All posts tagged Social Media

Yahoo’s Tumblr Purchase: What Does it Mean for Small Businesses?

By | May 22, 2013 | Micro Business Issues, Small Business Marketing 101, Social Media | No comments
Tumblr Yahoo

This post is written by Robbie Vogel, a writer/editor with Vistaprint. Robbie has worked for microbusinesses in both PR and advertising.

On Monday, May 20, Yahoo issued a press release stating their purchase of Tumblr, the popular social network and microblogging platform. This has several important effects on small business marketing, which we outline below. But first, here is a breakdown of what you need to know about Tumblr:

What is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a combination blogging platform and social network. Users log in and can upload content to their personal blog page. They can also follow other Tumblr pages, and can reblog posts from other Tumblr pages to their own. As a result, many pages contain multiple forms of media, including pictures, text, videos, GIFs, and music. To give you an example, here is the official Tumblr page of the Tumblr staff.

How Does Yahoo’s Takeover Affect Small Business?

  1. Tumblr is poised to gain users, exposure, and influence thanks to its partnership with Yahoo. “With more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day, Tumblr is one of the fastest-growing media networks in the world,” says Yahoo’s press release. And that was before the Yahoo takeover. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said on a phone call: “We can bring some of the exciting [Tumblr] content to Yahoo or we can bring some Yahoo users to Tumblr.” Suffice it to say, Tumblr will continue to grow, in both popularity and influence.
  2. With the addition of Yahoo, Tumblr’s content will be much more easily searchable. From Mayer’s post: “Tumblr can deploy Yahoo’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love.” This will allow both Tumblr users and Internet searchers to discover relevant Tumblr content more easily.
  3. Tumblr will no doubt begin to incorporate more advertising into their user interface. Tumblr as an advertising vehicle has been summed up nicely as: “…a place to promote particularly creative campaigns to an audience whose attention is worth paying for.” Promoted posts have appeared on users’ Tumblr dashboards since summer 2012, and Yahoo said in their press release regarding the purchase: “The two companies will work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance the user experience.” Between Tumblr’s enormous network of dedicated creators and Yahoo’s ad-targeting technology, this could be a huge benefit for businesses.

Tumblr’s CEO David Karp has said time and again that he is not out to compete with other social networks. However, after this acquisition, Tumblr may be poised to take on Twitter, Google+, and Instagram as a platform that allows audiences to create, discover, and share information.

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Pinterest for Small Businesses

By | May 16, 2013 | Digital Marketing, Online Marketing, Small Business Tips, Social Media | 1 Comment

This post is written by Kristen Johnson, a member of Vistaprint’s social media team who focuses on content marketing.

Pinterest has taken the social media world by storm by quickly moving up the charts as one of the most active and engaging platforms around. We first mentioned Pinterest on our blog about a year ago when the network was just starting to generate buzz. Since then, the network has exploded in popularity. In fact, a recent infographic published by Wishpond revealed that the total number of unique visitors to Pinterest increased by 2,702.2% since May 2011.

Read more…

The Socially Savvy Customer

By | May 15, 2013 | Facebook, Marketing, Retaining Customers, Social Media, Twitter | No comments

This post is written by Kristen Johnson, a member of Vistaprint’s social media team who focuses on content marketing.

Social media networks have completely revolutionized the way in which we communicate with one another. They enable us to engage with friends, extended relatives, A-List celebrities, big name brands, and even high-powered industry or political figures. Which means that businesses must be cognizant of the power that social media now plays in driving consumer opinion and buying decisions. Read more…

Twitter Expanding Its Self-Service Ad Platform To All U.S. Users

By | May 6, 2013 | Acquiring New Customers, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter | No comments

This post is written by Robbie Vogel, a writer/editor with Vistaprint. Robbie has worked for microbusinesses in both PR and advertising.

Twitter, the world’s 10th most-visited website, introduced advertising options in 2010, and rolled out its select self-service ad platform in March of 2012. As of April 30th of this year, Twitter has officially opened up this self-service platform to all Twitter accounts in the United States. If you’re on Twitter, you’ve no doubt seen the yellow “Promoted Tweet” arrow at the bottom of a post on your feed, or the “Promoted Account” featured prominently in your suggested followers sidebar. Now, with some careful investing and targeting, you can get your name into these slots. Small businesses stand to benefit in a few different ways from this change. Read more…

6 Networking Tips For Home-Based Businesses

By | May 2, 2013 | Acquiring New Customers, Marketing, Micro Business Issues, Social Media, Tips | 1 Comment

This post is written by Robbie Vogel, a writer/editor with Vistaprint. Robbie has worked for microbusinesses in both PR and advertising.

We wrote a post a while ago outlining three tips for establishing good work habits at home. This is an important set of guidelines, as it encourages the separation of your “business” self from your “home” self. However, it doesn’t touch on one of the most important parts of home-based business: networking. When working from home, it can be difficult to network, and find new customers. Here are six quick tips you might find useful: Read more…

7 Ways To Win New Customers

By | April 30, 2013 | Acquiring New Customers, Marketing, Offline Marketing, Retaining Customers, Social Media | No comments

This is a post by Sara Nash; Sara earned her degree in Public Relations from Penn State University. From there, she worked a PR agency in Boston before joining the PR and Social Media team at Vistaprint.

Part of growing your small business is growing your customer base. But how, exactly, can you do that? Here are seven ways to win new customers…it’s up to you to keep them! Read more…

What Social Media Network Is Right For Your Small Business?

By | April 3, 2013 | Facebook, Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media, Twitter | No comments
facebook-tips-2

This post is by Jeff Esposito, Vistaprint’s Social Media Manager.

We all know that social media can be overwhelming. There are stats and figures that show which network is a hit or a flop with given demographics. As a small business owner, you don’t have the time to be everywhere at once (big companies can’t either) – but what social network is right for you? If you don’t know, answer the multiple choice questions below: Read more…

Tips To Stay Trendy In Our Ever-Changing World

By | March 28, 2013 | Marketing, Social Media, Tips | 1 Comment

This post is written by Kristen Johnson, a member of Vistaprint’s social media team, who focuses on content marketing.

Back in January, there was a minor earthquake in Maine that shook the ground throughout New England. It came as a major surprise to locals who rarely experience the phenomenon. At the time, when I first felt what I thought was an earthquake, I immediately grabbed my computer, opened up Twitter, entered “earthquake” in the search field and instantly my feed populated with tweets from others who confirmed my suspicion about the quake.

Being the first to know about a big moment or unusual event is becoming much easier in this digital age where we now have the ability to be updated in real-time of global happenings. Social media facilitates users to interact with one another instantly after any big time events. For companies to stay relevant, they must always be looking for the next big trend or event to pounce on. Oreo, for example, has been particularly successful at jumping on late-breaking stories, such as this February during the Big Game blackout when the company released an image on Twitter with the phrase “You can still dunk in the dark.” Even amidst the flood of new television commercials that evening, Oreo was able to create a massive amount of buzz for their brand by leveraging social media channels with this timely and clever message.

Staying trendy is important for brands (both big and small) that want to keep their marketing efforts relevant, however since trends are always changing, it’s often difficult to do so.  This becomes even more challenging for a small business owner with limited time and resources to devote to trend-spotting. With spring around the corner, here are some quick and easy tips to help you stay trendy this season. Read more…

Facebook ‘Graph Search,’ And How It May Impact You

By | January 24, 2013 | Micro Business Issues | 1 Comment
Facebook Search Graph

This post is written by Kristen Johnson, a member of Vistaprint’s social media team who focuses on content marketing.

Facebook has revamped its search engine with the recent launch of Graph Search. The name “Graph Search” refers to the network of friends, or social graph, that Facebook users have created over the years and are now able to rediscover. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg refers to this new piece of functionality as the “third pillar to Facebook’s ecosystem,” in addition to the newsfeed and timeline. This new social search product allows users to sift through years of Facebook content and filter results by likes, check-ins, photo tags, and much more. Read more…

How Do You Communicate With Customers?

By | January 15, 2013 | Acquiring New Customers, Marketing, Micro Business Issues | 1 Comment
comminucate-with-customers

This is a post from Sara Nash; Sara earned her degree in Public Relations from Penn State University. From there, she worked a PR agency in Boston before joining the PR and Social Media team at Vistaprint.

Running a business allows for a variety of opportunities to interact with your customers. It’s important to take advantage of these opportunities to create repeat–and hopefully life-long–customer relationships. Here are a few ways to talk to your customers…which do you use? Read more…

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