from Mashable.com

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How has the rise of social media changed how you do business? Let us know in the Leave a Reply field below.

Posted by Regan Kelly

Reblogged from TechCrunch:

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Hip online eyewear startup Warby Parker has, over the last two years, been partnering with boutiques to open "stores-within-stores," or small Warby Parker showrooms, where customers could try on their eyeglasses in 3-D. These showrooms popped up in L.A., Nashville, San Francisco and many others. Today Warby Parker officially announced its first, flagship retail store in SoHo in New York City.

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The study also shows that UK consumers are increasingly using mobile and social media channels to interact with retailers, which in part will result in an estimated 31% of high street stores closing by 2020.

Retail spending over the next decade

The research reveals that retail is set to lose out further over the next decade as the proportion of discretionary income spent on the sector is expected to decline. Although overall household income will start to rise as the downturn eases, the proportion of disposable income will not recover to pre-recession levels. Moreover, retail’s share of discretionary income, which today stands at 32%, will decline to 27% by 2022.

The pressure on some areas is more pronounced. Music, film and book retailers will continue to struggle with spend expected to fall further with the move to digital media and subscription services. However spending on health and beauty, and clothing and footwear is expected to rise by nearly 20%, as they are more needs-based, and because the products are a way for consumers to treat themselves at relatively low expense.

Commenting on the findings, Guy Chiswick, Managing Director of Webloyalty UK, said: “Securing new customers can be difficult in tough economic times, so it is vital that retailers hold on to the customers they already have. Customer insight needs to be used intelligently to meet the needs of individuals and to drive loyalty and satisfaction.”

The rise of the online shopper

Webloyalty’s research reveals that the growing influence of online channels is affecting the way we shop, with 85% of UK consumers aged 18 and over now regularly shopping on the internet. This change is affecting town centres, where 31% of high street stores are expected to close by 2020.

With the growing popularity of online and mobile shopping, social media is also increasingly being used for price comparison, browsing and purchasing. We are seeing the rise of the “social shopper” with 69% of consumers now members of social media websites and half of these interacting with retailers through social media. 

This Webloyalty research suggests that by 2020, mobile shopping will play a part in one quarter of all purchases, through either price checking or direct purchases.

Consumers will expect a more personal experience. The report predicts that retailers will tailor experiences more and more to customer needs, based on insight into their past behaviour.

Neil Saunders of Conlumino says: “Social media will have a widening impact on the entire retail environment, with its role in the online shopping process growing in importance as the amount of data available on social media platforms enables experiences to be tailored specifically to the user’s interests and tastes.”

To view and download the full Webloyalty research, please visit: Webloyalty – The Future of Retail: The Demand Picture or follow Webloyalty on Twitter for new and research – @WebloyaltyUK

One of the major concerns about the growth of online business activity is identity theft, and ideas such as LaunchKey have already offered ways to make logins more secure. But what about companies requiring harder proof before authenticating customers to use their service? Netverify is a new platform that uses laptop webcams or smartphone cameras to confirm users’ identities by scanning official documents in real-time.

Developed by Jumio, the service allows financial institutions, government bodies, recruitment firms and retailers – among others – to capture essential documents for confirming customers’ identities by using technology they already possess. The process can be included as part of registration forms or apps, and simply requires users to hold up the required document – whether a passport, birth certificate or drivers’ licence – to the camera included on their smartphone or notebook. The scan is then encrypted and transmitted securely to the company within a minute, and no record of the document is stored on the device. Using image recognition technology, the system automatically rejects documents that are fake. The video below explains more about the service:

The platform makes registration processes easier and faster for the end-user, making it more likely that they will complete the application and saving time and money for businesses. Above all, it increases security for both parties. Considering that a recentGartner report predicted that fraud will comprise 1.5 percent of all transactions made on smartphones in the next four or five years, a quick and simple process such as this could make sending money over the web far more secure.

Visit www.springwise.com of website: www.jumio.com

Concerts have always been a popular way for music lovers to spend their hard-earned money, and as demand has surged so have the ticket prices. This often means that fans can’t afford to see the bands they love. Spanish promoters Caravana de Emerxenciahave recognized this problem and addressed it through their upcoming gig, where attendees can decide the price of the ticket when they leave.

The concert is taking place on April 4 at Sala Capitol in Santiago, northern Spain. Four bands will be playing on the night – , , and. At the end of the evening attendees can pay whatever price they think the event deserves.

High ticket prices can sometimes leave fans disgruntled when a concert doesn’t meet their expectations, so could this new enterprise provide a model for future events? Bands such as Radiohead have already used the pay-what-you-want model for an album release. Could we see this consumer-led approach spread across the rest of the music industry?

Website: www.facebook.com/events/218431391632701/?ref=22

While some US retailers and brands forge ahead, the e-tailing group’s “15th Annual Mystery Shopping Study” found that what appeared to be a mass exodus did indeed happen. The number of retailers in the US with Facebook-enabled checkout dropped 63% between Q4 2011 to Q4 2012, to 6%.

Still, even as fewer “buy now” and “add to cart” buttons sprinkle Facebook’s newsfeeds and apps, US retailers know the importance of being on the site. According to a new eMarketer report, “Facebook Commerce: Evolving, Not Extinct,” the question is whether or not retailers can crack the commerce half of social engagement.

According to the e-tailing group, 98% of US ecommerce merchants surveyed had a Facebook page in Q4 2012, and nearly the same number of respondents (97%) linked to Facebook from their site. It is also notable that sharing in general is on the rise—a tactic growing in popularity as social discovery becomes a bigger part of the shopping process.

And even if Fcommerce did not work out for plenty of retailers, they are still positive about the role Facebook plays in social commerce. A survey by RichRelevance demonstrated that Facebook retailers in the US consider Facebook with high regard: The site took up a significant share of user social commerce sessions compared with other social network sites in 2012.

RichRelevance also found that buyers coming from Facebook converted at more than twice the rate of Pinterest and Twitter and had the highest revenues per session. Pinterest, however, had the highest average order value.

Moreover, whether or not internet users go on Facebook with the intent to shop, it was the social network most likely to influence purchases among US internet users surveyed by Technorati in December 2012. Facebook nearly tied with blogs, at around 31%, and trailed only the more sales-focused brand and retail sites. The same study found that 21% of respondents followed brands on Facebook to make purchases.

Another way to leverage Facebook is to facilitate interactions among Facebook friends on an ecommerce site or app. And the key to encouraging this behavior is allowing Facebook Login, a tactic that’s not brand new yet only used by a small number of retailers.

Other approaches include tried-and-true deals, retargeted ads served via Facebook Exchange (FBX) and using the new Facebook Offers.

There are no set rules for how US merchants can leverage social commerce, and what’s possible is constantly evolving.

While many businesses in the past have opted for an automated telephone service – and innnovations such as FonGenie have helped smaller businesses use them – a number of customers can find them more annoying than helpful. Helping businesses become more user-friendly, Israel-based Zappix offers a visual alternative to voice menus that can be navigated before call charges are applied.

Automated menus can be useful for connecting callers to the most relevant line based on their needs, although the fact that they are audio-based means they often take a long time to go through the options, racking up charges for customers. Considering how many of those customers now have smartphones, Zappix aims to replace voice menus with a web-based visual option that determines the best department to connect them to before initiating the call. The first time a caller navigates through a company’s Zappix menu, their path is saved in a bookmarks folder so that they can easily call the correct extension again without having to re-navigate the menu. The app is available for free on the App Store and Google Play, and currently supports a number of top businesses.

Zappix saves consumers time and money, while improving their relationship with the brands they want to speak to. Companies wanting to offer the service to their customers can set up and customize their visual menu by getting in touch with the startup.

Website: www.zappix.com

Reading app Readability once butted heads with Apple on subscription rules, but more recently its friction points have been in competition with apps like Instapaper, Pocket,Pulse, and Flipboard, who all present consumers with ways of aggregating and making it easier to read the vast sea of content available online. Now Readability, with has 5 million monthly active users stripping out and reading tens of millions of articles each day, is launching Top Reads, a reading aggregation service of its own based on the most read stories on Readability, to get more people to spend more time on its platform.

Top Reads will launch first as a responsive web app for desktop and mobile screens, and Rich Ziade, one of Readability’s founders, says that there will be dedicated native mobile apps on the way in a matter of months if the response is good.

Top Reads is not exactly new — it a feature that first appeared as a list in Readability’s mobile applast year, and has been getting strong traffic since, with about two-thirds of the site’s 5 million users using it every month. Enough attention, he said, to get Ziade and his team to explore making it into a standalone service with its own URL.

“Discovery is a still big deal,” he told TechCrunch. “We’re getting swamped with stuff to read.” And while his app has developed a dedicated audience using it to read content they are finding themselves, this will help them look at what others are reading, too.

The new, more visual version looks more like Flipboard than text river, with pictures and links through to either read later, share, or read instantly.

Your content strategy should help draw parallels between what’s important to customers and what your brand stands for; it enables marketing teams to create more relevant content based on what your brand is comfortable talking about (and what it’s not comfortable talking about). And it provides opportunities for your employees, partners, and customer service reps to be a part of your story, too.

If you are ready to upgrade your content strategy — or create one from scratch — here are 3 considerations that will help keep your business in line with current content marketing best practices.

1. Move past the content marketing mainstream

Content marketing is more than just fodder for SEO; it’s more than tweeting out a cool photo in real-time during the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and it’s so much more than an infographic that blesses your site with a multitude of back-links. Content must be emotional, tell a story, and aim to impact consumers’ behavior, attitudes, or perception of your brand. And, while search is certainly important, your brand story encompasses much more than what you write on your blog or website.

Everything you do in marketing, online and offline, must align with your brand narrative. So, yes, blog content, videos, status updates, tweets, photos, and even press releases are important. But so is the story you tell through your employees, customers, and partners as well as through your paid media initiatives. This is why you must develop your content strategy before you start marketing it.

Red Bull is a great example of a company that executes its content strategy flawlessly across all forms of media — paid, earned, and owned — in a unique, non-mainstream way. Red Bull Stratos was not only an epic event that placed Red Bull at the center of “space” conversations everywhere, but it also proved, once again, that when Red Bull executes a campaign, it goes all in. Content marketing is surely a small piece of the marketing puzzle here, but it is the strategy that keeps these conversations alive, even today.

2. Develop a compelling content narrative

Your content narrative must different from the brand pillars and positioning statements that comprise your brand narrative. In most cases, your brand narrative will not impact consumer behavior when shared in its purest form, as today’s consumers ignore brand messaging. Instead, your content narrative should translate the tenets of your brand narrative into a story that demonstrates how your business relates to its consumers.

To craft this content narrative, consider the inputs it should include:

• Brand pillars/Corporate positioning: These are the key elements that you can take from your brand narrative to inform your content narrative.
• What issues are important to your brand (e.g., its politics, sustainability practices, social causes, etc.)?
• How is your brand perceived by the media: What do they say when they write about your brand?
• How is your brand perceived by your community: How has your community reacted to your current content offerings?
• Fan interests: What are your fans interested in, outside of their support of/interest in your brand?
• Historical content performance: What basic performance data have you compiled to show which of your content efforts are working and which aren’t? Examples can include basic engagement metrics (i.e., “likes,” comments, shares, retweets, etc.) or post-level reach (potential impression) numbers.
• Search behavior: What keywords or terms are consumers using when they conduct a search on your brand and its competitors?
• Customers’ pain points: What support issues are your customers most concerned about, and how can your brand help address these challenges?

The output resulting from these considerations will help you craft a content strategy that can scale and produce content that can have a strong, positive impact on customer behavior — whether it’s selling more products, repositioning your company in its industry, or raising your company’s profile and its public perception.

As much as the content narrative is important, it’s equally important to decide how you want to execute it and in which channels. A stellar content strategy will help you determine the different content themes and prioritize the types, ideal frequency, and most effective distribution channels for your content.

For example, the template below shows five possible content themes — all with different distribution frequency percentages — as well as the core channels this content strategy should be executed through. The percentages are just examples, but for the most part, you should plan on talking more about your customers than yourself. Also, it’s important to note that every brand is different, so the content themes you choose should be unique to your brand, its goals, and the industries it operates within.

Here is one way a content strategy can play out with the above themes. Assume you are an electric car manufacturer and your content narrative is all about “making electric cars cool to own,” fighting the negative stereotype that they aren’t “cool.” Your content may look like the following; with the content in the shaded boxes meant to be shared in the corresponding channels shown in the template above:

• Marketing and events: The content would revolve around new product launches, new dealership openings, and promotions; and would only be shared in the shaded channels (blog posts, press releases, tweets, videos, etc.).
• Customer stories: This content would amplify customer success stories and product recommendations, specifically highlighting the “cool factor” of the cars and car owners.
• Customer support: This content would focus on product recalls and common support issues; one example could be a series of videos with a very “cool and hip” customer support agent discussing the issues and providing solutions.
• Curation from third-party sources: This content would be curated from third parties, and may include reports, articles, or blog posts that align with your brand’s content strategy.
• Real-time news: You may want to consider leveraging the news cycle to create real-time content, though this will depend on how flexible your content strategy is.

3. Think like a media company

“Every company is a media company.” This is what Tom Foremski, publisher of tech blogSilicon Valley Watcher has been saying for years now. And though I agree in concept, I also believe that marketers are still struggling to realize this potential in their organizations.

In addition to delivering a content strategy, here are six steps that can help brands transition themselves into publishers:

1 Establish a centralized editorial team: The core team should consist of marketing, public relations, customer support, IT, and product/brand representatives. This ensures that the many key stakeholders in your organization will all have a say when it comes to delivering your content strategy, internally and externally.

2 Assign the roles and responsibilities of your contributors: Contributors can include customers, partners, and employees. If you work for a large, multinational organization you will have to assign regional editors who will be responsible for approving/editing content submitted by the contributors.

3 Build content ideation, creation, approval, and distribution workflows:Controls should be established to ensure content is being shared externally at the right time, in the right channel and to the right customers. Many content marketing platforms have work flows that allow you to assign controls so that content contributors can’t publish directly to a channel; rather, they must go through a series of approvals first.

4 Create a real-time listening station: Also known as social business command centers, these “stations” should be used to respond to and engage with customers through your content efforts, as well as to capitalize on the latest internal and external trends related to your brand. Listening stations are usually powered by technology platforms like Radian6 and display visual data about your brand (i.e., share of voice, reach, engagement, and community growth).

5 Define your converged media: Partner with your paid media team and work through various models that can take your organic content and amplify it through paid media (i.e., triggers that will take Facebook posts and turn them into promoted posts). In this case, a trigger can be “average number of engaged users” on any given status update. Once the engagement hits that number, a decision will have to be made to push that organic update into sponsored content channels.

6 Invest in the right technology: Many tools and services are on the market that can facilitate your organization’s evolution into a media company. For planning and ideation, consider using Kapost, Compendium, or Contently. For content creation, approval, and distribution management, try Sprinklr, Spredfast, Expion, or Hootsuite Enterprise (full disclosure: Hootsuite Enterprise is an Edelman Client), all of which have built in work flows and approval processes. And, for real-time content optimization, you may want to check outSocialFlow.

For more tips on planning for content marketing success, read CMI’s eGuide on Developing a Content Marketing Strategy.

Reblogged from TechCrunch:

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Pro tip: You can now watch, listen, and subscribe to our TechCrunch TV videos on iTunes. In addition to the video versions, each segment has an audio-only podcast, perfect while driving or working out.

A few weeks ago, we quietly relaunched our redesigned iTunes site. After some tweaking, we're now ready to get the word out.

Our most popular podcasts have been CrunchWeek, our weekly tech news wrap-up show from our writers which publishes on Sunday, and TC Cribs, which takes a VIP peek inside a startup's office.

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Reblogged from Beloved Brands:

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Almost 20 years ago, I graduated from the Western Business School, at the time is was clearly ranked in the Top 20 in the world for Business Schools.  At one point, I remember reading we were the top ranked non-US school.  At the time, Western positioned itself as the "Harvard of Canada" and it was clearly the best business school in Canada.  

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A few weeks ago, we ran this post about the innovative offers from auto manufacturers trying to lure customers to purchase. For those interested in the auto industry, yesterday’s issue of the Mint had this article about Japanese car manufacturers tweaking strategies to suit Indian markets.

• Escape Velocity Team

This brings up the point about IoT and home automation and the technologies available to the home consumer. While we can discuss forever which technology is best, I think that we manufacturers of home automation products aught to at least consider the consumer mindset and acceptance and not the technologies we choose to use.

In one of the LinkedIN forums the issue of technology was bounced back and forth. It was stated by the forum originator that their technology was the standard for home automation. My response was that we really needed to look at the SALES figure first before portraying any technology as a fact of life. What actually is selling and in which markets is a greater indicator of how the market is moving then it is listing advantages that can easily be applied to other communications technologies. Since home control and home automation is yet to be defined by the mass consumer, it stands to reason that it’s too early to predict the winner in any market as volatile and with as much churn as the consumer markets. Key players in this scenario must include GSM and WiFi/Bluetooth which are not going away any time soon. The telecoms are doing quite a game change when it comes to penetrating the home environment with their “internet of things” and “connected home” scenarios.

GSM along with WiFi/Bluetooth, in my opinion, stands to win the technology race. I use my garage door opener every day but I really don’t analyze what technology it uses. I just want the garage door to open and shut as needed; the same goes for using other devices in my home –they work when I need them to work. For any home technology to become dominant it stands to reason that mass consumer acceptance is critical. Not everyone out there is an engineer or a technical wizard or a technology marketing expert. Consumer behavior does tend to gravitate towards the ‘herd mentality” or “ keep up with one’s peer” mindsets. That, more so then anything else, sets the trend for which technologies survive and which are relegated to industrial markets verses consumer markets. ZigBee, Z-Wave, HomePlug, and the many different communications approaches used for home M2M connectivity eventually must address the IoT solution. Somewhere in the scheme of things, the consumer must be able to connect with the Internet and smart phones/tablets/mobile devices as a means of command and control –which brings us back to GSM and WiFi/Bluetooth.

Reblogged from Kevin Redford:

America is FAST becoming a service based economy again and Generation Y'ers, right there in the middle of it, are going to find themselves in over their heads. Gen Y has been sold a unique bill of goods regarding technology and communication. Taught that traditional communication such as Face to Face and Telephone communication are likely on the way out, Generation Y has focused on digital communication such as Social Networking, Email, and HTML Code.

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Reblogged from Stand by...:

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     The spark that Guglielmo Marconi flung across the Atlantic in 1901 heralded a new world order.  From that moment forward, information transmission was forever divided between landlines and airwaves.  The past verses the future.  More than a century later the disruptive forces of technological innovation are still real—if Marconi could only see us now.

     The palm-sized computers we now hold in our hands have sparked an applications revolution that is every bit the information game-changer that Marconi ushered in with his wireless telegraph. 

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