Natasha Khan

What is your New Years resolution?

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If you are a woman between the ages of 18 and 34, then the bulk of your holiday shopping starts at Thanksgiving. Though the time leading up to Thanksgiving will influence them in their buying decisions!

There was a full article in WSJ plugging the social plugin that Facebook has been pitching to businesses and website owners. The sales pitch:

For e-commerce sites, adding a “Like” button lets shoppers quickly share a product or deal with their Facebook connections, potentially encouraging them to buy the product themselves.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703787904575403512335975240.html#ixzz13acRpgmE

But they don’t mention that Share buttons on most websites also enable customers to do this, and in my opinion, do it better. Share buttons allow users to populate an image before they share the link with friends. If you are in any industry where visualization matters (fashion, beauty), the like button is not serving you best. 

Facebook does have a solution for this, layering your Share plugin over the “like” social plugin, but other than slight tracking data, what are the benefits of doing that?

The flip side of the story is best told by “flip side stakeholder” Tim Schigel, CEO of ShareThis.

That is a change from when users share content through sharing buttons developed by other companies. Those companies, including ShareThis, which has buttons on 800,000 websites, can collect data to help sites understand their audience.

If online publishers lose data about user behavior, it could deprive them of revenue from selling advertising that is targeted to particular users, said Tim Schigel, chief executive of ShareThis. Advertisers are increasing their spending on such targeted ads faster than that for traditional ads that appear across an entire website at a given time, no matter who is visiting.

Knowing which customers share website information is valuable because it lets publishers see which users are influential, meaning they drive a lot of traffic back to their sites. “To the extent that any third party comes in and knows more and can extract more value than the publishers themselves, they can be worried,” Mr. Schigel said.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703787904575403512335975240.html#ixzz13adi9SQq

I love Facebook, but I don’t think the Like Social Plugin offers enough value. 

I’ll go with Undercover Geek :)

thedailywhat:

Infographic of the Day: “The Evolution of the Geek”

I will henceforth be referring to my style as a “mix of tech and Urkel.”

(Embiggen)

[flowtown.]

During the Facebook Success Summit, speaker Jay Baer discussed how to be seen in Facebook’s “Top News” newsfeed. He elaborated that newsfeed standing is determined by the Edge Rank, an algorithm that reflects three components:

• Affinity Score: The amount you have historically engaged with content by a person/page increases your affinity to the content creator.
• Timing: The more recent the post, the higher it ranks.
• Weight: As posts are commented on, liked and shared by other Facebook users and their networks, their overall weight increases.

SmartBlog covered the seminar and added that “only 35% of Facebook users log in during the workday.” This is often due to company internet restrictions. 

Using the Edge Rank, there are some clear goals for Facebook success (related to organic traffic). 

• Bring repeat viewers and participants to your fanpage. The more they interact with you, the more they will see your posts. That means, when people interact with you, make sure to interact with them. They’ll get a notification and love you a little extra. :)
• I wouldn’t encourage posting more frequently. Frequent posts may be cool on Twitter, but look like Spam on Facebook. Instead, I would encourage posting when other companies/orgs are not. Often businesses post during the day, that means you should throw in some evening posts. Taking into consideration that most users are not logging in during work, it is a win win situation.
• Make your content GOOD! Find the formula that gets the highest interactions from your fans. I’ve seen that simple updates and interesting topics that focus on the individual (not the brand), yield the best results. 

Who are your favorite brands on Facebook?

A recent eMarketer post stated, “ExactTarget’s “Subscribers, Fans and Followers” report found Facebook users who “like” brands are even more likely to place importance on showing off their brand choices to friends than brand followers on Twitter or subscribers to opt-in marketing emails.”

For a fashion company that should emphasize protecting your brand on your Facebook page and/or social networking site. Customers identify with brands when they are aspirational or a reflection of how they see themselves.  To support this, the ideal Facebook page should let the customer immerse themselves in your brand, similar to the website experience. 

Nowadays, liking a company happens on the company website and not the fanpage, thanks to the Facebook likebox. This is an ideal situation, because the customer is totally immersed in the brand and probably at the height of identifying with it! The difficultly it taking the step to implement the like box on the website, where we would take up real-estate and make the facebook affiliation prominent. 
 

Trust in the Social World

Recently there has been a lot of buzz about “social graphs”, which measures who influences you the most online. Facebook launched the “Like” button with the research that Facebook friends rank pretty high on the social graph. This interesting study from Invoke Solutions (via eMarketer) left us with the following key points:

• Individuals: Most trusted information was posted by people respondents knew. But blog posts were more likely to be trusted “completely” than posts on Facebook, and trust dropped off sharply when it came to Twitter, even among friends.
• Brands: Postings by brands or companies were trusted less, but levels were similar whether companies posted to Facebook or blogs.
• Secondary Sites: Online community sites did not hold the same trustworthiness as Facebook or blogs, whether postings were made by companies or fellow members
• Twitter: And across all categories of content creator, Twitter streams were trusted less than other media.

I am not shocked that Twitter ranks low on trust.  There are far fewer “fake accounts” or secondary accounts on Facebook than there is on Twitter. Fake personas and multiple personas run rampant on Twitter. The only legit accounts are large company accounts and verified accounts. This is prompting me to sign up for a verified account for some extra umph!

Also, it makes sense that a blog post, a piece of journalism would be easier to trust than a 140 character thought, especially since tweets are actually only 77 characters on average.

Asked to rate what was most important to making social sites trustworthy, users’ top concerns are below:

According to comScore’s “Women on the Web” white paper, women account for just less than half of US internet users but make up a disproportionately large share of online buyers, at nearly 58%.

Their share of transactions is even higher, with more than 61.2% of online purchases made by women. They also spent more than men, accounting for 58.2% of the total, suggesting men tend to make fewer purchases of bigger-ticket items, while women are more frequent buyers with a lower average order value.

(Via eMarketer)

If you’ve seen “What Women Want” starring Mel Gibson, then you were clued in at an early age about women’s buying power. Mel Gibson’s lead character tried desperately to get inside the mind of women to understand how to market to them. The research shows that women’s buying power also translates online.

Will the next round of executives be hanging out in Farmville? :)

Here are the top categories:

So eMarketer published this report from The Neilson Company about who spends the most time on Facebook in the U.S. Asians won by a mile.

I think there are probably a lot of things that factor into this. But as an Asian, I think one of the major reasons is to connect with our ethnic community. Unless you live in a big city in the U.S., you have limited access to family and cultural outlets.

Facebook allows me to put my unique subculture at my fingertips, allowing me easier access to connections, relationships, and discussions that are important within this subculture.

I bet a study would show that more Asians meet their significant other online. Also, more Asians go to Cultural conventions and events, and afterward, use Facebook and other social media sites to keep track of these contacts.

So it could be deduced that the social graph of an Asian Facebook user is more impactful and influential.

Some fun facts from a new study released earlier today by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research (via Mashables).

The study sampled the habits of 1,605 adults using social media between May and June of this year in an attempt to break down their social media habits. While some of the results are in line with previous studies we’ve read, others simply shocked us (e.g. 42% of young women think posting photos of themselves “visibly intoxicated” is okay).

• More than half of young women (57%) say they talk to people online more than face-to-face.
•  A full 39% of them proclaim themselves Facebook addicts, while 34% of young women make Facebook the first thing they do when they wake up, even before brushing their teeth or going to the bathroom.
• 21% of women age 18-34 check Facebook in the middle of the night
• 63% use Facebook as a networking tool
• 42% think it’s okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated
• 79% are fine with kissing in photos
• 58% use Facebook to keep tabs on “frenemies”
• 50% are fine with being Facebook friends with complete strangers
• 50% of women believe that it’s just fine to date people they’ve met on Facebook, compared to 65% of men. 6% of women use it to “hook up” (20% of men do the same).
• 49% of women believe it’s fine to keep tabs on a boyfriend by having access to his accounts (42% of men think the same way). 9% of women have broken up their relationships via Facebook, as compared to a full 24% of men.
• 54% of 18-24 year old women do not trust Facebook with their private information, and 89% agree that “you should never put anything on Facebook that you don’t want your parents to see.”

I can see why women are obsessed with Facebook. The same way women can be obsessed with their hair, wardrobe, or significant other, they can be obsessed with Facebook.  It is an extension of the perceived self, and unlike your hair or significant other, you can control it.

As a marketer, the smartest thing to do is to help your Facebook following use you as a resource to express themselves and their identity. What are they telling the world by fanning you? What are they telling their friends by interacting with you and having it show up on their newsfeed?

The easiest and smartest marketing is to help people do what they are already doing, but better and more efficiently. E.g. carrying around mp3s by burning them on to CD was completely changed by the mp3player.

From this research we can see that women want to express their best self via Facebook, whatever their interpretation of that maybe…fashionista, hippie, or too cool for facebook. How will you help them express that? :)

As communication shrinks down to 140 characters the quality of writing associated with it is also degrading! Even though we live in a world where you are expected to understand “omg wat r u wearing thats soooo ly”, the truth is most people would prefer the English language we were taught in grade school.

I’m pretty lucky to have a Micromedia editor, by the name of Natalie B., that helps to manage ModCloth’s Twitter content.  After several months of editing, she was able to formulate the following rules for proper Twitter grammar.

1. Always try to follow conventional grammar rules when you have enough characters.
2. Paraphrase badly written tweets that you plan to ReTweet! Just because someone else said it doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for it.
3. Only use abbreviations that are widely recognized, e.g. w/, hr, 1-9, btw, ha ha and smilies.
4. Industry lingo is ok, such as ly (last year) used in the fashion industry, when your audience is in the industry.
5. Use ampersands(&) whenever possible, save the characters!
6. Slang is OK if it’s appropriate for your audience. For ModCloth we often use “fave” and “<3” because its the language of our customers.  But everything should be done in moderation.
7. Punctuation is always important. The old rules still work, you only need one exclamation point. Multiple exclamation points, along with ALL CAPS, just look spastic.

Do you have any more Twitter Grammar rules? We’d love to hear them! You can also apply these rules to status updates. :)

I’ve been utilizing yammer for the last couple of years in the workplace. It is a great tool for real time communication within medium size to large companies. In the process of training recruits on how to use Yammer, I found no resources to that quickly and easily share “Yammer etiquette”. Just some common sense information on how to not be the annoying person in the company. :)

1. Sharing what you are working on once a day is a good thing. Also, posting questions to the community is a good thing. But you want to be careful that you are not posting so often that you are annoying co-workers with Yammer updates.
2. Utilize groups! For non work related topics, utilize the Yammer groups to discuss interests, hobbies, social events, and hot topics.
3. If a conversation only involves 2 people, take it to private messages. Yammering a 2 person conversation is like standing next to someones desk and discussing very loudly a topic that doesn’t concern them. Not cool!
4. It’s Ok to observe for a bit before you participate.  No one will think you are creepy. Get a footing for which groups you want to participate in and how to optimize your participation (hashtags etc).
5. Pay attention to your conversations. If you start a conversation make sure you stay engaged.

The tagline is “find out when it’s best to tweet someone”. Do you find this accurate?

In a recent article, Brian Solis address the ongoing controversy of what makes a “social media expert”.

The truth is that experts, whether it’s social media or any field for that matter, are inspired by possibilities, but proven through experience and the ongoing quest to transform theory into practice. The more seasoned experts will also have figured out how to establish business metrics and in turn, design campaigns that map to objectives.

It’s this process of asking and answering questions that forms the framework for how and what to measure…But you can’t measure what you don’t know to track. You can’t start if you don’t know what questions to ask. I believe that programs inspired by insight, data, and business-caliber goals (before you start experimenting) set the foundation for a program that might share some attributes with many of the “how to’s” that are out there, but are unique in their content, context, execution, support, and measurement – and that’s the point.

Much of the information online is helpful for inspiring creativity and direction. But, it’s up to each one of us to get the answers through the hard work necessary to see how any of this applies to our unique challenges and opportunities that face us today and tomorrow. We have to become the very experts in our space that we once sought to answer our own questions.

In A lot of words he is saying that consultants (such as he) can provide the “insight, data, and business-caliber goals” for your social media program, but they can’t give you the “content, context, execution, support, and measurement.” These 5 unique factors are something that come from the “soul” of the business, it’s what makes social media an intimate experience with your customers. I found the remark that we can all be “social media experts” to be a bit fluffy, though. Not everyone has the time to ask the questions, practice the theory, etc as he states is necessary. I thought it was worth the share. It is a pretty honest statement, and sure takes a lot of heat off the consultants. :)

What do you think makes a social media expert?

In a recent goshtv.net interview, social media professionals in the fashion industry were asked, “who is doing social media well?” One of my favorite social media bloggers Macala Wright Lee of FashionablyMarketing.Me was kind enough to mention ModCloth!

Here are my profiles of the 7 other organizations that were mentioned by the experts in the field. I am always looking for peers in the field that really get it and are completely invested in their social media programs! I thought I would dissect what they are doing based on my requirements of engaging discussions/content, consistency, and creativity!

Burberry - referred by Fox Rothschild fashion attorney Staci Riordan

http://twitter.com/burberry
I’m a bit surprised at how few Twitter followers they have, coming in at 20K followers. Probably because they only update once or twice a week.
http://www.facebook.com/burberry
What they lack in followers on Twitter, they certainly make up on Facebook. With 1 million plus followers. Their content is a collection of photos, videos, and marketing updates. It’s clear from the feedback that the photos are the most popular. I am not incredibly impressed by the interaction, their facebook page is more of a PR vehicle than a community. They don’t respond to fan comments and “discussions” isn’t even enabled! I think the clincher for me is that they haven’t updated for a month.
http://www.youtube.com/burberry
Nice video quality, but basically a space to archive videos.

Bonobos - referred by Fox Rothschild fashion attorney Staci Riordan

Let me put out the disclaimer, I have affection for Bonobos because they think of ModCloth as their soul sister. They’ve tweeted at Modcloth several times proclaiming their affection. I also caught them on the Today Show last year, and they seem like pretty nice guys.

http://twitter.com/bonobos
Their humble Twitter account is managed by their CEO Andy Dunn, who uses it mostly for conversations, promotions, and questions to followers. I’m not a huge fan of founders manning the official Twitter account, it has an association to “founders syndrome” for me.
http://twitter.com/bonobosninjas
This is more of the company account, named after their blog. Most likely, Customer Service tweets sent to Andy are responded to here. But hasn’t picked up steam yet!
http://www.facebook.com/bonobos
Almost 5K fans, the page is still small enough to have an real connection with fans. Bonobos takes the time to answer comments (points) and also posts of a variety of things (fashion, style advice), it’s not just a self promotion vehicle. It’s a community of athletic men into style. Outside of the very odd body building pictures and bad tan photos in the fan photo area, and the wasted realestate in the tabs with the inclusion of the Sign up for NL tab, they do a fairly good job of keeping a FB presence.

Scootergirls - referred by Fox Rothschild fashion attorney Staci Riordan

http://twitter.com/LAScooterGirls
http://www.facebook.com/pages/ScooterGirls-Clothing/133386302973
Seth Godin says you need a tribe of 1000 to really have a movement, if so, ScooterGirls is about 300 short on Twitter. They also have 163 likes on Facebook. Sure it’s not about the numbers, but it seems like the only person they are talking to or listening to is themselves.

Hayden-Harnett - referred by Macala Wright Lee of FashionablyMarketing

http://twitter.com/hayden_harnett
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hayden-Harnett/16959276125
They do a fairly good job of chatting with their customers and potential customers online, and sharing much of their company culture & lifestyle.  I’m not a huge fan of the PR and salesy copy on the Twitter stream.
http://www.youtube.com/haydenharnett
I have to say, I have a fascination with seeing what’s inside people’s purses. So I kind of loved the “Going Downtown” video. PS. It’s pretty amazing how much stuff they cram in these bags!! It’s a pretty low activity page otherwise.

Need Supply Co. - referred by Macala Wright Lee of FashionablyMarketing

http://twitter.com/needsupply
I’m pretty disappointed by their Twitter stream, it is mostly product updates mixed in with conversation. I am totally against Twitter feeds.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Need-Supply-Co/28398760868
Much to my disappointment, they channel the same feed to their Facebook page!

For me, this list of fashion companies using Social Media well is going downhill. My morale is low, but I am going to give these last two companies a fair observation.

Kate Spade - referred by Macala Wright Lee of FashionablyMarketing

http://twitter.com/katespadeny
Right away, I appreciate their use of the “#thingswelove” hashtag in the bio and encouraging other people to participate. What a fun positive theme to a Twitter page. Definitely a good idea to pass on! There is a very real voice to all the tweets. When its mother’s day, they give general mother’s day advice, they don’t push a product. I love it.
http://www.facebook.com/katespade
The “Things We Love” theme carries over to their Facebook page. They really really get it! Great brands think like party planners and curators, they’ve really hit the nail on the head with this campaign. My only issue is that there is conversation on the fanpage. None of the customers are attended to!

LOFT- referred by Macala Wright Lee of FashionablyMarketing

http://twitter.com/Loft
Surprisingly this Ann Taylor brand only has 900 followers on Twitter.  They are very good at responding to individuals and keeping a conversational tone.
http://www.facebook.com/LOFT
Pretty fab Facebook page. They are engaged with customers on the wall, the discussion board is well managed, they use photo albums in interesting ways (e.g. Sunglasses to Fit Your Face). I also like that becoming a fan gives you access to exclusive fashion tips and not deals, since they are not a promotion/price driven brand. But at the same time, I would want genuine fans, people who don’t need to be coerced into loving you. Many times FBML pages can look very “magazine-y”, they were able to bring in socialization functionality (voting, comments), which was a nice touch.