Tag: Branding

Yunha Kim, Founder of Locket: Why I Quit My Job To Launch A Startup

Posted on by Stephanie Carino

When you initially meet Yunha Kim, you wouldn’t automatically assume that she is the mastermind behind Locket, the super successful lock screen app for Android, but that’s before she begins to speak with an intelligence and passion that you would expect from the head of a company. I’m not the only/first/last person to take notice. When companies like TechCrunch and VentureBeat are writing about your company and when Tyra Banks expresses interest in investing in your idea, people are bound to jump on the band wagon. During my visit to San Francisco, I got a chance to speak to Yunha about her journey from Investment Banker to Founder and CEO of  her very own startup. Find out below what exactly it takes to get an idea from concept to realization.

1) You started your career as an Investment Banker and with your switch from iPhone to Android user, you quickly found the calling for this company. Can you tell me a little bit about your first couple of months of the company?

YK: I can barely remember the first couple months of the company. It was just so crazy.

In the first month, I was running around pitching our idea for investment. After getting funded by Great Oaks VC, I was then running around pitching to advertisers and I did that for a half year. Then I started pitching again for another round of funding.

When we had no money or product, I was getting somewhere around four hours of sleep every night. I was living with five other guys out of a two-bedroom apartment with three dogs and a hamster where we worked and lived. We were also getting by with hot dogs and ramen noodles.

Sometimes, I wondered, ‘What did I sign up for?’ but I think I was really happy, getting things off the ground, creating something out of nothing.

2) This idea actually came from our culture’s tendency of constantly checking our phones. Can you give us a little more insight into that?

YK: While pulling long but boring hours in investment banking (prior to Locket), I wasn’t able to do anything fun on my monitor, so I was checking my phone a few hundred times per day. That’s when I realized I keep on checking my phone every single day, bringing it to the restroom, everywhere I go. Every single one of those moments I was unlocking my lock screen which was a picture of a daisy which came as a default lock screen with my Galaxy S3.

One day, I was looking at it wondering why anyone wasn’t doing anything with the most valuable real estate in advertising. If people check their phone 150 times per day, with 71 million Android users, that’s 10.7 billion glances on the lock screen every day in the US that we have not been able to monetize. It occurred to me that this will be the next big thing in mobile advertising.

3) What do you feel are some of the benefits of Locket?

YK: Locket brings content you care about to your lock screen based on your interest, swiping habits and time of the day. It’s a quick passive way to learn about what’s going on around you, in your world. I am too busy to check out all my apps on my phone, but with Locket, I am consistently updated. I was able to learn about a fire in Soma which is only a few blocks away from our office through my lock screen, then I looked outside my window and I saw that fire.

4) How do you find a life work balance with being in such a busy and quickly expanding company? What does your typical day look like?  

YK: When you are in a startup, it’s really difficult to balance your work and life (if you even have a life). It’s like when you have a baby (your startup), and the baby cries, you can’t really say you are off your work hours and let it cry. So, it will feel like you are on call 24/7.

5) I know focus on the company has changed, can you tell me a little about that?

YK: Recently, we have stopped our paid-per-swipe-ad service. We are now focusing on contextual content on your lock screen. Based on an user’s interest, swiping habits and time of the day, we serve content that people care about in a visually delightful way on the Android lock screen, and as the apps is consistently used, the content becomes more relevant

For more on Yunha and Locket, please visit: http://getlocket.com/.

Stephanie Carino has spent over the past 10 years working in the city in the Fashion, Food and Event industries. She currently works in the PR Department at leading Technology and Business Book Publisher, Apress.  On the side, she also writes event coverage and reviews for, Socially Superlative, a NYC-based event website, covering predominantly food, travel and entertainment stories. Connect with Stephanie on Twitter.

 

Getting Pinned

Posted on by Allison Heaps

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In a cyber-friendly world, be careful what you wish for — you just might get it on sale.

This week at Social Media Week New York, Huffington Post’s  Bianca Bosker moderated Reading Is No Longer Fundamental: The Shift To Visual Vocabulary (hosted by JWT) by engaging industry leaders from JWT, Nokia, and Curalate. Among the various topics surrounding the visual vocabulary discussion was a new model of marketing utilizing visual social media images procured from Instagram, Pinterest, and Buzzfeed.

Apu Gupta, CEO and Co-founder from Curalate, stated that “the shift from people and places to networks about things” is now here. According to the Pew Research Center, the social media users behind the “networks about things” have been classified into three categories: the creators, curators, and online image creators. Creators take pictures of themselves, curators post pictures found online and post to sites used for sharing images with others, an online image creators are a little of both. Which one are you?

The endless surge of social media “exhaust” allows companies, such as Brandwatch, to work with more than 700 leading brands and agencies in monitoring and identifying key insights from text-driven social media. Indeed, the current visual images created by curators and creators presents additional opportunities for businesses to partner with social media. Target and Nordstrom have utilized specific consumer-driven images displayed on Pinterest. Nordstrom has effectively created store merchandizing displays based on those most frequently “pinned” items.

Simply put, brands now know exactly what you want because you have told them! This, of course, is based on the assumption that all the ‘pinned’ items are analogous to a Facebook ‘Like,’ as opposed to a snarky “OMG” or the elusive “dislike.”

Craig Hepburn, Global Head of Digital & Social at Nokia, observed, “The biggest challenge is managing the images themselves.”

Hepburn also asserted that even news articles are being written entirely around images, while Gupta added that that is now a necessary to restore ”context to content.”  Will Palley, Trends Strategist at JWT offered this advice, “Brands need to be judicious about the images they use.”

It is evident that we live in a transparent world — even President Obama was busted taking a selfie. So the next time you pin, post, tweet, your fabulousness consider what you have released to the cyber universe.  In a final comment, Hepburn conceded, the “Biggest challenge is going to be around reputation management and privacy.”

Allison Heaps is corporate wellness advocate living in New York. In her spare time, she practices yoga, runs marathons, and sings jazz. She is a master’s candidate at NYU with a concentration is organizational effectiveness. Contact her here.

The Problem with Cross-Posting: Mastering Your Brand’s Identity in Social Media

Posted on by smwnyc

This is a guest post by Kelly Meyers, CODE AND THEORY

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Posting the same piece of content across every social channel, all at the same time, without modifying a word, is something the average person would never do on their own social profiles. Yet, while the “brands should behave like people,” social media movement is far from new — agencies, marketers, and brands are all guilty of cross-posting content every single day.

Why don’t we cross-post in real life? And why shouldn’t your brand?

It’s simple. As my colleague Saeid and I discussed on Tuesday (and again on Thursday!), the Internet is made up of subcultures. Each environment has different relationship dynamics, communication styles, and cadence.

For example, I use Facebook to reach the closest people in my life, past, and present. It’s my “home” voice. Twitter is almost the complete opposite. It’s my “Monday-Friday, 9am-9pm” voice. Posting the same things on both channels could be perceived by each community as unproductive, awkward, and possibly rude.

We all use our different social profiles to participate in and build relationships with different communities. Not unlike relationships in real life, we behave differently from relationship to relationship. And your brand should too.

So, what is the solution for brands?

Ideally, when you are developing a social media strategy, you should always consider a unique approach for each platform. However, creating quality content for each channel can be time-intensive. To help decrease repeat-post offenses, here are three simple strategies you can implement today:

  1. Understand the different personality types of social media users and where they play.
    This will help you make better decisions of when it might be okay to share content across channels.
  2. Establish conversation guidelines for your community manager that will open more opportunities for real-time content on more fast-paced channels like Twitter.
  3. Don’t put Facebook first.
    Split your content creation priorities in half. For example: 50% of the content should be created with Pinterest or Tumblr in mind, 50% with Facebook, and Google+ in mind. At least you won’t seem like a one-trick pony.

Bottom line: Every Internet subculture has different needs, behaviors, and rules. The more you understand and adapt to these communities, the more impactful your brand can be.

Jonathan Basker of betaworks’ Guide to SMW NYC

Posted on by Sara Adam

betaworks is a network that builds new products to change the media landscape — some of their work includes Bitly and Tweetdeck. Additionally, they make seed investments in companies and products that they believe have the potential to be game changers. VP of People, Jonathan Basker, is responsible getting some of betaworks’ amazing talent on board. Jonathan is joining us at Social Media Week and took the time to share with us the events that he is most looking forward to and why.

  1. How To Build a Brand That People Don’t Buy, They Join
    This is an impressive panel of brand-forward companies. I’m excited to learn more about how these companies think about strengthening their businesses through brand identity and branded community.
  2. Using Social Technology to Galvanize Residents and Improve Neighborhoods
    With San Francisco, Detroit, Austin and dozens of other US cities in periods of transition, we’re facing a real challenge in bringing our local communities together in useful and meaningful ways. I’m excited to hear how these men and women are using technology as a tool to elicit social change.
  3. The Content Marketing Revolution, hosted by Percolate
    Percolate is awesome. Their branding and marketing work is awesome. I’m really excited to hear what they have to say.
  4. Is Social Killing Storytelling?
    Content is King? Content is Queen? Content is King, but he’s very short? Our communication tools have changed so quickly in the last 20 years…how has this affected what we’re choosing to communicate?
  5. Building Essential Products for the Social World, with John Borthwick, CEO of betaworks
    This is not to be missed. Having worked for John for over two years, I can tell you that he is one of the premier thinkers working with the Internet today. The betaworks team is cooking up some incredible stuff!

Social Media Week is just around the corner, but it isn’t too late to get your pass to see these awesome events and more! And definitely don’t forget about our VIP opening night party, Monday February 17th, hosted by our partner Nokia.

To Endorse or Not Endorse? The Value of a LinkedIn Endorsement

Posted on by Vilma Sierra

I was confused and flattered when I first received an “Endorsement” notification from a connection, which happened to be my friend and from someone who I didn’t really know. Some of my endorsements such as writing and editing matched my skills. However, it was given by most of my close friends instead of my former coworkers or college classmates. I must admit that I felt content that they were considering me a talented writer or editor. Even though, they never read any of my works, and I never had a chance to edit their papers. Were they just being good friends or maybe they just want me to return the favor by endorsing their skills?

I was also endorsed by unknown connections, which was strange and confusing. Yet, I still accept the endorsements and left them in my profile because, I thought that it was going to attract recruiters. However, after researching about LinkedIn Endorsements, I ended up with mixed feeling about my endorsements. According to the article “Everything You Need To KnowAbout LinkedIn Endorsements” from Forbes, endorsements make it easy to put in a positive word for a connection without going to the trouble of writing a recommendation.

But at the same time many recruiters are not impressed by the given endorsements of their potential candidates. They tend to pay more attention to the elaborated written recommendations.

However, who has time to sit and write recommendations? Therefore, LinkedIn had the confusing and practical idea of the endorsements, which is considered the Facebook Poke of professional marketing, according to the article “LinkedIn: Thanks for the Endorsement, Do I know you?.

LinkedIn tried to save us some time when it comes to recommend our connections by endorsing their skills. They should have developed this feature in an efficient and reliable manner, such as describing briefly (perhaps in less than sixty words) why are we endorsing our connections. In other words, ask their users to be more descriptive at the time they endorse their connections. Lastly, endorsements should be exclusive for people that work with each other or were involved either in a college project or freelancing project. It is time for LinkedIn to develop a feature that’s more professional and reliable in order to keep their reputation as the professional social network.

Want more on your online reputation? We recommend keeping an eye on this during SMW14.

Featured image courtesy Sheila Scarborough.

Rising To the Top: Percolate Reigning Content Marketing

Posted on by Nicky Yates

When one of your founders is labeled a Brand Genius in New York, you know you’re doing something right.

tumblr_m0kvc1VzZy1qln7vao1_500Percolate, a platform that publishes and measures brand content on social media sites, was founded by Noah Brier and James Gross. And both have business savvy and some serious tech knowledge. Only 3 years old, Percolate is a tool that many big brands rely upon, like Ford, Nickelodeon, and Jawbone. They’ve also seen some tremendous growth in that time, telling of their success. (Fun fact: the SMW offices took over their recent offices, in which we have NO idea how they fit their entire staff!)

They will be leading a special track focused on what will be a crucial skill for marketers in 2014: content marketing. To get you ready, we talked with James Gross a little more.

  1. James, can you tell us a bit about Percolate and what you do?
    At Percolate we have a vision to redefine marketing through technology and a mission to be every brand’s content marketing platform. We do this by providing technology to a brand across planning, inspiration, sourcing, creation, publishing, monitoring and analytics. If that sounds like a lot, it is. We are excited by the depth of our platform and our growing client base.
  2. Percolate is a New York tech darling. In only 3 years, your team has seen incredible growth. Can you explain how you’ve achieved such success and the foundation for Percolate?
    We believe in 2 things:

    Find the biggest challenge marketers have. We have found that with content, the atomic unit of marketing. Similar to how Salesforce built technology to help the sales department manage contacts, Percolate helps marketers create and manage content. When you solve the content challenge, you have the ability to work across the entire marketing department.

    Find the best people to come work with you. We believe NYC has some of the greatest people in the world across all the areas that we care about: engineering, design and business. We are proud to say nearly 100 people in NYC now work with us.

  3. Can you explain why content marketing should be integral to brands’ marketing?
    We believe in a social, mobile world your content is your ad. As marketing becomes more and more driven by platforms with billions of users and unlimited targeting capabilities, the challenge is not how are you going to reach people. The challenge is what are you going to say to them, and how are you going to scale and sustain it. Percolate is the full end-to-end solution for a marketer who is looking for a technology platform to scale their marketing efforts.

  4. User-generated content is often seen as a holy grail for brands. But it’s not often done right and there is a debate on how to properly use this content. Percolate has recently developed some tools to assist. Can you elaborate on why this was a focus and how brands can land on the right side of this powerful tool?
    Billions of people on social platforms capture branded moments every second of the day. The challenge for the brand is often times they can’t acquire the rights to UGC in a scalable, legal manner. Before Percolate, brands used all sorts of crazy techniques to try and secure the rights to images, videos and other UGC.

    Only with Percolate does a brand have the unique opportunity to reach out to anyone who has captured a brand moment and get the legal rights to re-use that content in any way they see fit. For the user, our experience is just better than anything they have ever seen before as it relates to how they can rights manage their content. We have seen both happy clients and happy users with our UGC product.

  5. A lot of Percolate’s tools focus on making content more visually appealing. What is the importance of a visual strategy and how can brands get started?
    At 1.2 billion images shared daily across the four largest social platforms, there is no question that brands have to have a visual strategy. Brands also naturally like to communicate visually whenever possible, as this aligns well to the type of storytelling they are used to in a medium like television.

    Brands can get started by reusing images from their archives, tapping into the enormous potential of UGC across platforms, and enabling their workforce to capture and share brand moments.

    At Percolate, we have built technology to help surface content from archives, manage and acquire UGC, and iOS/Android apps to activate the employee base. Our app Photographer that puts the power of creation in the hands of a brand’s entire workforce.

  6. What advice would you give to a startup or entrepreneurs in being more effective with their marketing?
    Buy Percolate as your first marketing investment. 🙂

    Also, take your brand seriously. There are two key components to a business as Peter Drucker once said – Innovation and Marketing. The rest are just costs. You live or die based on your brand, start building it from day one.

We’re honored to have Percolate join us this February. And we know you need to be in attendance when they’re on stage. Get in on the action here.

Social Media Does, In Fact, Matter — To Every Kind Of Business

Posted on by Lane Blackmer

Let me be honest: I’m sick of seeing posts on LinkedIn looking for volunteers or interns to run social media. Furthermore, many of those that do offer pay, they are only suggesting a $30,000 salary.

The fact is this: those businesses misunderstand what social media is about — as do plenty of fresh-faced college graduates who think the job description consists of tweeting.

Social media managers and strategists don’t post on social media. They create, plan and execute marketing campaigns.

It’s all about social media strategy. Social media matters simply because of this fact — it’s new-age savvy marketing, not a just social tool.

2014: the year of salaried social media jobs

OK, so many businesses aren’t understanding the full importance of social media, but it’s at least important that businesses of every kind — non-profits, corporate and small businesses — recognize its potential. A staggering 88% of marketers would like to know the most effective social media uses.

Forbes declared last month that in 2014, investment in social media would be more than just a luxury — it will become necessary. A quick scan of social media-related postings on LinkedIn show that it’s true — many listings have the words “new position” embedded in there somewhere.

And there’s even data to back up that claim: Business Insider cited Constant Contact’s Small Businesses: Then and Now Survey saying that 87% of small businesses are using social media as a legitimate marketing tool.

The publication also predicted there’d be a vast expansion in these six social media-related jobs: SEO Specialist, Social Media Strategist, Online Community Manger, Social Media Marketing Manager, Social Media Marketing Coordinator, and Blogger or Social Media Copywriter.

This expansion makes sense. The Internet is accessible almost everywhere and folks are consuming more tidbits of information than ever.

People certainly take advantage of it.

According to Chelsea Krost, the average person has their smartphone with them 20 hours out of the entire day. And 80% of people reach for their smartphone when they wake up.

But why are so many skeptical to jump on the bandwagon?

Here’s the big question in social media for businesses: how do I measure the return on investment (ROI)?

That question isn’t easily answered — because there’s no way to be 100% sure you’re tracking the right data to prove this… or that you even can track the right data.

Every company is different. And sometimes it’s about trial and error to figure out which platform is most effective for your business. B2B companies seem to have a lot of success on LinkedIn; while B2C companies, depending on what they do and if they’re business or service oriented, can see great success on Twitter or Instagram.

Regardless, Social Media Examiner reported that some businesses actually have mastered tracking ROI. It seems like most of those businesses don’t have direct proof per se, but use of social media is the differing variable when the company started to see decreases in spending or increases in sales.

Either way, Social Media Examiner’s 2013 Report finds 89% of marketers surveyed claimed increased social media marketing increased exposure and site traffic.

Social media matters — and here’s why

When I talk about social media use I don’t mean quoting eccentric family members at Thanksgiving dinner on Twitter (though I’m guilty of this). I mean using it for marketing, branding, developing brand trust, hearing from individual customers, and doing damage control.

It’s pretty much a given that businesses, marketers, and even individuals (in a lot of fields, you market yourself) should care about these things.

A lot of businesses may not see an ROI on their social media, but the question should be this: why?

Sometimes it’s not about the use of social media as much as how it’s used. Social media can be used poorly or used well. Someone doing a company’s social media should be paid for their expertise — because social media is not just about posting on the platforms, it’s about posting content to the platforms.

According to HubSpot, companies that blog 15 times or more per month see an increase of five times the traffic on their site.

The other key to social media is persistence. Social Media Examiner’s 2013 Report also cited that companies using social media for three or more years said it helped by improving search rankings, creating more partnerships, generating ideas, increasing traffic, providing marketplace insight, and reducing marketing expenses — to name a few things.

Social media in use — effectively — isn’t just about posting. It’s about executing a strategy specifically tailored to a company — and it is proven to help marketing efforts.

So why aren’t you investing in social media?

Lane Blackmer is a self-employed former journalist. Although she’s no longer a newsie, Lane since discovered other uses for social media such as public relations, marketing, job searching and trying to win gift cards from her favorite local businesses through contests. Lane inhabits Philadelphia, where’s it’s not always sunny…but at least there’s cheese steaks. You can follow her on Twitter at @LaneBlackmer.

Image courtesy Social Media Examiner 2013 Report. Featured image courtesy Dan Meyers.

Blow Shit Up: Cindy Gallop Taking SMW NYC By Storm

Posted on by Nicky Yates

Cindy Gallop, Porn

Cindy Gallop has been a long time friend to Social Media Week. An active member of our Advisory Board and a frequent speaker, we’re honored to have her on our team. She’s a woman of action. The founder of two powerful organizations, IfWeRanTheWorld and Make Love, Not Porn, Cindy stays busy. IfWeRanTheWorld helps create microactions to turn human and corporate good intentions into action.

IfWeRanTheWorld works with businesses to create specifically tailored and unique Action Programs that integrate social action and their business objectives. Her goal is merge business and social responsibility. Cindy’s vision is that this creates Action Branding, communication through demonstration. Cindy acts like a business innovator for these brands, selecting only brands that want to change the game. What we love is Cindy is straightforward and not afraid to shake things up. Her motto sums it up best: “I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business.”

In addition to IfWeRanTheWorld, Cindy launched Make Love, Not Porn. Stemming from a realization that hardcore pornography is distorting the way a generation of young men think about sex, she launched a site to counteract it. Make Love, Not Porn expanded into a series of talks and even a TED Book.

Cindy is known as a staunch advocate for women, but as with all of her activities, she’s not your standard feminist. Not shying away from the word, she wants to see women be more self-confident, aggressive, and a general shift for more gender parity. Something we love here at SMW (check out our Gender 50/50 initiative).

“Because it is uncomfortable to work with women, because we are different from you. Women ask tough questions, they ask them in life and they ask them in business. Greatness comes out of discomfort. Hire women, champion women, promote women, spend time with women. It is not as comfortable as hanging out with the guys, but it’s going to be more productive.”

We think you’ll love her disruptive views. Challenge yourself and join us at SMW NYC this February.

Get your pass here.

5 Minutes With IAB’s Jeff Fryer

Posted on by Nicky Yates

SMW NYC has some incredible partners- from our event partners to hub hosts to our growing media partners. This year, we are honored to be joining up with IAB for SMW NYC. Not only is IAB the leading body in the Interactive Marketing space, but also, they love collaboration. It’s a perfect pairing! Let’s extend a warm SMW NYC welcome to the IAB team- to get us started, meet Jeff Fryer, Social Media and Marketing Manager of IAB.

Jeff, how did IAB get involved in Social Media Week?
IAB has become more and more active in programing in Social Media Week, from last year hosting a SMW NYC session on social retail and brand marketing loyalty to our event at The Onion’s new offices for SMW Chicago about the amusing interplay between paid, owned, and earned media.

This year, we’re glad to put forth two sold-out events during Social Media Week NYC – an Author’s Roundtable with speakers who’ve literally ‘wrote the book’ on social, and a ‘Mobilecultural’ session at which leading agencies and marketers will discuss how they’ve been able to reach the emerging mobile, social, and multicultural users that marketers and brands are very hungry to connect with right now.

IAB is thrilled to be the Official Media Sponsor for Social Media Week New York 2013. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has had many of the brightest minds in social media working together since 2007 in a committee to develop, move forward, and educate the digital industry about social media in advertising. Along the way we’ve released best practices, buyers guides, delved into why people even share online, hosted tweetchats about paid/owned/earned media, and worked with our Data Council to recently demistify social data. As social media continues to reinvent how business marketing, we have a lot of very exciting challenges ahead.

We’re also honored at IAB that we just announced our Head of Brand Initiatives, Peter Minnium, to the Real-Time Academy marketing jury that select the winners for the prestigious Shorty Awards.

 
This year, our global theme is “Open & Connected: Principles for a Collaborative World.” How does IAB embody or support this idea?
With a global network of 37 national IABs and 2 regional ones, we are actively engaged with helping our members become digital influencers worldwide. It is through worldwide collaboration and cooperation that IAB continues to build strong markets, make digital standards fluid across borders, influence public policy, and produce world-class events.

Further demonstrating our dedication to “Thinking Global – Acting Global” IAB is partnered with Social Media Week from New York all the way through Singapore, where IAB Singapore is a local media sponsor and is moderating a few events.

(Map of IAB’s Global Network)

 

A core focus of SMW is collaboration. IAB brings together leaders in the interactive advertising space to help grow the industry and research best practices. Why is the collaborative approach so crucial?
As a trade association, collaborative relationships are at the heart of what our members embody. We have 20 committees & councils in our membership who are responsible for working together to develop solutions that improve the entire interactive advertising ecosystem. Team collaboration is critical to release a POV to the marketplace at large.
 

What are some of the most creative and successful interactive campaigns you’ve seen?
I have to be very careful how I answer this, as IAB does the MIXX Awards! I will say that I was impressed by the team that did the Oreos’ on-the-fly “Blackout Bowl” advertising during the Super Bowl. If you look past the tweet and pull back the curtains a bit, what really impressed me was the ability of the brand and its agencies to work together, ready to react in real-time during one of advertising’s biggest nights of the year. It demonstrates the potential future of social – we are for evermore in the world of reactive, real-time advertising and even ‘next morning’ could be too late.
 

Where do you see the interactive advertising space heading?
Participation with interactive advertising will continue to grow, but with a more advanced relationship. As the next generation of digital advertisers look for a way to innovate and reach through technology, new creative canvasses will also have to be adopted. That’s one of the reasons IAB has created its Rising Stars program – to challenge the ecosystem to reinvent old ad portfolios and build new opportunities for global brands and digital marketers.

Digital advertising will also continue to seismically shift towards mobile. More people are becoming comfortable with using their mobile devices, and advertisers have recognized they need to meet these users wherever, whenever, and however they are. As a sign that advertising dollars have started to flow where consumers are, U.S. mobile revenue doubled in 2012. At the same time, the dividing line between “mobile” and “not mobile” media and advertising is steadily wearing away – marketers and media companies alike will increasingly think about reaching the right audience wherever they are, across different screens, not siloing them based on what device they happen to be using.


 

IAB recently worked with MMA to release mobile phone creative guidelines for ads. Why are initiatives like this important to the field?
The mobile phone creative guidelines will make mobile ad buying and selling easier and more efficient, by establishing clear standard ad units that sellers can build into their mobile websites and apps, and buyers can design ad creative for. Agencies and marketers have long asked the IAB to include mobile ad sizes among our standard ad units, and this will address that industry need. Working with the MMA means that both trade associations with standardize around the same set of ad specs, ensuring we are all pulling in the same direction, in favor of faster mobile ad growth.
 

What are you most excited about for SMW NYC?
Is it a copout to say “everything”?

As the person responsible for the strategy & execution for IAB’s multiple social media presences, there are so many awesome events to attend. SMW NYC is like Social Media Mardi Gras for someone like me.

If forced to pick something, I’m intrigued by Emily Steel’s conversation with Jeff Dachis about the future of pre-purchase intent through social, and the ‘Engagement Through Imagery’ event at Curalate. Innovation through creative visual storytelling such as photos and videos will continue to become even larger in the coming year.

Social Media Week, here I come!
 

In Brand Ambassadors We Trust

Posted on by Lisa Chau


This month, General Motors (GM) decided to stop spending ten million dollars a year on Facebook advertising. In a time when many are suffering Facebook fatigue, it’s easy to point the finger at the social networking platform. Surely, as a company which employes 202,000 people, conducts business in approximately 157 countries, and has a 100+ year history, GM must have made an informed and saavy decision.

Not so fast.

While I do suspect that Facebook has reached a saturation point, at least in the United States and Canada where seven million active users left the site in May 2011 (Yes, seven million in one month, according to CNN.), were GM and other businesses really optimizing their presence on social media sites?

The rest of this article will discuss the union between Facebook and businesses in general. I am not familiar enough with GM’s advertising strategy to speak specifically about that company but I do think it presents an interesting starting point for discussing the intersection of advertising in social spaces.

Individuals were much more enamored with Facebook before corporate management realized its advertising potential. While Facebook has been available to the public at large since 2006, many businesses have yet to fully comprehend the power the network still encapsulates & the work necessary to harness the network’s power. I touched upon this subject briefly in my previous article: Public v. Private.

A few months ago, a company who is a leader in management consulting tasked me with creating a Facebook campaign which could be deployed in 30 to 60 days.  Deadline: One week. I have never done any outward-facing work for this company before. My first thought: This company does not understand social media.

The most valuable, and consequently most effective component of social media is trust.

Trust is built over time. Even ten million dollars won’t buy that- at least not immediately.

As Ben Kunz wrote for Bloomberg Businessweek, “What GM’s retreat really shows is the harsh reality that other brands must face: Making social-media communications work requires heavier lift than many organizations can muster…”

From personal experience, I would say it takes at least six months to get a new online community to accept, & possibly trust, a new member as one of their own. That is, after a dedicated campaign of listening & regular participation. On more than one occasion, I have been mistaken for a community manager or asked if I worked for the sites I belong to.

Kunz understands that “keeping Facebook conversion rates up and customer acquisition costs down requires a constant battery of audience-targeting refinement, creative testing, and website ‘landing page adjustments,’ whereas those unfamilar with social media think it’s about the number of times the Like button has been pressed.”

If you have a massive budget, it’s easy to get your Like numbers up quickly- just offer people a cool trinket in exchange for their Like.  However, it won’t mean much in the long run if you don’t deliver on your core product & connect with your target demographic.

Social media is about postive engagement.

Maintain conversations which lead to trust and exponential word of mouth endorsements. The way that advertising and marketing works hasn’t changed, only the tools have.

Consider a class of senior students attending a lecture taught by the most popular high school teacher versus a substitute who just joined the faculty a month ago. Who would the students respect? Whom would the students pay attention to? These same dynamics hold for virtual communities. Social media strategists need  resources and time to build a trusting audience.

Show people you care about them & they will care about your product or service, in turn.

It’s important to note that sucesses cannot & should not always be measured in Likes. People may not be commenting about your company online, but they could very well be bringing the conversations offline. This is why social media is so difficult to quantify.

On the flip side, if people are adding to your number of Likes, do something! How many times have we liked something only to be faced with silence?  We toss the ball onto a company’s court & it just lies there, & too often dies there.

If your customer invites interaction, seize the opportunity. Acknowledge their compliment.

1) Do something!
Kunz “tested a dozen big brands, including Apple (AAPL), Bank of America (BAC), Starbucks (SBUX), and others, “liking” them on Facebook to see how they would respond. I then checked into Facebook 31 times over the next week, each time scrolling back through several hours of friends’ posts, to see which brands would reach out to me. On average, the brands I had liked engaged with me 0.6 times over seven days—an awful performance, given the basic marketing precept that three or four interactions are required per week to trigger consumer response. I liked you, Zappos (AMZN)—and you didn’t return my call.”

2) Make your response personal, if possible.
Don’t reward your audience’s attention with some generic algorithm: If Like, respond with form letter. It’s difficult and time consuming, but don’t be just be adequate, be outstanding. What makes a good hotel great? Personalized services. The best hotels offer more than a clean, safe space to sleep and relax.  They anticipate their guests’ desires. As a new client, they won’t know your preferences, but they will try to please you nonetheless. After you’ve visited several times, they will have built up [providing you share this information] a database of your favorites. Thus, during your next stay, your room will be outfitted with your fruit, flowers, etc of choice. Without your further input. The most extraordinary hotels will even provide private butler service.

Make deep, lasting connections & appeal to people’s emotions.

Of course, this level of service is hardly feasible for most companies’ social media strategists; and that is where volunteer brand ambassadors enter the picture.  A trustworthy social media strategist is worth his/her weight in gold, but unpaid brand ambassadors are priceless. The latter group is motivated to endorse products or services not for money but genuine love (See Apple fanatics.) The social media strategist should absolutely be an active participant of the communities s/he wishes to engage, but ultimately, his/her job should be to cultivate & lead proactive teams by leveraging the trust s/he has built up in his/her followers.

 
Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on Twitter.

Image courtesy of AllMediaNY.

Twelve Twitter Tips

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Twitter Tips to help you make the most of your time. Yes, there are actually strategies for maximizing your 140 character missives. My advice won’t apply to every case, but I hope it will serve as a good guide for helping you craft a personalized approach for your needs. The suggestions below are primarily geared towards businesses, but can used for personal accounts, too.

1. SMILE
As I mentioned, there are exceptions to my advice. So, if you’re a haute couture fashion model, you might want to skip to step two. Everyone else, you’re here to engage and collaborate. Project approachability. Smile! Be the “person I’d like to have lunch with,” not “person I’d rather walk up 20 flights of stairs to avoid rather than share an elevator with.” Be a confident, compassionate leader, not a dull, disinterested slacker.

If you’re really camera shy, you can use a logo or photo of an inanimate object. I wouldn’t advise it, though. People want to put a face to the tweets. Either option is still infinitely better than the default Twitter egg, however. If you can’t bother to put up any profile image, why should anyone bother to take you seriously?

 
2. PERSONALIZE
This step is an extension of picking a good profile photo to represent you. Whenever I look at a new Twitter profile, I look at the photo first [out of instinct], then the bio. Who is this person? Why would I care what s/he has to say? Tell your audience who you are — Concisely & directly: What is your function? What is your expertise?

I highly advise a link to a fuller bio for people who want to know more about you. My suggestions are LinkedIn or About.me If you have various social media accounts, the latter will neatly organize all of your redirects in one place.
 

3. HUMANIZE
Yes, there is a definitely a place for Twitter accounts that just broadcast news. They are called news outlets, like The Wall Street Journal or CNN. For most other companies, I believe it’s much more effective to humanize your Tweets. Because there will be some people who are only interested in corporate updates, I urge keeping two accounts. One that is business-oriented (Product launches, formal announcements and the such) and a second that allows for more creativity (Employee stories, thoughts about other industries, etc.). Humanize yourself and your staff. Who works at your company? What are they interested in outside of the office? Build an emotional attachment to your brand.

Hootsuite makes managing multiple accounts very easy, even on an Android phone.
 

4. BALANCE
If you plan to keep a business account that is not limited to formal corporate announcements, make sure you balance the ratio of personal to professional tweets.  I would aim to keep work-related updates around 70%.
 

5. SCHEDULE
Decide when you want to send out your updates. If your company is international, but based in the U.S. you might want to schedule tweets to out at 9PM US time to appear on an Asian timeline at 9AM. Figure out what time slots work best for your company and plan accordingly.

I’m currently experimenting based on Dan Zarrella’s concept of “contra-competitive timing.” In numerous cases, he discovered that the most successful times and days to publish new content are off-peak times. “It’s like when you’re at a noisy party and it’s hard to hear the person talking to you 2 feet away, but… When there is less other noise to compete with (ie fewer tweets, emails, blog posts, etc) your content can gain attention more easily.”

Again, I recommend Hootsuite for this job. Huge fan.
 

6. DISTRIBUTE
Now that you’ve decided XYZ day at XYZ time is optimal for you to tweet, don’t bombard your followers with all your insights at once. I don’t think that anyone needs to send out more than one tweet an hour. Any more than that, you’re should either be classified as a good friend (in which case, you should just text my personal phone number or email me directly) or a spammer (in which case, just stop. Stop now- seriously).
 

7. SPECIFY
You have 140 characters to tell me something. Give me details.

Pointless: Checked out some clothes. Totally going shopping.

Much improved: Went to Hermes fashion show with @heatherpixley. Must buy green cashmere turtleneck Heidi Klum wore.

Quality tweets attract quality followers.
 

8. CHOOSE
Don’t blindly follow everyone who follows you. Yes, it might feel a little rude, but it’s better than cluttering up your feed with updates that are completely irrelevant to you. I have no interest in buying real estate in Florida. Sorry.
 

9. ORGANIZE
The more time you spend on Twitter, the more feeds you will follow. Make organized lists and use them. Otherwise, things have the potential to become very messy and overwhelming after your feed tops 50 unless you only follow very niche accounts which don’t update often.

It’s also a great public service. I’ve found some great lists compiled by others. I can follow 36 new photographers or 63 CEOs in just one click.
 

10. ENGAGE
Give. Receive. Share.

Exchange information and build relationships. This is how you will make the most of your time on Twitter.

Empower yourself and others. Remember, we’re here to be social. In fact, Social Media Week’s theme in 2012 focuses on “Empowering Change through Collaboration. This theme is designed as a call to action, allowing individuals- like you- and organizations around the world to explore how social media empowers citizens, increases mobility, enables mass collaboration, develops hyperlocalism, maximizes interconnectedness, fosters knowledge creation & sharing, bolsters leadership, and encourages global empathy.”
 

11. EXPERIMENT
Twitter is best understood and used by those who do. Experiment. Everyone needs a different strategy. Find the approach that works best for your specific case. I would be remiss not to tell you to heed caution in your activities, though. This is a very powerful vehicle for communication. The larger the corporation, the higher up in management, the more visible you will be. Be vigilant in your messaging choices and stay on course.
 

12. ENJOY
Of course!
 

I hope this list helped you. I could go on, but I like the alliteration of Twelve Twitter Tips. Also, I reached my word limit for this post.
 

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on Twitter. 

Branding Social Change; The Persona of Change Through Social Media

Posted on by Darcey Howard
El Lissitzky, 1929

The use of the words branding and social change in this title is not an attempt towards commercialization or to cheapen movements such as the Socialist Revolution, Women’s Suffrage, or Civil Rights Movement, but to more clearly identify how we are reaching individuals, giving expression, and creating the tribe around a movement.

The internet may be a phenomenon of our generation, but social change has utilized the benefits of branding since the invention of large format printing for posters during the Belle Époque era of the late 1800’s.  One of the greatest examples of branding social change of this kind is the Communist society’s use of previously banned modern art and movies as the perfect platform to attract, inform, and motivate the illiterate masses.

Not intended as a history lesson, I’ll fast forward to the current tides of social change: the uprising in Egypt, Occupy Wall Street, The Tea Party. All have used social media as a conduit to the masses and each other, giving their own unique voice and persona that distinguishes them not only from each other but to the media.  This is where we come full circle.  This, my friend, is known as branding.

An adviser to small businesses and start-ups, Darcey launched the Solo-Preneur Success Program based on brand strategies and corporate citizenship platforms. Her work has been chronicled in The New York Times, Forbes, TIME, and AOL Online; she has keynoted at IBM, the SBA, MORE magazine Re-invention Convention, Staples, BDO Seidmans, T-Mobile, and on her own DVD “The Essential Guide.”