Positive start for U.S. shopping season

Online retailers await ‘Cyber Monday'

"Online sales on Thursday and Friday, however, rose 11 per cent to $913-million, according to data released Sunday by comScore, an Internet research firm.

According to preliminary figures released Saturday by ShopperTrak, a research firm that tracks more than 50,000 outlets, sales rose 0.5 per cent to $10.66-billion Friday, compared with a year ago. That was on top of a 3 per cent increase last year."

Read full report from The Globe and Mail - The Associated Press

Choosing the Right Social Media Tools for Your Business [Video]

Staying on top of Social Media tools is a huge undertaking and I prefer to watch those that are leading the way and read their reviews. Then I choose which to test for myself. It's been said that "experience is the best teacher"; while I subscribe to the school of thought that "wisdom learns from other's experience".

All parents hope their child would be willing to learn from their experiences, that is after all why we walked both ways uphill to school barefoot. I do believe we can save a lot of time and money from learning who to follow and allow to influence our decisions. Mashable.com has proven to be an invaluable resource time and again as I keep up on whats happening in the wonderful world of Social Media.

Enjoy this video and article I found on the Mashable site. It is a daunting task to filter through and determine which Social Media tools are best suited for your business.



I encourage you to get started...pick one venue and build your web footprint!

Happy marketing!

Are you convinced of the need for Social Media?

Social Media....the buzz, the confusion, the variety and the Choice!

After spending over 20 years in the technology field, I decided to build my own website to promote my existing Gift & Incentive business online. Now everyone knows that the place to build retail businesses right now is online, correct?

In fact I was introduced to the S-Curve of technology - a theory by Harry S. Dent when I first began with an online business in 1999 and as predicted by this theory Internet shopping has passed the 10% mark in the past 10 years. Therefore, over the next ten years we are going to be witnesses to incredible growth.

With my product offering in the Gift & Incentive market and experience with website development from my full time job at a website solution company Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies, I decided to launch a website. Next came the marketing research...social marketing that is. I reviewed all the traditional marketing methods and put my plan together to begin with the less expensive social media arena.

After many, many hours I learned some incredible lessons about social networking and believe I was born for this time in history. Social marketing is nothing more than relationship building! This has always been and will always be the root of sales; customers are people that need to be respected, appreciated and provided with a value in order to part with their hard earned money.

There are incredible resources available to learn where and how to begin your path of creating a web footprint, regardless of your industry. I know the first thing I do when I meet a prospective client or source is to search them online to check their reputation. Have you checked yours? What does the first page of the searches tell you about your company?

Creating loyal customers is part and parcel of brand recognition, integrity and the relationship building. Customers purchase based on trust. I encourage you to do your homework, check out some of these resources and become proactive about your reputation. It won't consume you if you understand the big picture and know where to start and what to spend your time on.

I recommend reading this USA Today Article about More marketers use social networking to reach customers!

1) Chris Brogan is a NYT and WSJ best selling author for his book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust. Chris is a ten year veteran of using social media and technology to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Chris speaks, blogs, writes articles, and makes media of all kinds at chrisbrogan.com.

Here is a link to one of Chris's articles; Starting Your Social Media Case

2) Seth Godin's latest book, Tribes, is a nationwide bestseller, appearing on the Amazon, New York Times, BusinessWeek and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. It's about the most powerful form of marketing--leadership--and how anyone can now become a leader, creating movements that matter. The Miami Herald listed it among the best business books of 2008. Seth writes the most popular marketing blog in the world;
is the author of the bestselling marketing books of the last decade;
speaks to large groups on marketing, new media and what's next;
and is the founder of Squidoo.com, a fast-growing recommendation website.

Here is an excerpt from his blog; "Connecting people to people. Over and over again, that's what lasts online. Folks thought it was about technology and it's not."

3) Social Media training; that's right if you don't know where to begin, ask someone. Invest your money in someone that has done the research and let them shortcut your learning curve and teach you what works. Your future is in your hands! Feel free to contact me for direction and encouragement, it really is not difficult to maintain if you are setup correctly and ready to recognize that an hour a day online marketing is a fundamental part of business.

Wishing you all the success you are willing to work for!

OfficialWire: Four Tips For Effective Social Media Use

There is no question about it- social media are changing our lives. Here are four tips on the effective use of social media for individuals and companies

Social media loosely defines all types of communications channels where the contents are created and shared by the people. There are so many types of social media- blogs, flickr and other photo-sharing media, YouTube, LinkedIn, Multiply, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc. They have become so ingrained in people’s daily lives and in our society that they really are changing the way people communicate and even how they live their lives.

There are so many uses for social media, and individuals and companies decide how they can really benefit from them. Here are some of the things people should consider doing to maximize the full potential of social media:

Read full article by Lawrence Perry

STUDY: Time Spent on Social Networks Has Tripled

Social networking usage by Americans continues to soar. According to a new report from The Nielsen Company, Americans spent 17% of all their Internet time using social networking sites. This was nearly triple the time spent a year ago.

As users spend more time on social networks, advertisers are starting to take notice and move their campaigns to social networking sites. According to Nielsen, the online advertising spending on top social networks and blogs was estimated at $108 million for August 2009, a 119% increase over August 2008 figures.



Full article by by Christina Warren on www.mashable.com

Customer Acquisition and Retention Top Priorities - eMarketer

Social media big winner in marketing mix

Marketers’ top priorities for 2010 will be customer acquisition and retention, followed by thought leadership, according to a survey by virtual events provider Unisfair.

Six in 10 marketers polled said acquiring new customers would be critical in 2010, while 48% would focus on retaining current customers—a particularly important effort in the recession.

Read full articel on www.emarketer.com

The Real-Time Web: A Primer, Part 3

This is part 3 of a three-part series on the fundamental characteristics of the real-time Web.

In part 1 and part 2, we looked at how the real-time Web is a new form of communication, creates a new body of content, is real time, is public, and has an explicit social graph associated with it. A final characteristic of the real-time Web is that it carries with it an implicit model of federation.

A number of sources both generate and consume real-time streams. As a result, many of these new companies are becoming communication carriers, passing their users' real-time threads through their networks to other networks. This is more than simply being open (i.e. more than allowing data to be imported and exported). Just as in shipping and transportation and other communication industries before it (telephone, Internet packets, and email, to name a few), the real-time Web is developing a federated model of transmission whereby companies formally or tacitly agree to facilitate transmission and perform actions on behalf of end-users within the eco-system.

It's hard to say whether this model has arisen because of a conscious strategic effort to build a new industry, or because building a fully closed world would have required just too many resources, or because of a collective effort among business friends and acquaintances to develop open products and open interactions so that cool new things could be created. It's probably a combination of all three, but considering the history of the people at Twitter and FriendFeed (Paul Buchheit, one of FriendFeed's founders, is credited with coining Google's unofficial "Don't be evil" slogan), the open and cool factors are probably a big part of the equation.

Read the entire article on ReadWriteWeb

The Real-Time Web: A Primer, Part 2

This is part 2 of a three-part series on the fundamental characteristics of the real-time Web.

In part 1 we looked at how the real-time Web is a new form of communication and creates a new body of content. The immediacy of the Twitter channel is a third fundamental characteristic of the real-time Web and one of its prime currencies, not surprising given the name of the space. Because of demand within the eco-system, quite a bit of effort is being made on storing, slicing, dicing, and disseminating information as quickly as possible. The fundamental implication of this activity (without any explicit markers being laid down) is that the velocity of information within the Web data system has just increased by an order of magnitude.

Click to view the entire article by ReadWriteWeb

The Real-Time Web: A Primer, Part 1

This is part 1 of a three-part series on the fundamental characteristics of the real-time Web.

Like cloud computing less than a year ago and social networking two years ago, the real-time Web is the new black on the tech circuit. The trend has been publicly bandied about this summer, starting with a few industry get-togethers, followed by several enthusiastic testimonials from investors (notably angel investor Ron Conway's widely posted list of ways for Twitter to monetize). It was then capped by a glowing report in BusinessWeek in early August.

That a serious trend is on the rise would not be doubted by those watching Twitter's rise in usage and media popularity. In fact, the debate this summer has centered not on whether something is afoot but rather on what to call it. Ron Conway favors "now media" in the belief that it's a media phenomenon. But most commenters, led by several bloggers and lead investors, prefer to call it "real-time Web" ("real-time stream" is also popular).

Click to view the entire article by ReadWriteWeb

Social Media is where you'll find your customers

Businesses spend billions on marketing to reach customers. When I decided to launch my retail business online, I did the research. Where are people today? Online!! How do I reach these people - marketing! Therefore, people + internet = social media. Now wading through the numerous social networks to find and transition leads to customers is a little more complicated and time consuming, thats where over 20 years of business and technology experience comes in....stay tuned for The Social Marketing Touch! In the meantime, enjoy this video:

Customer Loyalty Begins with Experience

So, Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This?
— Posting from my iPhone at LAX. I’m flying Virgin America today for the first time, and I’m waiting at the gate to board a flight to JFK/New York City.
I’m already impressed. When I walked up to the ticket counter, hip music was playing. The counter is lower than other airlines, so you don’t perceive a barrier between you and the ticket agent.
After my bags were checked, the agent stepped from behind the counter to hand me a boarding pass and point me to security. The way she handled ...

Using Twitter for Business

There is so much information out there on what is happening with social media/ especially twitter. Here is a resource as to what is happening with twitter and business. http://cli.gs/7r24JJ

Once you make the leap and start with twitter I highly recommend the most comprehensive Guide to Twitter I've found: http://cli.gs/MZyhLa

This link tells you who you are following that is not following you back and the opposite: http://friendorfollow.com/

Wishing you all the success you are willing to work for!