Can social media and e-commerce successfully work together to drive business?  In our last post, we focused on why Facebook fails as an e-commerce platform; now we’ll look at why Pinterest works so well for retail.

Pinterest’s growth has been exponential; hitting 10 million visitors per month faster than any other website, and usage numbers recently topped 20 million.  Though growth rates are slowing, Pinterest is showing nearly unprecedented levels of engagement, and is driving traffic to retailers at levels no other social media platform has been able to achieve.

Pinterest is a free social media platform that captivates users with the ability to browse through various eye-catching images for inspiration and save and share their findings.   Why does Pinterest work so well?  It’s focused around sharing and engagement, with a high level of visual interaction that make it an excellent tool for marketing visual brands; it also leverages existing customer engagement and allows them to share it with friends and followers.

Users are given empty boards to fill with images they love. These boards house many different topics and the user can personalize the titles –. e.g., fashion, food, holiday ideas, favorite products, etc., and  users can also create their own board  around any topic that sparks their interest. It’s easy to browse and easy to share:  after clicking an image, users can like, comment, pin, re-pin, or follow the side link to the image’s originating website. Being one click away from a product page, Pinterest drives a high number of traffic to external sites – more than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined.  Yes, you read that right.

With virtual storefronts being a driving force in e-commerce, Pinterest is a great avenue for products and stores. In a recent study, five major retailers reported July 2011 to December 2011 total same-store referral traffic from Pinterest rose 289%, with much of that traffic converting to sales.

A major differentiator for Pinterest is the focus on images.  We’ve all heard the cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words, and it’s a cliché for a good reason.  The images found on Pinterest have been curated by like-minded individuals, and can create an immediate spark of affinity and connection that are lost in even the best retail sites–and the consumer browsing the website is only one click away from purchasing.

Pinterest allows for a high level of interaction among users, friends, consumers, and marketers. To further boost products, a consumer posts a photo on their board or ‘likes’ an image – the user then becomes an influencers to his or her friends and further helps promote the photo or product and make it viral. The number of ‘likes’ also reflect a public endorsement of products. Pinterest allows sharing among other social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. On Facebook, Pinterest has 9 million connected users, which dramatically increases reach and sharing potential.

Pinterest and e-commerce work well together due to the high levels of interaction and engagement between consumers and marketers, and succeed in driving traffic and sales for retail sites where Facebook fails, because it’s one step closer to that shared virtual shopping experience.

Facebook is an amazing platform for brands, enabling them to engage and interact as no platform or channel ever has before.  Markets have evolved into conversations: conversations that deepen relationships, building awareness, affinity, trial, and perhaps most importantly, loyalty.  But it’s not a panacea, and there’s one critical step in the business process where Facebook falls short:  it doesn’t work as an e-commerce platform.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen major retailers quietly shutter the Facebook storefronts they opened to take advantage of F-commerce.  When Facebook works so well for so many things, why doesn’t it seem to click for retail?

Facebook, and the retailers who embarked on this noble experiment, aren’t wrong to try to capitalize on the community and brand affinity that Facebook facilitates. They just went about it the wrong way.  Most F-commerce stores featured small subsets of the retailers’ product line—and that’s where they fall short. Shopping online is about choice, variety, selection—and making that selection smaller isn’t a benefit.  To top it off, creating a Facebook storefront creates more work for the retailer:  Maintaining the world-class e-commerce experience that online consumers expect is hard enough, and a subshop created for a specific environment is counterintuitive…and therefore fails.

But while Facebook might not work for e-commerce, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for retail. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.  Facebook is at its heart an engagement platform—one that enables consumers to interact with and redefine a brand, to provide feedback, to build community, and to bond with a brand—as stated earlier in this post, it’s an unprecedented opportunity.

The key to success in capitalizing on this engaged audience is to create a way for users to share their affinity and experience without limiting the selection they’re seeing—in short, find a way to leverage the realtime community of Facebook on the retailer’s full-selection site.  Harness the joyous bonding of a girls’ day out Saturday afternoon in the Herald Square Macy’s shoe department.  My best girlfriend might be in Colorado, or Des Moines, but help us shop online together just as if we were in the store together. That’s how retailers, Facebook, and consumers for that matter—win.

Clash of the Titans: Facebook v. LinkedIn for Social Recruiting

LinkedIn has long been the established leader in social recruiting, with 150 million+ members and an ever broadening range of tools for recruiters and job seekers alike—but Facebook may have something to say about that.  At more than 5 times the user base of LinkedIn, Facebook is well positioned to challenge the conventional wisdom that LinkedIn is for professional life and Facebook is for the personal.

It’s not just the compelling size of the user base—it’s the level of engagement.  Facebook is the second-highest trafficked site (only Google gets more traffic) and 74% of Internet users are on Facebook every day (note that’s 74% of Internet users—not Facebook users).  And users themselves are open to Facebook for job hunting; according to JobVite, 48% of job seekers have completed a job search-related task on Facebook in the past year.

Tools like eQuest and Work4Us enable fans to see and apply for jobs at companies they already have an affinity for. New functions recommend potential matches for a job based on a user’s friends, taking the power of referrals to a whole new level.  These tools are robust and full-featured, and connect seamlessly into candidate management and tracking tools like Taleo—making Facebook as seamless a platform for recruiters as for job seekers.

Recent real life examples have proven Facebook to be an effective recruiting tool for hourly and entry level jobs especially.  Hard Rock Café managed recruiting for its recently opened Florence, Italy location entirely through Facebook, staffing the store cost-effectively and creating a positive user experience and affinity for the company even among candidates who didn’t land jobs.  More recently , Macy’s, Inc. has had great success recruiting through Facebook for a range of positions, including college internships, beauty careers, and seasonal workers, showing Facebook is a truly viable platform for this type of recruiting.

Now Facebook has stepped up to tackle the power of LinkedIn head on, adding its own new Social Jobs platform.  The massive social network has partnered with the US Department of Labor and other agencies to provide advice and tools for job hunters as well as tools for recruiters.

Facebook also has the advantage of size—at more than 5 times the size of LinkedIn’s network and continuing to grow.  But size alone may not be enough of an advantage – a key issue is the different ways users think about the two platforms. As we said before, LinkedIn is clearly establish and perceived as a professional network, and users have geared their LinkedIn profiles accordingly.

Facebook is a much more personal platform, where users tend to share aspects of their lives at a deep level –personal  details, photos, location , etc. . New features like Timeline and frictionless sharing (which lets apps share everything from what music you’re listening to to what article you just read on Yahoo!) and Facebook’s penchant for changing privacy settings exponentially increase the content users are exposing—often unwittingly.   This creates potential risk not only for job seekers (who will need to be extremely careful about privacy settings as well as the content they choose to share), but also for employers, who will have to carefully walk the line in terms of how they use the information they can find on Facebook.

Is Facebook an incredibly powerful tool for recruiting? Yes, absolutely, and well worth exploring.  But there’s also potential for an incredibly powerful backlash—so proceed with caution.

I have a great love of color and I try to surround myself with a wide pallet of hues. Every room in my home is painted at least 2 colors and I have a large selection of markers, pens and paints to play with.

I think my love of color began with my first “big” box of Crayola crayons (the 64 count box with the sharpener in the back). I still remember the excitement of getting this box of color and the wonderful smell of the wax. This love has remained constant throughout my life; painting was my passion in college and I think it was the colors that drew me in. Today, it’s design that allows me to experiment with color—whether it’s a website in RGB or a printed piece in CYMK, the colors are key.

I’m intrigued by the emotions that colors can impart. Color can convey an unlimited range of meanings and the impact of design can be greatly altered by the simple change of color. It is not the colors themselves that have meaning; it’s our culture that provides the meaning and context. Red can mean anger or urgency in the West, while it is a symbol of prosperity in Eastern countries such as China, where red is worn at weddings and doors are often painted red.

Below is a table of meanings typically assigned to colors:

This information can easily be used to influence your audience.

• Red: used to create urgency and impulse purchases
• Green: use to relax and calm
• Blue: use to create trust, as in financial institutions and banks
• Navy Blue: implies lower cost – use when selling to the price-sensitive
• Royal Blue: implies urgency – use when selling to impulse buyers
• Pink: romantic, selling to women and girls
• Yellow: attention grabbing – used in windows and displays
• Orange: energizing – used to elicit action as in impulse buying
• Purple: wealth – use to imply exclusivity
• Black: power – luxury selling and aggressive products

McDonald’s is a perfect example of an effective use of color:

Red=Fast, Yellow=Hunger … Fast Food

Armed with this information, I sample colors from many sources: photos, websites, advertisements… anywhere really. Here are some of the techniques I use to sample colors:

Photoshop’s Eyedropper Tool

The eyedropper tool allows you to sample colors within Photoshop, but it can also be extended to anywhere on your screen. Here’s how: Select the Eyedropper tool. Click and hold down the mouse button inside an open Photoshop document. With the mouse button held down, drag the eyedropper tool outside the Photoshop document to sample color from anywhere on your screen.

Photoshop Eyedropper

Firefox Extension

I often like to grab colors from a website. The Firefox extension called ColorZilla adds a little eyedropper to the bottom left corner of your browser window. Click the eyedropper to activate and mouse around a webpage picking colors. The icon changes to represent the current color. You can then click to “lock” that color. The color values appear in the bottom of the browser window. Click the down arrow to the right of the eyedropper to present options for saving the color values.

Firefox's ColorZilla

ColorZilla Figure 2

ColorZilla Figure 3

Mac Software Utility

In the Utility folder of the Applications folder is an application called the DigitalColor Meter. Simply choose what format you want to see the colors in (hex codes and RGB values are available) and just move your mouse over your screen. You will see a zoomed in section of the area you are sampling, a color swatch, and the color values. [For Windows users there is a free tool called ColorPic.]

Mac Software Utility

In the Utility folder of the Applications folder is an application called the DigitalColor Meter. Simply choose what format you want to see the colors in (hex codes and RGB values are available) and just move your mouse over your screen. You will see a zoomed in section of the area you are sampling, a color swatch, and the color values. [For Windows users there is a free tool called ColorPic.]

Mac Software Utility

I’m sure there are many other utilities and applications out there—I’d love to hear what you’re using. Share your favorite color inspiration sources. Here are a few of mine:

Web-hosted applications for generating color themes:

Color Scheme Designer

Adobe Kuler

Creative community where people create and share colors, palettes and patterns and discuss trends:

ColourLovers

Don’t forget to look to the fashion industry as an important influence on color trends:

Pantone

Fashion TrendSetter

It sounds familiar, if not a bit redundant. This time of year brings out the lists of things that we are thankful for. I’m eternally thankful for the usual — my family, friends and health. But if I reflected more, I would say that I am thankful for the chance meetings each year that bring a connection with someone who will add still another dimension to my life, who touches me in unexpected and surprising ways. I’m grateful that the people I’m surrounded by every day never tire of learning and sharing new things, questioning and challenging the expected. I am thankful that those in my life find joy in humor. I’m grateful for the ability to embrace life wholeheartedly without the constant fear of failure.

I’m thankful that I, alone, am not an expert at anything, that I’m forever a life traveler, finding the right path to happiness, success and worthiness. I’m especially thankful that I can define the meaning of those words. I’m grateful that as my own mapmaker, I’ve learned how others forge their paths and stay on them. But, just as importantly, I have discovered how often the path we choose has a detour, a change in course—but not always a change in direction. I’m thankful that God has blessed us with the uncertainty and vulnerability that make us human, that not every decision is a snap one, that internal debate is a given.

I’m thankful for smiles, sincerity and courage. I’m grateful for the gift of time we still have to tell those in our lives how thankful we are to include them in our lists. To everyone, a heartfelt thank you.

We’re delighted to announce the launch of the 2012 Workshop @ Macy’s website, which we first launched last year for the 2011 session.  The new site features a refreshed design, incorporation of videos, and a photo gallery featuring shots from the inaugural Workshop, compelling new content, and tighter integration with social media.

This innovative, comprehensive retail vendor development program provides up and coming minority and women-owned retail companies with the tools they need to perform and sustain growth in the competitive retail field.

The 2011 Workshop was a tremendous success, exceeding expectations on all fronts; the first lines from program graduates are expected to hit Macy’s stores in 2012.  Macy’s is accepting applications for the Spring 2012 Workshop through January 22nd, and is expecting even greater results this year.  Take a few minutes and check out the relaunched site!

As I heard the news about Steve Job’s passing last night, my heart hurt a bit. Here was the man whose innovation and creative passion changed my life and the world around me. Whose vision and drive was to make simple the most complex things we humans do. Whose life sought meaning in experiences that weren’t the norm, but rather what his soul craved. Here’s to the man who wasn’t afraid of life, of failure and ultimately of death. He was and will continue to be an inspiration.

An article in a 1996 article in Wired, Jobs spoke about creativity and life experiences. In essence, Steve Jobs’ life experiences helped shaped all of ours.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

“Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

So today, as our team is creating and developing as they do everyday, I pause a minute to celebrate his incredible contribution to our discipline. Today, every keystroke on our Macs, each touch on our iPads and every conversation on our iPhones will have just a little more meaning.

Until recently, companies and brands had the option of preventing fans from posting comments on their Facebook pages.  In early August, Facebook removed this capability, stating Facebook is designed as a social platform and that preventing comments and wall postings goes against the spirit and intent of the platform.  While I don’t necessarily disagree with their logic, it does present a challenge for companies that are still wrestling with how to best engage with their fans.

If you weren’t comfortable with comments to begin with, the initial response may be to delete comments–but this is a recipe for social media disaster.  It garners very negative publicity and often spreads to the broader media—a sort of “anti” case study showing what not to do. Companies caught deleting Facebook comments (often called “whitewashing”) are regarded as out of touch with their fans and as misusing or even abusing social media by trying to manipulate the conversation.  The strong negative reaction to this practice actually has the complete opposite of the desired effect, damaging the offending organization’s reputation, as shown in these examples:

• PR firm Burton-Marsteller caught in the middle of “Googlegate” became the focus of the story itself when it began deleting negative comments from its Facebook page.
• When Netflix deleted negative comments about their unpopular price hike, users reposted their complaints and began adding to their comments that apparently Netflix didn’t care about or want to hear from its customers at all, since it also lacked an e-mail address or mailing address to which to send complaints.

On the other hand, companies that keep negative comments up actually enjoy an enhanced reputation.  When criticism is legitimate and the company responds respectfully, it increases credibility and positive reputation.  These companies are perceived as being open to discussion and as engaging with their fans; they “get” social media and understand they’re part of a conversation, and this creates trust—a holy grail of marketing.

If you’re still uncomfortable with comments, you can consider a closed Facebook Group instead of a fan page.  This is a viable option for some, but it’s important to consider your objectives and the focus of your Facebook presence, and we don’t recommend it for the vast majority of businesses.  Groups are best suited for a cause or affinity, where there’s an ongoing need for information and communication.  If your objective is awareness rather than ongoing engagement, a group is probably not the right tactic.

If you choose to have a closed group (one where users must ask to be added), you’re making it harder to connect: the more hurdles you put in front of a user, the less likely they are to complete an action.  Even once a member is approved for a group, you don’t have any better control over what they chose to post than you do on a fan page—they’re still going to say what they like, and it will still be visible. It’s not providing greater control over comments–just reducing reach by making it more difficult to find and connect.

There are a few other challenges with groups—they don’t support apps, and for many companies an app is a key part of their Facebook engagement.  Groups also lack the tracking and engagement statistics available for fan pages, and they’re less visible to search engines.

Facebook is just one element of a social mediasphere that changes every day—not just the technology, which advances at a blinding rate—but the rules, etiquette, and ways communities engage and interact.  Knowing what approach fits your needs and what not to do is half the battle.  Do you have a strategy for how you manage your Facebook page and other social media platforms?

There’s something inherently exciting about attending a Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) Conference with over 3,000 women-owned business leaders, more than 300 exhibitors, and dozens of workshops. And it didn’t hurt that the conference just happened to be in Las Vegas. I was ready to go!

Like all businesses, Sanger & Eby is continually looking for new opportunities to grow and develop. The company has long been a certified WBE, but we rarely, if ever, use that as our calling card. But when a major client told us about this highly-regarded conference, we decided to check it out.

Viva Las Vegas!

Enter the world of glitz and glamour, desert air and slot machines. I had never been to the “Entertainment Capital” before, so I caught myself several times feeling like a small child in a huge toy store. But I slapped myself back to reality and got back to business.

At the conference we were greeted by an enthusiastic group of women and men who loved their businesses, were interested in yours, and were all looking for ways to grow their companies.  We were in good company.

Through seminars and meetings, we gathered new ideas and success stories on risk management, strategic alliances, purchasing trends, and marketing. We were inspired by various speakers, including World Series of Poker winner Annie Duke, Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh, and News Correspondent Soledad O’Brien. And throughout the conference we felt the sense of commitment that major corporations have about using WBEs.

In the world of sales, networking has become an essential ingredient of the process. Picking up the phone and cold calling to find the right person at any major corporation who might be interested in hearing your spiel enters you into a maze in which you might constantly hit dead ends. Here, we could sit next to someone, walk up to them at a booth, or meet them in a buffet line and strike up a conversation. It was worth the trip.

The end result is that I have become a WBENC devotee, ready to carry the banner for the cause. But more importantly, I have a greater appreciation for all small business owners working energetically, enthusiastically and passionately to grow their businesses. I am in good company indeed.

What would you do for the opportunity to ask one of the world’s most influential business leaders a question, have him answer it face to face, and be able to respond to what he says?  How far would you travel?  How many long lines would you wait in?  How early would you get up? How do you get the chance?

Well, pay about $78 for a B share of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, travel (in my case) many miles to Omaha, Nebraska, wait in more long lines than you can imagine, and get up at 5 AM for admission to the Berkshire Annual Meeting (yes. 5 AM), and this opportunity could be yours.   This was something I’ve always wanted to do, and this year I did.

Coming into Omaha, you’ll see hundreds of private jets and limos; for those who come without their own high-end transportation, however, Berkshire provides a free shuttle to all activities from everywhere (even the Budget Inn).   The Berkshire Annual Meeting is a huge event, beginning with a Friday evening cocktail party at Borsheim’s Jewelry (another Berkshire’s company).   In addition to the opportunity to buy items at a generous shareholders’ discount, you may find yourself standing in a long line next to the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, or a childhood friend of Warren’s (Buffett still calls Omaha home). This odd combination of Buffett junkies, Wall Street Executives, local farmers, and everything in between makes for a unique energy.

The annual meeting begins at 8:30 AM, but if you want an audience with Mr. Buffett (that is, to see him in person along with 18,499 other people), then you’d better be in line at 5AM.  When the doors opened at 7AM sharp, the main arena was completely filled in less than 6 minutes.  The next 40,000 people watch on-screen from other rooms in the Quest Center.

The meeting opens with an exclusive hour-long shareholder video, and then the real show begins:  Warren Buffett answers questions from 9:30 AM to 3:30 PM.  This session is the main event—you can ask virtually any question and he’ll answer it, adding on anything else he wants to talk about as he munches on See’s Candy (a company he’s extremely proud of).  Buffett is pretty direct with his answers, shortcomings and successes, and the range of questions and comments is amazing.  A woman who lives down the street from Buffett took him to task for taking too long to respond to an internal scandal (and she was applauded by many in the audience).  A Boston stockbroker was shaking with awe when asking a question of the Great One, and another woman raved about her successes with energy stock. Buffett told her she had done a better job than he had with energy, so he just talked about his thoughts on the economy for 20 minutes.   After the Q&A, there’s a very short annual meeting, and then it’s off to the next event.

Why did I feel compelled to go to Omaha? I have owned Berkshire since 1998, love listening to Warren Buffett and admire his business. I would see the annual meeting weekend on TV, and it just fascinated me. Buffett plays the banjo and puts on a bridge tournament, Wall Street veterans are on their best behavior, and his neighbors ask him very difficult questions about “their” investment.  The quirkiness of the whole thing intrigued me, and I wanted to experience it.  To anyone who asked, I answered “Neither Warren nor I am getting any younger; if I’m going to do it, now’s the time.”

But it was more than that. I don’t like the term “Bucket List;” it bores me. It sounds like checking a box instead of experiencing something wonderful and owning that experience. For me, this was a quest. I didn’t meet Warren Buffett in person but I did get a great seat in the main arena (thanks to my boot camp workouts).   I saw and heard some really interesting things—most of them not from Warren Buffett. I laughed a lot and shook my head a lot. I probably won’t go again, but I’m very glad I went this year.

I didn’t used to do this kind of thing, but last November I saw the final table of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and got a chance to tour behind the scenes. It happened by accident; I didn’t plan it but it woke up something inside me, and now I am bursting with things I want to experience.  What’s next? Maybe going to the NFL draft in New York and cheering on my Bengals’ pick (hope springs eternal) and booing the Steelers (no explanation needed).  Maybe going to the Kentucky Derby but only if I can somehow get real seats. Maybe going to the Indianapolis 500 (with earplugs of course).  I want to sit in the Grandstand at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  I want to see a Super Bowl in person. I want to walk the Appalachian Trail.

OK, those are my ideas.  What do you want to do, and how are you going to make sure it happens?  Or do you just let life happen?   What would you call your list besides the “bucket list?”