Zappos.com has only been around since 1999, but it has quickly grown to be a popular site for online shopping.  Although it started just selling shoes, Zappos has grown to include clothing and accessories as well.  What has made them a success is their customer service.  They call this their WOW.  The purpose of WOW is to go above and beyond what is expected in order to have an emotional impact on the customer.  Zappos wants nothing about their service to be considered average.  They WOW.

Zappos has built its entire business on customer loyalty.  They bank on the customer enjoying the experience of the website and delivery.  I have ordered a few products from Zappos myself, and I have always been satisfied.  Their site is very user-friendly and I have always received my shipment before the intended arrival date.

After watching this inside look into Zappos (video below), I can understand why their company is successful in its mission.  They are completely focused on people and the experiences for both customers and employees.  Zappos does WOW.

David Fischer

A Different Kind of Advertising

Users swarmed to Facebook back in 2005 because of its selectivity and clean look.  Unlike the flashing banners and confusing formats of Myspace, Facebook was uniform and surprisingly easy to navigate. One of the reasons why the social media monster, Facebook, is different than other social media sites is its advertising. Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg allegedly hates pop-up ads and obnoxious promotions which gives the vice president of marketing and former Google executive, David Fischer, the difficult task of selling ad space without discouraging users. Fischer has risen to the challenge by creating ad ‘experiences’ that engage readers by relating to them personally.

What Does Sponsored Mean?

Take a look at the right side of your Facebook page. There’s a column under your live feed titled ‘sponsored’ that pays Facebook’s bills.  This section highlights any status updates or likes that your friends make about a company and combines them with an ad straight from the company.  For example, under my sponsored section it says, “Justin P. likes Chevrolet” and there’s an ad for the Chevy Game Time app below it.

The Most Effective Form of Marketing

However, this month Facebook will start putting their sponsored stories directly into your news feed. So for the first time, companies can pay to be at the top of your page and at the forefront of your mind.  This strategy is to try and reproduce the most effective form of marketing, word-of-mouth.

Considering the fact that 85% of Facebook’s revenue last year was from their online advertising, I would say it’s working quite nicely.

What do you think of Facebook’s advertising technique? Will sponsored stories in your news feed get you more interested in brands that your friends endorse or just annoy you?

What is this new Policy Shift?

Google recently announced that they are going to be eliminating a significant number of their privacy policies across their different services to make way for a single new privacy policy. This policy states that on March 1 of this year Google will begin integrating information from each of their different web services in order to develop a profile for each user. Google states that these profiles will be used to “tailor” search results and provide advertisements that each user will find more relevant. If you aren’t already worried about this policy, you should be.

Who Should Care and Why?

Just about everyone. Anyone who uses any form of Google web service (i.e. YouTube, Gmail, Google+, and Google’s search engine) and enjoys some level of privacy. The new policy becomes much more frightening in conjunction with the fourth privacy principle of the Google company philosophy:

People have different privacy concerns and needs. To best serve the full range of our users, Google strives to offer them meaningful and fine-grained choices over the use of their personal information. We believe personal information should not be held hostage and we are committed to building products that let users export their personal information to other services. We don’t sell users’ personal information.

This means that as of March 1, any online activity that you perform with some degree anonymity using one of Google’s services will be public knowledge that is associated with your name, your face, and your phone number. This should be particularly off-putting to android phone users whose real-time location, Google Wallet data, and much more will also be available.

The Take-Away Message?

So what can you do? Not much really. There’s no way to opt out of this debacle. If you plan on continuing to use Google’s web services, you’ll simply have to submit to these policies and the fact that all personal information you share or indicate with them being available to anyone who cares enough to know. Ultimately you’ll just need to reevaluate using Google’s services instead of their alternatives. Time to break out the pros & cons charts again!

The top 3 companies that use Social Media most effectively, as posted by Amy Porterfield (a social media strategy consultant), are;

1): Martell Home Builders: they are a construction company based in Canada where there goal is to create a direct path from the builders to the consumers. So there website is very user friendly and most of their leads come from other buyers who have previously used the company.

2): Zappos: This is a very popular user friendly internet based shoe company. They use strategies such as fan of the week and allow comments on their website from buyers and their reactions. They are very successful and have a solid company structure.

3): Giantnerd: This is a company that sells outdoor equipment for activities such as hiking and biking. They are dedicated to selling their product but also becoming friends with their customers as well. They have set up their site in a way that encourages a social network where customers can talk to each other. Another aspect of their site is called WikiNerdia. This is where anybody can post questions about different products and then the other consumers that use the site answer it for you. This works well for Giantnerd because their customers do their selling for them. Along with this you can also look up older topics and posts about different products sold.

These companies can be used as examples as how to effectively use social media into your business. If you can’t think of strategies yourself you might as well look for them in companies where it works.

The competition for small businesses is intense.  The are faced with competition in every area.  A lot of their competition is from big corporations that have large marketing budgets and better name recognition.  The odds are against them but one thing that does level the playing field slightly is the web.  Although large companies do still have the advantage the internet is big enough for small business to cut out a nice market for themselves.  Unfortunately small business often make key mistakes that force them out of the market.  Here are some common mistakes small business make:

• ignore the importance of the internet
• poor maintenance of a site
• Not advertising the site
• ignore local submissions sites
• ignore monitoring and analyzing results

They use Facebook fan pages to have fans support the team by declaring that they are fans

Top 5 fan pages on Facebok:

1. Pittsburgh Steelers

2. Minnesota Vikings

3. Indianapolis Colts

4. Green Bay Packers

5. Washington Redskins

They use Twitter Accounts with followers for teams and not to mention a ton of players with followers who have individual accounts that tell about different aspects of things that are happening off the field.

Top 5 followings:

1. New England Patriots

2. San Diego Chargers

3. New York Jets

4. Oakland Raiders

5. San Francisco 49ers

People believe though that Social Media for the NFL and all sports teams is a source of advertising and media that is very much untapped. Very few of these organizations have professionals running the social media system and they don’t know how to effectively use this tool. Doesn’t mean they are doing it wrong since they obviously keep making tons of money, but the point is still being pushed by people around the country.

http://www.sportsinfo101.com/businesstips-topics/how-nfl-teams-use-social-media