User-generated content is created for companies to getting people involved and form a community in order to encourage communications and generate ideas. It makes brands more approachable and strengthens brand loyalty. Since the ideas can be generated by anyone, people feel that they contribute to the brand during the process and get a sense of fulfillment once their effort have been shown to the public. Moreover, it also indicates that the brand cares how its customers feel. Launching a campaign on any social media platforms, the movement helps to create buzz and for brand recall.

Coca-Cola’s successful “Share a Coke” campaign motivates consumers to find their names on the Coke label. People are also invited to share their photos with the hashtag #shareacoke to be featured on interactive Coke billboards across country. The campaign is very simple with little extra costs, but makes consumers feel differently when holding a bottle that has their names. Sales also increased by the campaign as people are looking for ones that have the names of their friends and families as well. In addition, regarding to last summer’s most successful campaign- think ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, people participate actively and voluntarily share the posts. I think people like to make a little impact on the world in any forms, so contributing to a big named brand would make them excited.

There are many benefits of launching a user-generated campaign, but the creativity of the campaign is very important in order to make people interested in the campaign first. Usually this kind of campaign is also hard to control. Companies need to constantly monitor during the process and reacts quickly towards customers’ responses.

Source:

http://digiday.com/brands/brands-embracing-user-generated-content/

From the infographic created by DOMO, every minute around 2.5 million pieces of content are being sharing on Facebook, about 300,000 tweets are posted on Twitter, almost 220,000 new photos are being shared on Instagram… Having that in mind, our posts may be easily flushed out in a second. Businesses have to find ways to make their posts stand-out among all the other posts and drive people’s attention as soon as they can. Therefore, visual has become very important for that, which is also the reason why Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat are more popular nowadays.

Peter Gasca who is an entrepreneur and small business strategist provided a lot of tips and useful tools for us to learn.

• Colors and Patterns

First of all, using a catchy color ensures that people will notice. However, you should not choose randomly, because color can also pass on some information. Moreover, choosing a color that represent the business would reinforce that brand in people’s mind. Peter suggests to use Paletton.com to find complimentary blends of colors and DeDraeve.com to generate matching color scheme with any pictures that you upload. HEX or RBG code also makes sure you get exact same color in any platforms.

• Images

The images that been selected should be high-quality and high resolution. Death to the Stock Photo is free for use. Dollar Photo Club provides millions of great photos at relatively low fee. Getty Images has more selection of amazing photos, but at much higher prices.

• ŸLayout

Canva provides many template layouts for all social medial channels and also a lot of free designs and photos.

• Typography

Choosing an appropriate font is important because it should align with the information that you are trying to deliver and help the viewers quickly react to the messages. Google Fonts is free to use with a large assortment. Here are 25 free fonts must-have for designers.

When I was doing the email marketing campaign, I realized that people are likely to spend more time on an email with more pictures instead of more texts and the click through rate was also higher. Therefore, I think learning how to make any form of marketing materials, visually appealing is very important. I will definitely use these tools in the future.

Source:

http://newstex.com/2014/07/12/the-data-explosion-in-2014-minute-by-minute-infographic/

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239789

Nowadays advertisers are looking for ways to draw people’s attention and influence them to purchase or shop. The recent study called Mobile Marketers Should Pay Attention to China shows how much potential on Chinese consumers. According to the IAB U.S. and China Mobile Report 2014:

• Ÿ   71% of Chinese mobile users watch TV drama from a smart phone or tablet          while only 28% among the U.S. users.
• Ÿ   81% of Chinese watch short videos on mobile devices weekly comparing to 69%    in the U.S.
• Ÿ   64% of Chinese used smartphones on public transit and 49% pulled out their          phones in cars. 26% of people in the U.S. used smartphones on public transport    and 64% in cars.
• Ÿ   59% of Chinese smartphone users interact with a mobile ad at least once a day,    compared to 22% of Americans (86% of Chinese on a weekly basis versus 52%    of Americans, and 91% of Chinese on a monthly basis versus 62% of                    Americans).
• Ÿ   43% of Chinese people who use tablet interact with ads daily and more than          27% in the U.S. (80% of Chinese tablet users on a weekly basis comparing to        64% among Americans, and 88% Chinese in a monthly basis versus 70% in the    U.S.
• Ÿ   37% of Chinese people bought something from a smartphone ad compared to        24% of Americans.

I think many young people in China are much updated with the new technology. Because of the single child policy, parents would like to satisfy their child as much as they can. Therefore, lots of students have a mobile device or two. This young segment is very familiar with online shopping, especially Tao Bao, and they spend much time on social media such as Weibo which also filled with ads in the news feeds. Young people are quite open to this kind of ads. As for adults, a lot of middle-aged people in China still do television shopping, and when they see ads online, they feel like to see if there are any deals without thinking too much. American consumers are more rational and have been exposed to too much ads online which makes them reject to those ads directly.

Source: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/study-mobile-marketers-should-pay-attention-china-161367

http://list.juwai.com/news/2014/03/inside-look-china-s-social-media-landscape

Due to the photo-sharing service of Instagram, the app is very visual and with very clean user interface. Advertisers are now using Instagram to reach more young audience and build brands in Canada. In the past, ads have already existed in Instagram in the U.S., Britain and Australia. The new ads in Instagram allow companies to get more exposure without having people following them in Instagram. The ads are just like regular news feeds, so people would more likely to click them while scrolling through. Mobile ads are considered hard to work with because the interface of mobile device is relatively small. By putting ads at the top or bottom of the screen and even on the side, people would usually find them annoying and just ignore them, but now Instagram ads are presented in a more natural way, and people can treat the ads as regular news if the image or video look appealing to them. Therefore, I find this can be successful as people nowadays also spend lots of time on their mobile device at anywhere and anytime. As evidence, 66% of ads revenue Facebook has comes from mobile.

For the Canadian launch, Instagram has picked six advertisers it will work with at first: Hudson’s Bay Co., Target Canada, Sport Chek, Air Canada, Travel Alberta and Mercedes-Benz Canada. More advertisers will join Instagram and launch their campaigns a bit later. As a company owned by Facebook Inc, I find that Facebook’s put a lot of effort towards advertising, which may due to the company has been publicized and as a business, it has to be “sustainable”. I would like to see people’s votes on free service with lots of ads or premium service without ads. I think it would also depend on how many connections the person has on the platform.

Source:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/brand-building-one-instagram-post-at-a-time/article21514759/

http://infospace.ischool.syr.edu/2013/10/07/instagram-ads-twitter-ipo-reveal-and-more-social-media-roundup/

Nowadays, banner ads still appear a lot online and in the apps of our mobile devices. However, people always ignore them and dislike them, because banner ads lower the user experience as they are very distracted and make the user interface not clean. Therefore, the value of banner ads become much less for companies. Rather than using banner ads to hope people would notice and even click, Scott and Ryan suggests using the accessible data and conversations to create branded solutions that help with brand awareness and further consideration.

Giving the example of L’Oréal’s creative solutions, consumers can purchase nail polish in the vending machine in the airport and cosmetics in the subway. Companies should learn from it by thinking from consumers’ perspective in details and what kind of needs they can fulfill. Brands which bring more values to people’s lives would appreciate, because the brand is so considerate and people will have a positive impression of it. Essentially, customers are the priority and the blood of a brand. When social media platforms full of ads, consumers might start having negative feeling against a brand. If a company takes a unique initiative to make consumers feel not being targeted but been taking cared, the effects will be much better than putting ads in the social media platforms.

Scott and Ryan indicate that marketers can still use marketing mix, but go beyond the normal tactics. Listening to consumers’ requests and instead of following other companies’ move, finding an effective marketing method for the particular brand to specific customer segment are more practical and useful.

Source:

http://digiday.com/agencies/fix-social-media-banner-ads/

I have recently read an article from Ray King, the CEO of Top Level Design, LLC. He pointed out that customers’ voice of big brands nowadays is felt to be ignored. With the development of social media platforms, we might think that brands have a better communication with their customers in order to understand their needs and wants. However, there are still multi-national brands that have not realized the importance of getting customers involved. According to the analysis by Ray, 22% of customers want to collaboratively engage with brands about future products being offered, 38% want to involve with the promotions and offers the company provides and 18% want to be provided with product usage guidelines. From the 2014 Customer Collaboration report, Walmart was named as the least collaborative company.

I think that companies which spend lots of marketing expenses are more likely to make effort interacting with customers. Companies like Google, Nike, Apple and so on, customers for them have great value on their products and they play an important role in helping companies to generate new ideas. Walmart as a supermarket and taking a cost leadership strategy is more focusing on the operation and management. Therefore, it is quite obvious when comparing Google and Walmart. However, I do agree with Ray that companies eventually have to find ways to understand their customers and try to make changes for them in order to gain a long-term relationship.

Source:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238797

Have you ever waiting for an important person to respond your email and wondering whether your email is being opened or not? Or as a company, would you like to know whether your customers actually open your newsletter and how long they spend on it? Even though nowadays Facebook, iMessage, WhatsApp, etc. all notify the sender when messages have been seen, the information like that is not provided by a regular email server and we always have to guess and wait.

Not too long ago, a Toronto Startup named MailTracker has created an app to tackle these issues and it is compatible with all regular email apps in iOS mobile operating system. MailTracker is actually using very simple technology; like other mail analytics providers, Mailtracker also uses tracking pixel technology – a small, transparent image that’s downloaded when an email is viewed and allows the sender to track that particular image from their own server. After installed the MailTracker, users can see whether their emails have been opened, how many times they’ve been opened, what kind of computer they’ve been viewed on, where that computer may be located, and more importantly, how long readers reading the email. These are very useful information, especially for enterprise to have a better understanding of their customers. Since this is so powerful, after this app becoming prevalent, I think people might start concerning about privacy and security issues.

MailTracker will extend to Android and the desktop soon. The app is free for the first two accounts and it has a pro version which can support 5 email accounts for $5 a month. Would you be interested in this app and test with your email today? I just did.

Source:

http://mailtrackerapp.com/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-digital/innovation/toronto-startup-drags-ordinary-e-mail-into-the-modern-era/article18298821/

In the past, we hear a lot about customer relationship management in order to better understand customers’ needs and target them effectively. Actually there are many sales tools to improve sales productivity which determines a company’s success.

Sales managers have integrated social, mobile, big data and cloud services to change the way they work, and sales representatives have to learn how the new system is operating and to quickly adapt to it. 60% of a buyer’s decision process is made online by using self-selection. This trend indicates that sales person’s role is not just providing product information any more. Gschwandtner, CEO of Selling Power, says that only those who make that transition will have a future in sales.

Currently, customer relationship management software, Salesforce, Zoho and InfusionSoft are now being used most for supporting a company’s sales team. Gartner has estimated that the customer relationship management software is now a $20 billion market, and that it will expand to be a $36 billion market by 2017. However, this kind of software may not be enough for influencing the outcome of deals. Howard Brown, founder of RingDNA, mentions that sales acceleration technology can be more powerful, because it provides sales intelligence data in a useful context and boost sales almost the same time. Notable companies making waves in this space include Yesware (providing email for sales teams), Inside View (with enhanced prospect data) and SalesLoft (offering a tool allowing for sales via social media).

Source:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237916

http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2013/07/sales-technology-trends.html

Can you imagine what your life will become when your car is able to run without a fuel tank or you are able to move your house without shipping your furniture? Cloud service does the similar thing to your life. With cloud service, use of storage devices can be minimized on our digital devices. By maximizing Internet’s power, we will be able to access all the data we want without necessarily carrying the storage devices.

I appreciate that person who came up the idea of cloud service. However, this newly born technology may also bring new troubles. For example, security risks are the first thing to worry about. What if somebody else accessed my data and did harm to me? What if the cloud server crashed and I lost all my files on it?

Could service certainly need to improve but there are things also for users to do, we take advantages of cloud and we avoid the risks. I have read an article from a website called Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of the Cloud. This article basically advice cloud users to manage their accounts in a better way instead of worrying too much about the security issues that might occur. I personally agree its idea.

It says “While the death of the password as a security linchpin is long overdue, it’s still the easiest point of access for users and hackers. Be sure your passwords are at least 15 characters long and include numbers, letters and special characters if possible.” It also suggests that we should make use of additional security options which many cloud servers offered.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238061

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” –William Penn

Human beings may desire for many different things but time is what we always need to fulfill our desire. Creating technologies is not always a problem for us but it is always a problem that we have to make our technologies work better with limited time or space.

Here comes wearable technology. Not like cellphones or other pocket devices, wearable technology is physically “attached” to the user which means it is easier to access, it is not hard to understand why wearable technology is so popular already even though industry of wearable technology is not well developed yet. For instance, simple wearable devices like wrist watches never left human daily life since they were invented because people need them to manage time better.

Toronto startup Bionym has closed a $14-million (U.S.) funding round led by a number of high-profile investors, including Relay Ventures, Export Development Canada (EDC) and MasterCard. The product Bionym created is called Nymi band which provides a new platform for authenticating users’ identity while interacting with devices.

Recently, other wearable technologies like i-watch and MOTO-360 also gained a lot of attentions online. Simple technology does simple jobs. I think this idea will soon become the main-stream. We tear huge machines into wearable pieces and eventually everybody can act like intelligent machines. With wearable technology we are able to do whatever we want at anywhere and at anytime.In my opinion, soon wearable technologies will capture the digital markets since they are so desirable and they can eventually become the new platforms for digital markets.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-tools/small-business-briefing/wearable-password-maker-raises-14-million-in-funding/article20747520/