Christy Ferer Recommends Brands to Become Familiar with the Four Types of Holiday Shoppers

Not only is Black Friday a big day for shoppers, but it is also an important day for businesses/retailers. Vision Critical, a market research and technology firm, defines four types of Black Friday shopper personas: the Modern-Day Coupon Queen, the Millennial Generation Shopper, the Mobile Tech Embracer, and the Single Cyber Male. Vidicom and Christy Ferer suggests brands to become familiar with the four major personas when marketing to them.

1.     Modern-Day Coupon Queen: This persona is typically a mom in her forties who spends the least amount of money on herself during the holidays. The Modern-Day Coupon Queen is likely to line up for doorbuster Black Friday Sales.

2.     Millennial Generation Shopper: Usually in their mid 20s, the majority of Millennial Generation Shoppers admit to impulse buying and about 2/3 are not in-store when shopping on mobile devices.

3.     Mobile Tech Embracer: This type of persona embraces traditional forms of shopping while adopting new ways of purchasing.

4.     Single Cyber Males: This persona generally makes purchases via their computers. Most Single Cyber Males look for gifts ahead of time and are not likely to bother with lines and crowds for in-store holiday promotional sales.

http://mashable.com/2013/11/28/marketing-holiday-shoppers/

Vidicom Suggest Ways for Brands to Bring More Consumers to Their Sites

Here at Vidicom, Christy Ferer stresses the importance of connecting brands and consumers. Bringing consumers to brands’ websites is one way to increase consumer engagement. Brands need to know their referring traffic sources in order to do so.  Some effective ways to analyze and optimize referral traffic include:

1.     Analyze the two types of referrers: The two types of referrals are referring domains and individual referrals.  In order to understand your referral sources, brands should know both metrics.

2.     Track everything: Brands should go into great detail in their data so they know where to invest for the next campaign.

3.     Optimize for social: Social media is a powerful tool that can increase visits, develop brand affinity, and get your brand in the conversation of consumers; all of which will pay off in the long run.

4.     Partner opportunities: You can find potential partners with similar missions and goals by keeping track of your referrals.

http://mashable.com/2013/11/27/referrals-metrics/

Vidicom Provides Brands with Tips to Build Customer Relationships

Christy Ferer agrees that we strongly value customer relationships here at Vidicom. It is a nonstop effort to strengthen our customer relationships as well as help other brands build theirs’. Some useful advice for brands regarding cultivating customer relationships include:

1.     Realize that happy customers are returning customers: When customers are happy, they are more likely to spread a positive message about your brand by speaking to potential customers or posting reviews online about your brand.

2.     Set and manage realistic expectations: To avoid disappointing your customer, it is better to under-promise and over-deliver than to set unrealistic expectations that your brand cannot follow through with.

3.     Be a connector: Your brand will benefit in the long run if you help people fulfill their needs by making connections for them.

4.     Keep track of customer information: Documenting customer details such as names, birthdays, kids’ names, etc. will build your customer relationship and will keep your customers coming back.

http://mashable.com/2013/11/25/customer-relationships/

The New Addition to Instagram will be Beneficial for Brands, Recommended by Christy Ferer

Christy Ferer and the Vidicom team love discovering what’s new in the social media world. It was recently reported by GigaOm that Instagram will be adding private messaging before 2014. What the messaging function will look like is unclear, but it is likely that a user might be able directly share photos with particular friends or groups instead of posting to the public newsfeed. Private messaging is a efficient tool for brands to use to reach out to consumers as well as potential consumers more directly. Brands should get excited for the new addition as it can enhance consumer relationships!

http://mashable.com/2013/11/22/report-instagram-messaging/

Vidicom Helps Businesses Grow in Cost-Efficient Ways

To help other businesses expand that are just starting up, Vidicom's CEO Christy Ferer shares some bootstrapping tips from successful entrepreneurs:

1. Use Time Wisely: Laura Kenney, founder and editor-in-chief of YouBeauty.com, has set up a process to ensure productivity. The development team makes a clear direction on which task to accomplish first by having weekly priorities meetings.

2. Be Smart about Customer Feedback: Co-founder of Unroll.me, Jojo Hedaya, knows the importance of not only listening to customer feedback, but also being resourceful about what to do when addressing it.

3. Hire Well: Alexa Hirschfield, co-founder of Paperless Post, stresses the significance of the quality of a new hire in a small company.  Hirschfield says, “ Recognize that skill comes first and personality comes second, but if the personality is wrong, still don’t hire someone.”

For more productive tips, check out: http://mashable.com/2013/11/18/tips-resourceful-small-business/

Tumblr Add-ons Help Brands Improve Overall Experience Tumblr, Says Vidicom

As Vidicom previously noted, Tumblr is a great tool for businesses to use to build their brands. Christy Ferer agrees. There are extensions offered for users to improve their overall experience on the social media site. Some of the add-ons include:

1.     Missing e: Provides faster reblogs, a bookmark for your place in the dashboard and enables you to select multiple posts at once.

2.     X Kit: You can add timestamps to posts, improve your inbox experience, reply to notifications, dim posts you have already read, and browse safely in public.

3.     Tumblr Savior: Add words and phrases to a “White” or “Black” list with this Chrome extension. The Black list prevents you from seeing posts containing unwanted words and the White list displays posts on your feed containing the words.

4.     Tumblr Hate: This add-on is similar to Tumblr Savior because you can hide posts that are reblogged over and over again.

Brands Should Use Tumblr to Connect with Consumers

Christy Ferer and the Vidicom team take pride in linking brands to consumers. A sufficient tool for brands to use to connect with consumers is Tumblr. Tumblr can provide brands with great exposure because it highlights strong visual content that can be easily shared to mass audiences. Fortunately, Tumblr’s templates are easy to manage and many are totally free.  Brands that are not yet on Tumblr should check out the following brands that are successfully using the social media site.

1.     Calvin Klein: Tumblr is clean, sexy, and sleek just like their ads.

2.     Disney: The content is visual, recognizable, and commonly shared on the site.

3.     GQ: Tumblr highlights the most sharable content from the magazine.

4.     Lexus: Lexus’s Tumblr is subtle and sends the clear message that Lexus=luxury.  

5.     Adidas: Tumblr is interactive, clean and full of color and personality. The products are put front and center without seeming forceful.

Christy Ferer Thinks Custom Timelines on Twitter are a Great Tool for Brands

Christy Ferer, Vidicom CEO, makes sure her team stays up to date with social media news. The ability to create custom timelines on Twitter was announced last week. Users will be able to develop their own timelines focused on certain events and fill them with tweets from particular users and topics. Users will need Tweetdeck in order to develop a custom timeline. Timelines can also be made by hand by using the Twitter API. Our team recommends brands to create custom timelines about current events as they will grab the attention of consumers and increase engagement.

Vidicom Recommends Ways Brands Can Reach On-the-go Customers

Christy Ferer says helping brands get their names in the conversations of consumers is what we do here at Vidicom. With the major shift to mobile advertising in today’s society, the Vidicom team agrees that it is necessary for brands to have a strategy in place to reach on-the-go customers.  Some effective ways brands can reach customers via mobile advertising include:

1.     Create a native mobile ad: By finding and partnering with relevant blogs and new sites in your niche, you can create low-cost ads and target a more receptive audience. 

2.     Use a mobile display advertising partner:  If you don’t want to create a native mobile ad, then a good alternative is to partner with a mobile display advertising partner. You can create an inventory of products for a relatively low cost and the partner takes care of the hosting.

3.      Make a Foursquare ad: Foursquare ads help personalize local searches for consumers looking for the types of products and services your businesses offer.

Content Marketing, says Christy Ferer, is an Effective Strategy for Brands

Traditional, static forms of advertising are no longer effective in today’s social media-driven societies. Businesses now need to adapt by using responsive websites to build their brand. Vidicom and Christy Ferer strongly promotes brands to utilize this content marketing strategy. Brands should take a look at the following companies that have mastered content marketing:

1.     Zady: The ecommerce venture whose product is ethically made goods with transparent supply chains, connects with customers by providing a backstory of the maker of each product. This strategy increases sales because the target audience is shoppers who care about where their goods come from.

2.     Sweetgreen: Via social media platforms, (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Youtube) having a mobile app, and a whole section of its website dedicated to community, the restaurant chain actively engages with consumers. While maintaining consistent brand identity, Sweetgreen also connects with customers by taping into their core beliefs and healthy lifestyle values.

  

Vidicom Says Google Analytics can be Very Useful for Brands

Here at Vidicom, our main goal is to link brands to consumers. Christy Ferer thinks it is a great tool brands can utilize to do so is Google Analytics. Google Analytics promotes brand awareness, lead generation, and customer retention for free!

Brand Awareness:  By using Google Analytics’ “Traffic Sources” option and viewing the “Organic Search” data you can view the top referring search terms that drove Web Traffic to your site.

Lead Generation: You can drive more leads for your business by using the Organic Search results to gather demographic information and behavior found in the audience selection.

Customer Retention: By knowing the search terms, you can understand customers’ reasons for visiting your site and if the visitor is a new or returning customer. In addition, you can optimize the response for existing customers and take care of any issues they may have.

Vidicom recommends brands to Google Analytics to connect more with consumers.

Have you ever used Google Analytics? 

Vidicom Suggests Three Free Tools to Improve Your Overall Twitter Experience

As an active user on Twitter, Vidicom was pleased to discover three free tools that allow you to analyze and manage the accounts you follow to improve your overall experience. These tools will help reduce the list of who you follow in a meaningful way:

1.     Manage Filter: This tool enables you to view the accounts that don’t follow you back, don’t tweet in English, accounts with high and low influence, talkative and quiet accounts, and accounts that haven’t been active for 30 days.

2.     Untweeps: You can reduce your list with this service by being able to see which accounts you follow haven’t tweeted in a while.

3.     Tweepsi: Tweepsi’s “cleanup” function shows all the accounts you’re following in a grid-based list format. This tool is useful because you can add or remove grid columns to see more information about the accounts you follow.

Social Media Sites are a Great Tool for Brands

As social media is becoming so prominent in today’s society, more and more businesses are using it as a tool to promote their brands. CEO of Vidicom, Christy Ferer, agrees that via social media sites, businesses can spread their brand embedded content by allowing customers to share the content with other potential customers. According to data, 87% of content marketers use social media platforms as part of their marketing strategies. Of those who used them, 91% preferred LinkedIn to popular social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter, which 85% and 81% of those surveyed used respectively. Based on these statistics, we know it is quite clear that many businesses are building their brands via social media.

http://mashable.com/2013/11/01/b2b-marketing-infographic/