In a world increasingly filtered through Instagram, a carefully crafted photo shoot starts to look dated. That’s why retailers are rushing to crowdsource their product shots — harvesting a stream of photos from social platforms to help sell everything from West Elm couches to Coach handbags.

The photos are typically curated in galleries, where each picture is linked to a page selling the product. Increasingly, the amateur images are also showing up directly on product pages, next to professionally styled pictures. “The path to purchase has evolved tremendously, and consumers are much more likely to trust their peers than a brand,” said Mimi Banks, director of social media at L’Oreal’s Lancome brand.

The team at Lancome recently goaded women into posting portraits of themselves sans makeup for a project coded “#bareselfie.” The campaign urged women to “be proud of the skin you’re in,” but it also tied in nicely with one of Lancome’s newest products: a cosmetic called Dreamtone that promises to correct blemishes and weird skin tones without blush and powder.

“It’s a challenging ask,” Banks said of getting strangers to share stripped-down selfies. “But people love social clout — to be acknowledged by the brand.”

Coach, meanwhile, is burnishing its brand with a website that collects photos from women wearing its shoes all over the world. The pictures — routed to the company via the hashtag #coachfromabove — aren’t a far cry from what one would find in a professional lookbook.

Both strategies constitute more than branding, according to Olapic, a New York-based startup that helps retail companies collect, curate, and display social content. Photo tie-ins from Facebook and Instagram increase the odds of a purchase by from 5 percent to 12 percent on average, according to co-founder Luis Sanz. What’s more, there is plenty of material: Olapic’s clients feature only about 4 percent of the photos they capture.

“The structure of an e-commerce site has basically been the same since the beginning of the Internet,” Sanz said. “But as soon as we started doing this, the results were really good.” Olapic, which launched in 2010, closed a $5 million round of funding in July. It also won the backing of Scott Galloway, a New York University marketing professor known for founding Red Envelope.

Galloway said Olapic is hitting a sweet spot in e-commerce: High-quality cameras are now standard in new smartphones, and consumers are searching for a sense of authenticity that’s lacking in traditional advertising. “If I can show a Coach bag looking great on me, it carries more credibility than if Annie Leibowitz makes it look great,” Galloway said.

The photos also prime purchases by addressing what might best be called a failure of imagination. For instance, consumers who like a throw pillow from West Elm, a Williams-Sonoma home-goods brand, might be more eager to buy if they see it paired with a particular couch or carpet. That’s one of the main strategies behind the company’s #myWestElm campaign, which went up in September.

“We don’t want to be style dictators,” said Abigail Jacobs, West Elm’s vice president of brand marketing. “And there’s this age-old thing that we love seeing inside other peoples’ homes. […] The goal really is for them to inspire each other.”

An “inspired” customer is often a spendthrift customer. What’s more, social media lets retailers engage in an incessant exercise in AB testing. Coach, for example, might decide to make more of a particular shoe in red if photos of that color appear more often and get more positive feedback.

The practice isn’t entirely new, but it is spreading through the retail industry at a rapid pace. Web marketers are starting to develop best practices. Just this week, two marketing professors at the University of Wisconsin unveiled an algorithm that promises to help retailers select the best photos to drive sales. The researchers found that increased purchasing activity comes from unfiltered photos without long captions, question marks, or exclamation points. In short, authenticity is all.

West Elm, meanwhile, has found another surefire attention-getter: pets. Everything gets more “likes” when it has an adorable animal on it. That’s just a law of the Internet — no research required.

This article originally published at Businessweek here

Photo by Coach

 

Exciting News!!! I was perusing one of our trusted sources in the social media world, Mashable.com, and found out Facebook is rolling out an updated ‘Graph Search’. What does that mean? Read on!

Facebook announced an update to Graph Search on Monday that will enable users to search for conversation topics within status updates, comments and posts. Some users with Graph Search can now browse Facebook for topics of interest — for example, “posts about “Breaking Bad”  or simply “Breaking Bad.”

The update also allows users to search for posts or comments from a certain time period or location (for example, “posts by my friends from last month”) or posts that they already composed or commented on.

The update makes Facebook much more conducive to real-time conversations, an area where it has been making major strides to compete with the likes of Twitter. The two social networks have been competing for eyeballs during primetime television events like the Emmys, the NFL’s Monday Night Football, and Sunday’s Breaking Bad finale. When users’ eyes aren’t glued to the TV screen, Facebook and Twitter want them to be having conversations or voicing their opinions on their respective networks.

Opening up Graph Search to enable post and comment searches will help Facebook to do so. When a user logs into his profile during a primetime event, he can quickly scan all conversations about the game or his favorite show — even if he isn’t near the top of the News Feed. If a user want to talk about an event hours (or even days) later, he can search for all relevant conversations on Facebook, something users can’t easily do using Twitter.

Facebook’s search update is not yet available to all Graph Search users, according to a company spokesperson. It will be tested starting on Monday with a small group of users and will roll out more expansively after that.

*Parts of this blog were originally posted on www.mashable.com. Click here to see it: http://mashable.com/2013/09/30/facebook-graph-search-conversations/.

 

 

LinkedIn is recognized as the professional social network.  It’s a place where people in all industries can go to build relationships with their colleagues and demonstrate their experience and expertise.  You can establish connections with people who are in the same industry or an industry you’re interested in becoming a part of.  Here are a few tips to keep in mind while creating a personal or professional LinkedIn profile.

Keep it professional

Silly or risqué photos we often see on Facebook are not a good choice on LinkedIn.  Keep your headshot professional. Make sure that your profile photo is appropriately cropped.  Your profile picture is the first thing most people see so make sure you are giving your best first impression.

Update your contact information

It’s important to keep all of your information up-to-date.  You don’t want to make it difficult for people to connect with you.  With the LinkedIn app it is now easier than ever to maintain your profile and engage in important discussions.

Personalize invitations

When you invite someone to connect on LinkedIn, your request is accompanied by a brief note.  You have the option of selecting a standard boilerplate message that reads, “I’d like to add you to my professional network”, but adding a quick tailored note will enhance personalization.

Keep up with new tools

LinkedIn, along with all the other social media outlets, are constantly adding new tools to enable a smooth, user-friendly experience.  Make sure to educate yourself on any new tools offered.  LinkedIn recently updated their company page analytics.  With this new set of analytics, you can:

• Identify the updates that drive the greatest engagement.
• Filter engagement trends by type and time period.
• Get more detailed demographic data about your followers.
• See the growth of your follower base and benchmark it against similar brands.

Stay tuned for more tips to create an effective LinkedIn profile and network.

 

 

 

Hi guys, this week I am going to write about the use of hashtags on Facebook. Yes… hashtags; that pound sign looking thing you see all over social media. Believe it or not, there are legitimate reasons for them!

As you have undoubtedly seen, hashtags are now clickable on Facebook. Using a hashtag # (or pound symbol) in front of a word or phrase turns the word into a clickable link. And when you click the link, you will find a feed of public posts that include that hashtag.

If used correctly, hashtags can expand your reach, amplify your brand and promote specials and events. But there are some common mistakes that people make when using hashtags.

Don’t Do This:

• Create a hashtag that is two words. Hashtags have to be all one word.
• Use another brand’s hashtag. Do your research!
• Use hashtags too much. Use them sparingly (not in every single post). Some people may not be as excited about hashtags as you are!
• Use long hashtags. Make them short and easy to understand.

Well, that about wraps up this week’s post! Hopefully you use these tips to your advantage and are able to see the benefits of increasing your visibility. Now, get out there and get your #hashtagging on!