Social Media and Marketing Strategies
5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Link Your Store’s Facebook and Twitter Accounts
May 30th
As many social media users know, you can connect your Facebook page and Twitter account with the click of a button. While this feature may save your store time, it has some serious downfalls, as well.
Take a look at five reasons why we recommend that you don’t link the two social networks:
Frequency
Twitter moves at a fast pace and has a much higher threshold for acceptable posting levels than Facebook. Because Twitter feeds turn over so quickly, your store needs to tweet frequently to keep your message visible to followers. That means that you may tweet as many as 10-15 times a day, without showing up excessively in any of your followers’ feeds.
The same isn’t true for Facebook, however, which moves at a much slower pace. The newsfeed is slightly more static on Facebook and fans generally expect to see your store appear 1-3 times per day. By posting your tweets to your Facebook profile, you may overwhelm fans with status update after status update, and appear more as a spammer than a credible source.
Exclusivity
The point of liking or following any page is to access exclusive information or incentives. If you post the exact same content to both your Twitter and Facebook page, then what reason do your students have to interact with both? Try to vary up both the types of content you share and times that you post so that your fans and followers benefit from being a part of both networks.
Lingo – The syntax used on Facebook and Twitter is also completely different. Twitter relies on hashtags (#), mentions (@), and abbreviations like ‘RT,’ while Facebook’s vocabulary is more typical. When tweets post to Facebook, they look out of place and students who aren’t on Twitter may be confused or annoyed by seeing their newsfeed filled with these references. Although it may take a few more minutes, make sure your message includes a format that is appropriate to the social network that you’re sharing it on.
Length
Twitter is limited to 140 characters so posts are meant to be short and sweet, typically with a link attached to the end for more information. With a much larger character limit, however, Facebook posts are usually intended to provide a full explanation. By posting these brief tweets to your Facebook page, fans may not get the full message. Likewise, by syncing your Facebook statuses to post on Twitter, they often appear abbreviated and will have the same unfortunate affect on followers. Ensure that all your content meets the appropriate length requirement for each account.
Expectation
Twitter and Facebook are two distinct networks with two distinct sets of etiquette and norms. The people you’re connected to on Twitter expect different things than those you’re connected to on Facebook (even if most of them are the same group of people). The culture of both networks is different, so if you combine them you risk losing your audience.
So, what should you do instead?
Just because you don’t link your accounts, doesn’t mean you have to spend an exorbitant amount of time crafting and sharing your content. We suggest using a third-party social media management site, such as Hootesuite or Tweetdeck, which allows you to post across social networks from one central location. These services are typically free and operate as a dashboard where you can write, schedule, and manage your messages.
That being said, it’s important to remember each of the issues above and create unique posts for Facebook and Twitter. At the very least, start by switching up the language and format you use to ensure it fits the platform. Then, work toward creating a social media strategy that guides you in what type of content to share across each network.
WKU Uses Foursquare for Event Promotions
May 25th
The following article, written by Corie Martin for the Journal of Higher Education Web Professionals, is a great example of how colleges and institutions can put social media to use for on-campus promotions. Take a look at how Western Kentucky University was able to connect with students through foursquare as they walk you through the process from start to finish:
Part of my challenge as the manager of Creative Web Services at Western Kentucky University (WKU) is to keep our web presences interactive and fun. I like to use the tools our students use for direct communication, and I like to let them drive the conversation.
So when we got to thinking about cool, new, free (because we are a state university, after all) things we could do on campus for our students, Foursquare made a lot of sense.
WKU is a mid-sized four-year public with over 21,000 students, but on our campus we have determined that smaller is better. We don’t have a retail-heavy campus and we are not surrounded by much commerce, so generally campus check-in specials and incentives offer limited benefits to our students. We decided to try something different and shift our focus to using Foursquare as a tool to create a buzz around specific events rather than to focus on offering widespread, high-frequency specials or badges.
Becoming a 4sqCampus
We began in the spring of 2011 with a simple email to campus@foursquare.com that opened our dialogue with the staff at Foursquare. We worked with them to claim our campus venues in bulk (“Bulk Claim Venues”), set the geo-coordinates of each location and they helped us build out our page (http://www.foursquare.com/wku). The set-up process for us involved a lot of back and forth correspondence. Today, 4sqonCampus has expanded and campus administrators have the ability to do much of this on their own, as well as add their own venue managers, check-in specials and more.
Once we were all set up and ready to go it was summertime, so with no students on campus we had to decide the best way to encourage students to use the tool. We put the word out on our various social media channels, created some marketing materials, web and digital signage ads and placed flyers in summer orientation packets. Little did we know at the time that the incoming freshmen class held the key to the success of the Foursquare program on WKU’s campus!
The History of WKU2K15
Like many colleges and universities, WKU holds a special orientation week for incoming freshmen called M.A.S.T.E.R. Plan. New students have the opportunity to come to campus before the rest of the student body to move in, attend informational sessions and social events and to get acquainted with our large hilltop campus.
For the past several years, we have hosted WKU “Class of” groups on Facebook for these incoming students. Typically the students are very active in the late spring and throughout the summer, but when they arrive on campus in the fall for M.A.S.T.E.R. Plan, we never hear from them again. This was not the case with the Class of 2015. No, this year’s freshmen class joined and stuck around. They connected as a unit and identified themselves as a class, often referring to themselves as “WKU2K15,” and they actually engaged – daily! Their sense of community is what inspired us to release Foursquare at WKU to them first.
Reaching 2015
The camaraderie within the Class of 2015 was neat to witness from an administrator’s perspective. At its peak, our Class of 2015 Facebook group grew to over 1,400 students before Facebook freaked out and stopped counting them. This was over a third of our freshmen class! We decided to try something we had never tried before – we created the first ever official “Class of” t-shirts and scored some great sponsors from various student service offices to help pay for them. We printed a thousand of them with nice Foursquare at WKU QR codes on the back and set up a tent in our highest campus traffic area during three days of M.A.S.T.E.R. Plan week.
In order to get the free shirt, students had to sign up to follow WKU on Foursquare and check in to our tent. Pretty simple. We set up eight laptops and invited our t-shirt sponsors to join us at the tent to hand out swag and to help us explain to students what Foursquare is (hint: No, it is not the old schoolyard ball game). It was a brilliant move because the students started seeing the shirts walking around campus and wanted to know where to get them. In all, we handed out every last shirt that week and scored 800 new followers on our WKU Foursquare page.
The greatest thing about this project is that even today, months later, we still see our Class of 2015 shirts all over campus. Our president sported one at the freshmen convocation and one of our WKU Men’s Basketball players had his on the day our team returned from winning the conference championship game that landed WKU in the 2012 NCAA tournament!
Where we are today
With the help of our friends at Foursquare, we have used the tool to promote athletic and orientation events, and we recently hosted a check-in tent at the WKU Earth Day Festival. We are working on integrating Foursquare check-ins into our new Virtual Tour, and we are currently planning another release to the Class of 2016 when they come to campus for M.A.S.T.E.R. Plan 2012. We are also looking into creating fun events using the tool like scavenger hunts and Mayorship programs in our residence hall communities.
By offering a fully supported Campus Ambassador program and tools to help schools succeed, the 4sqonCampus division has grown and now enables institutions to do much more for themselves. Still to set up a specific event under a venue in Foursquare, an online request must be submitted and you are at the mercy of the Foursquare folks to set it up for you, a fact I hope will change in the future.
The best advice I can give institutions looking to get involved is that if you are in a smaller community like we are, don’t expect Foursquare to be an instant hit. Schools in major metropolitan areas with a lot of retail and dining venues surrounding their campuses might expect thousands of followers and tons of check-ins and custom badges but, in our smaller community, most of our students are just now embracing mobile technology. By keeping realistic expectations and by using Foursquare for event promotion and starting with incoming cohorts of students, we’ve insured that, a couple of years from now, our whole campus will be following WKU on Foursquare and telling their friends about it!
Why would I recommend Foursquare over other similar services? Well, for starters, it’s free. They also offer incredible, personal support from real people who offer so much more than lip service – they really understand the higher ed industry and work with schools of all sizes to help their programs succeed.
Want to get started? Check out https://foursquare.com/universities and email campus@foursquare.com.
6 Easy Steps to Get Started With Mobile Marketing
May 22nd
The following article, Mobile Marketing: 6 Easy Steps to Get Started was written by Hollis Thomases, President & CEO of Web Ad.vantage, for Inc.com.
You can’t talk about digital marketing–or even social media–without acknowledging the growing importance of mobile.
New stats about mobile’s gains and innovations make the press almost daily now. Here are a few you might have missed:
- “There are 5.3 billion mobile devices in use on the planet today” (Mobile Marketing Association)
- “86% of smartphone owners used their phone in the past month to make real-time queries to help them meet friends, solve problems, or settle arguments” (Pew Resear)
- “Consumers spent $26.1 billion globally on apps last year” (Strategy Analysis)
- “Mobile ad revenue increased 149% 2011 versus 2010, up to $1.6 billion” (Interactive Advertising Bureau)
- “Within three years, $930 billion in payments will be processed via mobile” (KPMG)
Essentially, this means you’d better get your business mobile-ready … and fast! Embracing mobile doesn’t have to be as complicated as it may seem. Consider these six relatively low barriers to entry.
1. Check your website’s mobile-friendliness
Before you wholeheartedly embrace mobile, it’s a good idea to see how your website fares when viewed on different mobile devices. Run your site through a few of the mobile compatibility testing tools on this list for a good gauge.
Bonus: MBS Systems inSite can be optimized for mobile viewing. Talk to your MBS Systems inSite Representative to take advantage of this feature.
2. Run a short code/SMS text messaging campaign
American Idol first popularized this “text [ABCDE] to [12345]” form of marketing. Today, SMS campaigns can encourage users to request information, download coupons, set up reminders, participate in sweepstakes–or, sure, cast a vote–among other ideas.
These “short-code” campaigns are relatively easy to set up, especially if you follow these tips from Mobile Marketer.
Bonus: See how other college stores including University of Wyoming Bookstore and The Duck Store are implementing SMS marketing.
3. Claim your place
Particularly if you are in a consumer-facing business, mobile users may be seeking businesses like yours through location-based services such as Yelp, foursquare, Google Places and others. Make sure you can get found: Be sure to register and create a company account.
Bonus: Check out how to create a foursquare business page.
4. Use scannable QR codes
It’s hard to avoid seeing QR codes these days; their adoption rate in the US has increased 314% year-over-year from Q1 2011 versus Q1 2012. They can appear on products, posters, shelf displays, and even wine bottles.
Using camera-enabled smartphones, consumers can scan your QR code and be taken to a URL to receive whatever message or information you’ve set up to be associated with this code.
Bonus: See our tips on how to create QR codes as well as some best practices to keep in mind.
5. Segment out mobile in Google AdWords
If you’re running a Google AdWords campaign, you can now separate and manage the mobile side of how your ads get seen–and you should be doing so. This allows you to better optimize, track and measure mobile-driven traffic.
Bonus: Google explains how in this Help Center video.
6. Buy mobile ads
Target your campaign to your desired audience (demographic, geographic, whatever) using mobile advertising.
Bonus: Since most mobile ad campaigns are served based on the user’s location, here’s a comprehensive list of location-based mobile advertising options.
How does your store market via mobile? Share your ideas and experiences in the comment section!
How to Launch Facebook Offers in Minutes
May 15th
The following excerpt is from the article, How to Launch Facebook Offers in Minutes, written by James Meyer for SocialMediaToday.com. View the full article.
One of the most powerful features you can use to promote your business is Facebook Offers. Although they have been in beta for nearly two months, Offers are now being rolled out to small businesses slowly and that’s good news! The even better news is that it takes just minutes to create an offer. Here we will go step by step from idea to redemption.
Step by Step:
Photo Credit: SocialMediaToday.com
1. On your page, at the top of your timeline on the left hand side you will see an image listing: Status, Photo/Video, Offer, Event +
2. Click Offer, Event +
3. A dialog box will open. Click Offer. (This area also has other tools such as Event, Milestone, Question aka Polls).
Photo Credit: SocialMediaToday.com
4. A new dialog box will open and here’s where we start to get down to business
Make the Offer
5. Upload an Image – the image should be clean and uncluttered. A simple close up of the item is all that’s needed.
6. Write a Headline – keep it simple and strong. This is the call to action and what will get people in your door.
7. Limit the Number of Offers People Can Claim – two thoughts here; create a large number. This leads people to believe you need a large amount to meet demand or use a small number to create scarcity and urgency. You decide.
8. Set an Expiration Date for your offer – simple enough.
9. Add your Terms and Conditions – 1 per person, 1 per day, 1 per table, cannot be combined with other offers. Whatever is appropriate for your situation.
Example Offer
Here is one I made for a client. It contains a simple image, a strong headline. I like to start my headline with FREE when I can. I also like my headlines to be as simple as possible for clarity. I listed the number of free items, when the offer expires and the term.
At this stage if everything looks OK click the preview button.
Photo Credit: SocialMediaToday.com
Fans Redeem the Offer
Photo Credit: SocialMediaToday.com
When your fans click on “Get Offer” and redeem your fantastic offer they will receive a message and an email. They then have the option to print the email or take their smart phone into your venue and show the staff the redemption message.
Where to Promote
Where should you promote your offer? The answer is everywhere you can! Create a status about it on Facebook, tweet your followers on Twitter, share it through an email, post it to your website, and add it to your in-store promotional materials!
It may sound strange to offer a special once the customer is in the store but just because they are in the store doesn’t necessarily mean they ‘Like’ you on Facebook. On promotional materials, add a message that encourages readers to “Like Us on Facebook” and you may get a new fan.
Facebook Timeline Changed the Way We See Brand Pages
May 11th
It's easy to see that fans focused heavily on the Cover Photo in the Timeline layout.
When Facebook launched Timeline for brands last month, it wasn’t just marketers’ social media strategies that got turned upside down.
The new format also changed the way consumers experience brands on Facebook.
In a webcam eye-tracking study for Mashable by EyeTrackShop, participants spent less time looking at Wall posts and ads and more time looking at the cover photo on brands’ timelines than they did on their old Facebook Walls.
“The new Facebook Timeline limits the effective branding space, and the top portion of the page must be effectively utilized,” suggest the study’s authors.
EyeTrackShop recorded eye movements of 30 participants as they were shown brand profiles — before and after being converted to timeline — from the Dallas Cowboys, Good Morning America, “The Muppets” and Pepsi in 10-second intervals. What participants looked at on each webpage, for how long and in what order is recorded in the images below.
Results suggests a few ways our perception of Brands on Facebook has changed:
- Ads on Facebook Timeline are less visible than ads on Facebook Brand Pages. While 30%-40% of study participants looked at ads on brand Timeline pages, 80% looked at them on Brand Pages. In both cases, ads placed higher up on the page fared better than those below them.
- Cover photos are the new Facebook Wall (at least as far as attention goes). On brand pages, Wall posts were the star attraction. Viewers on average looked at them first and for the longest amount of time.On the brand Timelines, however, viewers always looked at the cover photo first. In all but one case, they spent a longer time looking at it than at Timeline content.
- Everyone will notice your cover photo. It’s larger than anything else and at the top of the page for a reason, and 100% of viewers looked at it. On average, they saw it in 0.5 seconds or less. Meanwhile, only 65% to 92% of viewers noticed profile photos on Brand Pages.
- Viewers see Timeline content last. In every case, viewers looked at either the left or right column of Timeline content last — after ads, navigation buttons and brand logos.
- Information that was invisible is now a focal point.Facebook moved the number of Likes, events and apps to prime top-and-center territory. It now gets more attention than when it was listed on the right-hand side of the page.In the case of Good Morning America, for instance, the show’s 585,000 Likes went from being completely ignored on its Brand Page to being the biggest attention-getter on its Timeline.
- Cover photos with faces attract the most attention. Good Morning America and “The Muppets” have cover photos with faces, whereas the Dallas Cowboys and Pepsi do not. The cover photos with faces attracted more attention.
Still don’t have a cover photo? That’s okay, we have options for you! Take a look at the 16 Cover Photos we created just for college stores and choose your favorite. Even if you decide to design your own, just make sure you have something in place for Fans to focus on at the top of your page – it’s the best way to make a good first impression!
To $ or Not to $? A Study of Brands on Pinterest
Apr 24th
The following article, Brands on Pinterest: To $ or Not to $? [STUDY], was written by Lauren Indvik, associate editor of marketing and media for Mashable. View the full article on Mashable.com.
Brands should be wary of attaching price tags to the products they pin on Pinterest, a new study from analytics startup Pinreach and Josh Yang, a MBA candidate at Harvard Business School, indicates.
The two parties discovered that pins with price tags are just as likely to be shared as pins without price tags. Both types were repinned between 5.4 and 5.5 times on average. Pins with price tags received slightly more likes, however: 1.4 likes per pin versus 1.1 likes per pin.
Users can attach price tags to pins by typing in a “$” sign followed by one or more numbers in the description box. The price tag appears not only in the description, but also in the upper lefthand corner of the pin thumbnail and image,
The results were based on a randomized sample of 1 million pins, 1.2% of which bore $ tags.
When brands affixed price tags to product pins however, users behaved differently. An analysis of 2,588 pins across three “major ecommerce sites” showed that followers were far less likely to repin images with price tags. One site, which averaged 135.6 repins per pin, only received 54.6 repins on items with $ signs, the study found. A major group-buying site fared even worse, averaging 0.2 repins on pins marked with a dollar sign, versus 1.8 repins on pins that bore no sign at all.
Why the behavior shift? Yang and Pinreach suggest that when users include $ in their pin descriptions, it doesn’t feel overtly commercial, but when brands do, it does. “When Pinterest users see $-pins from brands, it feels very much like an advertisement to click-through and buy, and they are less likely to share (i.e., repin) advertisements, as it degrades their own social proof with their followers,” the study reads.
The lesson here is readily apparent: If you’re a brand and want your products to be shared, don’t affix a price tag. But the study also underlines users’ more subtle aversion to brand-driven commerce within the Pinterest environment, even as a growing contingent of users prove eager to purchase products found on the site.
A Tumblr Tutorial for Brands
Apr 19th
The following excerpt is from the article, Tumblr Tutorial for Brands, written by Bliss Hanlin, Community Manager, for eModeration.
Visual content, curation and storytelling are the three major trends for 2012 when it comes to emerging niche social networks. Unlike content-based forms of networking (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,) services like Pinterest, Posterous, Instagram, and Tumblr allow users to share visually in a way that bypasses personal networks, commentary and conversations, and instead relies on viral spread.
In fact, in Tumblr’s own words, they are about “millions of people sharing the things they do, find, love, think, or create.” The curation and identity points are so strong that some Tumblr authors have found themselves with book deals based around the concept of their micro-blog.
But what exactly is Tumblr?
Tumblr is a bit like a Twitter and WordPress mash-up. Tumblr is both a microblogging platform and a social network where “short form” content rules. Anytime a user sees something interesting online, a quick click on a “Share on Tumblr” bookmarklet posts or ‘tumbles’ the snippet directly. Unlike the “web logs” of yesteryear, wordy personal reflection and super-techie customization are considered passé on Tumblr. As David Karp, the CEO of Tumblr puts it, “All blogs took the same form,” he notes. “I wanted something much more free-form, much less verbose.
Who’s tumbling?
Introduced in 2007, Tumblr has steadily increased in population as mobile and smartphones have become incorporated in everyday life. The site saw hockey stick growth in late 2009, as college students and tech-lovers world-wide adopted the platform.
Per the comScore, users spend an average of 89 minutes a month on Tumblr. Quantcast tells us that the demographics are split fairly evenly between men and women, with the majority of users falling in the 18 – 34 age range. Approximately 50% of the traffic currently comes from the US, with the remaining percentage being international.
What’s on Tumblr?
The world of Tumblr is a wide and varied one. Personal blogs often center on a meme (aka, a single topic blog.) Design, fashion, and music all are popular focuses of the Tumblr audience. A separate style of Tumblr blog is one devoted to reblogging, or internal curation and sharing, where a member neither posts original content nor commentary on outside content, but instead “reblogs” from within the Tumblr community. Like the members of Pinterest, Tumblr users have a constant stream of new and interesting content flowing on site.
Is Tumblr right for your brand?
The best Tumblrs are full of small snips of media that come from original content, reblogs and added opinions on content that is shared. Some brands have enthusiasts ready to blog, but without a built-in audience (General Electric‘s Tumblr is a prime example.)
Without a committed curator, however, no Tumblr blog is successful. The content stream has to remain constant and engaging, otherwise even strong starts can end with a string of unfollows. That kind of creative output can be taxing, though, so ensure you have a dedicated employee or employees willing to put in the effort to maintain it before beginning.
Do college stores use Tumblr?
You bet! For two great examples of how your store can use Tumblr, MBS suggests checking out how Chico State Wildcat Store and The Skidmore Shop are engaging with their students through the microblogging platform. If your store is on Tumblr, too, be sure to share a link in the comments section below so others can take a look!
Thinking about joining Tumblr?
eModeration offers a free eBook with details on how to get started! Download it here.
3 Twitter Rumors and What They Could Mean for Brands
Apr 12th
The following article, 3 Twitter Rumors and What They Could Mean for Brands, was written by David Clarke, CEO and co-founder of BGT Partners, for Mashable.com.
With increased competition for ad dollars, Twitter is making a big push this year to become more attractive to advertisers. It has invested in a redesign, as well as brand pages, but that may not be all the social network plans to unveil.
According to a recent Ad Age report, the company is looking to add new experiences to its platform, in the hopes that the move will entice brands to spend more ad dollars.
Although Twitter hasn’t officially confirmed these rumors, it’s worth taking them seriously. See below for the three possible changes, and what each could mean for brands.
1. Open Platform
Facebook and Apple transformed their businesses by opening their platforms to third-party developers. The move allowed independent developers to create new ways for consumers to engage with brands. As a result, we now have multi-million dollar businesses built around these apps.
If the rumors are right, Twitter is heading in the same direction by opening its platform to developers.
An open Twitter platform would allow brands to create deeper interactions with consumers through custom experiences. This would not only be an opportunity for developers, but also for brands — especially those with strong Twitter presences. For example, if you’re using Twitter as a customer service channel, then a customer service app could potentially streamline the way you handle customer support.
That said, apps on Twitter will face inherent challenges. The Twitter stream is the main attraction, and most people don’t visit brand pages directly. Plus, popular Twitter browsers such as TweetDeck and HootSuite are built around the Twitter stream, which deals another blow to the power of brand pages. Perhaps custom apps can find a way to drive more traffic to brand pages, but it seems doubtful.
2. T-Commerce
Social commerce was hailed as the next big thing in e-commerce. Several brands developed e-commerce integration on the Facebook platform, hoping people would want to purchase while on Facebook, but it never really took off. Gap, JC Penny, and Nordstrom closed down their Facebook shops because customers preferred to shop on the main websites. This probably had more to do with the poor Facebook e-commerce user experience than with Facebook itself. Most of these early f-commerce attempts were simply developed without an understanding of how Facebook could add value to the shopping experience.
Now, Twitter is rumored to try its luck with social e-commerce for brand pages. Will it be successful?
Fundamentally Twitter has to succeed where Facebook failed. Twitter e-commerce, or t-commerce, has to create a significant added value to make it more compelling than shopping from a traditional web store.
It’s likely that Twitter’s e-commerce solution will include a deep integration with Square, the mobile payment company Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey established in 2009. It’s possible that t-commerce will be a mobile-only service that uses location-based technology and one-click payments with your Twitter name. That would add significant value to Twitter’s mobile user base, especially when you consider that 50% of Twitter’s users are accessing Twitter on mobile devices.
3. Contests and Sweepstakes
Lastly, Twitter is rumored to introduce contests and sweepstakes for brand pages to create deeper brand engagement. That said, brands have been pushing contests and sweepstakes on Twitter for some time, and given the viral capabilities available with retweeting and hashtags, it will continue to happen.
Will an official change by Twitter be groundbreaking? Probably not, but it’s likely that these changes will allow brands to more efficiently manage and execute campaigns on this social network.
Five Ways College Student Internet Use is Unique
Apr 10th
The following article, Plugged in: Five Ways College Student Internet Use is Unique, was written by Mykel Nahorniak, CEO of Localist, for SocialMediaToday.com.
Seems like everyone these days is constantly plugged in: it’s no surprise that today’s college students are some of the biggest internet users. Look around any campus and you’ll see college students connecting all over the place.
There are students thumbing smart phones while waiting in line for coffee, lining library tables with laptops, and up late in the common room with tablets on their knees. No matter the device of choice, on a college campus, everyone’s connected.
So what exactly are students doing online? And is college student internet use all that different from that of those who left the quad years ago?
To supplement what we’ve learned from experience, we took a look at some studies from the 2011 Pew Internet and American Life Project and the First Monday article, Everyday Life, Online: U.S. College Students’ Use of the Internet.
Let’s break it down with five characteristics of college student internet use you should know:
1. It’s not all fun and games, but most of the time, it is
You might be thinking, shouldn’t this list include studying? College students are, after all, students. The answer is yes; the internet has certainly made it easier than ever for students to conduct research, access online course content, and share academic materials. However, students are spending a significant portion of their time online doing non-academic activities.
Take a snapshot of a student’s internet activity for one day and you’ll see that a lot of time is spent emailing, IMing or chatting, playing games, connecting on social networking sites, and watching videos.
So while college student internet use isn’t all fun and games, the majority of the time, it is.
2. It’s as basic as breakfast
Millenials are the first generation to truly embrace internet devices and activities like social networking as an essential part of daily life. The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that unlike older generations who marvel at internet-related technologies as new innovations, millenials seamlessly weave them into their daily lives, as if they were old friends. Consuming and sharing information across multiple devices and websites feels familiar and natural to college students.
3. It’s all about usability
Pop quiz: True or false? Today’s college student internet users are tech-savvy.
Answer: False. It’s a commonly held misconception that college student internet users are all tech wizards. There’s a big difference between frequently using technology and being tech savvy.
In our experience, college students don’t always care how an app or new technology works. They just want it to be easy to access and use. Give them a product that takes too long to figure out, and they’re on to the next one.
4. It’s dynamic and participatory
College students are both consumers and creators in the internet community. They spend time devouring information from news sites, blogs, and social networking sites and posting content of their own.
As a group, they appreciate interactive opportunities to access information and contribute ideas. The internet has given college students a voice, and they like to use it. To them, no website is complete without that little blank box asking them to share their opinions in the form of a comment.
5. Connecting to connect: it’s all about social
Social networking sites are the new common rooms. Millenials, more than any other age group, use the internet primarily for connecting with others. They’re also the only generation that thinks technology makes people closer together rather than isolated.
It isn’t surprising then that 86% of millenials who attend or have attended college identify themselves as social network users. They build and maintain social relationships through Facebook, Twitter, email, chat programs, and blogging. They’re visiting social networking sites multiple times a day. Some even describe their online social activity as an addiction.
Talk to a college student and they’d ask, what’s the point of accessing the wealth of information on the internet if you can’t share it? When it comes down to it, it’s all about social.
If students are online, then your store needs to be, too! We have lots of ways to help you connect with your target audience. For instance, our new mobile app, On The Go, places relevant information directly in the hands of your customer base.
Seamlessly integrated with inSite, the app pulls data from your e-commerce page so that students can look up buyback prices, compare textbook prices, and search for general books and merchandise. Because it’s fully customizable, you can even brand the app by customizing it with your name, colors and logo!
Learn how you can bring this solution to your store by contacting your MBS Systems Sales Representative!
Twitter Launches Self-Serve Advertising for Small Businesses
Apr 3rd
The following article, Twitter Launches Self-Serve Advertising for Small Businesses, was written by Sarah Kessler for Mashable.
Twitter announced on Tuesday that a select group of small businesses can begin using its self-serve advertising platform to create promoted tweets and promoted accounts.
Promoted Accounts suggest a brand’s Twitter account to users with interests similar to those who are already following the brand. Promoted Tweets take an existing tweet from a brand’s account that is inspiring a lot of engagement and promotes it in search results. Small businesses pay only when their account is followed or someone engages with their promoted tweet.
Twitter launched a self-serve advertising platform in November with just a “handful of advertisers,” but it remains closed to most businesses.
All of the companies with initial access to these promoted products will be American Express merchants and cardmembers. The credit card company partnered with Twitter to launch the new platform, offering early access to its customers and a $100 credit for free advertising to the first 10,000 businesses to sign up.
American Express will notify the first batch of small businesses who have access to the platform starting Tuesday, and the number of eligible businesses will increase throughout the next weeks.
It’s no surprise American Express stepped in to help promote the new option to small businesses. The company has launched Twitter-based promotions in the past, and it has been aggressively pursuing partnerships with other social networks as well. A Facebook program called “Link, Like, Love,” for instance, tailors offers to what cardmembers Liked on Facebook. A partnership with Foursquare that launched in June rewards users with loyalty card-like credit when they check in.
Learn more about how Twitter’s promoted options will work here. Will you take advantage of Twitter’s new Self-Serve ads once they become available to the public? Share your thoughts in the comments section!
