| TRENDING STORIES IN BUSINESS & MARKETING | | | | | | | ALL STORIES IN BUSINESS & MARKETING | | |
| Parking Panda Helps You Find, Rent & Rent Out Parking Spaces | |  The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: Parking Panda Quick Pitch: Find, rent or rent out a parking space online. Genius Idea: Earn money off your empty driveway. When Nick Miller was a student at Georgetown, he had, by his description, one of the best parking spots in the city. "If I could have sold that driveway, I probably would have gotten half a million for it," he joked. "But I was in college, it was empty, I never used it." It was that driveway that inspired Parking Panda, the three-person company of which he is cofounder and CEO. The site allows you to locate and rent parking spaces, and rent out your own stretch of car-friendly turf, similar to what AirBNB offers for housing. Right now the service is only available in Baltimore, MD, but Miller says his team is working to roll out in Washington, D.C. in the coming weeks, followed by Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. To find a parking space, simply enter an address. You can sort by distance and price, and view photos of the spot. You can also see how many others have "liked" or "disliked" a space, which is I suppose marginally helpful -- full-text reviews would be much better. Renting out your own parking spot is a simple process. You can connect to Facebook to import your basic details, then set a price and schedule to announce your spot's availability. You'll receive an email when someone has made a booking. Parking Panda will take a 20% cut. The startup has raised an undisclosed amount of funding and is still in the process of raising more, Miller tells us. Parking Panda has helped more than 1,000 people park in Baltimore, he adds, and has recently begun working with parking garages to increase its inventory. ParkWhiz, another online startup in the parking space, focuses on helping people find parking in major commercial lots. Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. |
| Google Execs, James Cameron Plan Space Venture | | Friday, April 20, 2012 11:21 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Google CEO Larry Page and the company's executive chairman Eric Schmidt have joined forces with Avatar director James Cameron for a space venture that will possibly involve mining asteroids. The venture, Planetary Resources Inc., plans to "overlay two critical sectors -- space exploration and natural resources -- to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP" and "help ensure humanity's prosperity," according to a press release issued by the company this week. More details will be forthcoming when the company formally unveils its plans at an event in Seattle on Tuesday. The three aren't the only ones involved. Planetary Resources was co-founded by former NASA Mars Mission Manager Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis, the commercial space entrepreneur. Charles Simonyi, a former top executive at Microsoft, and K. Ram Shriram, a Google director, are also backing the company. Ross Perot Jr., son of billionaire H. Ross Perot, is also a backer. For Cameron, the venture may be a case of life imitating art: His 2010 blockbuster Avatar's plot involved mining resources on alien planets. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, adventtr |
| Mobile Advertising: 5 DIY Tips for Small Businesses | | Friday, April 20, 2012 10:34 PM | Zephrin Lasker |
|  Zephrin Lasker is CEO of Pontiflex. Follow the company @Pontiflex. When it comes to digital advertising, small business owners (SMBs) must wade through a lot of industry jargon. Today, they have to make sense of words like SoLoMo, and tomorrow, they'll be evaluating marketing options with terms such as InstaLikes. The good news is that if SMBs can look beyond these buzzwords, there are a number of DIY digital advertising options that can help them get new customers and grow their businesses in the burgeoning mobile space. In fact, there are several self-serve ad platforms like Twitter that work with advertisers of all sizes. What's common among these solutions is that they make it easy for SMBs to go mobile. SEE ALSO: 7 Surprising Facts About Mobile Shoppers Going mobile makes sense now more than ever. According to a recent Borrell Associates Inc. survey, 48% of SMBs said they are "somewhat likely" or "very likely" to incorporate mobile into their advertising spending this year. Yet, navigating the self-service market can be tricky. Here are five tips on what to consider as you make that decision. 1. Go Local Mobile advertising has opened up a unique opportunity for SMBs. It allows them to target by geo-location and reach people as they're looking at what's around them. Even better, advertisers can target customers by zip code, which is particularly useful considering that most purchases are made in the immediate vicinity of one's home or office. So, when evaluating advertising options, small businesses should choose solutions that allow them to target customers by a location size that is most relevant to their business. 2. Think Beyond the Click In the online world, Google AdWords has proven to be wildly successful for advertisers. Google launched AdWords so that businesses could pay only for clicks and also create, manage, and optimize campaigns themselves. While there's no reason the mobile ad industry can't have its own AdWords, it's important to note that clicks don't necessarily work in a mobile world. A recent Harris Interactive survey proved nearly half of mobile users clicked on a mobile ad by mistake, meaning nearly half of mobile advertising dollars are wasted. In other words, when advertising on mobile, SMBs should be wary of solutions that charge on a cost-per-click basis. 3. Advertise in Mobile Apps According to Flurry data published earlier this year, time spent on mobile apps is growing, with people spending more than an hour and half per day using them. Meanwhile, they're spending less time on the mobile web. This data shows that people are becoming more and more engaged with apps. Couple that with a projection by IDC that more than 76.9 billion apps will be downloaded by 2014, and the message is simple: when thinking mobile advertising, think mobile apps. 4. Engage People with Relevant Deals According to another Harris Interactive survey, almost two-thirds of mobile app users prefer mobile ads that contain coupons, deals, or newsletters over commercial and video ads. So SMBs should try performance-branding solutions that engage people with deals and coupons. For the most impact, ads should also include a strong call to action and stress exclusivity. 5. Integrate Across Various Online Platforms People use mobile devices to interact with apps, read their emails, and engage with social media sites. This means SMBs should find one tool to engage people and follow-up with activities, such as email marketing, which can help drive in-store purchases, promote online sales, and increase their social footprint. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL |
| How Streaming Video Is Killing the DVD [INFOGRAPHIC] | | Friday, April 20, 2012 8:11 PM | Sam Laird |
|  Will the DVD die off like the LaserDisc and VHS Tape before it? There's a compelling case that streaming video is killing its predecessors. This year, it is estimated, there will be 3.4 billion movie views online, compared with 2.4 billion disc views. Streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus have racked up tens of millions of subscribers. It's easy to see why -- viewing a movie on a streaming service costs a fraction of the price of viewing a movie on disc. For production companies, the rise of digital streaming capabilities isn't necessarily good news. Movies in physical form are still far more profitable than streamed versions, and digital piracy is a thriving industry unto itself. In 2011, Fast Five, The Hangover Part II and Thor were illegally downloaded more than 25 million times. This is all according to online education site TheDegree360, which pulled reports from several sources to produce the infographic below. Pronouncing the DVD officially dead as of 2012 may be a bit hasty, but the graphic does give some perspective on just how dominant streaming video has become. When was the last time you bought a DVD? Let us know in the comments. Courtesy of: Online Degrees |
| Fan Growth Slowed Slightly After Brands Switched To Facebook Timeline [STUDY] | | Friday, April 20, 2012 6:23 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  About six weeks after the first brands began switching their Facebook Pages over to Timeline, some data is beginning to trickle out and it's not all good. Facebook has yet to offer any overall analysis of brand pages before and after the Timeline switchover, but Wildfire Interactive, a social media marketing firm, has studied 67 brands that adopted Timeline and has released those results exclusively to Mashable. The report looked at the brand pages' performance before and after the switch over a nine-week period. First, the good news: Likes are up an average of 22% per post and People Talking About This (PTAT) rose 25%. The bad news? Comments are down 6.5% per post and fan growth was "slowed slightly" for all brands on average, but brands with more than 1 million fans experienced twice the sluggishness of smaller brands. The company did not delineate the extent of that slowing. Generally, bigger brands fared less well than their smaller counterparts. Likes per post on brands with 1 million-plus fans jumped 10.9% while PTAT was up 11.9% and comments per post fell 7.4%. Wildfire CEO Victoria Ransom believes that comments are down with the Timeline redesign because "it's much more difficult to see users' comments, both on a brand's wall and in the newsfeed." Adding to the issue, "comments from other fans don't show up in brands' posts on users' newsfeeds and because Timeline is now so visual with so much real estate taken up by pictures and videos, comments are quickly collapsed. This encourages likes and shares more than comments," Ransom says. Wildfire's analysis is the second it's done since Timeline launched. The first, which was released at the end of February and included just 43 brands, showed lower engagement with brands with 10 million or more fans, but the new numbers, which encompass a longer period, do not. Another researcher, Simply Measured, noted a 46% increase in post-Timeline brand engagement in late March, but had looked at a smaller sample of 15 brands. Facebook reps could not be reached for comment on the report. The company has a lot riding on Timeline, whose brand pages launch included an overhaul of the company's ad products. |
| 5 Food Brands Building Social Buzz on a Budget | | Friday, April 20, 2012 3:03 PM | Bob Marshall |
|  Bob Marshall is a social media strategist for SociaLogic Marketing. SociaLogic provides social media strategy, community management, and content development for clients in the food, CPG, and automotive categories. Follow him @Bob_SociaLogic. By now, most brands are rightly viewing social media as an integral piece of their overall marketing strategy. However, many still hold the incorrect notion that injecting more money into social media is the only way to build and nurture an online fan base. In reality, there are several standout social media marketing tactics that can mobilize an enthusiastic audience while remaining cost effective, and the food industry has consistently been a leader in this department. SEE ALSO: 8 Best Practices for Food Brands on Pinterest The most successful brands are discovering three truths about social media marketing. First, food brand marketers know that in order for a fan base to talk, it needs something to talk about. Second, they understand the need for conversations to go beyond company products and services. They get that without appealing to consumers' broader interests, a brand's social media presence tends to intrude, rather than engage. Third, they know they don't need millions of dollars to succeed online. Here are five food brands that prove a company can build social media buzz without draining the marketing budget. 1. Chobani Chobani Greek Yogurt is an innovator among health food brands. While many competitors in the industry were utilizing social media to blather about the benefits of their products, Chobani employed a different strategy, tapping into the lifestyle of its consumer base and joining conversations that were already happening on social media. Knowing their target's social media habits led to insight on what interests the target and elicits engagement. These insights led Chobani to provide specific content to its consumers, which included recipes, snack ideas, and tips on staying fit. Chobani also wasn't afraid to follow consumers to niche social platforms, being the first yogurt brand to join the young, predominantly female target on Pinterest, as well as the photo-sharing phenomenon, Instagram. This move established Chobani as a thought leader on these networks, staking claim before competing brands with bigger budgets followed. On places like Facebook, Chobani openly aligned itself with other, non-competing brands that were popular with its target demographic. Take a look at Chobani's likes, and you'll find companies like NPR, SELF Magazine, and Oreo. Lessons: Look to your target consumers' social media conversations to lead strategy and know that letting consumers take the reigns on content development is a cost-effective way to keep them engaged. 2. Whole Foods Whole Foods shines when it comes to giving users something to talk about. It does so by not talking down to consumers, realizing that many of the grocery store chain's shoppers are already quite knowledgeable about the wide array of products the company offers. Instead of focusing on a product's features and benefits, Whole Foods shares content that encourages consumers to talk about what they can accomplish with a product. For example, instead of using Twitter to mention a type of wine's characteristics, Whole Foods designates a separate wine-focused Twitter account to suggest what dishes the wine would be best paired with. This strategy addresses and responds to consumers as peers, connecting with them on an emotional level while offering value-added advice. Whole Foods also willingly decentralizes its social media presence, encouraging individual stores around the world to begin Twitter and Facebook accounts to let customers know about promotions happening at the local level. Lessons: Respect your consumers' intelligence and conversations over social media, and when appropriate, take an extra step with your content development to offer tips and advice where appropriate. This will help your brand get more bang for its buck with community management. Also, if your brand has multiple locations, creating individual social media accounts is a cheap way to speak more directly to consumers. 3. Chipotle
Chipotle employs a highly responsive social media strategy by using multiple community managers. Although they attribute all tweets and Facebook posts to a specific community manager, they have managed to maintain a consistent, helpful, and jocular voice. This strategy is a great way to establish a brand as customer-service oriented. It's also a great way to emphasize the individual personalities of its employees. In addition, it can be a thrill for consumers to be directly mentioned over social media by a brand with 80,000-plus followers on Twitter and 1.7 million Facebook likes. This responsive social media strategy has helped Chipotle forge genuine relationships with consumers online, turning casual social media fans into brand evangelists. This has helped Chipotle harness social media's power as an effective channel for digital word-of-mouth marketing. Lessons: Consumers appreciate the opportunity to connect with the community managers behind a brand, and adding attribution to posts and responses is an easy and free way to foster these connections. Don't be afraid to engage with consumers directly. As you get to know them, you'll find consumers will want others to get to know you, spreading your brand messaging and, in a sense, doing your work for you. 4. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Last year, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese made headlines for hiring Ted "Golden Voice" Williams as the product's new TV spokesperson. A social media celebrity, Williams rode a wave of fame when a YouTube video exhibiting the then-homeless man's incredible pipes went viral. By hiring Williams over a more costly Hollywood celebrity, Kraft tied itself to someone with existing social media equity, and then used the online buzz around Williams to support the brand's traditional marketing. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese continued to use Williams in their digital marketing efforts, employing his talents in the brand's "Golden Voice of Love" Twitter and YouTube campaign this past Valentine's Day. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese also used social media to support its TV advertising in another way, taking Twitter users' tweets about the product and turning them into ads. Using this user-generated content, Kraft produced three 30-second TV ads, one of which ran during the prime-time broadcast of Conan on TBS. In doing so, Kraft used social media content to generate traditional media content, using consumers' ideas to direct the brand's own. The television spot may have not been free, but the tweet that influenced it was. Lessons: You don't need a big budget to hire someone with existing social media clout. Aligning your brand with a person or thing that has already built social media equity can be an effective tactic for boosting your marketing on social and traditional media. Social media conversations and user-generated content also can be utilized as a content farm for developing marketing concepts that connect with consumers who are already talking about your brand. And, no, you don't need the kind of cash a prime-time TV media buy requires to do so. 5. Domino's Like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Domino's Pizza used user-generated content to make a big statement. As part of its "Our Pizza Sucks" campaign, the company looked to social media to listen to the advice, ideas, and even complaints of customers unhappy with the company's products. Social media guided Domino's marketing tactics, culminating in the company's pizza tracker, which allowed customers to review their ordering experience. In doing so, the company created its own social media channel, which continues to guide its marketing efforts and solidify its dedication to customer service. Though not directly affiliated with Domino's corporate marketing efforts, a former Chicago delivery driver, and now marketing manager of six franchises in the city, has been innovating local stores' social media tactics. In 2009, Ramon De Leon responded to a customer complaint by recording a YouTube video of himself apologizing. The video now has more than one million views. By going the extra mile to converse with customers on social media, De Leon is a great example of one person making a big impact.Those who have seen him talk social media strategy at speaking engagements throughout the country agree. Lessons: Providing a platform that welcomes and asks for consumer response is an easy way to get consumers talking about your brand. Also, as Ramon De Leon proves, you don't need a company-wide policy to motivate employees to take the initiative when it comes to using social media for customer service. Embrace your employees' ideas, and don't hesitate to follow their lead if they find success marketing your brand over social channels. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, nicolebranan |
| Could YouTube Replace Women's Magazines? | | Friday, April 20, 2012 1:23 PM | International Journalists' Network |
|  Tomorrow's magazine journalist may be more likely to work with video, answer reader comments online and push out news on social media, if Hearst's Hello Style YouTube channel is any indication. The recently launched Hearst channel brings together five of the publishing behemoth's women's titles, including Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and Harper’s Bazaar, to create videos with a $10 million budget provided by YouTube. The result? To date, a few dozen videos with content that goes down so easy it makes the paper editions of these magazines seem obsolete. The initial line-up is a banquet of fresh content, offered five days a week, including "Sexy vs. Skanky," "Big Girl in a Skinny World" and "Visible Panty Lines." You might thumb through Cosmo at the hairdresser's or a doctor's office, but if you want to try the manicure style du jour you'd be better served watching the quick tutorial on Hello Style. Similarly, makeovers, those old stand-by features of the women's mag, get, well, an extreme makeover with video. It's more entertaining to watch an unsuspecting woman get a "runway makeover" that turns her into a clown. Before she can see the results, she has to ask passersby in New York what they think. This is definitely more schadenfreude fun than it would be with photos. So far, the reaction from subscribers to the channel has been positive, though many don't understand the channel's stockpiling of evergreen content, a typical strategy for a monthly. "You guys need to stop posting like 10 videos per day..........? all i see in my subscription bar thingy is your videos...i like them but its too much!!" said nailsbeautyfashion, in a comment echoed by other viewers. Unlike other publishing-to-TV ventures we've looked at, including Reuters TV and the New York Times' show, Hello Style seems to cannibalize more than complement the original. With the added interactivity of a community manager jumping in to respond to comments online and a Twitter stream packed with giveaways, why bother with the paper version? And while it's true that you can't take your computer everywhere, you can certainly stream videos on a smartphone or tablet computer about easily as you could a carry magazine. ?Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Picture Lake? |
| How Nike Makes a Soccer Uniform From 13 Recycled Bottles [VIDEO] | | Friday, April 20, 2012 9:21 AM | Sam Laird |
|  At the European soccer championships this June, top national teams including the Netherlands, Portugal and France will be decked out in stylish new Nike uniforms. But there's a catch -- the "kits," as they're called, are made from recycled bottles. It takes an average of 13 plastic bottles to manufacture a set of uniforms and shorts. The video above gives some insight -- albeit choppily edited, music-heavy insight -- into how the uniforms are made. The two-minute spot -- which gained more than 60,000 views in its first three days on YouTube -- was a collaboration between Nike and the marketing outfits Conscious Minds and Optimist LA. Check it out above and let us know what you think in the comments. |
| Today's Top Stories: Microsoft Reports Record Revenue, Samsung S-Cloud Rumors | | Friday, April 20, 2012 8:50 AM | Stan Schroeder |
|  Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. Today, we're looking at three particularly interesting stories. Microsoft Posts Strong Quarterly Results Microsoft announced revenue of $17.4 billion for the quarter ended Mar. 31, 2012, a 6% increase from the prior year period and a record for the company. Operating income was $6.4 billion, a 12% increase compared to the same period last year. Samsung to Unveil Cloud Service Called S-Cloud Samsung plans to unveil a new cloud service called S-Cloud at its press event in London on May 3rd, Maeli Business reports citing a leaked document from Samsung. The details about the service are scarce, but it's said to be similar to iCloud -- sans the limitations of what type of content you can upload to the cloud. Hulu Announces Four More Original TV Shows Hulu has announced four more original shows, bringing the total number to seven, TechCrunch reports. The new series are "We Got Next," "The Awesomes," "Don't Quit Your Daydream," and "Flow." Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock |
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