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Asbury Park Press 12:02 a.m. ET March 20, 2017

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Theresa Pittius (left) and Cassie Galasetti own Social Sidekick Media in Red Bank.(Photo: Courtesy Chris Kucinski Photography)

Theresa Pittius andCassie Galasetti own Social Sidekick Mediain Red Bank.

When did you decide you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Pittius: Funnily enough, I started working in middle school, volunteering at the Monmouth County Library shelving books and running a pretty darn successful babysitting business for myself in Lincroft and surrounding towns. (The Baby-Sitters Club series was a huge hit back in the '90s and I read each one religiously!) My work ethic has always been very strong, and through the many different occupations I've had over the years, I quietly kept note that I was working harder than most of my fellow employees. There were times when my bosses were coming to me for answers, and I always found it odd, so when I was in my mid-20s I started my first company and was hooked.

Galasetti: I worked hard at various jobs during college and out of college where I picked up a lot of skills along the way. I worked in TV, publishing, marketing, public relations, advertising and entertainment. For me, I think I needed all of the background first before venturing out on my own.

Why did you start this business?

We were both working separate jobs at the time that we met. We noticed each other's work on social media, but it wasnt until I (Cassie) reached out to Theresa to compliment her work that we started to become friends. We were both working on our own until we decided to go full-force together. We quickly learned that our individual strengths complimented one another extremely well. We both wanted to have free reign over our success; I guess the rest is history!

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Were there any challenges that made you think twice about striking out on your own?

Never. We are both extremely efficient and highly dedicated individuals. Every new challenge has been exciting for us to experience and overcome!

If you could do it again, what would you do differently?

Maybe learn a little more about the accounting side of things. We agree thats the most intimidating part of running a business. As creative professionals, bookkeeping is not an area where we truly excel, but we were able to quickly find that out and hire strong accountants to back us up.

Whats the best business advice you have ever received?

Pittius: "Treat others how you wish to be treated." My grandmother, Carol Sullivan, started a business in Red Bank in the '60s and was my mentor in life. She always had life lessons, and this one stuck with me. Dealing with all types of business owners, they all have one thing in common: they want to be treated with respect and held in your best interest. I take that with me every day when I visit my clients. Owning a business is stressful enough without having to deal with unpleasant people!

Galasetti: Surround yourself with good people. Take risks. Dont take things too personally. Watch, listen and learn. Write every dream and goal down on a piece of paper and read them often.

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What personality trait helps you the most?

Creativity, dedication, open-mindedness, innovative, hardworkingand (the big one in our line of work) deadline oriented.

Whats the hardest part of the job?

We are constantly working. We will try to meet for something fun (kickboxing, lunch, etc.) and just end up talking about work because we are so passionate about what we do. Being able to turn off that constant energy is tough, especially on holidays when we know we have to focus on family.

The easiest?

Working with each other! We have the same vision and dedication and want whats best for our business and clients.

What surprised you the most about running the business?

That many potential clients dont set aside the time and budget for crucial business tools like social media and PR.

Describe your most unusual customer, job or work experience.

We were working on a social media campaign for our Philadelphia clients and ran (literally) around the city with a photographer taking pictures at all of the Philly landmarks with our client's product. Try taking a product photo next to the Liberty Bell during a class trip! It was nearly impossible, but really fun. We were basically doing an on-the-go photoshoot. We got a ton of looks from people, but now they all know the name of our client's brand, if they werent aware of it before!

How would you like the business to grow and change?

We have very high hopes for Social Sidekick. As other small businesses continue to learn and understand the importance of hiring a professional to run their social media and PR, we will continue to work with more and more new clients. We like our boutique agency feel, but we do see ourselves growing with another staff member or two in the near future. We also have a very wide variety of clients from divorce attorneys to surgeons to restaurants, theaters and dance schools, but we definitely want to work with a clothing retailer or art gallery something colorful and fun.

In one sentence, tell us why customers should go to you?

We help small businesses receive the attention that a major company would die for.

What do you love about the community where your business is located?

Small businesses are the backbone of Red Bank. There is just something about watching a business grow from their grand opening to their one-year anniversary party or even second location.

When you leave work, do you leave the office behind, or are you always in contact?

Were always connected! Were a text, call, tweet, comment or DMaway. Every day is different, so we need our communication tools by our side at all times.

What do you do in your off time?

Pittius: I teach private voice and acting to local performers at a professional track training studio I own,Red Bank Performance Prep. I have a background in musical theaterand love boosting confidence in kids and teens (and adults!) and strengthening talent while training my students every week.

Galasetti: I love to travel, especially to Central America. I also write for many blogs, magazines and local newspapers, so that keeps me pretty busy!

When you leave the business behind some day, what will you do?

Pittius: Start another one!

Galasetti:Travel full time!

Small Business Spotlight runs Mondays. If youre a small-business owner in Monmouth and Ocean counties interested in taking part in this Q&A, contact business producer Dennis P. Carmody at dcarmody@gannettnj.com.

SOCIAL SIDEKICK MEDIA, BRANDING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS

Describe your business: We are a boutique social marketing agency founded on ambitious goals and a passionate spirit. We assist in launching your company on social media platforms, help with managing existing accounts, get your name in the press and execute a total overhaul of your brand. Social Sidekickis your one-stop shop. We provide clients with strategic, inventive and measurable results to bring you to the next level of your industry.

Owners: Theresa Pittius andCassie Galasetti

Location: Red Bank

Website: socialsidekickmedia.com

Founded: January 2016

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Read this article:
Red Bank social marketers unafraid of risk - Asbury Park Press

Influencer marketing is now an integral part of social marketing; it may even become an anchor for marketers trying to navigate around the scourge of ad blocking and bot fraud this year.

However, while influencer marketing has proven to yield excellent return on investment, rising costs have some experts asking how much is too muchto pay for influencer campaigns. Content discovery platform Bloglovin surveyed 100 marketing pros to get a sense of the current state of influencer marketing.

The marketers surveyed by Bloglovin take advantage of influencer marketing for a few main reasonsraising brand awareness, reaching target audiences and the original content created by social media influencers. Fewer than 20 percent of those surveyed said they werent working with influencers yet, but they planned to this year.

Marketers who sponsor influencer content on social have discovered that traditional advertising, such as display ad campaigns, simply cant impact audiences the way influencer campaigns can. The personalized and authentic content created by social influencers encourages audience loyalty. In fact, for 75 percent of marketers surveyed, quality/authenticity was the most important factor in choosing an influencer. 70 percent also selected for audience size, 64 percent for engagement and more than one-half for the influencers aesthetic.

The bottom line is that influencers provide real value to marketers. Aside from the essential boost in brand awareness and new audience reach, more than one-half of survey participants reported that influencers help grow their social following and increased sales, while still nearly one-half reported increases in website traffic.

For more information on the preferred ways to locate influencers, the best social sites for influencer content and investment growth data, download the full report.

Image on homepage courtesy of Shutterstock.

Go here to read the rest:
Influencer Marketing Is Becoming an Essential Business Strategy (Survey) - Adweek

The findings of a survey among 400 Facebook users, conducted by researchers from the University of Edinburgh Business School and the Universities of Bath and Birmingham, suggests that marketers look beyond their social followers and take heed of those followers' own online social network.

Many people on Facebook include older and younger family members in their Friends list, as well as employers, and as a consequence are often reticent to Share posts with risque or potentially offensive content.

A quarter of those surveyed (25%) said they would be extremely worried about their parents or employer seeing them Share or Like a sexually explicit ad for Durex, and three-quarters (75%) said they would be very unlikely to Share or Like the ad on the brand's Facebook Page.

"In the same way they might avoid pictures of them appearing drunk, or posting offensive comments for fear of being embarrassed or judged by their bosses or grans, Facebook users are also less likely to 'like' or 'share' brand content that could cause offence," said Dr. Ben Marder, Lecturer in Marketing at University of Edinburgh Business School.

"Social media provides a novel environment for showing off brand connections. But whereas in real life people carefully select which brand are best to show off their appreciation for and to whom, on social media everyone can see what you 'like' at once".

Tags: engagement, marketing, social media

View original post here:
Research warns marketers to consider social media followers' diverse network - BizReport

Email marketing is still the highest-grossing marketing channel per dollar spent, but return on investment is impossible without a list of subscribers to send marketing messages to.

Ascend2, a marketing research firm, investigated the most effective email list acquisition tactics in its latest monthly report by polling 255 B2B and B2C marketers on the list growth strategies that result in the greatest benefits with minimum effort.

Social media advertising was the top-ranking email list growth strategy, according to the study-- with 45% of respondents selecting it as an effective tactic. Social media presents an opportunity for marketers to acquire customer data and curate email lists on a channel where consumers spend a large amount of time, and it does so limited effort on the part of the marketer.

Just 37% of marketers selected social media as a channel requiring the most effort to be successful, likely because Facebook has made people-based marketing a straightforward process for marketers that can afford the ad spend.

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Content marketing presents brands with an opportunity to share news and thought leadership, and was selected as the second-most effective list growth strategy according to Ascend2s report. Following closely behind social media, 42% of respondents indicated that content marketing was a fruitful email acquisition tool.

The problem with content marketing, however, is the large amount of resources that need to be funneled into the channel to create fresh content.

Content marketing was actually selected as the email acquisition strategy that required the most effort, according to Ascend2, garnering 50% of respondents selecting it as a resource-draining solution.

Not surprisingly, many marketers are turning to user-generated content (UGC) to bridge the divide between providing consumers with new material with minimal effort. Stackla, a popular UGC marketing platform, recentlylaunched an email plugin to help email marketers curate content created by fan.

Search engine optimization (SEO) was selected by 38% respondents as the third-most effective email acquisition tactic, but 45% of respondents asserted that it required the most effort. Social logins and sign-up forms were a productive strategy for 36% of respondents, while 30% asserted it drained resources.

Contests and giveaways require the least amount of effort, according to Ascend2, but only 34% of respondents believed they were an effective acquisition tactic.

However, contest and giveaways were viewed as more successful than partnerships or paid search/remarketing campaigns while also requiring less effort.

Read the original here:
Social Media, Content Marketing Most Effective For Growing Email Lists - MediaPost Communications

Unified's report, 'The New Age of Transparency', surveyed 100s of digital marketers from Fortune 500 brands and their agencies. It reveals that this year is "the tipping point" and will be the year where "marketers intend to leverage business intelligence to give them the transparency and context they need to confidently unleash the power of their social advertising investments".

But first, it seems, those marketers need to overcome some challenges. The report reveals that half of social marketers refer to their data as "a kludge" - a term attributed to Jackson W. Granholm, who defined the word in a 1962 issue of the magazine Datamation as "an ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole".

Nearly 1 in 4 (38%) of social marketers say they have no capability to "normalize and enrich" social media data to make it usable and 56% have little to no transparency into social advertising performance and ROI.

Furthermore, fragmentation causes challenges and limits social advertisers in reaching their full potential, found the report, with 1 in 3 marketers leveraging 4-10 different buying and/or activation tools for their brand.

Additional findings from the report include:

- 60% have little to no ability to easily share performance analytics with other teams;

- 51% have little to no transparency into which solution is working best;

- 67% of marketers state that "the ability to understand creative and targeting performance at a granular level" is somewhat to extremely important;

- Only 8% of marketers call themselves advanced trailblazers when it comes to business intelligence for social ads - meaning there is a huge opportunity for growth in 2017.

Tags: fragmentation, research, social marketing, transparency

Go here to read the rest:
Social marketers refer to their data as 'kludge' - BizReport