Making a Big Impression – Marvelous Marketing Methods

Promoting and marketing your brand well is important because you need to make sure you attract interest. And it’s important that you come up with unique and original forms of marketing. You have to understand that it’s not all about digital. This is not the be all and end all. Yes, digital marketing is hugely important, and you can’t very well do without it, but don’t put all your eggs in that virtual basket.

Think about all the different formats of promoting your company effectively. You have to do as much as you can to create a big impression. Wowing people and making them take note of your company is so crucial. You have to stand out these days, and really make a great impression. Here are some of the great ideas you can use that will help you with that.

Tangible Marketing

It’s a good idea to have some form of tangible marketing. This is even more important these days because we live in such a digital world. So you need to provide people with something tangible that they can touch and feel. It makes them feel more comfortable and helps cement your brand in their mind. So, how can you do this? Well, you need to look at what is involved in tangible marketing. Two of the best examples of this are business cards and flyers. Let’s consider flyers, and whether they still have a place. Well, the short answer is yes. Handing someone a flyer with information is more likely to illicit a response, and stay in the memory, than flicking through an advert. If you decide to create a flyer for your business you can market to people offline as well as online. Business cards are similarly effective. They give a unique role and professional perspective. And they can increase sales by up to around 2.5%!

Go Mobile

The future these days lies in mobile technology. If your company isn’t scaled down for mobile use yet, you need to rectify this. So many people use mobile and cellular devices every day, and they will be using these to access your business. 80% of Internet users own and use a smartphone as their primary web surfing tool. That’s why it’s important to make sure your company embraces this, and you make full use of mobile marketing. Now, there are a few things you can do to achieve this. For one thing, you need to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. It’s also worth developing a business app that users can download. That way you’re going to be able to connect and interact with users no matter where they are in the world. Going mobile is hugely important, and represents the future of business marketing.

Hashtag

You need to make your marketing suitable for modern Millennials. They represent the future of business and make up one of your most important demographics. Yes, all types of marketing are important here, but you need to connect with them on their wavelength. And what do Millennials love more than anything? Social media. That’s why you have to adopt and embrace the hashtag as much as you possibly can. It’s important to make sure you Tweet a lot about the business and that you make a hashtag a major part of the marketing strategy. It might surprise you to learn just how effective this can be for you as a business owner.

Making a big impression with your business marketing and advertising is so important. And that’s why you need to sometimes think outside the box with the things you say and do and the way you market yourself.

Is Social Media Working for You?

Anybody can sign up for a social media account and understand its general premise. Does that make you capable of using it for business? Like anything in business, social media (done right) requires extensive experience and understanding of people, some technology and — most importantly — marketing.

Primarily, social media users fail in one of two areas: understanding that social media fits into the larger part of a company’s overall marketing goals, and the ability to see correlations between activities on social media and quantifiable ROI. (Like in grade school math class, you don’t get credit if you don’t show your work.)

You — or your social media marketing ‘pro’ — might be using social media the wrong way if:

You don’t measure ROI

Utilize basic tools like Facebook analytics (which is free, by the way) to understand what your customers really respond to. Notice whatever seems to help you generate more likes, clicks and reach. Then, use tools like Google Analytics to see how the traffic is converting on your website. If you want to get a bit more robust, try simple, yet powerful analytics tools like Simplymeasured.com. They will help you stay connected with your audience and keep them interested, as long as you can interpret them correctly.

You call yourself a ‘guru’ or something similar

Keep your titles professional, people. Using a term like ‘guru’ usually screams that you’re a refugee from another industry and don’t really know what you’re doing. Anybody who has been in the marketing industry wants to create a professional appearance. Let others call you a guru if they’d like.

You’re not working with other departments in the business

Social media marketing is most efficient and effective when it’s coordinated with your company’s branding team, email marketing team, advertising team and other various marketing departments. For instance, your web marketing team can help drive your social media communities’ growth by linking back to your company’s social networks. Alternatively, you can gain potential leads that can convert into sales by driving traffic back to the website through content marketing. If you create original content and you work intra-departmentally, you will then be a social media rock star.

You are not identifying key influencers or competitors

Social media is a great portal for identifying potential allies and competitors. Keep an eye on your competitors to see what they’re up to. Make sure you add them to a private list on Twitter and don’t follow them, because then they’ll know. Use tools likeFollowerwonk.com to identify key influencers who may be driving the conversation in your industry. Interact with the influencers and try to involve them in various social media programs that you run. Soon you’ll have people adding you to their secret Twitter lists.

You use a tweet-by-tweet strategy

It’s easy to sign up for a social media account. The real magic happens when you have a strategy. To create a one, you must learn to understand what your audience needs through analytics, then implement a process that drives measurable ROI. With this strategy, you can plan out social media initiatives like contests. Ensure that they are successful by planning appropriately and implementing flawlessly. If you’re running a social media program but you don’t know what you’re going to accomplish next month, you are doing it wrong.

You don’t build relationships or listen

Social media is all about relationships — that’s why it’s called “social” media. It will draw engagement, encourage brand advocacy and keep customers happy. To build these key relationships you must listen to your fans’ needs. They will do some of the work for you, but you need to treat them right. Some businesses talk too much on social media. This comes across as “spamvertisement,” and their fans tune out. If a proverbial tree (your content) falls in the woods (into the newsfeed) but nobody cares, did it really happen?

Find out why people like your business by listening to them. Build your community around that.

Andy Karuza is the CEO of brandbuddee.com and a long-time social media consultant with experience in Enterprise, Startup and local small business. Also an active nightlife, fashion, entrepreneur and charity community member.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

10 Ways to Instantly Boost Your Social Media Credibility

Question: What’s one thing an entrepreneur/startup could do TODAY to quickly boost their credibility on social media?

Answer Others’ Questions

“Establish a search query, using a tool like TweetDeck or HootSuite, around an area you have expertise in. Watch the stream and answer other people’s questions or retweet articles that you think provide valuable insight to others. The No. 1 rule about social media is “be helpful.””

Eric Holtzclaw, Laddering Works

Create Great Content

“Create great content including infographics, photos and videos, and share the content across social media platforms. If your content is not insightful, people will not want to read it or engage as much with your company. Also, consume and respond to others’ content — you might get new ideas for future content, and everyone will benefit.”

Jesse Pujji, Ampush

Be Reponsive

“Many entrepreneurs use social media as a one-way platform to spread a message to those who follow them; however, the best will engage in conversations with their followers, responding to comments and being truly accessible. “

Bhavin Parikh, Magoosh Inc

Make All Profiles Consistent

“It’s worth updating all your social media profiles and making sure they are consistent and similar. When people are looking you up, they’re seeing all of them at the same time!”

Derek Flanzraich, Greatist

Be Authentic

“Content is king, so it’s important to have something to say, and when you do, be authentic. If I see something or read something that’s interesting, I share it because others will likely find it interesting, too. I don’t take myself too seriously on Twitter; if I see something funny, I tweet it. If you’re true to yourself and simply share what interests and inspires you, you’ll build credibility.”

Dries Buytaert, Drupal

Get Endorsed

“On LinkedIn, make sure you are endorsed for the skills you want other people to recognize you for, and ask for recommendations on past positions. On Twitter, make sure you have more followers than you are following; otherwise, people will suspect you of follow-back, mass-follow/mass-flush and other such techniques.”

Christopher Pruijsen, Sterio.me

Do the Math

“Successful startups go into specifics. Everyone else talks about fluff; they’re afraid to give away company secrets. If you’re willing to provide real examples with real numbers, your posts will have five times the chance of succeeding.”

Gagan Biyani, Growth Hackers Conference

Interact Naturally

“Talk with people in your social media community. Get to know them, and let them know who you are without being a salesman. Have conversations and ask questions. This will build your reputation, and you’ll have a community supporting you. If you’re just doing sales on social media and talking about yourself, you’re doing it wrong.”

Kyle Clayton, Jackrabbit Janitorial

Sponsor High-Quality Content

“I believe sponsoring high-quality content is a great way for an entrepreneur or startup to get the message they want out there. It’s also easy and fast. It’s all about having the content first — then you can target anyone you want using Facebook ads, for example. “

Pablo Palatnik, ShadesDaddy.com

Start Writing

“I started writing more frequently on my site and for others’ sites. I instantly started getting more Twitter followers and a lot more engagement on Twitter and via email.”

Wade Foster, Zapier

Manalto Wants to Solve Social for Enterprises

What’s your startup called?

Manalto Social Media ERP

What’s your big idea?

Manalto is changing the way social media is managed inside enterprise.

We’re enabling organizations to manage social media content with greater efficiency and alignment to their operations, with seamless integration with marketing and communications processes and activity.

Manalto is an end-to-end social media management platform, powered by an innovative backend technology which has been engineered for enterprise. Our cloud-based social media management solution allows SMB’s and multi-site or multi-brand organizations greater control to create and efficiently manage fully customized Facebook pages, regulate user permissions, and monitor and engage with local communities on Facebook and Twitter from a centralized dashboard.

Manalto enables

o Improved brand management across organizations of different sizes and structures, from a single business to a multi-site, or multi-product enterprise

o Greater agility for an organization to manage operational and reputational risks, through built in system controls expected of an enterprise system

o Increased delivery of operational efficiencies

What’s the story behind your idea?

Manalto formed from the need to address a significant challenge and barrier-to-entry facing multi-site, multi-brand organizations wanting to adopt social media into their existing traditional-digital suite of sales and marketing activity, but not able to find the right solution that delivered the same level of rigor, brand control and granular-level user management controls. Manalto is positioning itself as a mid-tier to top tier social media management software provider, architecting enterprise-grade solutions for single and multi-site organizations – such as a franchise group, wanting to sustainably and efficiently integrate social media management into their core operations and marketing activity.

Manalto also offers a robust SMB solution. SMBs are a critical market for Manalto given SMBs make up a large percentage of the business sector. The Manalto SMB solution which enables a business to manage a single social account using Manalto, offers the same management features as the Enterprise solution.

While the DIY SMB solution and DIY Enterprise solutions are available directly through the Manalto website our primary approach to the SMB market is through the ISP and Hosting company channel. Where an SMB is going to be able to purchase and use the Manalto software using their hosting account.

Who are the founders?

Anthony Owen

Where are you located?

Currently in Melbourne, Australia; and Santa Monica, CA

What’s the startup scene like there?

The start up scene in Australia is alive and active. There are a lot of innovative companies, talent and technologies in Australia that have both a local and global focus.

Australian-founded technology companies that make their foray into the USA are generally highly-regarded. However, unfortunately not everyone takes the leap into the USA market and choose to remain with a local focus.

I think one of the challenges facing start ups in Australia is the lack of Seed capital and Series A investors available locally. Typically, early stage companies in Australia are expected to be generating substantial revenue to attract investment interest and hence tend to source lead investors, in particular, outside Australia.

What milestones have you reached?

Manalto has achieved significant traction and successes in its short life to date.

Since it build and launch in Australia 12 months ago, the team has released two substantial upgrades to our software and is at now at version 3 and soon V3.1. The solution has come leaps and bounds and we work closely with organizations to shape our solution to solve problems.

We relocated the business to the USA in December and have been rapidly building momentum, ramping up our sales and marketing activity, expanding our team and creating a footprint for Manalto in the USA.

What are your next milestones?

Manalto plans to continue to drive our growth in the USA and cast the net wide – extending the solution to as many organizations and developing our distribution channels. We will close a Series A Round, and look to expand inside European and Asian markets, while accelerating our growth in the USA.

We have a comprehensive and innovative technical development pipeline that will see the Manalto solution integrated with more social media platforms, CMS tools, advertising management tools and e-commerce solutions.

Where can people find out more?

People can follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/ManaltoInc) and/or FB (www.facebook.com/ManaltoInc), and go to our website (www.manalto.com).

Which Social Media Platforms Are Best for Your Startup?

From Tailwind

In this new age of social media marketing, many make the mistake of posting the same type of content on all of the different forms of social media platforms. In actuality, the different social media platforms have differentspecialties and setbacks that make them unique. While we don’t recommend just using one form of social media, we do recommend knowing each platform and their strengths well so that you can choose the best form for your particular message and/or content. Here, we’ll review many popular social media platforms, along with what is unique about them and what they are good for.

Facebook

Facebook can be an ideal platform for businesses because of its huge user base. While people have taken notice to the fact that many younger people no longer prefer Facebook as their first choice regarding social media platforms, it still holds the vast majority of users with over 1.19 billion, making it a great source to get the word out with an awesome reach.

Facebook is ideal for longer messages- perhaps big news about your company, due to status updates allowing larger amount of characters than any other platform. One thing that Facebook is usually not a good fit for is actually selling items- save this for some of the other more immediate, actionable platforms. Instead, use Facebook as a platform for branding and displaying personality. Use Facebook to let consumers see news about your company, topics that you’re company is interested in, your company culture, etc. This is the platform where followers will come to love your company/brand for who you are, in turn causing loyalty.

Instagram

Instagram is a newer and more contemporary platform that more and more businesses are beginning to use. It’s a fun and extremely visual way to show off your brand, especially if you have eye-catching products to offer. Instagram is a remarkable way to create interest and curiosity about your company and getting people to want to know more.

When posting pictures, make sure to provide a caption with information about what is going on in the picture. If it’s a product, provide a link to where they can find it. However, your Instagram shouldn’t be all products. Show fun things going on at your company, relevant and intriguing images, etc. Instagram is also a great way to show usage situations- show people actually using and experiencing your product; followers will be able to see what the experience looks like, further peaking their interest. The rule of thumb here is to make sure that whatever you post is eye catching and appealing. Don’t post boring or fuzzy photos.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an often overlooked platform by many businesses, but its purpose is to create something invaluable that everyone needs- social networking. In these modern times, LinkedIn is vital to create and maintain business connections in order to take advantage of them when relevant to do so.

If doing any B2C or especially B2B marketing, LinkedIn is a great way to reach out to others and get onto their radar for when they may need your product/service. Because of its emphasis on copy rather than visuals, LinkedIn is more prevalent of those offering a service rather than a product (not to say that those offering products can’t see benefits from the platform as well).

Another helpful aspect of LinkedIn are the social groups/discussions that it provides, based around common interests, industries, communities, etc. This gives you the chance to get involved in discussions where you can both contribute and learn more about anything that you may be having trouble with. LinkedIn is THE platform to establish your authority and show others that you really know what you are talking about and that your company holds value. LinkedIn is an ideal place to post links to your company blog or other such informational links to provide further information on your company and what you do.

Pinterest

Of course, here at Tailwind, we are partial to Pinterest and are very aware of its enormous potential, but we promise to remain unbiased for the purpose of this blog post. Pinterest is renowned for its content sharing format. Using Pinterest, you can post videos, photographs and additional images to various boards based on subject. Whereas LinkedIn is a copy oriented platform, Pinterest is quite the opposite, with an emphasis on visuals. This makes it ideal for businesses with products whose main appeal is their imagery (for instance, clothing).

Pinterest is one of the platforms where sales can be a main goal, due to its aspirational nature. Those visiting Pinterest are typically looking for ways to improve their lives, and they often even conduct specific searches to find particular items that they are searching for. Additionally, people can click your pins, which will lead them back to your website (or wherever you would like to take them), making for a good conversion rate. While sales is a sound goal for Pinterest, it shouldn’t be the only goal kept in mind when pinning content. Pinterest is actually another great platform to show off your company’s brand and personality. Don’t just pin items from your website- pin items that you are interested in and know that your customers would be interested in as well. You can also create boards centered around your company and its culture- maybe even one centered around its employees- without it being all about the product/service that you are offering. After all, customers do love to get to know the company that they are doing business with.

Twitter

Twitter’s appeal comes from the fact that it is quick-paced and in the moment. It has become extremely popular due to this and the interactivity that it provides. Businesses who want to have real-time conversations with consumers will enjoy using Twitter. Using Twitter Search or tools like HootSuite, you can even conduct searches on people tweeting about topics or companies that would be relevant to your company and contribute to discussions going on about them in Twitter. It shows consumers that you’re taking notice of what they’re talking about, you want to communicate with them and you can provide help.

Twitter isn’t just for replying, however. You can makes your own posts requesting feedback and opinions, and like Facebook, you can also post (short) news regarding or relevant to your company, as well as any quick updates that you would like your followers to immediately know.

Vine

Vine is another new platform that many businesses have implemented into their social media plan. Its appeal is the personality and fun-side of your company that it can reveal, along with the fact that its videos are 6-second loops- in today’s society people are impatient and won’t sit through much, but almost everyone has 6 seconds to spare.

Like Instagram, Vine is also great to show (quick) usage situations, so people will see your product/service in action. We think the most important thing that Vine can do is to show consumers that you are a fun, interesting and dynamic brand that is willing to keep up with the times to please their consumers.

Now that you know a little bit more about many social media platforms, next time you post on social media, you can think to yourself, “Which one of these platforms will best help me get across the goal that I am trying to accomplish?”

This post originally appeared on the Tailwind blog.

3 Easy Tips for Your Startup’s Social Media Strategy

It’s a new year, and you know what that means- the perfect time for New Year’s resolutions! When setting your resolutions, think larger than yourself; perhaps it’s time to better your business. What’s a better way to start than to begin your social media scheduling for the year?! We are sure that your brand has some sort of social media presence (we don’t know many who don’t), but why not make it great by planning killer content AHEAD of time? While this may sound overwhelming, it’s a lot easier than you may think. Given that social media scheduling is something that we have recently begun to do religiously, we believe that we can give you pointers for the task, so sit tight and stay tuned for some of our advice.

Designate Days

In order to make sure you are posting meaningful, purposeful content, we recommend designating particular days around certain subjects. For instance, maybe on Wednesdays you will post things centered around your company, while on Mondays, you will want to post more fun things or things that would be of interest to your target audience as they are easing into their week. Tuesday could be dedicated to things going on within your company’s industry, Thursday could be centered around people that are in communication with your brand and giving thanks and feedback to them, and Friday could be about what is going on in your company’s home city. Of course, these are just suggestions- use your own discretion about what is good for your unique company when designating days. In addition, you may also choose to continue posting throughout the weekend, if you’d like. The idea is to create a blueprint of what you would like your week of social media to look like so as to make finding content easier as well as providing relevant and useful information to your target audience.

Optimize Your Schedule

There are certain hours in the day that are better for engaging with your audience than others. In other words, just by choosing a particular time, more people will not only see your posts for themselves, but they are also more likely to interact with it and share it with even more people. These times can vary according to your business and your audience, but according to an infographic by KISSmetrics, titled “The Science of Social Timing”, here are some helpful guidelines:

Twitter:

5 pm is a good time to tweet for an optimal amount of retweets
You are most effective when you tweet between 1-4 times an hour
The best days to tweet tend to be during the middle of the week and on weekends
To increase click-through rates, noon and 6 pm are the best times to tweet

Facebook:

The best day to share is Saturday
The most effective time to post is noon
The best sharing frequency tends to be .5 per day

Of course, as we previously mentioned, these times and days are not set in stone, and they can vary from company to company, so use these as guidelines, not absolute rules.

Choose A Program

Now that you have an idea of what you want to post as well as when you want a post, you’re ready to actually begin to schedule. The good news is that there are many programs out there to help you with this task. We are fond of HootSuite, but here we will provide a list of additional programs you may want to look at for your scheduling needs:

For even more options, visit this site.

Hopefully these tips will help you get the start you need for a great year of social media content!

This post originally appeared on the Tailwind blog.

Is Your Startup Investing Well In Social Media?

Tailwind

There is an old maxim: “You value what you measure.” For many companies, this has translated into a philosophy of rigorous adherence to specific company-wide key performance indicators (KPIs), such as revenue, lifetime value of a customer or time to serve. There are endless KPIs companies may select from, but when it comes to investing in social media, your standard KPIs probably don’t apply. And even if they do, you probably can’t measure them well.

That’s our fault- and by our, I mean the ecosystem of social media marketing companies such as PinLeague- we haven’t helped establish those KPIs well enough. Unfortunately, it’s also YOUR problem, because without commonly accepted KPIs, your Executive team looks at social media investment and asks the same questions they ask of everyone else. “How much revenue did it drive?” “Did it reduce our time to serve a customer?” “Is it increasing lifetime value?” and so forth.

The problem is, you – and we- don’t have those answers yet. And the answers we do give often underestimate the impact.

For example, at PinLeague we offer a Pinterest ROI Tracking feature. For many brands, this is a big win. You can now say to your boss “we earned $X from Pinterest this month.” Great. Revenue question answered.

There’s a problem though: You’re selling yourself short!

The true revenue impact of Pinterest is far greater than the revenue you see directly from Pinterest. For example, in our socially targeted email product (PinMail), we work with clients to help them measure not only revenue from Pinterest, multiple sources of revenue:

Revenue from Pinterest
Revenue from visits directly from the socially targeted email campaign
Revenue influenced by Pinterest as a channel
Revenue saved/gained by providing better customer service via social networks

And so on…

As you grow on Pinterest (or any social platform), all of these sources of revenue tend to grow together. For example, our PinMail campaigns have delivered as much as 8x as much direct revenue as they have revenue through Pinterest. In our own marketing, we’ve seen that social tends to influence purchase decisions but rarely are the last point of contact before a user joins PinLeague.

It’s difficult, if not impossible to quantify all of these impacts today. And if you did, the investment in that social media analytics would probably outweigh the profit impact to begin with.

In lieu of these metrics, CEOs often determine Social Media is a cost center, not a profit center. As a result, they fail to invest adequately. They simply hire their proverbial daughter Becky and check the “Social Media” box.

So, How Do I Get My CEO to Increase Social Media Investment?

Here are a few strategies to try:

1. Start investing in social media with targeted, measurable campaigns

PinMail has taken off for us because brands can see results with small budgets. We’ve run trials as low as $1,800 in budget that have generated $10k+ in revenue. Doing a simple trial like that puts little budget at risk and can be used to justify higher spend later.

2. Show there are benefits to investing in Social Media beyond Social Marketing

Go sign-up for a free pinterest analytics account now. Do it. Then, add a few competitors. In a week, log-in and pull down those competitors most popular content or products (“Brand Mentions” in PinLeague terms) and e-mail that report to your editorial team, content team, merchandising team, etc with a single question: “How would you use this data if you could have it for any competitor on an ongoing basis?” Boom. You have an ally who can help you get budget (or give you budget) so you can invest in social media tools.

3. Ask for Budget in Terms the CEO Can Understand

Most Social Media teams default to scaling through more people. How about if instead you make your current people more effective. Your CEO will hear: “By spending $100,000 on social media tools and campaigns, we’ll double the efficiency of our 4 person team this year.” CEO then does the math: 4 people @$100,000 each (with benefits, etc) can double their efficiency. That’s $100,000 of investment in social media tools vs $400,000 of additional headcount expense. Sounds like a deal!

This post originally appeared on the Tailwind blog.

How To Get Your Content Shared

Tailwind

What’s one of the best parts about marketing and sharing content online? This content has the potential to go viral, which means you have a chance at some free publicity plus the chance at reaching users that you wouldn’t normally reach.

While that sounds great, it’s a lot easier said than done. You may find yourself wondering why the awesome content you’re creating isn’t getting as many shares as you would have hoped. Obviously, having solid content that is worth sharing is important, but there is more to it than that. We’ve provided a few tips that you can follow in order to get a kick-start on getting your content shared. Keep reading to get the ball rolling!

Draw Them in With Your Visuals

There’s a reason you keep hearing that people are drawn to visual content online. Time after time, it’s been proven that people interact most with posts that include great visuals. So go ahead and add big, high quality photographs, infographics, and other great images to your work. Even if your company isn’t a part of the most visual industry, you can still easily pull quotes from your content to create graphics for users to pin, tweet or share. Just make sure to combine the right amount of text and graphics so that your audience is drawn in, while knowing what the content has in store for them. If something is able to catch your audience’s eyes, they’ll believe that it will catch their friends’ eyes as well.

Encourage Feedback

Any time that you share something, encourage feedback from your fans on what they liked, what they think you could do differently or any other comments they might have. Not only will this encourage more buzz and conversation centered on you and your topic, but also it will make your fans feel like they have helped you and been a part of your thought process, as if they have a stake in your brand. This makes it much more likely that they will want to share the things that you generate in the future with their own audiences.

Volunteer to Write Guest Blogs

A great way to introduce yourself to a new audience, is by creating content for other sites. Reach out to other companies, create alliances and offer to produce a guest blog here and there. This will be a great chance to network with other brands and create connections that can lead to more helping and shares in the future. Plus, as we said earlier, it will get your information out to a broader audience, while providing the potential for even more people to see and share it.

Show Appreciation

So, someone has interacted with your content… your job with them must be done right? Wrong. Marketing online is about more than getting one share or like. It’s about fostering long-term relationships with your audience. One share is great, but developing a relationship with your audience members that compels them to share even more of your content is better. You’d be surprised how far a simple, well thought out comment or thank you goes with someone who has interacted with your brand. It provides them with the incentive to interact more and more. Another great way to show appreciation? Check out their website or profile to see if you can share anything of theirs to return the favor.

Remember, all of these items are important, but don’t ever sacrifice the quality of your work. Whatever information you put out there should be correct, helpful, and consistent with your brand voice. That (along with the tips above) will give your content a great shot at reaching all types of people.

*This post originally appeared on the Tailwind blog.

Teen Thinks “Facebook is for Old People” and “Snapchat is Getting Boring”

This post may be a little outside of our mission here at Nibletz to be “The Voice of Startups Everywhere Else” but after reading Josh Miller’s, founder of Branch, Tenth Grade Tech Trends the conversation seems appropriate.

Over the holidays I was lucky enough to head back to my hometown in Indiana to spend plenty of quality time with my younger siblings.

My siblings are your typical, Midwestern middle school and high schoolers. One Direction and Taylor Swift dominate their Pandora while interacting with friends is priority number one.

My two sisters are 13 and 16 respectively and my brother is an 18 year old senior. My youngest sister, 10, would cry if I didn’t mention her but her thoughts are not discussed. Although it should be noted her and her friends are already addicted to Instagram, using my parents’ phones to check it whenever she gets the chance.

I asked the older three a wide range of questions about their usage of social media and the overall sediment amongst theirs peers of the various networks.

What I heard was a bit of a shock.

Facebook

The biggest surprise had to come when I asked my 13 year old sister if she used Facebook? “No, it’s for old people and it’s stupid! Nobody has it anymore.” (yes, I realize you’re supposed to be 13 to have a Facebook account but the majority of her friends we’re on it well before). While I laughed at her choice of words, my jaw almost hit the floor. Is it true? Has Facebook become so “uncool” that they had all already left?

I heard similar responses when I asked the other two. My brother had recently deleted his account but said that many of his friends hadn’t because, “their whole high school career is on there.” It seems my brother’s friends, who mostly adopted the service about four years ago, currently use it to look back at the good times they’ve had, not to post new content.

Instagram

I got a very difference response when I asked them about Instagram. Each uses it everyday. It has completely replace Facebook as their default photo service.

This echoes Josh’s takeaway that Facebook was smart to buy Instagram.

Twitter

But what about Twitter? Are the kids as hooked as you and me? It’s been pointed out before that Twitter is not a mainstream technology and Josh’s sister said, “I guess a few kids use it.”

I found a little different response. Both my brother and 16 year old sister, along with “most” of their friends, check it daily (but less than Instagram). However, It’s primary function for them is to broadcast things that make them look funny or cool and to find out what their friends are doing, not to find links and join interesting conversations.

The 16 year old said her friends are really into sharing quotes and other things to get them more retweets and followers. As for the youngest, “None of my friends use it.” The 16 year old was relatively new to the service while my brother had been on it for a few years. This lead me to believe Twitter is adopted more as they get older.

Snapchat

Now it was time to ask about Snapchat. Is it really a sexting app?

Probably not the most appropriate conversation to have with your little sisters (let alone get honest responses) but I drilled my brother on it. He said, “Yeah, I’ve heard some people use it for that but it’s definitely not its main purpose.”

All of them proclaimed that it was used to, “share funny pics with close friends that are too ugly or ridiculous for Instagram.” As for their frequency of usage, “basically everyday.”

The most insightful takeaway regarding Snapchat came from my 16 year old sister. “I’ve used it for a while now but it’s getting boring. I feel like I have to respond to my friends though.”

This makes me wonder, is Snapchat a fad? More of a viral service that goes out of vogue after receiving the 1000th picture of your friend pulling their cheeks apart in the mirror?

Conclusion

Teens are “so over” Facebook. Instagram is now the de facto photo sharing app. Twitter has their foot in the door. Snapchat isn’t just for sexting.

One final point is age seems to be the largest determinate in how teens use these networks and for the most part not geography or cliques

While these observations are clearly anecdotal and are by no means meant to be scientific (I can hear the comments on Hacker News now), it does provide another interesting look at how teens are currently using the world’s largest and fastest growing social networks.

Let me know what you think? Does this go along with what you’ve seen or is my family an anomaly?

Our Twitter Philosophy: Why We Tweet So Darn Much And It Works

First off Thank you for following us on Twitter and reading nibletz.com “the voice of startups everywhere else” everyday. Whether you say it under your breath, have tweeted us about it, ignored it, or just noticed it we tweet a lot and we retweet the same story a lot with a different text before the owl.ly link. We originally published this story on our first highly successful new media site. We entered an agreement where we can’t mention that site by name.

Also, I speak about Twitter, social media and this specific philosophy that’s been working for four years, at conventions, conferences, and seminars across the country. The chart above is from Robin Sloan’s research that supports our theory.

In the post Robin Sloan correlates the twitter findings to TV. We correlate it between Twitter and my experience in Radio in major markets. As much as “active” people tend to say they hate it, I was instrumental in the 90′s to deriving the current top-40 format where the “hits” are played sometimes 90 times per week which equates to every 70 minutes. Imagine in the mid to late 90′s when the Spice Girls and MMMBop were the songs getting that spin factor. Irritating right? However the stations that used this programming and still do today, and the artists that experienced it saw great ratings (and still do today) and the artists sold more records. More ratings meant higher ad prices so even the bosses were happy.

Why though…

Radio, like twitter, can be very passive at times. Especially now most people listen to the radio in a short car ride, a short job, or passively at their desks at the office. Maybe you listen baking a cake, or making dinner. What else did you do when you were listening to the radio? Handle a fussing child? Laundry? Cleaned? Dishes? An Argument? It was passive.

For most (not all but most) people using twitter it’s a passive form of social media. When you log on to facebook you check your updates, profile, friends updates, maybe you play Farmville or Cityville or Family Feud, but your engagement time on Facebook is more than that on Twitter. What do you do with Twitter, most people “scan” it, just like the radio, looking for something that strikes their curiousity.

Add that to the fact that our analytics show us a mix of 50% US based twitter profiles follow us with the other 50% being based in other countries around the world, and that is exactly why we post things so much. Without revealing our entire strategy we rank the stories as their posted at thedroidguy.com based on our keywords from analytics and what people are currently interested in.

Also consider the variety in followers we have, we have brand new people to Android, people who like Android but aren’t gung ho into it, Android Enthusiasts, Ecosystem partners, Android Developers and modders. Based on this variety and what’s hot we rank our posts, a top ranked post gets tweeted once by word press automatically, then we do a manual bit.ly link almost immediately following and then based on the ranking we tweet it out 32-56 times over the next 2-5 days. If it’s really hot we’ll post it every 40 minutes for the first couple of hours.

Now consider some of our top retweeters and people we know that follow us religiously and have for a while (Thank you again) we’ve noticed, and you may have too, that even these folks who are on twitter all day may actually retweet something that was fresh 7 hours ago.

Now Robin’s piece was focused on Hashtags and not actual tweets but it tells the same story. We want you to read Robin’s post so we aren’t going to re-post the whole thing but link to it here

Here’s what Robin Sloan writes to explain the graph

“The vertical axis (P) is a fraction of Twitter users tweeting with a particular hashtag. The horizontal axis (K) is the number of times they had seen that hashtag before tweeting with it. So basically, the graph is telling us: You need to see a hashtag four or five times before it really clicks.”

Robin summarizes by saying that if you use a hashtag repeat it, users are more likely to pick it up and retweet it after more exposures.

Now back to MMMBop at a radio station in Washington DC the 8th largest market in the country, Mmmbop actually played on the radio station 214 times before it started requesting on the phone lines.

Linkage:

Now that you’ve read that, why not check out some startup news from “Everywhere Else“

We could really use your help here.

Miami Startup: Sumpto It’s Like Klout For College Students, But Better INTERVIEW

Klout is still a big mystery to most, how do you get those crazy Klout scores. If you know how it’s really calculated feel free to send me an email. Klout Perks is a great program that puts manufacturers products into peoples hands. They presumably want the cream of the crop when it comes to Klout, but we have no idea who that really is.

Sumpto is looking to do something along those lines when they launch next week. They’re going to match products to college students with influential social graphs. Sumpto will rank a college students social clout (with a c not a k) and then link manufacturers with college brand ambassadors who can presumably get the word about those products out to the masses.

Manufacturers love it when they can get exposed to people with real influence. Ranking that influence can be a challenge but Sumpto’s Founder and President Ben Kosinski seems to have figured out the magic formula. Yes, Sumpto’s partners will most likely reach the hands of the right people.

The college demographic is a hard one to crack, with free stuff though it may be easier. When you add the free stuff to an exclusive layer of folks, your destined to gain exposure down the lines to the masses. That’s exactly what Sumpto is going to do.

We got a chance to interview Kosinski check out the interview below:

Interview With Canadian Startup Hashcaster

Back in June we brought you this story about Canadian startup Hashcaster. Hashcaster provides a curation, and measurement (analytics) platform for event coordinators to manage their social media graph. It really comes in handy when gauging the effect of marketing, press and media efforts on behalf of an event just about any size.

At Social Media Camp in June not only was Hashcaster used by the event organizers but they also received a “Coastie” for “Most Innovative Social Media Product or Technology”.

Event organizers everywhere are counting on social marketing efforts more and more everyday as traditional marketing has fallen to the wayside. Organizers need to be able to capture tweets, likes, and mentions and then aggregate them, and analyze them to make sure the cohesive message is getting across. They also want to know who their top influencers are and what kind of impact any paid social marketing may have had.

All of these things are why Geoff Clendenning and Paul Vet created Hashcaster.

Now social media dashboards are nothing new but this particular use case is. Hashcaster also takes into consideration that the social graph of a particular event is going to swell as the event draws closer. When you’re at a popular event, especially one with a social media focus, tweets, likes and mentions can come in a matter of seconds.

We got a chance to interview Clendenning about Hashcaster, check out the interview below:

Social Media: Why Wait For Zac Moffatt Of Course Romney’s New Twitter Followers Are Fake

A sudden surge in Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s Twitter followers has started making the rounds in the news. Our friends at Mashable have reported that Zach Green of 140elect.com, a blog that monitors Twitter trends revolving around end Presidential election, found an abnormal surge in Romney’s Twitter activity.

Romney normally receives between 3000-4000 new followers per day on Twitter. Friday he received 23,926 followers, Saturday he received 93,045 followers and Sunday he received 25,432 followers.

There has been a lot of discussion as to whether the Romney camp paid a Twitter following agency, and if those followers are fake. In fact Vincent Harris, who was a digital advisor to former Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, rang out on Twitter in defense of Mitt Romney’s digital director Zac Moffat. Harris and the Gingrich camp were also accused of buying fake followers for their candidate.

I speak on social media and Twitter quite a bit and have used Twitter virtually since the beginning. I use a tool called Tweepi to maintain the health of both of our key Twitter accounts, my personal account and the account for Nibletz. So when this story started to break I went myself and checked out Romney’s newest followers and here’s what we’ve found.

First off over 40,000 of Romney’s new followers have yet to change their Twitter icon from the cute little egg you get when you first join Twitter. This is usually a good indicator that someone has a lot of fake Twitter followers.

The next big indicator is that over 25,000 of the new followers have 0 followers themselves. Again this is a sharp indicator that the Twitter followers are fake. Now in the interest of transparency many of the new Twitter followers Romney has that have 1 or zero followers themselves are the same ones that haven’t changed their profile pic.

Of course the final big indicator is the fact that 30,000 of the new Twitter followers Romney has have tweeted zero times or have tweeted just one time.

Another big indicator for fake Twitter followers is that many of these new followers have never updated their biography in their profile as well.

Their are several ways to buy followers. There are sites that sell followers with similar stats to these. They use bots and other methods to set up Twitter accounts very quickly and then sell a bulk follow, typically automated at one time.

It would take hours and hours to check President Obama’s Twitter followers but the first 500 pages of 200 Twitter followers on a page of the account @barackobama, the newest followers look like this:

These newest followers of Obama’s look to be a much healthier set of Twitter followers.

There would really be no benefit to fudging followers in a political campaign unless Romney’s camp is just looking to cross the million follower count. Currently President Obama has over 17 million followers while Romney is hovering at 800,000 followers.

President Obama was the first candidate to really embrace social media ahead of the 2008 election. He has seen a surge recently in new followers as the race gets down to the final months.

Source: Mashable

Chicago Startup: SocialKaty Is Social Media Marketing For Everyone Else INTERVIEW

Enthusiastic and Scottish. Katy Lynch took her personality and social media skills from a hobby to creating a thriving venture backed company is less than two years. With a goal of providing result driven social media services for companies, she founded SocialKaty in August 2010.

SocialKaty is a full-service social media marketing firm employing 29 “social media assassins” who create and manage content for brands (big and small). Simply, they’re a one stop shop for social media who maintain and create content on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and even develop tabs and apps for Facebook.

Why start SocialKaty?
1) Companies are struggling with creating and managing effective social media campaigns.
2) There are no real pure play social media firms out there. (There are marketing and PR agencies that offer social media as an “add on” service, but not as their core offering.)

What’s interesting is the diversity of companies and industries they service. To name a few – funded startups, bars, restaurants, retailers, non-profits, and heck even energy companies. It’s no wonder they’ve been profitable since day one, grown to a 29 person team and raised a Series A round from Lightbank.

We caught up with Katy last week during Techweek Chicago:

Links we’ve got em:

SocialKaty Is Here

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