We are working on all sorts of digital projects these days—many of them are contests—with the plan to build a fan base, so they can begin to engage and connect with their clients one-on-one. As we continue to guide and educate our current clients with social media strategies and execution – we are always trying to sell new clients who have yet to really get engaged. As a women owned and run business – I always use the analogy that social media is a natural for women. It is focused on how we communicate. We like to tell stories and share our ideas. If we have a great experience we want the world to know and when we don’t we want the world to to know that too.

I have written regularly on our SHARE Blog, about the stats that provide overwhelming evidence – about the influence that women have as decision makers and buyers of all products and services. The power of their influence is even greater in an online community environment. The breadth and depth of the reach alone – is many, many, many times greater than that of using traditional methods. Today’s post is inspired by a post from a blog called Whymomsrule.com - I say not just moms but women too! Written by Jamie Dunham, this post provides stats that reinforce the importance of women and social media.

Don’t have a campaign that you feel reaches your target “women consumer”? Time to take a good look at social media in order to reach the women – who are eager to recieve from you – information that is important, authentic and personal to them – as they look to fulfill their needs, wants and benefits. The ones that best fit their day to day life.

Best Nicole

A recent post by Socialmediatoday.com did a nice job of bringing together some new studies that reinforce the importance of women in social media.  It’s not surprising to see that women are more active on social networks than are men.

The latest research from Royal.pingdom.com shows that across 19 social media sites, there were more female users than men on 16 out of the 19 most popular sites.

Here are some interesting facts:

• Twitter and Facebook have approximately the same male-female ratio:  Twitter is 59 percent female and Facebook is 57 percent female.
• The average ratio of all 19 sites was 47 percent male, 53 percent female.
• The most female-dominated sites are Bebo (66 percent female users), MySpace and Classmates.com (64 percent female users).

The three sites with more male users are functional, news related sites – Digg, Reddit and Slashdot.

So why is this female user important?  She’s the consumer, the connector and the decision maker for most of the purchase decisions in the family.

But more important to marketers, women are three times more likely to share personal stories with a friend than men.  Evidently, women are hard-wired that way – with more actual brain activity for bonding and connecting with others.

When we need a recommendation, we tend to ask our friends for their hairdresser, the dentist they go to, their favorite stores and what book they read last.

The multiple effect of a women’s Twitter or Facebook account has important implications for marketers.  The average Facebook user has 130 friends.  The more followers you have on Twitter, the most Tweets per day.  Twenty-one percent of online women tweet.

But remember, marketers, women want information that is important, authentic and personal to them.  Their age, their lifestage and their lifestyle are important indicators of how to address them.

Today’s post is going to do just that. In 2008, Starbucks (YES, I am one of their devotees ) found themselves in some serious hot water. Sales were down, there were major corporate management changes (which included Starbucks former CEO Howard Shultz returning and some management being let go), store closings, and some of the rapid rate expansion was slowed so that the company could go back to basics. The challenge? “How do they get back their relationship with their customer — the one they had when they first began?” Shultz claimed that, “Starbucks had lost its soul.”

They began with MyStarbucksidea.com, where customers could submit their ideas, frustrations, ask questions and share opinions. They have received 80,000 ideas thus far and implemented 50 of them—which shows they are listening. It has paid off.  What did the do right? They approached their social media campaign as a “customer relationship building movement”. Brilliant! They used their own blog, MyStarbucksidea.com, along with Facebook and Twitter. And in turn, they used those networks to feature promotions for “free” products that could be redeemed in-store. By melding both the online participation and offline engagement, they brought customers back into the stores. This relationship also allowed them to manage what is sometimes referred to as “issues management” rumors or negative press. Social media allowed them to clearly articulate the truth, answer questions and not let that negativity go unanswered.

The outcome? Starbucks is now beginning to see sales rise following its social media promotions and they posted in the U.S. their first same store sales gain in 2 years for the last quarter.

Can’t find a better example than this detailed blog article posted today by Ad Age Digital, written by Emily Bryson York. It shows what you can look forward to if you make the type of social media commitment that Starbucks has made and is making.  Sales gain is a pretty great reason to me! What are you waiting for?

Best Nicole

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Let’s get this straight right away: Return on investment in social media is not measured in how many friends you have on Facebook or how many followers you have on Twitter. It’s not calculated in trending topics or YouTube comments. It should, in fact, be held to the same criteria other marketing channels are: Did it move your business?

It’s done just that at Starbucks, which is a digital marketer worth watching.

No one would have guessed at that turn of events during the chain’s dark days of early 2008. Sales and traffic had begun to slip for the first time in its history as a public company. Founder Howard Schultz, returning to handle day-to-day management, even admitted that Starbucks had lost its soul. As part of Mr. Schultz’s multifaceted turnaround plan, the chain launched MyStarbucksIdea.com in July 2008 as a forum for consumers to make suggestions, ask questions and, in some cases, vent their frustrations. The website now has 180,000 registered users. Some 80,000 ideas have been submitted, 50 of which have been implemented in-store.

Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks’ VP-brand content and online, said amassing Starbucks’ 5.7 million Facebook fans and 775,000 Twitter followers could be tougher for a dental-floss brand. “Maybe we have an unfair advantage because in so many ways Starbucks and the store experience is like the original social network,” he said. Consumers “come in, hang out and talk to our store partners. They sort of got to know us as a brand in a very social way.”

But he’s quick to point out that Starbucks’ advantage could easily have been squandered. “If we had approached it not from ‘what you know and love about Starbucks’ but as a marketing channel, we would have taken this down a path that would have been very different,” he said. “This was not [built as a] marketing channel, but as a consumer relationship-building environment.”

More important than the number of fans, however, is that the coffee chain is beginning to see sales lifts following social-media promotions.

Results
Starbucks posted its first U.S. same-store sales gain in two years for the last quarter during a time when the company relied on digital and social-media promotions instead of what had become an annual TV blitz. The chain partnered with Pandora to sponsor holiday playlists, staged a Facebook sing-a-long and leveraged its partnership with Project RED to drive traffic to a dedicated microsite — and its stores, offering a free CD with a $15 purchase.

Mr. Bruzzo said that the company is benefitting from a trend “toward this intersection between digital and physical.”

“We’re seeing the beginning of that,” he said. “The experiences you have online can translate to rich offline experiences.”

The first time Mr. Bruzzo noticed this intersection was on Starbucks’ “Free Pastry Day” last summer, when consumers could visit the company website or its Facebook page and download a voucher for a free pastry. Mr. Bruzzo, who visited multiple stores that day, said he was amazed at the number of people standing in line holding coupons they’d printed out. He said the impetus for free pastries was the volume of faithful online followers asking to be included on new products or other company news.

The secret to Starbucks’ social-media success is, at least in part, the fact that it plays it cool. “It’s not like we started our Facebook community, got to a million people and started pushing offers at them,” he said. “We built up a community of people who enjoy engaging with our photo albums from our trip to Rwanda, who loved to have these shared moments around their favorite drinks.” Then, fans started asking the company what was going on, and how they could be included.

‘Straight scoop’
An added benefit of Starbucks’ social-media progress has been the ability to quickly manage rumors that could have dogged the company for days. Last January, a story spread that Starbucks was donating its profits in Israel to fund the country’s army — even though Starbucks doesn’t have any cafés in Israel. These days, Mr. Bruzzo said, when misinformation gets out, it’s easier to nip it in the bud.

Chris Bruzzo, VP-brand content and online, Starbucks

Internally, it’s called the “embassy strategy.” Starbucks strives to make MyStarbucksIdea and its Facebook and Twitter pages places that “when you go there you know you’re going to get the straight scoop,” he said.

After ceding its usual first-to-market status to competitors, Starbucks launched two iPhone apps in September, one for general café purposes, with store locators, details about specific blends and nutrition information, and the other to support its loyalty card. Moving forward, Mr. Bruzzo said the company will be looking for ways that consumers can connect with each other from inside the apps.

In the meantime, Starbucks is testing functionality that allows loyalty-card holders to pay with their phones.

Starbucks’ agencies are BBDO, PHD and Blast Radius.

Starbucks tweeter in chief

Unlike many marketers, Starbucks doesn’t run its Twitter feed out of its PR department. The chain’s voice on Twitter is Brad Nelson, 28, a former barista who rose through its IT ranks.

When the company was looking for ideas to re-engage with its core customer in 2008, Mr. Nelson suggested that he begin a Twitter handle for the brand, and it now has 775,000 followers. The brand relies on the 28-year old to translate the Starbucks experience for the online community, search out confused or disgruntled consumers, chat about store offerings and even crack jokes.

Chris Bruzzo, VP-brand, content and online, said that Starbucks was beginning to institute its turnaround plan in early 2008 when Mr. Nelson announced he was ready for something new and wanted to get involved in the chain’s online efforts.

“I sent him away and said ‘Fine, sure,’” Mr. Bruzzo said. But about two weeks later, Mr. Nelson gave him a presentation about Twitter and the opportunity to communicate directly with consumers as questions arise. Mr. Nelson sweetened his pitch by adding, “It’s a lot like being a barista on the internet.” Mr. Bruzzo recalls greenlighting the project, and after a period of working with Mr. Nelson, let him loose on Twitter.

Mr. Bruzzo gives credit to Mr. Nelson and his “willingness to take smart risks,” but shares some of the kudos for Starbucks. “I guess you have to have a brand like this and an environment that’s open to innovation and someone like Brad with the passion and personality.”

Now Starbucks is finding more ways to use Mr. Nelson. He took a week-long cross-country drive last fall with comedienne Erin Foley and an Edelman entourage to help launch Via. The group made stops for a web series along the way, passing out product samples.

The moral of his great story and of this post: make sure you spend the time on the great ideas and actions, rather than the army of followers. Let those great ideas do the SHARING!

Best Nicole

Viral growth trumps lots of faux followers

Many brands and idea promoters are in a hurry to rack up as many Facebook fans and Twitter followers as they possibly can. Hundreds of thousands if possible.

A lot of these fans and followers are faux. Sunny day friends. In one experiment I did, 200,000 followers led to 25 clickthroughs. Ouch.

Check out the graph on the left. The curves represent different ideas and different starting points. If you start with 10,000 fans and have an idea that on average nets .8 new people per generation, that means that 10,000 people will pass it on to 8000 people, and then 6400 people, etc. That’s yellow on the graph. Pretty soon, it dies out.

On the other hand, if you start with 100 people (99% less!) and the idea is twice as good (1.5 net passalong) it doesn’t take long before you overtake the other plan.  (the green). That’s not even including the compounding of new people getting you people.

But wait! If your idea is just a little more viral, a 1.7 passalong, wow, huge results. Infinity, here we come. That’s the purple (of course.)

A slightly better idea defeats a much bigger but disconnected user base every time.

The lesson: spend your time coming up with better ideas, not with more (faux) followers.

Of course whenever you find something great it appears everywhere! Modcloth.com is a company that is leveraging social media to get its customers involved in the purchasing of its product. One of the skills and risks of the fashion business is the selecting and production of fashion items – ahead of an upcoming season and getting those selections right – so you sell your inventory by the end of the season. “As one of my old bosses told me early on – inventory is money and you don’t want that money sitting on the floor or warehouse!” Modcloth engages with its customers regarding samples and lets them vote on whether they like them or not. They select about 40% of the samples that have the highest votes and allow the comments they receive both good and bad – to assist in their decision making as well. This approach takes some of the guess work out of what they will buy and truly delivers on what their customer wants. From the customer perspective they get to be involved in the types of products sold – by participating and sharing their opinions both positive and negative. They are avid users of Twitter and Facebook – where they and their community can share the products they love and don’t love with their friends. Inc.com has written a great article by Lauren Bans about this winning 21st century online business model!

A brilliant example for retailers – on how to engage their customers and minimize the risk of their product purchases – by getting the customers involved in what they truly want, need and will buy.

Best Nicole

ModCloth’s Be the Buyer program lets customers tell the company exactly what they want.

Courtesy Company

Democracy of Style As a result of votes and comments from ModCloth customers, only the left dress is being offered for sale.

Susan Gregg Koger is a lot like her customers. The 25-year-old co-founder of ModCloth, a $15 million online clothing retailer based in Pittsburgh, Koger lives and breathes fashion, eschewing mainstream mall taste in favor of offbeat, often vintage-inspired pieces such as floral housedresses and flapper hats. “Our customers are young women in their 20s who live for fashion-forward clothes the same way we do,” says Koger. ModCloth has always prided itself on having an open channel of communication with customers, through, for example, frequent contests and an active Twitter feed. Says Koger: “Our internal motto is ‘ModCloth is a company you’re friends with.’ ” So she decided to do what any good friend would do: take her customers shopping with her and ask for their advice before making a big purchase.

In October, ModCloth began asking customers to help the company decide whether to carry certain items in its store. ModCloth’s initiative, called Be the Buyer, encourages customers to vote online on clothing samples. If a garment receives enough votes, ModCloth will sell the item.

In the past, Koger and her three-person buying team relied on their own fashion sense to select the items offered on ModCloth.com. They traveled around the country, sifting primarily through small collections from independent designers. But the buying team sometimes found clothing samples it loved but couldn’t afford to purchase because of the minimum order size. Clothing manufacturers generally need large order commitments — typically anywhere from 120 to 500 pieces, says Koger — before committing to production. If a larger retailer hadn’t already plucked a certain sample out of the lineup, ModCloth often wouldn’t risk committing to the kind of large-scale purchase needed to push it into production.

But now, says Koger, the company can confidently gamble on what were once risky items by securing the most valuable of opinions before taking the plunge — those of its customers. Each sample is put up for a vote on ModCloth’s website for 14 days, and after tallying the votes, the company decides whether it’s worth the investment. If an item is picked, the customers who voted in favor of it receive an e-mail when their chosen design becomes available for sale. There is also a comments section for each garment and a feature that lets customers send a link to the clothes to their Facebook and Twitter friends.

Koger says the program benefits everyone involved. Not only do the customers get to play a firsthand role in choosing their own fashions, but ModCloth reduces much of the guesswork involved in fashion buying. “The customers are helping us make a safer financial bet by eliminating the risk,” says Liz Bensink, ModCloth’s site manager. “Now if we order some of those samples, they’ll be exclusive to ModCloth, and we already know that our customers voted them into existence.” Plus, the designers get a chance to produce the clothes that larger, more mainstream outlets passed on.

The first batch of 66 product samples appeared on ModCloth’s site in late October. By the end of November, those items had received more than 100,000 customer votes, and Koger had decided to carry about 40 percent of them. Molly Miltenberger, a regular ModCloth shopper, weighed in on some of the samples. A self-proclaimed scarf lover, she voted in favor of a green plaid scarf with tassels and another brightly colored striped one with pompon fringe. Only the latter received enough votes to make it into production, but Miltenberger says that’s OK. She will buy the one that will be produced. Plus, she is thrilled that the company is letting her vicariously experience her “dream career” of being a professional buyer.

In addition to the votes, ModCloth also received thousands of comments, some of which were harsh — and often amusing. One customer quipped about a printed yellow dress, “It looks like a cat shred a ’70s polyester and then threw up on the shreds.” Of another multicolored outfit, a shopper wrote, “I like the cut, but the pattern makes me want to kill myself.”

Snarky or not, the comments reflect a high level of customer engagement. Plus, many of the remarks proved insightful, says Bensink. For instance, a heather-gray cotton dress, which did not make it into production, got a fair number of yes votes, but commenters kept pointing out the same flaw in the dress: It was too sheer. In the future, ModCloth may even consider asking a designer to make changes based on the criticisms of customers. “The customers are letting us know why they voted the way they did,” Bensink says, “and the point is to see how comments and votes translate to sales.”

It’s too early to tell what the exact conversion will be, says Koger, but the initiative has already boosted traffic to ModCloth.com. The number of visitors increased 25 percent in the first month after launch, partly because enthusiastic participants were promoting their favorite samples on their Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and personal blogs. Thrilled by the response, the ModCloth team has continued to add new samples to the voting page. “Items are getting 50 votes mere minutes after we upload them on the site,” says Bensink. “It’s so exciting for us to watch. We had this customer base ready to interact with us, and we just needed to give them a proper forum.”

This example proves that by doing your homework—via a strategic plan and working with partners that can do the analysis needed to ensure your promotion is a success—you can achieve the ROI all businesses should be focused on reaching. Are you doing your homework in 2010?

Best Nicole

Be my friend, get a free bagel! That’s the message Einstein Bros. Bagels is telling potential customers on Facebook, and, at least in visible numbers, it’s paying off. The bagel-and-schmear giveaway started less than three full days ago, and already the bagel chain has increased its Facebook fan count from a measly 4,700 to a massive 336,000-plus. According to the company, this is the first instance of a Facebook advertiser providing a free offer though instant digital coupons. Is free the social media marketing campaign of the future?

Einstein Bros. is calling this the world’s biggest bagel giveaway, and if its hundreds of thousands of new fans cash in for their $2.50 bagel–or $840,000 worth of would-be sales–it certainly will be. Numbers don’t mean everything, though–how many times have you followed and retweeted a company on Twitter during a contest just to turn around and unfollow them when it ends? (I didn’t win those Lady Gaga tickets, so bye bye @vcastmusic.)

One of the most interesting things about Einstein Bros.’s campaign is that it has an indefinite end date. “We are gauging customers in real time,” the company told us over email this morning. “We’re looking at not only the number of Einstein Bros. Bagels fans, but also the rate in which we continue to add them.”

Einstein Bros. worked with Facebook to develop the campaign, innovating features like staggered coupon expiration dates to control traffic to the restaurants. The company has “done extensive homework to ensure that this promotion is a success.”

A recent Nielsen survey showed that globally people spent an average of more than five and a half hours per month on social networking sites this past December, an 82% increase year-over-year. In December 2007, we were spending just over two hours per month, so in just two years we’ve more than doubled our social networking time. In the U.S., there was a 210% increase in total minutes spent on social networking and blog sites year-over-year. If the future is social media, then apparently the future is now.

Major social media sites are ramping up their user- and advertising-keeping features at a similar speed. A new feature currently testing on Facebook will allow advertisers to buy “cost per acquisition” ads, where the advertiser pays for users who click on the ad and then go on to make a purchase, as opposed to the current pay-per-click model popular Internet-wide. And over on Twitter, the new Local Trends feature that allows users to watch what’s trending in their respective cities is making the site more and more targeted. Access to city-specific and ultra-targeted data is something advertisers could be very interested in.

Mashable.com has a post, written by Soren Gordhamer, that is titled “7 Lessons for Better Networking with Social Media.” Gordhamer says “Many of us are on both sides of this relationship— sometimes making the connection, sometimes receiving the invitation.” His article is a good tool to use with actionable tips on improving your networking skills.

Tell us about your network and some of the things that you have learned to best utilize your network for 2010.

Best Nicole

Social media allows us to discover, connect, and engage with new people of interest. While most people are open to new connections and receiving messages from people they don’t know, there is a fine line between reaching out and “spamming.” The challenge is to make a connection clearly and effectively without wasting people’s time.

Many of us are on both sides of this relationship — sometimes making the connection, sometimes receiving the invitation. To help navigate these waters a little better, I’ve outlined seven key lessons for improving your social networking skills.

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1. Find a Person’s Preferred Communication Channel

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If you want to contact someone you have never communicated with before, do some research. Find the person’s preferred communication channel. If they have a website, check out their contact page and see if they encourage people to contact them in a particular way, and follow their suggestion.

It also helps to discover what level of participation they have on various social networks (Twitter (), Facebook (), YouTube ()) to see which places may be best to engage them. When is the last time they posted on Twitter or Facebook? Do they respond to the @replies they receive on Twitter or comments on a Facebook page? Get a sense of their preferred means of communication, and make contact where they are.

Lesson: Go where they are.

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2. Say Just Enough

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This cannot be emphasized enough, and it is probably my toughest challenge. In the age of social media, we may be able to get the attention of more people, but we get it for a much shorter amount of time. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make, is that they send long e-mails or social media messages explaining all the reasons they want to connect. You are likely have not earned not earned the five minutes of the recipient’s time that it will take to read that message.

Brevity is built right into Twitter, making it a great platform for making a first connection. However, if you use other channels, keep it simple. If there are 700 words you eventually want to get across, include only 50 in the first contact. Let the person choose if he or she would like more. You can fill in the rest later. I prefer a less complete 50 words than 700 words that tell me more than I need to know.

Lesson: Less is more.

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3. Don’t Expect a Response

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I often see e-mails with phrases like “Please respond,” or “please get back to me.” Unless it is an old friend or a colleague, if you are contacting someone new, you are not entitled to a response. If the person wants to get back to you, he or she will. It is much better to say “If this is not of interest, feel no need to get back to me.”

At times I hear people complain because they reached out to someone and never heard back. The fact is most people do not have the time to get back to everyone who contacts them to say, “not interested.” Open a door without adding pressure. There may be times to follow-up, of course, but don’t do so with resentment or frustration.

Lesson: Say what you need to and then let it go.

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4. Clarify Early

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This may seem like common sense, but don’t wait for the last line of your message to say that you want to meet for lunch, or ask your contact if he’d like to speak at an event. Put it right up front. If he cannot provide what you’re looking for, he’ll know sooner rather than later, and will appreciate you for it.

Lesson: Say it up front.

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5. What You Want is Not the Point

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You may think that what you want is a phone call or lunch meeting to discuss your big idea. But communication is more than any one project or meeting. What you really want is an authentic connection.

In a very real way, it doesn’t necessarily matter if the person is interested in discussing your project idea. What matters is whether you are making a connection.

If you focus on the relationship more than the specific request, and the person has a pleasant experience reading your opening communication, it is likely the door will remain open for possible collaboration in the future, and the next e-mail you send will more likely be fruitful.

Lesson: No one knows what the future may hold, so make the moment count. Ensure the door stays open, even if no one is walking through it right now.

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6. Be Open Without Needing

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Needy never goes over well. Statements like “I really need to talk to you,” or “it is essential that we speak,” show your general insecurity. There is a huge difference between being open to collaboration and “needing” it.

Do not make contact until you find that place in yourself that is totally comfortable with any outcome, including a strong “no” or no response at all. Only then can you make authentic contact. When you do, openness rather than need will come through in your words.

Lesson: Speak from openness rather than need.

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7. Give Space

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The key questions people have when someone new reaches out to them, particularly those who are quite busy, are “Do I have time to bring this person into my network? How much time will they take?”

Therefore, it is generally not helpful to send too many e-mails. Doing this may send the signal that you are going to take a lot of the recipient’s time and send numerous e-mails every day, and communicating with you will take great effort.

Instead, give communication some space. Unless something is very timely, let a bit of time pass before sending a response. Let communication have some breathing room. Once there is some level of trust, you can experiment with more immediate information exchange.

Lesson: Focus on thoughtful instead of continual contact.

This Youtube video from Ikea shows you a viral campaign that leverages Facebook and how they were able to build friends, engage people in a contest and promote Ikea product. A perfect trinity! We love when this happens and love having the opportunity to do this for our clients.

Enjoy the video. Time for you to kick it out of the park!

Best Nicole