Mediaboss Marketing

Ilana Rabinowitz is a "lion" in ecommerce and social networking. As Vice President of Marketing for the Lion Brand Yarn Company, she built a newsletter with over 1 million subscribers, launched an award winning podcast and blog, and created a presence on social media outlets that gives Lion Brand Yarn a circulation greater than all of the trade publications combined.

Ilana writes and blogs at Social Media Explorer and Marketing Without a Net, Google Plus and Twitter.

EcommerceBytes caught up with Ilana to find out some of the secrets of successful social networking for ecommerce players.

Do you see social networking as an important tool for online sellers who may not have a nationally known brand?

Ilana Rabinowitz: I think social networking is most important for companies that are not nationally known brands. This is because people do business with companies they know and trust.

If you are not a known brand, you have to help people to learn about you and develop trust by showing them that you know your product and you are there to be helpful, every day, when you're not selling, by providing useful and relevant content. This doesn't happen by broadcasting marketing messages. It happens by sharing information and telling your story on social media.

Online sellers also need to be on social media because people often make buying decisions based on the ideas and recommendations of friends.

What are three social networking sites where all online sellers would be participating and, if you chose just one, which one would it be and why?

Ilana Rabinowitz: Choosing the right social networks for your business is not a simple one-size-fits-all question. It depends on how much time you have to devote to social media, what your goals are, who your audience is and what your resources and talents are.

I would never recommend that anyone try to conquer three at once. It would overwhelm any small business. Anyone just starting out should realize that while there may not be an out of pocket cost, there is a time commitment, and to do it right means that one or more people will need to set aside time to seriously dedicate to it.

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Social Networking Most Important for Small Ecommerce Players

By Eve Tahmincioglu

Figuring out which social networking site is the best for your job search is like trying to decipher a riddle with a constantly changing answer.

When Google+ was introduced, many expected the site to rival Facebook and LinkedIn when it came to its job-hunting potential. But recent data show that the social networking site hasnt lived up to all the hype. Google+ users only spend mere minutes on the site each month, compared to almost eight hours a month on Facebook, comScore reported last week.

And now, an increasing number of people are using Pinterest, the latest social-networking darling; and some are even posting graphic-intensive resumes in an effort to impress employers. The number of unique visitors to the site jumped 56 percent since December, according to comScore, to nearly 12 million.

All this social media ballyhoo has many wondering which site will help them land the job of their dreams.

Once upon a time, career experts pointed to LinkedIn as the only site workers had to be on, but now thats changing. More playful sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Quora, and even Pinterest are turning out to be valuable tools for job-hunters, too, wrote George Anders, author of The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else," in a Harvard Business Review post last week.

If the alphabet soup of social media choices has you wanting to shun them all, think again. Employers are increasingly using social media to connect with applicants. The most recent data show 56 percent of the organizations currently use social networking websites when recruiting for potential jobs, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), which surveyed nearly 550 HR professionals via email last year. Thats up from 34 percent in 2008, the last time the survey was conducted.

Where recruiters are going to find you out in cyber space, however, is a moving target.

Among the employers SHRM polled there are three top choices:

But a survey put out last month by The Creative Group, an interactive advertising company, of advertising and marketing executives found that if they had to pick one social networking, 56 percent would choose Facebook, followed by LinkedIn and Google+.

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For job hunters, social networking options abound

I have a couple thousand "friends" on Facebook, and a few days ago I cyber-smacked one of them over the head like an ugly son-in-law. He had made what I thought was a very snarky, malicious comment about one of my awe-inspiring, earth-shattering posts. Such an offense I could not abide.

So, in defense of my opinions (more accurately, my ego), I took to the keyboard and let him have it in front of Mark Zuckerberg's 800 million Facebook users (That's right, if you haven't been paying attention, Facebook is now the third largest nation on the planet, exceeded only by the populations of India and China). But a day later I discovered it was a huge misunderstanding.

My friend had not aimed his comment at me; it was directed at someone else. Further, he was being more sarcastic than sinister, more playful than mean-spirited, but it just didn't communicate across the online superhighway. I apologized profusely and retreated to a corner of the World Wide Web with my foot, mouse, and keyboard in my mouth.

This whole incident, as minor as it turned out to be, is reflective of how we communicate and miscommunicate in the 21st century. For years I have noticed how people will say things in e-mails that they would never say to someone else's face (good and bad), and I often warn my children about this as their thumbs blaze across the QUERTY keypads of their cell phones.

"Social networking" sites greatly magnify the effect, an effect now known as "online dis-inhibition." We seem to lose our social restraint, our better judgment sometimes we lose our minds completely while hiding behind the pseudo-invisibility of the Internet and the digital airways.

A congressperson posts racy pictures to his account and scuttles his career; a middle-aged husband rattles all his marital skeletons online and ends up in divorce court; a high school football star loses his promised scholarship because of his Twitter rantings; a young woman can't land a job because prospective employers Google her and deem her a liability: These are the realities, virtual and otherwise, of today's world.

I don't want to sound like some crazed Luddite who hates technology and pines for the days of the rotary phone or the covered wagon. I love WI-FI, streaming video, GPS, downloadable audio, and satellites. These words you are reading were typed on a laptop computer I cannot live without, and I've received a dozen emails in the course of writing this column. No, I'm not ready to give up these things.

But neither am I ready to accept all of these technologies without some critique and discernment. While I now recognize the countless alternative ways we can connect with others, I also recognize that we are lonelier and more disconnected than ever. I can see that we are more aware of the world around us than any previous generation, and yet I see that we may be the most narcissistic generation to ever live in North America.

As "social networking" grows, it appears we must guard against real communication disintegrating, and the constant undermining of real, human connection. Technologies aside, we still need flesh-and-blood relationships, connections that are built upon mutual respect, actual time together, shared interests, and face-to-face conversation.

People of faith may have more at stake in this issue than most, because faith fails in a hyper-individualized, self-centered world. Faith only flourishes in the environs of an authentic, unselfish community, not a virtual imitation where people hide behind their avatars.

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Real Social Networking

Automakers have begun slowly integrating social networking into vehicles via advanced infotainment systems that provide voice-activated social functions. In a recent collaboration with Facebook called "Hackathon," Ford gave the world a glimpse of what in-car social networking 2.0 might look like. It's scary and intriguing at the same time.

One time, long, long ago, cars were a primary means of socialization. You hopped into your red sports coupe and went on a date; you gathered a group of friends and went driving in the town; you drove to visit family every week, month or holiday. In short, the car was the way to see those that were important to, you face to face.

These days, you carry a mobile phone with texting capabilities, you video chat with long-distance friends and family, and you update your crew about your life instantaneously via Facebook and other networking websites. The car no longer plays a primary role in keeping you in touch and social. In fact, studies show that young people increasingly prefer smartphones over vehicles - the once timeless glamor of the first car is all but extinct.

Automakers are quite aware of this trend and are shrugging off potential dangers in an effort to make the car more social than ever. The Ford Sync system includes functions like voice-activated text messaging and in-vehicle smartphone app integration, which extends to Twitter updates.

At the Hackathon event last month, a team of Ford and Facebook programmers spent 24 hours brainstorming and hacking together advanced social functions that they believe could take the Sync system to the next level of in-vehicle socialization. The team created a vehicle in which Facebook integration was more than just a robotic voice reading updates. Facebook became intertwined with traditional vehicle functions like GPS and radio.

One of the functions the team worked on was a navigation system capable of not only supplying the driver with locations of nearby restaurants, but sorting those restaurants based on Facebook friend likes. So, you could eat at that hot new restaurant all your friends are talking about with hardly any effort. Another program could provide location updates for your friends, and automatically navigate you to them (kinda stalkerish if you ask us). A music function would let you automatically tune in to the music that your friends are playing.

Ford said the best ideas will find their way into official R&D channels, where they'll be further developed. It ended its blog post about the event by promising the driver's "first priority will always be to remain focused on driving and making it safely to your destination." However, features like in-vehicle Facebook run the risk of creating cognitive distractions, which studies show can be as dangerous as manual distractions like dialing a cell phone.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has been quoted in the past as saying that things like Facebook have no place in the car. The Department of Transportation released the first phase of voluntary guidelines last month, that begins to address what automakers should and should not be doing in terms of vehicle technologies. The list is largely focused on manual-based technologies like Internet browsing and text messaging, but later phases will deal with things like voice-based texting and social networking. Functions like those dreamed up at Hackathon could very well end up on the wrong side of safety regulations.

Whatever becomes of the work, you can see all the brainstorming, coffee chugging and carpal tunnel-inducing keyboarding that went on behind the scenes below.

Source: Ford

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Ford teams with Facebook to make 'social' car

The "Facebook of China" Renren Inc. ( RENN , quote ) has announced the release of Renren HD, thefirst social networking application selected by Microsoft ( MSFT , quote ) for its Windows 8 application store.

The application was released at the Windows 8 Consumer Preview Conference held during the Mobile World Congress 2012 inBarcelona, Spain.

Renren HD is designed to be fully-integrated with Windows 8, a generational change on Microsoft's flagship operating system. Windows 8 focuses on tablet usage and integration with social networks, so the application has adopted tiled Metro-style user interfaces and the ability to share content from a wide range of different applications with a single click.

"We are very proud to be selected as the first SNS partner for Microsoft's new Windows store," said Joseph Chen, CEO of Renren. "Renren shares the vision of Windows 8 in its aspiration to revolutionize how content is delivered and shared between the next generation of digital devices. Renren HD was designed with the same philosophy."

Renren Inc. operates the leading real name social networking internet platform inChina. Its sites cover social networking, gaming, commerce, and video sharing. Renren had approximately 137 million activated users as ofSeptember 30, 2011.

Investors looking to invest in Renren and other Chinese internet ventures should look at the Global X Social Media Index ETF ( SOCL , quote ), which puts 4.56% of its holdings into Renren shares.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.

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First Windows 8 social networking app is Chinese