Cover Story: The 50 Best Tips of 2014

Social Media
41. Users don't "like" bait. Posts with "Share This," "Like" or "Please Comment" will be downplayed by Facebook. Through research, Facebook found that while these kinds of posts get more eyeballs, they tend to be less relevant than other content.
Jim Gilbert, Gilbert Direct Marketing, "How to Avoid Facebook's New Feed Spam Trap," April 29, Return on Intelligence blog

42. Establish social media policies for employees to clearly communicate an employee's responsibilities as it relates to their social media activity. There are numerous retail examples of inappropriate online postings from employees that unfortunately travel with lightning speed around the social media universe. Retailers must have the ability to quickly identify truly damaging content and respond to it immediately before a small distraction escalates into a truly harmful incident to the brand.
Liz Ebert, The North Highland Company, "Social Listening Must-Haves for Retailers," May 27, ROI Report

43. Let customers vent. You can't please everyone, although it should be your goal as a retailer to try. Don't delete or ignore customers’ posts on your social media accounts. Doing so will only make things worse.
Diana Adair, Zazzle, "5 Tips to Survive a Social Media Crisis," June 16, ROI Report

Store Design
44. Small is the new black. For retailers, small formats, in both emerging and developed markets, represent an opportunity to get closer to their customers. Smaller formats can also help retailers channel their investments into more locations to maximize reach. Although a straightforward per-square-foot rental and development cost calculation may not skew favorably towards urban locations, the potential for higher traffic can put those investments in the black. For all this to work, however, it will have to be backed by a strategic approach to site selection, category/assortment and customer experience.
Suresh Bharadwaj, Infosys, "4 Best Practices for Retailers Entering Emerging International Markets," Jan. 24, ROI Report

Technology/IT
45. Retailers can take control of their infrastructure by deploying monitoring systems to help identify problems and even pinpoint potential issues before there's a customer impact. Whether it's a network switch, a server or an access point, retailers should be able to see what normal operations look like and immediately know when a piece of equipment is acting outside defined parameters.
Casey Murray, SevOne, "Who's Minding the Connected Store," Feb. 20, ROI Report

Video Marketing
46. Whether it be a funny video that's low on branding but likely to be shared or an informative video introducing your business, products or services, make sure the video is easy to find and not too long. Eighty-three percent of consumers say the ideal length of a video to inform a purchase decision is five minutes or less.
Brad Jefferson, Animoto, "3 Steps to Incorporating Video Into Your Marketing Strategy," April 7, ROI Report

47. Learn to "storysell," not storytell. When creating a video story around your brand, be sure to create a brand voice on camera. Cultivate an expert who can establish credibility and affinity with your brand. You'll want someone who people will come back to again and again. They need to be trusted partners.
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Joyus, "3 Video Lessons From Start-Up Joyus," June 13, ROI Report

48. Open new video channels at low cost. Since video is the most persuasive storytelling medium, it makes sense to expose as many people as possible to your brand or product story. One oft-overlooked yet extremely low-cost channel is email. Embedded video in email drives, on average, 35 percent more video plays compared to video linked from email that plays on a retailer's website, according to VideoEmail.com.
Justin Foster, Liveclicker, "From Soup to Nuts," January/February, Retail Online Integration

Web Design/Creative
49. Create style sheets. Detailed style sheets provide creative direction for your product images and go a long way toward improving the visual consistency of your online catalog. The most important issues to address in your style sheet are the desired background (which can be included in the photo or generated digitally) and lighting requirements (e.g., flat light, directional light, shadows, etc.). The more details you provide in your style sheets, the easier it will be for creative professionals to produce consistent, high-quality photos for your brand.
Maria Haggerty, Dotcom Distribution, "Tips for Effective E-Commerce Photography," Feb. 18, The Art of Delivering Style blog

50. Reformat images. An incorrectly formatted image can be several times larger than it needs to be. Rule of thumb: Photos should be in JPEG format, complex graphics should be in PNG-24 format and simple images with few colors should be in PNG-8 format.
Tammy Everts, Radware, "10 Things You Can Do to Speed Up Your Web Pages," May 14, ROI Report