopSugar City, Plum District, ReachLocal, Zozi, Home Run, KGB Deals, aDealio, and ViaGoGo.
With 500 million members, Facebook brings a sizable user base in its challenge for dominance in the deals market, which brought in $873 million in revenue last year and could bring in $3.93 billion by 2015, according to a projection from consulting firm BIA/Kelsey.
Chief among those competitors is Groupon, which has been riding meteoric growth with half-price massages, discounted restaurant meals, and travel bargains. Chicago-based Groupon, with 60 million users and more than 39 million deals sold in its two years in business, is expected to beef up its muscle with an initial public offering later this year.
Twitter Looks To Buy TweetDeck for $50 Million
Posted By: Micah Pratt, Social Networking R&D
Twitter has recently been in talks to buy TweetDeck, a third-party client of Twitter that allows users to connect with contacts across a variety of social networking sites including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. According to an article by Chris Taylor on mashable.com, Twitter does not know the exact number of TweetDeck users, but believes it includes the most obsessive power users in social media.
Twitter In Talks To Buy TweetDeck [REPORT]
Twitter is in talks to purchase TweetDeck Inc. for $50 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.
TweetDeck is one of the most popular third-party Twitter clients, available in desktop, iPad, iPhone and Android versions. It displays your Twitter news feed, @mentions and direct messages, along with your Facebook feeds — all on the same screen, all updating in real time. TweetDeck can also support updates from MySpace, LinkedIn and Foursquare.
The 15-person company, based in the U.K., has never revealed how many users TweetDeck has. The number may be small — but it is also likely to include the most obsessive power users in social media.
Jennings Social Media Marketing Celebrates Earth Day With a Billion Acts of Green Pledge & Provides Tips to Promote Green Brands
Posted By: Jamie Sutera, VP of R&D
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Jennings Social Media Marketing is celebrating Earth Day by making a pledge to the Earth Day Network (EDN) campaign: A Billion Acts of Green and providing tips to promote green brands.
Valerie Jennings, CEO and founder of Jennings Social Media Marketing, said that Earth Day is a great way to review sustainability practices. “Jennings Social Media Marketing committed to replacing its hazardous cleaning products with more eco-friendly cleaning supplies this year. Next year, we hope to have everything toxic removed from our office,” said Jennings.
Jennings added that the office is always trying to improve, however, it is a constant challenge. “We have been providing eco-friendly social media marketing advice to businesses since 2008 and are currently working with many companies that are making green commitments.”
Here are a few tips-
1. Be transparent and use the brand to advance education, awareness, media exposure and promotions.
2. Do use social media to promote green messages, connect with green bloggers, tweeples, social networks and press.
3. Reach out to the Earth Day Network.
4. Marketwire, a PR distribution platform, works. Green reporters are researching subject matter experts online. Use this tool to connect.
5. Monitor success via Google search results, media coverage, Twitter followers, blog traffic, contests, Web video views, Facebook likes, email opt-ins and leads.
6. Reach out to green bloggers who are appropriate for the brand. The greenest environmentalists may not want to hear about a medium-green product, company or expert. Stay focused on where the key listeners are around the product.
Jennings Social Media Marketing is a full service company that utilizes the art of online storytelling with the science of measuring quantifiable results. Jennings creates comprehensive social media marketing and Web advertising strategies from website design and development to viral videos. The company represents publicly traded to medium-sized businesses across the U.S. and overseas including technology, sports, sustainability, entertainment, travel, financial, health care and real estate (www.jenningssocialmedia.com).
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!
Valerie Jennings 
Cassie Stubs
Katie Stumpf
