Social Media Marketing

A large percentage of U.S. retailers have created Pinterest pinboards and are using this community to successfully drive web traffic and generate sales. While Facebook and Twitter users have considered business activities invasive in their social spaces, the Pinterest community is perfectly happy to view and repin the images posted on retailers’ Pinterest boards. In return for this enthusiasm, brands are trying to figure out how to reward the Pinterest community with exclusive sales.

At 18, Sahil Lavingia helped design the massively successful Pinterest, currently the third most popular social network behind Twitter and Facebook. Now he's starting Gumroad, a new service which he says will revolutionize social shopping and e-commerce — and maybe even alter the way people create.

Times have evolved from analog to digital for everyone except my mom. Even my grandmother is more technologically-savvy than my mother. Sorry mom. A string of usually charming emoticons and abbreviations simply won’t do the trick when speaking to my mom. HSIK what 2 get mom 4 Mother’s Day? WWMD?! How can I begin to thank her for everything she’s done, in a language we both understand?

Top toy makers Hasbro and Mattel are struggling through tough quarters, but smaller U.S. rival Step2 grew its toy sales over the past 18 months, in part by employing social media and web review software.

Our primary job as software vendors is to highlight the value of our products and convince consumers they're worth investing in. Twitter, currently with 140 million users, is an excellent place to market and find digital goods, as well as to educate and be educated in best practices.

In its ongoing attempt to win over women at every step of their fitness journey, Under Armour is introducing a goal-setting Web site called “What’s Beautiful.” Involving Twitter and Facebook, the site is “a competition to redefine the female athlete,” with an end result of three new “faces” for Under Armour, as well as seven brand ambassadors. 

French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, maker of Louis Vuitton handbags, Moet Champagne and other high-end brands, beat revenue expectations Wednesday, but doubts remain about the sustainability of the sector given the poor economic climate in Europe. The company said it “will continue to focus its efforts on developing its brands, will maintain a strict control over costs and will target its investments.” One of the ways it manages those brands is through a carefully managed social media campaign, primarily focused on Facebook pages.

Performics, the performance marketing firm owned by Publicis Groupe, has released  findings from “S-Net: A Study on Social Media Usage & Behavior.” The study of nearly 3,000 active U.S. social networkers highlights mothers as more versatile, present, active andengaged users of social networking sites, compared to other women.
According to the study, mothers are approximately 61% more likely than other women to own a smartphone.

Avon Products, famous for sending its representatives door to door, is losing traction in the U.S., where many time-stressed consumers are increasingly buying their cosmetics online. Operating profit per representative in the U.S. has plunged 75 percent over the past decade, according to an analysis by Sanford C. Bernstein.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, Pinterest is primarily image-based. Engagement is all about leveraging visual images to establish quick connections between brands and consumers while promoting social sharing and ultimately driving traffic to the brand's website.