Wikipedia defines crowdfunding as:

A collective effort of individuals who network and pool their money, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations.

Simply put, crowdfunding allows people to donate cash to your cause if they believe in you and your idea.

Why Use Crowdfunding?

By using crowdfunding, you can grow stakeholders who are interested in your product, service or mission while obtaining cash resources to invest in your start-up, expansion or new idea. By collecting small contributions from many, you have the opportunity to source significant funds while increasing awareness and boosting your reputation.

How Crowdfunding Works

No matter what you want to raise money for, you can start now. The key here is to invite others to experience your passion. Successful crowdfunding isn’t about asking people for money but rather building a community around your idea and letting them take part in the unique opportunity.

There are many websites that provide you a platform for your crowdfunding. Two types of crowdfunding platforms – rewards-based and donation-based – are the easiest for companies and non-profits to manage. Rewards-based projects offer an item or service in exchange for a monetary offering. Donation-based projects offer donors recognition, appreciation or an item of value.

Once you decide what kind of project you want to offer, you can select the platform that will best help you achieve your goal. Here are just a few:

• Indiegogo is an equal opportunity platform dedicated to democratizing the way people raise funds for any project – creative, entrepreneurial or cause-related.  Its flexible funding option allows you to keep whatever money you raise, minus the platform fees.
• Kickstarter accepts creative projects in several industries including: Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater. At Kickstarter you have to define your pledge goal and meet it, or none of the money is collected.
• Fundly.com connects those who need to raise funds for “passionate” campaigns to donors.

Once you have selected the vendor you want to work with, start building your project or campaign. Preparation is key…..identify people who you think would be interested and those who know a lot of people who can share your passion. Start building your community and share your enthusiasm to get others motivated. When it comes to crowdfunding, it’s not all about how much money each contributor gives, but rather how many contributors you can get. So start building that network.

In order to transfer ownership of a Google Plus business page, the email account you’d like to become Owner must first be a Page Manager.

(If you need it, check out our post on how to add a user as a Page Manager of your Google Plus business page.)

A user needs to have been a Page Manager for at least 2 weeks before s/he can become the Owner.

How to Transfer Ownership of a Google Plus Business Page

1. From your Google Plus Page slide-out menu, click on “Settings” (gear icon) at the bottom of the list.

2. On the next screen, click on the “Managers” tab at the top.

3. You’ll now be shown the Page Owner and current Manager(s). Click on the down arrow beneath the current Manager you want to transfer ownership to.

A “transfer ownership” option will appear.

4. You’ll need to confirm the fact that you do want to transfer ownership.

The transfer of ownership is pretty much instant. The previous Owner will automatically be included as a Manager on the Page unless and until that person is removed as Manager by the Page Owner.

But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have Abercrombie & Fitch kids.

You don’t have to wear the label to embody the attitude.

By now most people have read the remarks from A&F CEO Mike Jeffries about their target audience. Quotes like “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids.” He goes on to brag about the exclusivity of the brand in ways most people find appalling.

There’s been plenty of understandable outrage about the quotes, especially in light of the ongoing national discussion about bullying. As an aside, if you were troubled by those quotes that recently resurfaced, the full article from 2006 is worth a read (both because it shows how deeply he means what he says, and because it might remind you of some of Abercrombie’s past controversies).

For the most part, the reactions I’ve seen have been kneejerk disgust. My personal response was to roll my eyes. This was nothing new; it was the same attitude I dealt with throughout my youth as a kid who could never hope to be part of the “in” crowd. But after reading several blogs that approach this from a marketing perspective (among them, Mark Olivito’s take here), I’ve given the issue more thought.

And I can’t believe what I’m going to write next…

From a strategy perspective, I really can’t find fault in what Jeffries said. His statements were only surprising because people rarely speak the truth so bluntly. Abercrombie IS exclusionary, and aggressively so – every aspect of their branding pushes that message. I can’t imagine any time in my life when I would have felt comfortable in an Abercrombie store. Jeffries’ remarks just served to solidify the exclusivity and snob appeal of the brand: most of the people alienated by his comments would never put on an Abercrombie label anyway, and most of the people who have the Abercrombie worldview either won’t understand what all the fuss is about (think naïve Cher from Clueless) or will write it off to jealousy (like the Plastics in Mean Girls or the Heathers in Heathers).

So even though I personally find his attitude despicable and would sooner wear a live badger on my head than be seen in a pair of A&F pants, I think these statements probably helped his brand more than hurt it.

But that’s not the point. What’s most instructive about this case is the fact that Jeffries talks about something that’s more important to all of us than we tend to realize or admit: exclusive marketing. Jeffries has done a good job profiling the customer that Abercrombie wants and the customer they don’t want, and has created a brand that appeals to the desirable customer while repelling the undesirable one. It’s brutally efficient positioning from a guy who understands that having the wrong customers can be a death sentence for an image-based brand or a company.

(Incidentally, for anyone who has sworn off A&F clothes forever as a result of Jeffries’ statements, you’re missing the point. Exclusive brands don’t die when they are ignored by the masses, they die when they are embraced – and diluted – by the masses.)

The trick, obviously, is to be more subtle about it so that you don’t end up making national headlines for your insensitivity. But the more clearly you define your customer, the more clearly you’ve defined your non-customer. Think about Apple’s “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads – similar mentality to Abercrombie, just executed more delicately.

You’ve hopefully already figured out which customers you want, and you’ve taken steps to brand yourself in a way that appeals to those customers. But have you thought about who you don’t want as customers (particularly if they are people who could be damaging to your brand) and what you can do to keep them away? If not, take the Jeffries challenge. Think about the customers who, if you had enough of them, would sink your company: maybe because they are high-maintenance, or have demands that you are not well-suited to meet, or are abusive, or constantly nickel-and-dime you. Build a profile of your ideal non-customer, and then try to develop a strategy to keep them away.

Just don’t be a jerk about it, okay?

*Photo credit Rob Young

Both stations run a bit where they pose a question to their listeners or share about some unusual or strange news story. They then open the phone lines and put people live on the air to give their thoughts or answer.

Recent topics discussed include:

• Bad drivers
• Best local burger
• Strange workplace rules
• What the tooth fairy pays these days
• If pregnant women should receive Mother’s Day gifts
• Whether or not it’s a good idea to “Friend” your boss on Facebook

These questions and topics always attract a lot of response. Each time I’ve listened to one, the conversations are lively and interesting enough to make me think, “Do I know what the station’s number is to call in myself?”

So what does radio have to do with social media?

Morning radio shows figured out long ago how to properly engage their core customer – the average morning radio show listener. Businesses trying to learn how to do the same with their core customer – but on social media – can learn a lot from watching the techniques these morning radio show hosts have perfected.

Rules for Social Media Engagement

So, what are the morning radio show customer engagement lessons to be learned?

• Know your Audience – If you haven’t ever profiled your typical customer, do so now. For the sake of your business and your social media efforts. For example, these radio shows know that people listening to their stations during that time of day are typically driving into work or driving their kids to school and then heading into work. 
• Be Relevant - Relevant for your customer demographic and psychographic make-up, and relevant for the time of year. That’s why workplace issues, Mother’s Day and parenting topics like the tooth fairy work for them.
• Social Media Isn’t About Selling 24/7 – None of the topics for the call-in bit ever have anything to do with the radio station. And all of them have to do with common life, work and family experiences and frustrations most people face.

People respond to these questions because they identify with them. They’ve hollered (and perhaps raised a finger) at bad drivers. They’ve made Mother’s Day brunch reservations. They eat lunches and dinners out. And they have the same types of office annoyances than you do.

Try to think about *who* your core customer is, what they care about and how they are likely to spend their time and money. Then use that insight with your social media content planning.

I bet you’re thinking: so what?

The big “so what” is that these messages disappear in ten seconds or less.

Snapchat allows you to take photos. You can then add text or draw on the photos. From there, you can determine how long you’d like the message to appear for. The timeframe is 10 seconds or less.

Once messages have been sent, you can refer back to see the messages that have been sent to you. If you haven’t viewed them for your fully allotted time, you can view them again. This means if the sender has set a message time at 10 seconds, you could choose to view it 5 separate times for 2 seconds a piece (if you wanted).

Snapchat will also notify you if the receiver of your message captured it with a screen shot.

Snapchat isn’t necessarily a platform designed for business use, but it is important to understand what’s currently “hot” in the app and social media world. Especially since this is currently the platform of choice for teenagers.

Do you think Snapchat has a future for brand marketing?

LinkedIn Tagging

Those who regularly post updates to their professional profiles will appreciate the newly added “tagging” feature. You can now tag other users and business pages when you post an update.

LinkedIn Professional Portfolio

A much-needed (in my opinion) upgrade being rolled out to the new-ish LinkedIn Personal Profile format is the ability to visually enhance sections of your profile like your Experience or Summary.

LinkedIn had made it easier to connect items like SlideShare presentations to a specific position with its profile changes in late 2012. However, this recent upgrade is much more visually-appealing and gives your connections the opportunity to interact with the media you’ve uploaded.

LinkedIn Contacts

Your online professional rolodex just got an upgrade with LinkedIn’s new Contacts tool. Integrating your email contacts, address books and calendars with your existing LinkedIn connections helps you to keep all this information in one place. You can even add notes and reminders to each Contact’s listing.

The new LinkedIn Contacts will be gradually rolling out to personal profiles, but you can add your name to the wait list here: http://contacts.linkedin.com. LinkedIn Contacts will also be available as a standalone iPhone app.

LinkedIn’s tagging, Contacts and Professional Portfolio are 3 very useful improvements to the platform. If you had your druthers, what other feature would you like to see added to LinkedIn profiles?

There’s really no disputing this fact. When I was in college, I worked in a retail store where I got paid commission. A customer who was eager to purchase a $300 leather jacket stared into the mirror while she hemmed and hawed over the decision. She finally sighed and asked my opinion.

A good sales person would have told her how great she looked in the jacket and suggested a coordinating pair of shoes to go with the jacket.

But not me.

Instead, I explained to her that she didn’t seem to love the jacket. If she didn’t love it, it was not worth the money. She left the store happy which made me happy. My manager, however, was not happy. This was my first and greatest indicator that I am not great at sales.

However, my managers were loathe to let me go. Why? It was simple: while I didn’t make extraordinary sales I did make our customers uniquely happy. As a result, they changed my position and had me as the dedicated cashier. I was the last line of defense to make sure customers walked out happy. This also gave our sales team more time to sell since they didn’t have to take time to ring a customer up. Additionally, I handled every customer who was blind with rage over a return or the way they’d been treated on the phone. I empathized with them, offered a solution for their problem and treated them with respect.

They left happy, which made me happy.

What I was doing was offering great customer service. While I’ve never believed that the customer is ALWAYS right, I do believe that all customers should be treated with respect. They should be treated as though their concerns matter – because they do. A customer who is pleased with your service will spread that word. A customer who is furious will spread that word as well, perhaps with more vehemence.

So how do you ensure you’re offering great customer service?

1. Listen - Before you tell them how you’ll fix things, make sure you listen to their whole story. The devil is in the details and not all issues are what they first appear. This is crucial to making sure you offer the right solution.
2. Acknowledge - Acknowledging their situation and feelings can do a lot to set the tone of the exchange. People almost instantly calm down when they understand that what’s going on.
3. Empathize - The words “I understand you don’t want to be in this situation” and MEANING it, can do a lot. Plus, this about it. If the situation were reversed, would you want to be in their situation? No. Whether or not they are right is not the point. They are upset and you don’t like being upset either. Genuinely empathizing helps your client know you value them.
4. Offer a solution - Offering a solution can be subjective. Perhaps a full refund is in order. Perhaps an exchange or simply an explanation is in order. Whatever the case may be, be sure you explain to your client what you’re doing and why it helps them. Sometimes simply being trained on how to use the good or services they’ve purchased can go a very long way.
5. Help them avoid the situation in the future - Explain how they can avoid the situation in the future. If possible, write down any tips that might be tough to remember. This helps them feel confident about working with you in the future.

There’s a lot of talk now about customer service. I’m of the mindset that great customer service will eventually lead to more sales. Yet it seems that many are ignoring existing clients in order to chase new business.

In a world that seems to be moving away from fantastic customer service, let’s bring it back.

New Facebook Mobile News Feed

The image below shows the new News Feed look available with the most recent Facebook App update. The default view is your overall News Feed, and you have the option to expand your choices to target only the type of updates you are most interested in seeing.

Clicking once on the up/down arrow icon expands the menu to show a “Photos” option and a down arrow to see more. It’s important to note that viewing “Photos” only shows you photos posted by your Friends, and not Fan Pages that you follow.

You’ll need to click one more time to reveal the full set of menu options.

Users clicking on “All Friends” will get to see a News Feed filled purely with their Friends’ updates and not fan page news. Mobile users having the option to filter out all fan page updates is never good for a brand.

Clicking on the “Following” option displays updates from all the pages you follow. On one hand, this is great because it’s only fan page updates being shown to you. On the other hand, a user needs to click 3 times in order to see only updates from the fan pages they follow.

From a general usability standpoint…the more clicks required, the less likely people are to use that feature. So, it’s unlikely anywhere close to that 50% are opting to consume their News Feeds this way.

New Facebook Fan Page Mobile Site

The goal of Facebook’s mobile redesign of its fan pages is to make it as easy as possible for users to find the information they most want. For a brick and mortar business, this means displaying a profile photo, cover photo, and the option to Like/Unlike, check-in, call, view on a map and see ratings of the business. Although it has always been important to fully populate the About and Description fields of your fan page, this new design reinforces the importance of having a correct business address and phone number on your fan page. Nothing is more frustrating than a customer clicking the “Call” button and not reaching that business.

Beneath the map, users will find the number of Likes, count of people who checked-in and recent Recommendations of the business.

Beneath that, a user will find photos tagged by people with that business’ location.

A user will need to scroll past all of these fan page sections to read the most recent status update.

So, What’s the Take-Away Here?

Actually, there are a few.

• Make sure you have complete, correct information about your business on your fan page.
• With so many users accessing Facebook on their phones, using photos can make the difference between someone stopping their thumb scroll motion or not.
• However, using photos with all your fan page updates doesn’t mean those updates will become part of the “Photos” News Feed view.

Will this change your Facebook content strategy? What percentage of the time do you access Facebook on your phone?

In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current. – Thomas Jefferson

Social media has plenty of fads and trends that quickly inspire people to jump on board. For instance, look how quickly people started posting links to their articles in the comments of their own threads.

Some fads are innocuous; matters of taste or flash in the pan memes. Others, however, only appear innocuous but can be terribly detrimental to your business.

Knowing what the terms of service on any given platform allow can make or break your social media presence. Brand pages with hundreds of thousands of Facebook fans have been deleted with no warning for running contests that violated Facebook terms of service. Earlier this year, Instagram almost instituted terms of service that would have drastically impacted your rights. It is crucial that you understand and abide by the terms of service in order to preserve your business.

When it comes to matters of principle and terms of service, standing strong even when it appears jumping on the band wagon would give you an easy social media boost will ensure you have a long term presence and not just a flash in the pan.

When I opened the letter, it appeared to be a bill. It included an invoice and account number as well as a description of services. It was from a company with a very generic name. It appeared to be billing me $85 for listing my website on various internet platforms – a service which my very own company offers.

Upon further inspection, I found a line that said “This is not a bill. This is a solicitation.” However, by that time, I was already upset. My initial reaction had been one of fear – that somehow I’d ordered this service accidentally. After that, I became angry that they’d bill me for something that was unclear. By the time I realized this was a solicitation, I simply felt manipulated.

Clearly, this is not the way to gain new clients. Making people feel confused, fearful, angry or manipulated is typically not a wise way to build your brand. So why do it? Because it is an easy way to grab someone’s attention. What seems like a clever marketing ploy to you can sometimes come off terribly to your audience.

So, now you’re stuck. You want attention but you need to get it without feeling cheap or spammy. How do you manage to keep from spamming your clients? Here are three simple guidelines to help you avoid sending materials that can evoke negative reactions.

1. Don’t intentionally trick your clients or potential clients. Just, don’t.
2. Before sending anything, think about how you’d react upon receiving it from someone else.
3. Avoid trash talk and over the top boasting. It doesn’t come off well in political campaigns and it won’t come off well in political pieces.

At the end of the day, think about how you’d like to be approached. Chances are, your customers and potential customers will appreciate being treated the same way.