1. A Startup Store

As the founder of the tiny NYC story, Rachel Shectman had a dream to start telling stories through merchandising.

Using marketing tactics and the age-old art of storytelling, she’s reinventing her store, known as A Startup Story, every month or so with a new theme and new products (even a new name, although the location will remain the same). Her goals are to curate like a magazine, change the look and feel like an art gallery and sell things like a regular retail store.

Shectman’s current catchphrase is “the future of retail will be less about consumption and more about community.” she furthers this statement by clarifying that the energy that comes along with online communities needs to show up offline if it’s going to continue to thrive.

If her store’s a success (it’s still in a sort of beta while they work out the kinks of an ever changing space), there might just be a new blueprint in the retail market place. One where community is at the forefront.

2. Twitter now has weekly email digests

Twitter announced Monday that you can now opt in to receive a weekly Twitter recap. Using algorithms, Twitter will decide what content is the most relevant. The email will also feature engaging tweets that were seen by those you follow (even if you don’t follow the same accounts they do).

This rollout will be available by default but can be opted out of by managing your notification preferences. Personally, the concept is interesting and a great way to try and catch up with the ever changing stream of updates. After all, who has time to keep up with every single thing that people tweet about. J

3. Google Docs now lets you do research straight from your document

Google’s been rolling out updates at an almost constant pace the last few weeks. And while people are still adjusting to Google Drive, the Docs team has rolled out a way to do all your Internet research straight from your document.

Using a new “Research” Bar, you can insert, cite or preview a website to aid in your project. Considering most people use Google as their first choice in search engine, the ability to do this in window as you type. New websites open as expected in a separate tab or window, but the initial ability to search without losing your place in the document or opening up yet another screen clogging window is certainly something to celebrate.

One of the multitude of speakers enlisted to discuss social media was 14 year old Adora Svitak, a renown author, educator and speaker. She made a case for social empowerment and the draws that truly spark the Millennial generation when it comes to social media.

Adora Svitak at Mashable Connect

Covering several of the larger social movements (using Facebook and Google Docs as replacements for traditional study groups and how memes are the new culture gap) the highlight of her talk is explanation of the type of marketing that really speaks to the digitally native generation.

The two main draws? Contests and Causes. In other words, highly engaging content that requires serious participation.

For contests she highlights campaigns that went beyond simple “enter and win” schemes. Citing Vans as an example, she explains their promotion that encouraged fans to decorate the plain shoe and post their creations to Facebook. One  friend posted her shoes and received 40 or so likes in mere minutes and someone even asked to buy the shoes. Certainly more gratifying than the average contest.

The Causes is a little harder to pin down. Youthful idealism spurs this movement forward and companies like Pepsi Co. and JP Morgan Chase have had success with the campaigns Pepsi Refresh and Chase Community Gives respectively. She points out that while Millennials don’t have money, they like to have their ideas heard and enjoy doing good in ways they can within their means.

Sites like Kiva.org have the right idea, using Micro-loans to allow people to use the same money to go a long way with low-interest rates and group spending. (A popular group manned mostly by teens is the Nerdfighter group with over $625,000 loaned by about 21,000 people. One glance at the page shows just how young most of those lenders are.

The Nerdfighter Lending Group

Want to learn more from the tiny guru on how you can make your social media Millennial friendly? Check out the video here.

What you’ll do:

• Gathering qualitative data through Advanced Google search and tools such as Sysomos and Scout Labs.
• Assisting in qualitative interviews and coding interview data.
• Working with the Strategy and Research team to analyze data and develop insights.
• Analyzing and reporting on quantitative research.

What you’ll have:

• Academic degree;
• Past experience in online qualitative research;
• Proven ability to effectively manage your time and deliverables;
• An eye for accuracy and attention to detail;
• Hands-on mentality;
• Experience using advanced Google search;
• Excellent communicative and written skills in English;
• Experience using Social Media Monitoring Tools is a plus.

If this sounds like you, please get in touch with your resume and references.

1. Doodle.ly

With Draw Something’s daily users dropping drastically, it’s time to put a new social drawing app into the market. At least that’s what Doodle.ly wants you to believe. Heralding itself as a drawing based Instagram, the NYC startup has launched a website and a free iPad app.

Doodle.ly

Their primary audience are between 18 and 24 years of age, and while the platform is pretty good, the controls take some getting use to, meaning that of the roughly 300,000 doodles on the site, most are rough to put it nicely.

That’s not to say that it’s not a fun way to blow off a few minutes or sketch something quickly (although if you’re looking for an iPad app, around the office we’re very parital to Paper by FiftyThree.)

2. Journalist Live-Tweets his own arrest in Moscow

Kevin O’Flynn a journalist in Moscow on assignment for The Guardian found himself under arrest during the protests surrounding Putin’s inauguration as Russian president. The story takes an unusual turn however when he goes from journalist in a potentially dangerous scenario to one who took matters into his own hands by livetweeting the entire arrest from his smartphone.

Beginning with a short tweet stating his arrest after being cleared as a journalist minutes prior, he caught the attention of his Twitter followers who sent well wishes and inquires as to what he was being charged with.

Twitpic from the police van

Unable to reply at first, he instead sent a photo from the inside of the police van. His detainment lasted only 7 minutes, but the fact that he was able to capture it all in a place that was both live and has traceability is what makes this fascinating.

Twitter should use this opportunity to see if it can create a sort of system to be used in more serious situations.

1. Tumblr creates Storyboard

Tumblr’s taking a crack a curation with the launch of storyboard.tumblr.com. An initiative started in early February with the hiring of an editorial team (including staff from The Daily Beast), the final result is a blog curated by hand of the best stories on Tumblr, nominated by its users through the hashtag #storyboard.

storyboard.tumblr.com

Started only 6 days ago, the content is all from bigger names to start, which sort of defeats the purpose, but hopefully this will change once people start using the tag. One thing is for certain though, Tumblr is really trying to cover every base possible to keep itself trendy and relevant in the social space. Whether their efforts will lead to success, or if the platform has to look deeper into adapting its mechanics to stay alive, only time will tell.

Dr. Friedman, the chief research officer at TNS points out the major problems come from brands imagining that social media is just like traditional media in an online space.  Traditional media, defined broadly as passive engagement based experiences like TV ads, still ranks higher per single person engagement than social media. However, the social media engagements while smaller in size are more meaningful. This divide seems to confuse even the most forward thinking of companies and they’re at a loss as to how to justify keeping up with social media campaigns and platforms.

Friedman is quick to point out in his article that the divide can be embraced and used to a brands advantage as long as they use research (such as the following findings from the TNS Digital Life survey)

·       Sixty percent of U.S. consumers who use social networks say that they are a place where they don’t want to be bothered by companies or organizations.

·       At the same time, 45% say that social networks are a good place to find out about brands — but 50% say that even a single negative review on a social-media site can affect their brand decisions.

·       Most people who join brand communities will do so for mercenary reasons (65% say they do so to get coupons), but many also do so to express their passion for a brand (45%).

·       Most of those who write about brands on social media say they do so to praise brands (61%), but nearly as many say they write about brands to express negative feelings (45%).

The site lays out a lot of information on consumer/brand interactions and not all of it looks positive. Instead of seeing the negative, companies looking to improve or create social strategy should approach their initiatives using the positive knowledge gained.

the TNS Digital Life front page

Consumers that are interacting are more often than not brand advocates and while most want to receive something in return for their efforts, they would likely participate similarly if they felt they were part of a conversation or movement.

Dr. Friedman uses the phrase “let social be social” in his blog post and the sentiment is powerful. By focusing less on the media purpose of social media and more on the social engagement, brands are likely to find the response they want.

So the question is, will brands start to listen?

1. Skype gives emoticons a human touch.

Skype’s been riffing on the lack of conversation over the Internet for a few weeks now. Their latest ads hit home with ‘When did it become okay to text mum happy birthday?” and “Humans were made to look, listen and feel”. But their latest digital venture really takes the human interaction on the web to the next level.

Introducing the Humoticon (which Skype would have you believe heralds the end of the ). The company has paired with Facebook, which was fully integrated into the latest Skype update, to help users create short gif images or single pictures that you can use instead of the usual string of keystrokes.

Skype's Humoticon

The only downside, while the gifs are easy to make and tons of fun to use, they’re not embeddable into the Skype platform right now.

2. The Digital Life of a Pop Star – How online branding even applies to pop stars.

This find is more fascinating than news worthy. The New York Times has taken a dive into the two very different online personas of Rihanna and Beyoncé. While the article is quick to point out both performers keep within their established personas, their use of their chosen media platforms enhances the illusions they’ve created.

Rihanna, known for her dance club anthems and party girl lifestyle posts dozens of breezy updates to Instagram and Twitter. The updates are raw and not filtered by any PR company. She’s been known to lash out at the media, including MTV and posts gratuitous shots of her face reminiscent of most teen girls’ profiles.

From Rihanna's Instagram

Beyoncé on the other hand controls her social media carefully using only Tumblr to communicate with her fans. All of her images are clean and professional looking. The intimate subject matter (particularly those pictures with her family) still maintains the distant, ethereal quality that her persona is built on.

A post on Beyonce's Tumblr

Besides being a fascinating look into how to create a brand out of a real person, the article makes you think about the persona you’re also creating online.

3. Super Mario for your desk

Johan Peitz wants you to waste a little time at work and play his single screen Super Mario summary. There’s not much to say other than how cool this is and what a great time waster this is when you’re stuck on hold on the phone.

Super Mario Brothers re-imagined

So give it a shot if you’ve got a few minutes, but be warned, it’s addicting.

Intrigued? Click below to see why I think this graphic has nailed why the online customer experience is having such a positive impact on brands.

Monetate’s customer experience graphic takes viewers step by step through the best possible customer experience as they transition from an offline format to an online environment. While the examples are strictly retail, the lessons are great takeaways no matter what your business.

The Ultimate Consumer Experience Infographic by Monetate

Now there’s been lots of articles and graphics about the benefits of taking the customer experience online, but I’ve never seen one that lays out the key metrics benefits so clearly. It’s important to realize just how much of your business can be altered using a social platform online to create a positive community environment for your customers to engage with both your brand and each other on.

The numbers have all been seen before, but the stand out on this graphic is the section entitled “move the offline customer experience online”. Using a step by step guide to show how the offline experience can be turned into a more lasting online one, the guide makes it clear that an interaction with the customer no longer sensibly stops at the metaphorical door.

My favourite piece of this puzzle is the very end ‘surprise and delight’ which highlights some of the many ways you can make a lasting impression with bonus content. The examples they use work best for a consumer retail experience, but the idea is simple enough. Go beyond a customers expectations as often as possible and make a real human connection that will warm them to what really makes your company and product unique.

79% of people who said they were engaged with a brand online said they would purchase from them. (Forrester)

That’s compared to the 41% of non-fans who had intent to purchase. This is according to a Forrester study done regarding big brands such as Coca-Cola, Blackberry, Best Buy and Walmart. Those surveyed also stated that as a fan they were more likely to recommend the brand (74% of fans versus 38% of non-fans).

So it’s clear that having fans is beneficial in theory, but the practical numbers are always good to arm yourself with when building a business proposal.

By 2015 the predictive revenue of the social commerce market is $300 billion dollars annually. (Buddy Media/SpinBack)

In 2010 annual sales were already past $175 billion dollars annually. Sites like Groupon and Living Social use the shared power of engaged fans and crowd sourcing to generate astronomical single day sales, such as the Groupon/Gap campaign that led to $11 Million in revenue. Smaller companies such as baby & me have similar success, stating that 50% of all their online sales come from links shared on Facebook.

While most of the hard sales numbers come from direct offers on social media sites, the power of a review is just as likely to turn into cold hard cash.

By 2014, 53% of total retail sales will be affected by the Web (online and Web-influenced), as consumers increasingly use the Internet to research products before purchasing. (Forrester)

This stat speaks for itself. More and more, consumers trust their fellow consumers over traditional advertisements and sales pitches. Having a commerce enhanced social media plan will help turn positive reviews online into positive sales quickly. Creating content chains that will lead from story to sale is the best way to monetize on positive customer experiences.

Which leads us to our final stat:

It costs a business about 5-10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to sell to an existing one — and on average those current customers of yours spend 67% more than a new one. (Inc.)

Creating a positive and informative social media space helps give current customers extra value and keep them loyal to your products and brand. The right interaction and clear communication of benefits can create lasting relationships and the opportunity for bigger ventures then they might have attempted with a less personal, engaged experience.

Here’s an infographic that highlights the history of Social Commerce until Mid-2011.

Social Commerce: A History

1. Google enters the Online Storage/Collaboration Market with Drive

Tuesday Google launched it’s first real foray into Online Storage. A large step above the collaborative environment provided by Google Docs and the high quality, high capacity storage of Gmail, Drive is for storing any file for use anywhere.

Google Drive

And boy does it seem like the mean it. Similar to Dropbox, the free 5GB storage system lets you drop files from any device onto the cloud where they, in turn, will be accessible on all other devices.

The complete details as well as the user interface are vague but here’s the video with a complete explanation from Google.

2. Do you know the significance of this video?

If you do then you probably also know that it was uploaded 7 years ago this week marking over half a decade of cat videos and music videos (and so, so much more).  According to their stats page, in 2011, YouTube had over 1 trillion views  (about 140 views per living person). If that statistic’s not staggering enough 500 years of video are watched daily via Facebook.

Do you know the importance of this video?

Here’s their 5 year anniversary video and if you’re looking for even more, check out this summer’s VidCon dedicated to the whole online video phenomena (it’s run by the Vlogbrothers who just launched a secondary channel dedicated to teaching their fans, mostly teenagers, science and history)

3. The Hole Left by MySpace

Even with a MySpace (sorry, we should say My_______  ) about to have a major overhaul courtesy of Justin Timberlake, the site that was once the coolest place to be is now considered completely dead in the social space.

This might not seem like a big deal for most people who’ve moved on to the greener pastures of Facebook and Twitter to build online identities for themselves,  but the Huffington Post’s piece on the impact the death of MySpace has had on the music industry is one of the best.

The new front page of My________

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“If I heard about a DJ, rapper or band, I would type out myspace.com/theirname and get their full list of tour dates and venues….What website gives your all that info today? None! We have to juggle data from SoundCloud, YouTube and Twitter …..And you can forget searching for an artist website: MySpace made those obsolete, and now that it’s gone it left a hole even bigger than before it arrived…. Now if you want to reach out to a peer that you don’t know, you either look up their birth name and write to their personal Facebook page, which is very creepy, or you tweet them to follow you so that you can send them a short Direct Message. What is this, a telegram?”

It’s a lot to think about but worthwhile to consider what will happen if the same goes for LinkedIn or other niche networks that are progressing their respective industries.

1. Just like Facebook, Google+ now has a cover image option.

Google+ now has cover images enabled for a more Facebook like aesthetic

What’s this mean? This means the page is now more visually friendly and can tell the same powerful story that you can via Facebook’s cover photo. There’s also an option to instead use 5 of your most recent photos (much like Facebook’s old design) if that works better for your branding. They’ve also enlarged the size of the profile picture in the top right corner for a real visual impact.

2. Now you can quickly browse who’s sharing and +1-ing your content.

The Dalai Lama's most recent post shows all his +1s and reshares

What’s this mean? Now that this feature is viewable to everyone, there’s a social push to be seen actively engaging with the page, something that will hopefully encourage users to participate more for visibility.

3. Trending topics and hashtags are now on Google+.

Hashtags are now trackable on Google+

What’s this mean? This works exactly how it does on Twitter, meaning if you’re using a hashtag someone who isn’t in your circle can view your public posts. This is a great way to help people find your page and to keep up on the trends of the moment (an interesting note is how different these trending topics are compared to those shown at any given time on Twitter).

4. New “Hangouts” based on topics.

Click the highlighted button to turn any post into a Hangout

What’s this mean? This is another great way to network on a more personal level. Pages can start their own Hangouts based on public posts they’ve made by selecting the camera on the bottom left of the corresponding post. For more about Hangouts check out Google’s official video.

5. Circle navigation is now customizable.

Circles - picture by Social Media Examiner

What’s this mean? This means that your nicely sorted circles can be sorted in order of importance, placing the two circles that are most important at the very top of your navigation bar. So if you’re getting an influx of fans that need to be sorted accordingly, you can do it quickly based on the importance you place, not how Google+ sees it.

6. A bigger focus on high quality photos and videos.

The new picture layout - picture by Mashable

What’s this mean? Google+’s focus on the visuals is a big bonus. They’ve eradicated borders and added a lightbox image of all the photos in a particular album. This means you can conceivably use this feature for slideshows or presentations as you would in Slideshare.

7. There’s now a suggestions bar.

Interests popup

What’s this mean? The more circles your page is put into the more likely you are to appear here, but it’s also a great way to network based on similar interests. If you hoover your mouse over the link it also reveals a pop-up with a little information about the page itself.

8. It’s now easier to switch from ones personal account to page account.

The new page switch button

What’s this mean? To be honest this isn’t something huge, but it’s a big convenience for moderators as the previous switch took several clicks and made the whole process of updating far more tedious.

Has anyone tried any of the new changes with success? We discovered the hashtags last week and were pleasantly surprised. Next up, uploading a presentation to the photo gallery might just be in order.