Online Marketing - Social Media Solutions - App Creation

Pinterest 101

Clay — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:08:01 +0000

Pinterest Becomes Top Traffic Driver for Retailers [INFOGRAPHIC]

Pinterest, a two-year-old social bookmarking site that lets users collect and share things they like on the web, is driving increasingly significant amounts of traffic to retailers’ websites.

The service enables users to create online bulletin boards, or “pinboards,” for popular categories such as home decor, food and wedding inspiration. Members can use Pinterest’s “Pin It” bookmarklet tool and iPhone app to save things they see online and offline, and explore and repin the images their friends collect via their personal newsfeeds. The website is especially popular among women, who account for 58% of Pinterest’s traffic, according to Experian Hitwise.

SEE ALSO: 21 Must-Follow Pinterest Users

The site’s popularity is quickly growing. Pinterest’s traffic increased more than fourfold between September 2011 and December 2011, bringing in 7.51 million unique visitors in December alone, data from Compete indicates. The amount of traffic Pinterest sent elsewhere has risen accordingly, becoming a top five referrer for several apparel retailers, according to internal data from Monetate, which provided the infographic below.

Although Pinterest is becoming a significant source of traffic for retailers, search still dominates, and the site has yet to prove itself as a potential sales channel. At present, scant data is available about the social network’s conversion rates.

[via Monetate]

Look at me. Now Look at your boyfriend.

Clay — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:04:04 +0000

I imagine we are going to see a glut of new Old Spice videos.

P&G To Lay Off 1,600 After Discovering It’s Free To Advertise On Facebook

Jim Edwards | Jan. 30, 2012, 3:44 PM | 265,472 | 12

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P&G said it would lay off 1,600 staffers, including marketers, as part of a cost-cutting exercise. More interestingly, CEO Robert McDonald finally seems to have woken up to the fact that he cannot keep increasing P&G’s ad budget forever, regardless of what happens to its sales.

He told Wall Street analysts that he would have to “moderate” his ad budget because Facebook and Googlecan be “more efficient” than the traditional media that usually eats the lion’s share of P&G’s ad budget.

UPDATE: Facebook cited Procter & Gamble’s advertising in its IPO filing.

This is coming from the man who increased P&G’s adspend by a staggering 24 percent over the two years through October 2011, even though sales rose only 6 percent in the same period.

Note that P&G’s revenues were up 4 percent to $22 billion in the quarter but the company’s costs for sales, general and administrative work were flat.

P&G’s staggering ad budget has become a bit of an issue among analysts. On the call, McDonald and his crew were asked about ad costs three different times. McDonald eventually said:

As we’ve said historically, the 9% to 11% range [for advertising as a percentage of sales] has been what we have spent. Actually, I believe that over time, we will see the increase in the cost of advertising moderate. There are just so many different media available today and we’re quickly moving more and more of our businesses into digital. And in that space, there are lots of different avenues available.

In the digital space, with things like Facebook and Google and others, we find that the return on investment of the advertising, when properly designed, when the big idea is there, can be much more efficient. One example is our Old Spice campaign, where we had 1.8 billion free impressions and there are many other examples I can cite from all over the world. So while there may be pressure on advertising, particularly in the United States, for example, during the year of a presidential election, there are mitigating factors like the plethora of media available.

P&G’s Old Spice campaign is a textbook example of what the entire company should be doing. The problem is that the entire company isn’t doing it. Check out Mr. Clean’s Twitter stream, for instance. Oh, right—he doesn’t have one.

McDonald’s recent discovery that digital media is free comes after the long-delayed launch of Tide Pods, now scheduled for a month from now but with only a limited supply. It was originally planned for July 2011. The ad budget for that campaign is estimated at $150 million and will come from agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

The problem is that while P&G has struggled to get a single U.S. pod out the factory door, several of its competitors have already launched competing laundry pod products.

WANT MORE? Check out Business Insider’s new Advertising news channel.

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Mobile purchasing power is here

Clay — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:24:29 +0000

From Cynopsis Digital

Pew Research Center finds that 52% of U.S. adult cell phone owners used their phones for help in making purchasing decisions while they were inside a store during the 2011 holiday season. In addition, during a 30-day period before and after Christmas 2011, 38% of cell phone owners called someone while they were in a store for advice about a purchase they were considering making. 24% of cell owners used their device to look up product reviews online while they were in-store. And 25% of adult cell phone owners used their phones to price-check a product while they were in the store. When Pew Research asked survey participants what happened on the most recent instance of them using their phones to look up the price of a product they found in a store, the responses were:

37% decided to not buy the product at all.

35% purchased the product at that store.

19% bought it online.

8% purchased it at another store.

Facebook Timeline is coming for you

Clay — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:42:21 +0000

Weather you like it or not. Everyone is going to be able to see your posts from today back so if you have anything you do not want people to see start editing!

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/24/facebook-timeline-now-open-to-all-users-get-a-week-to-clean-up-profiles/

You can run, but you can’t hide. Facebook’s biggest user interface overhaul since the Wall, the Facebook Timeline, is now becoming mandatory for all users. According to the company, over the next few weeks, everyone will get the new Timeline. And here’s the important part: when you do, you’ll have just seven days to preview what’s there now, and hide anything you don’t want others to see.

In case you’re unfamiliar, the Facebook Timeline makes it far easier for you to travel back through your Facebook posts – posts which normally disappeared off your Wall and into oblivion. The posts from these previous months and years are now accessible through new navigational elements on the right-side of your screen that let you quickly travel back in time to the day you were born.

You can fill in data from your pre-Facebook years using the new status update box, which now includes support for adding a specific year and various “life events.” These events include things like marriages, births, deaths, new jobs, trips and vacations, new homes, and other things you might want to record in the scrapbook-like Timeline.

With Timeline’s added ability to find older posts, including those from the days before your boss, grandparents, mom and dad were on Facebook, users will need to do a rapid cleanup on their profiles when the Timeline goes live.

Facebook explains how to hide posts you don’t want to appear on your Timeline (click the pencil to hide, delete or edit a post). You can also use the privacy drop-down to change who can see posts (e.g. “Only Me”).

In addition, the company is releasing a new tool today called Activity Log, which is where you can review all your posts and activity, from today back to when you first started using Facebook. Fortunately, only you can see your activity log.

Previously, users had to go out and get Timeline for themselves. Facebook was specifically trying to not push it too hard. It wouldn’t show News Feed stories announcing your friends had migrated, for example, as the company wanted the Timeline to be an opt-in decision that allowed people enough time to moderate their profile posts. Giving users seven days to do the same is somewhat an extension of that thinking, although could prove troublesome for irregular Facebook users who don’t realize they’ve been migrated, leaving themselves exposed when the week is up.

If you want to be proactive and get the Timeline now, go to the Introducing Timeline page and click “Get Timeline.” Or you can wait until you see an announcement at the top of your profile.

Timeline will also be available on Android, m.facebook.com and iOS.

Joan Osborne Announces Tour, new album

Clay — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:39:12 +0000

JOAN OSBORNE

ANNOUNCES FIRST LEG OF

NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

INCLUDING

PERFORMANCES ON NPR’S

MOUNTAIN STAGE,

WXPN “FREE AT NOON,”

NATIONAL RADIO SHOW BLUE PLATE SPECIAL,

AND MORE

New Album,

BRING IT ON HOME,

Due March 27th

(Saguaro Road)

Fairfax, VA (January 23, 2012) — Joan Osborne kicks off her national tour with two New York City Winery performances March 27th and March 28^th that will feature her hits and new songs from her brand new album, BRING IT ON HOME, due March 27^th on Saguaro Road Records). The first leg of the tour continues through mid- April and includes markets such as Philadelphia, Charlotte, Nashville & Louisville. Ms. Osborne will hit the road again later in the spring & summer with dates in the Mid-West and on the West Coast.

During the first leg of her North American tour, Joan will make special appearances on several national NPR radio shows including the prestigious Mountain Stage, nationally syndicated program Blue Plate Special, leading radio station WXPN’s “Free At Noon” performance hour, and more.

BRING IT ON HOME is Osborne’s first album of hand-picked vintage blues and soul songs, a collection that fans have long been asking for and Osborne herself delighted in making. The recording sessions were electrifying, as the singer/songwriter tapped into her lifelong love of blues and R&B and unleashed her impassioned vocals. Osborne’s vocal style and artistic taste were such a natural fit for the songs that she recalls an impromptu jam which turned into the album’s lead track, “Shake Your Hips” by Slim Harpo. “I knew the song well from the Stones’ recording, and from hearing other bands and singers do it on the NYC blues club circuit where it’s a staple,” Joan explains. “Without really discussing it, Jack (Petruzzelli) played the signature guitar lick, the band fell in behind him, I remembered the lyrics and we were off like a racehorse out of the starting gate. No need to over think this one, it just feels good.” After just two weeks at the Triple A radio format, the track quickly shot up the FMQB chart and is currently at #35.

Produced by Joan and her longtime music director/guitarist Jack Petruzzelli, they were joined by Joan’s longtime bandmates as well as guests Barbecue Bob Pomeroy (harmonica), Allen Toussaint (piano on his own “Shoorah! Shoorah!”) and vocalists the Holmes Brothers and Rufus Thomas’ daughter, Vaneese Thomas. Jimmy Vivino, Conan O’Brien Show Band musical director, assembled all horn arrangements and also played electric piano on “I Don’t Need no Doctor.”

Joan Osborne has sold millions of albums and garnered multiple Grammy nominations throughout her critically and commercially acclaimed career. In addition to her own headlining tours, she has sung lead vocals for The Dead (formerly the Grateful Dead) and was featured in the award-winning film Standing In The Shadows of Motown.

For more information, please go to www.joanosborne.com or view video footage for BRING IT ON HOME at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzInDIN7TDE.

The first leg of Joan Osborne’s North American tour includes the following performances, with more dates to be added:

March 27            New York, NY                        City Winery
March 28            New York, NY                        City Winery
March 30            Norfolk, CT                                    Infinity Hall
March 31            Londonderry, NH                        Tupelo Music Hall
April 1                        Albany, NY                                    The Egg
April 4                        Alexandria, VA                        Birchmere
April 5                        Annapolis, MD                        Ramshead
April 6                        Philadelphia                                    World Cafe
April 7                        Tarrytown, NY                        Music Hall
April 9                        Raleigh, NC                                    Lincoln Theater
April 10            Charlotte, NC                                    Visulite Theater
April 12            Knoxville, TN                                    Blue Plate Special
April 13            Nashville, TN                                    3rd & Lindsley

April 14 Louisville, KY Headliners
April 15 Morgantown, WV Mountain Stage

Do you want a hash tag with that?

Clay — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:38:04 +0000

http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-twitter-campaign-goes-horribly-wrong-mcdstories-2012-1

McDonald’s Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong #McDStories

Gus Lubin | Jan. 24, 2012, 6:12 AM | 371,713 | 104

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A twitter campaign by McDonald’s backfired when people started sharing the wrong kind of #McDStories (via @bored2tears).

McDonald’s kicked things off on Thursday with the hashtag #MeetTheFarmers, in a campaign meant to draw attention to the brand’s guarantee of fresh produce.

Later in the day, however, the burger company used a dangerously vague hashtag: “When u make something w/ pride, people can taste it,” McD potato supplier #McDstories

People took this hashtag and started talking trash. The Daily Mail gathered some of the best:

UPDATE: Here’s an emailed statement from McDonald’s social media director Rick Wion:

Last Thursday, we planned to use two different hashtags during a promoted trend – #meetthefarmers and #mcdstories.

While #meetthefarmers was used for the majority of the day and successful in raising awareness of the Supplier Stories campaign, #mcdstories did not go as planned. We quickly pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two hours.

Within an hour of pulling #McDStories the number of conversations about it fell off from a peak of 1600 to a few dozen. It is also important to keep those numbers in perspective. There were 72,788 mentions of McDonald’s overall that day so the traction of #McDStories was a tiny percentage (2%) of that.

With all social media campaigns, we include contingency plans should the conversation not go as planned. The ability to change midstream helped this small blip from becoming something larger.

Ad Weeks biggest Social Media Blunders of 2011

Clay — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:18:31 +0000

and the year aint over year people! Notice a recurring theme? Maybe people/companies should have a waiting policy on Tweets!

http://adage.com/article/special-report-book-of-tens-2011/marketing-s-biggest-social-media-blunders-2011/231503/

Marketing’s Biggest Social-Media Blunders of 2011

Published: December 12, 2011

Weinergate
When a photo of his nether regions was tweeted from his account to a Seattle woman in May, Anthony Weiner insisted that he had been hacked. But the scrutiny continued, and the powerful New York congressman — who had been considered the front-runner in the 2013 New York City mayoral election — was forced to admit that he had sent the photo himself. He resigned from the House of Representatives after 12 years in office.

Dissing Detroit Drivers
A New Media Strategies employee dropped the F-bomb in a March tweet from @ChryslerAutos (“I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive”). Chrysler had just launched an “Imported from Detroit” campaign along with a Super Bowl ad. The staffer was fired, but Chrysler announced it wouldn’t renew the agency’s contract.

Kenneth Cole Puts Shoe in Mouth
The retailer stirred up trouble when he tried to ride the coattails of the Arab Spring social-media phenomenon with this February tweet: “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.” Tone-deafness, or a calculated move by a company known for sometimes-controversial advertising?

Gottfried Gets the Hook
Gilbert Gottfried lost his gig as the voice of the Aflac duck after posting jokes about the tsunami on his Twitter account. (A sampling: “Japan called me. They said, “Maybe those jokes are a hit in the U.S., but over here they’re all sinking.’ “) The comic’s quips were particularly off-base given that the insurance giant reportedly earned 75% of its 2010 revenues in Japan.

Qantas Grounds Dreams
The Australian airline had awful timing in launching a Twitter contest in November in which it asked followers to describe their “dream luxury in-flight experience” and pledged to award top tweeters with pajamas and toiletries. Qantas and its unions had stopped contract talks the day before, and customers were still smarting from the grounding of the entire fleet in October. They retaliated by hijacking the campaign’s hashtag, #QantasLuxury, generating thousands of angry tweets.

Shooting an Elephant
The largest U.S. web domain registry company, GoDaddy, was subject to massive backlash after its CEO, Bob Parsons, tweeted a link to a video of himself shooting an elephant in Zimbabwe. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals led an effort urging a boycott of GoDaddy, and competitors tried to capitalize by offering discounted transfer rates and even making donations to elephant charities. But,, although the outcry was loud, GoDaddy seemed to emerge unscathed.

@Qwikster
Every conceivable thing seemed to go wrong for Netflix when it announced in September its plan to spin off its DVD-rental service into a separate site called Qwikster. The company also failed to obtain the Twitter handle @Qwikster, operated by a foul-mouthed stoner who enjoyed his newfound celebrity in a series of tweets. Netflix killed Qwikster three weeks later, but 800,000 subscribers wound up quitting the service in the third quarter.

Kutcher Has Paterno’s Back
“Two and a Half Men” star Ashton Kutcher was rebuked last month after tweeting to the 8.5 million followers of his @aplusk account, “How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #no class as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste.” He later confessed that he wasn’t up on the alleged Penn State child-abuse scandal and apologized via Twitter. But the firestorm continued, and he ultimately wrote on his blog that management of his Twitter account was being turned over to his PR team.

Micky’s Big Mouth
Micky Arison, the Miami Heat owner and Carnival Cruises founder and chairman, was fined $500,000 by the NBA last month for tweeting about the lockout after the league had specifically banned it. He retweeted lockout-related posts, and in an exchange with a user accusing owners of greed, he said, “Honestly u r barking at the wrong owner.” His fine was five times as big as those levied on Charlotte’s Michael Jordan and Washington’s Ted Leonsis for their public comments about the lockout.

Ragu Incites Backlash
The Unilever tomato sauce brand Ragu earned the wrath of fathers this fall after creating a seemingly innocuous video of moms sounding off on the haplessness of their husbands in the kitchen and sending it to prominent dad bloggers on Twitter. It didn’t go viral in the way the social-marketing team had probably hoped, since some recipients of the links took to their blogs and Twitter accounts to denounce the company for hating on dads.

A Blogger isn’t a Journalist in OR

Clay — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:43:37 +0000

http://mashable.com/2011/12/07/blogger-vs-journalist/

Judge Hits Blogger With $2.5 Million Charge for Not Being a Journalist

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In a case that’s sending a frightening message to the blogger community, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that a blogger must pay $2.5 million to an investment firm she wrote about — because she isn’t a real journalist.

As reported by Seattle Weekly, Judge Marco A. Hernandez said Crystal Cox, who runs several blogs, wasn’t entitled to the protections afforded to journalists — specifically, Oregon’s media shield law for sources — because she wasn’t “affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.”

The Obsidian Finance Group sued Cox in January for $10 million for writing several blog posts critical of the company and its co-founder, Kevin Padrick. Obsidian argued that the writing was defamatory. Cox represented herself in court.

The judge threw out all but one of the blog posts cited, focusing on just one (this one), which was more factual in tone than the rest of her writing. Cox said that was because she was being fed information from an inside source, whom she refused to name.

Without the source, she couldn’t prove the information in the post was true — and thus, according to the judge, she didn’t qualify for Oregon’s media shield law since she wasn’t employed by a media establishment. In the court’s eyes, she was a blogger, not a journalist. The penalty: $2.5 million.

The debate over whether bloggers are journalists has been going on for years, but the consensus has been largely settled — on the opposite side of what Judge Hernandez has ruled. Attorney Bruce E. H. Johnson, who wrote the media shield laws in next-door Washington State, told Seattle Weekly that those laws would have protected Cox had her case been tried in Washington.

In a more high-profile case, an editor from Gizmodo escaped criminal charges after revealing to the world an iPhone prototype lost in a bar. Although police raided the California home of editor Jason Chen in 2010, the case was cited as a test for that state’s media shield law, and the district attorney said publicly this year that no charges would be filed to anyone from the site.

When discussing the case, Steve Jobs told The Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg that he believed Chen was “a guy,” not a journalist. Mossberg countered that he himself was a blogger, and that he thought bloggers were journalists. (You can see the exchange in this video, at about the 16:00 mark.)

Are bloggers the same as journalists? And if not, what is the dividing line? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Gigante Media Client The Original 7ven takes over Centric TV this weekend

Clay — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:17:03 +0000

Saturday, December 10th through Sunday, December 11^th (beginning at 10am ET and PT / 9am CT) Watch the Original 7ven takeover the Centric network this weekend, with exclusive programming that includes the television premiere of their documentary, Being: The Original 7ven, a command performance of their explosive opening number at last month’s Soul Train Awards, hosting the network’s Hot 10 show, and a vintage clip of The Time on Soul Train. The Original 7ven, the band formerly known as The Time, recently released a new album, Condensate. The first single, “#Trendin,” continues to move up the charts in the adult Urban AC radio format and was called a “…funk-fueled jam that’s right on time…” by USA Today. People magazine called it “funky” and raved that “the players are still cool.” The Huffington Post gave the album five stars, noting ““Condensate marks a mighty return to the fore for a beloved ensemble that has rightfully earned its own status as music royalty” and the Philadelphia Daily News awards it an “A,” adding “…the set achieves nirvana…”

A major force in the Minneapolis sound phenomenon, each of the 7 musicians - Morris Day, Jesse Johnson, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Jellybean Johnson, Monte Moir and Jerome Benton – went on to successful individual careers with each scoring #1 chart toppers before coming back together for the first time in 21 years to record Condensate.

Will Amazon replace Walmart as the new enemy of small business

Clay — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:10:23 +0000

Amazon’s new app is a bar code reader and will offer you money not to buy the item from that store. So you do work for them price checking and creating a huge database for them to know how much everyone else is charging for products they are selling. Then they offer the item for less.

I think this may backfire on Amazon. They have always had good publicity but now they will be seen as the big box store beating up on the little guys. Thing is, there won’t be any little guys much longer so sadly I don’t think it matters much any more.

Amazon Will Pay Shoppers $5 to Walk Out of Stores Empty-Handed

December 6, 2011 at 9:04 am PT

Amazon is offering consumers up to $5 off on purchases if they compare prices using the online giant’s mobile phone application in a store.

The promotion goes live Saturday and will serve as a way for Amazon to increase usage of its bar-code-scanning application, while also collecting intelligence on prices in the stores.

This holiday season, mobile commerce is surging as more people become comfortable using applications on their phone to compare prices or simply shop when not at home or at work.

On the Monday after Thanksgiving, the biggest online shopping day of the year so far, mobile sales reached 6.6 percent, jumping from 2.3 percent in 2010, according to IBM’s online retail study.

Amazon is not the only company hoping for a strong mobile Christmas.

Last quarter, eBay started airing TV commercials – its first in the past few years — to promote its mobile applications. The company estimated that mobile commerce merchandise volume this year will hit $5 billion. Additionally, eBay’s PayPal unit is expected to exceed $3.5 billion in mobile revenue.

Amazon has never released figures on how well its mobile applications do.

While the information empowers consumers, it terrifies retailers, who increasingly are feeling like showrooms — shoppers come to to check out the merchandise but ultimately decide to walk out and buy online instead.

Amazon’s Price Check app, which is available for iPhone and Android, allows shoppers to scan a bar code, take a picture of an item or conduct a text search to find the lowest prices. Amazon is also asking consumers to submit the prices of items with the app, so Amazon knows if it is still offering the best prices.

“We scour online and in-store advertisements from other retailers, every day, year-round,” said Sam Hall, director of Amazon Mobile. “Now, we are enabling customers to use the Price Check app to share in-store prices while they search for the best deals.”

While Amazon’s applications and its $5 incentive can be viewed as friendly to consumers, physical retailers will see it only one way — as an attack.

The one-day promotion Dec. 10 will offer 5 percent, or up to $5, off on as many as three items.