Social Media And Retail Wrap Up: Ready, Aim, Oops!

I’m not a marketing professional, and I don’t play one on TV,  but I do understand the fundamentals of marketing. You need to reach out to your target market with effective messages they can appreciate and will act on. I have said (as with many others) in the past that social media marketing can allow you to effectively hit your target market with deadly precision.

I have a friend (he will remain nameless for his own good) who is just getting into social network marketing. So what’s a guy to do to get started? Well, he writes an article about social network marketing. I had a discussion with him about which groups he should join to help better market himself and he listed the major networking sites that most of us are already on. He also mentioned one site (email me if you would like to know which one) that he found out about during a ‘social network marketing’ course he took. I asked him what about that site is appealing to him. “I’m trying out new things’ was his response.

I received a text from him yesterday touting the fact that one of his articles on this particular site got over 4000 (yes that’s four thousand) views and a bazillion comments. I was really happy for him. Then I started asking questions.

 ”How many people got back to you about the article?” I asked.

“Counting spam emails?” he asked.

“No” I replied

“About 4 or 5 inquiries and 2 phone calls”

If I were to gauge the success of that article in military terms, I would say my friend sank the Bismark.

Let’s forget about consultants and gurus and other professions that offer expertise. What about retailers? In yesterday’s post, I mentioned how important it is to know where your customer goes for social networking. I’m going to repeat myself for everyone’s own good:

It is important to know which social networks your customer uses and actively engage those networks to reach out to your customer and acquire new ones.

Maybe my friend is a bad example. He’s not a retailer. But it illustrates the importance of finding the right environment to deliver your messages. Grocers put circulars in the Saturday and Sunday paper because they know their customers are looking for them to set up the week’s shopping list. Dollar stores use Twitter to blast out when new inventory comes in because they know their loyal customers are waiting for new and different products. Merchants create Facebook Fanpages so that their customers have a central place to get information and news about the brand. Some retailers use social media mobile marketing to get people into their stores with unique mobile promos and specials.

Know your customer, know their habits and know how they prefer to communicate (retailing 101?). Then create a social media marketing campaign that delivers messages through the appropriate networks.

I hope you enjoyed this discovery. I actually learned a lot myself. Ultimately, there is a place for social network marketing for retailers. Big box, small format, boutiques, corporate and independent merchants should use these tools to market themselves in real time. This is a situation where you must look before you leap. The time commitment required to actively engage your customers through social networks is considerable. 

Please share your social media stores and thoughts with me directly: doron@gocaptus.com or comment right on the blog.

This is a video of a presentation from a conference in Monterey where new innovations in computer vision mashed-up social technology produce some AMAZING results. See more at www.ted.com

Today, during our Social Currency CrunchUp, angel investor Ron Conway had some interesting data to share for the first time. Conway says that his company, SV Angel, has recently done an audit on the over 500 companies they’ve invested in over the past 12 years. And he was surprised with the results.

Conway expected it would show that about one-third of companies fail, one-third get investors their money back, and one-third bring a 2x to Google-x return (Conway invested in Google early on). But that’s not the case. Conway noticed that during the Internet Bubble in 1997 to 2001 — the failure rate (startups that go out of business and the investors get nothing) was a staggering 77 percent. “It was catastrophic,” he said.
TechCrunch

Good morning from the Social Currency CrunchUp at the Stanford Campus, which today is the epicenter of the entire tech world. Welcome, and please enjoy the livestream above.
TechCrunch

Apple’s earnings and revenue growth in mobile have been awe-inspiring to witness. From zero presence three years ago, Apple is now the most profitable cell phone maker in the world.

Apple’s success in this compressed period has helped it become an enormous buyer of components. In fact iSuppli projects that next year Apple will become the second-largest semiconductor buyer worldwide and may edge out HP in 2012 to become the world’s largest.

Though this scale presents Apple with enormous bargaining power, it also begs the question: Should Apple own its own wireless chip development?
TechCrunch

Facebook And Twitter Social Media Marketing Strategies

Social media marketing is the fastest rising strategy in making your product, brand or business known all over the World Wide Web. With the many people using it and the many things people claim, people start to wonder what the right way to start implementing this strategy is. This guide will focus mainly on the king of kings of social media namely Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook

Facebook, the internationally recognized number one social networking site offers small businesses excellent, cost-friendly marketing opportunities. Facebook offers 300 million users to exploit. Despite the huge population, Facebook has devised as very powerful marketing platform that can pinpoint our target audience in building up your web presence.

Basic Strategy

Sign up for Facebook if you do not have an account yet. You can not make use of its marketing platform for your social media marketing campaign if are not one of its members. After signing up with your own name, also sign up for your company’s own account.

Be conscious, however, that if you preserve your company name for your individual account, you will not be capable of utilizing it for your Business Fan Page, so you may opt to make a Page prior to registering your company’s name. Remember that Fan Pages have special rules regarding usernames.

After setting up accounts and pages, the next thing to do is to check out your competition. Do a Facebook search of your competitors and make an evaluation of their presence. What types of Pages have they built? How many fans or “friends” do they have? Spend at least 15 minutes per competitor in looking at their posts, photos and/or videos to understand how they’re using Facebook. Examine the strengths and weaknesses of their social media marketing campaigns and try to synergize. Combine their strengths while eliminating as much of their weaknesses as possible.

Advanced Strategy

While having your own personal account on Facebook, you may also register a business account for a little more presence. Such account though, may not be able to provide significant benefits especially due to the fact that Facebook imposes many limitations on such Business Accounts. Having a Business Fan Page is far better than having a Business Account. A business fan page is a page where customers or fans of your business or product can register as a fan. Every fan increases your web presence because your updates will become visible on their page or wall. You may also desire to think about running hyper-local ads on Facebook.

Twitter

Twitter is recognized worldwide as the number one social bookmarking site. It has showcased epic growth over the past year alone. Just like Facebook, it can serve as an amazing social media marketing platform for small and startup businesses.

Basic Strategy

Get a Twitter account now if you do not have one yet, and also reserve an account under your business name. Although you can easily twit in your own name, but having the alternative to twit in your business name may come in handy. The more important part is, you will be able to prevent competitors from registering your business name. Take the time to read the simple guide Twitter developed to help users make the most of Twitter for their business.

The next step is to allocate a few minutes exploring the Twitter homepage, making searches to be able to obtain a grasp of the kind of content available on the service. Let’s say for example that you are the owner of a small souvenir giveaway business, conduct some searches for various terms, phrases and keywords like “souvenir giveaway,” “souvenirs,” “souvenir business,” “souvenir giveaway business,” etc. also search for the names of your competitors to determine if they are already on Twitter, and if they are, how they are making use of it. After that search for your small business name, who knows, there may be some who already converse about you. After you feel comfortable with the available content and the means of how your competitors use Twitter, you can start on your strategy on how to use Twitter to establish web presence for your business.

Advanced Strategy

To be able to make full use of Twitter you also need to be able to efficienly use the more advanced Twitter tools like desktop and mobile Twitter clients like TweetDeck (TweetDeck), Seesmic (Seesmic), and Tweetie (tweetie). Desktop clients provide more flexibility and desktop access than the Twitter website. You can also do all sorts of things on Twitter straight from your desktop. Among other things, you’ll be able to pre-define searches  and group people you follow so that you can minimize the noise and focus on the real content. You might also consider using a web tool like Twitterfall, which will allow you to define and color-code various custom searches that you can review from time to time, and also to follow trending topics.

Google has added weather data to its Google Earth application. As of now, the new feature only supports locations in North America and parts of Europe.
TechCrunch

In January, we broke the news that prolific Silicon Valley angel investor Dave McClure was to set up its own venture capital fund.

Yesterday, the man filed for the fund with the SEC, providing us with more details (hat tip to FormDs.com). The name will be 500 Startups – McClure has long called himself the master of 500 hats – and the initial fund will amount to max. $ 30 million according to the filing.
TechCrunch

My attempts to live with an iMac were met with nothing but grief. I needed a rebound relationship—a total opposite to the prudish minimalism of Apple design—a bad girl with unnervingly fast tendencies. More »

Gizmodo: top

Focus Media, one of China’s leading digital media groups, this morning announced that it is selling a 62% indirect equity ownership of its Internet division, Allyes, to US-based private investment firm Silver Lake.

Under the terms of the agreement, Silver Lake will pay $ 124 million to Focus Media, in exchange for the equity ownership of Allyes. Focus Media had acquired the internet advertising service company, reportedly the largest in China, back in February 2007.
TechCrunch

Despite earlier reports to the contrary, Android Market watcher AndroLib says there aren’t 100,000 applications available in the store – yet. There have, however, 100,000 apps been submitted to Android Market since its public debut, the site wagered this morning, up from approximately 5,000 in June 2009.

The Androlib directory covers multiple markets, including international ones, so not all apps and games are available in the United States, necessarily. Not all markets are counted, even, so AndroLib claims it may potentially undercount the number of apps, although it’s safe to say there’s somewhat of an error margin either way as with every data aggregation.
TechCrunch